The Movies At

[ateolf]

I did a little bit of Memphis Concrète set editing yesterday. Getting pretty close to the end of that. Not many more artists left. I played around a little with the module Nate lent me. It makes glitchy percussion-ish sounds. It was the most fun when I triggered it with my Mikrophonie so it was kinda like a synth drum. Mary Beth and I did some movie watching at home. We watched that Rogue One star wars movie. It was pretty good for a star wars movie. Some decent things about it, some cheesy things. Speaking of cheese, I ate a whole bunch of chips and cheese dip (las delicias and panchos). Then after that we watched Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! which I hadn't seen since college. It'd been so long I'd remembered almost nothing about it and what I thought I'd remembered was wires crossed with another Spanish movie I saw around the same time (probably for the same entry-level spanish class). Not sure what to think about it right now. Need to think about it some more. There were some I liked about it (especially visually), but the end is kinda, hm. There are some subtler things happening that make me think about it a little differently beneath the surface, but watching some interviews with the people who made it and it makes me think that they're not really there and I'm just projecting what I want it to be. Aside from paying for yesterday's cheese crimes this morning, that's about it.

Comments

[ifjuly]

i wanna have a convo with you about how that's a movie where it's not hard to imagine viewing it with a...a sort of gay male romantic lens (not essential terminology, i'm not trying to larry summers this thing, but i'm trying to get at...that kind of "queer" subculture/transgressive, mostly invisible or misunderstood social code on the margins thing, that kind of queerness and scene/grammar/gloss) to it, and also not hard to imagine viewing it with yeah, a straight white young woman lens (with all she knows from her life and its "rules", too), and how the takeaway and reaction could easily be so very different. and neither's invalid, of course...it's an interesting thing.

[ifjuly]

and i think it's fascinating in ways i'm still trying to untangle some, how it's both (to be annoyingly reductive for the sake of communicative shorthand i trust you'll give me the benefit of the doubt with given our relationship) sharply "unfeminist", seems to actively refuse what to me feels like it sees as a stifling or reductive code (but too, has the luxury to...), yet it's also silently feminist in transgressive ways (the sexuality, Marina's sexual sensibility, and the unspoken awareness of the dangers and limitations/marginalization/judgment such appetites get bundled with if you're a woman...but also how they are, or could be at least, a source of power and self definition, too) without being doctrinaire/by the book coded/lecture-y, it simply is if you know what to look for. which goes back to the (again, for lack of better terminology) gay male art/underground scene sensibility thing. i'm trying to figure out the relation of the "not gonna be a second waver by the book feminist, nosiree" sort of "art vs politics" rebellious statement vis a vis the latter thing. if they're, in some ways, even at odds with each other (it seems to me almodovar obviously doesn't think so, that the actual harmony of the two's almost an underlying principle).

[ifjuly]

also the wiki article is both surprisingly lengthy and still somewhat disappointing (the bit about almodovar and the wiki-ists emphasizing repeatedly it's not about bdsm but the emotional and social bonds of heterosexual romance we enter into willingly--entirely missing the point that for many kinksters that's precisely what they're playing with, too! alas). like. the subtle joke when he comes back and she's all "i can undo my ropes, don't worry about doing it" and the fact she can talk through the hole-y bandages, both the notion he's too distracted with his own wounds to notice the bonds aren't effective, just costume/prop, and the idea they both pretty much know that's what it is by then.

"Almodóvar has consistently denied that Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!’s ropes have any links with sadomasochism.[8] There is no erotic charge to the ropes and gags....Ricky's stated ambition is to be a good husband to Marina and a good father to their children. Indeed, the relationship between Marina and Ricky is meant, ultimately, to be a parody of how such relationships work, as if heterosexuality (and its consequence, marriage) are almost inevitably equivalent in character to the infamous Stockholm syndrome.[6] The cords that tie us one to another become literal ropey metaphors in the film. It is a tale not of kinky sex, but of a sweeter human bondage, of loose ends tied into lover's knots."

i wonder if there are movies about a kind of reverse (that's not the right term though) or mutual osmosis kind of s. syndrome. which reminds me, to bring it back to, "but you can watch it through the lens of a young woman and...": i distinctly remember reading articles in teen magazines when i was 13 or 14 or whatever with apparently firsthand accounts from other teen women about being kidnapped and what to do to survive, things like "talk to your captor, remind him of your name and the details of your life, get him to see you're a person who can be liked/related to as such, so he won't want to hurt you" (for my sister the equivalent was lifetime tv movies).