Ten Sexy Singers (Plus One): Suzanne Vega

Suzanne Vega is a different sort of artist than Mariah Carey, obviously. I got turned on to her her by a girlfriend, who puter her in a mix tape for me. I'd never heard any of her stuff on the radio, but I quickly went out and bout Solitude Standing and loved it, listening to it pretty frequently for a couple of years. I shared my like of her with some guy in college, who derided it as "music for angry lesbians."

My first response was "angry lesbians"? I was pretty naive at this point, so my experience with lesbians was limited to hardcore movies like Pumping Irene and Skin-emax softcore, so I thought, "What does a lesbian have to be angry about? They always seem to be having such a good time."

Anyway, labeling Vega as lesbian music had a dual effect on me: it made me ashamed to like her, but also imbued her with a seductive charm. Her music had many clear indications that she liked men, so she must be bisexual--the best possible thing from my standpoint. (At this point, I did not know about the possibility of heteronormative passing, so I never considered it.)

So I listened to her music in secretive fashion, the way I'd look at porn, and it gained something of that quality for me. It leant itself readily to that tint with her lush vocals, the rich orchestration of the music, and the voyeuristic quality of the lyrics. "Tom's Diner," of course, where we are uncomfortably close to a couple kissing their greetings, as well as the woman hiking up her skirt to fix her stockings. But also "Solitude Standing," with the watching figure, "Language," and "Night Vision," which bring us into the intimate moments of Vega and her lover. Not to mention "Luka," which puts us into the role of outside observer putting together the facts about Luka's situation. And there's "Ironbound Fancy Poultry" with its closing coda,

"Fancy poultry parts sold here

Breast and thighs and hearts

Backs are cheap

And wings are nearly free."

Which I have always thought hinted at the imprisoning power of sex.

It was only recently that I heard Nine Objects of Desire, which thrilled me even more with its flirting bisexuality. In "Stockings"she focuses again on a woman hiking up her skirt to fix her stockings, although this time more explicitly sexual, capturing the speaker's discomfort at being in an intimate situation with a friend for whom one feels lust (a situation I unfortunately know all too well as a guy who often finds himself friends with women). Of course I love "Caramel," so prominently featured (to great effect) in The Truth about Cats and Dogs. But we can't forget "My Favorite Plum," an innocent-sounding ditty with just enough allusion to WCW to give it intellectual cache, but there's something in the way it describes the plum that hints the fruit might be for women what peaches are for men. The shape, the color, the firmness of it are all suggestive, something that had never before occurred to even my febrile imagination. And for that, alone, she deserves mention here.

Movie Review: Werewolf Woman

You can basically understand this movie if you imagine Cat People as an Italian exploitation flick from the 70s. I was totally shocked by this movie because I didn't know what to expect. I read a 1-paragraph blurb on the plain jacket the movie came in as part of a 50-movie pack of bad SF. It was a late-night, I don't want to go to bed so I'll throw something in, movie. Rated R, so I expected some gore, maybe a little nudity, but then the first scene comes and even before the credits the heroine, Daniella, is dancing around naked, full frontal view, by firelight. And much of the first half of the movie she would wear the same costume.

But shortly afterwards, she turns into the she-wolf, a striking bit of makeup. Shaggy, hairy body with a black snout more reminiscent of a Koala than wolf. Also, she seems to have developed tubular deformity of the breasts, and her nipples are suddenly two inches long and completely rigid. Anyway, she's foaming at the mouth and bloodthirsty, so she kills a peasant man involved in the expected werewolf hunt.

However, this is just the nightmare of the protagonist, a woman in modern Italy, who, since her rape, has been haunted by the story that one of her ancestors was a werewolf. Now she despises men, except for her father, with whom she lives in solitude on their ancient estate. Until her sister visits with her husband. Now with a man in the house, Daniella is haunted, restless, and, hearing the sounds of her sister and brother-in-law making love, she gets up to investigate. Surprisingly, she watches the lovemaking and is enticed by it, and, somewhat graphically, masturbates while the couple finishes.

It was at this point that the movie could have been really interesting. In addition to being kind of hot, with a scene reminiscent of one in the first (and only) Emanuelle move I ever saw, the paradox of Daniella trying to resolve the conflict between her sexual desire and the self-hatred and man-hatred inspired by her rape, could have made for an interesting psychological study. And when she seduces then murders her brother-in-law, it is an act completely of her own choosing in which she maintains a certain amount of agency. But from this point on, the movie degrades into typical exploitation-type stuff and gets a little disappointing as Daniella wanders from being under threat of one man's power to the next. All in all, the violence is pretty moderate, with really fake bright red viscous blood, although there is one rape scene that is a little discomforting, and the sex is softcore, although very suggestive.

The ending is good in that it maintains an interesting parallel with the beginning, and humorous in that it contains two conflicting statements. First, it claims to be a true story with the names changed, then it says that any similarity to persons living or dead is completely coincidental. So which is it? All in all, the movie was good to have on in the background while I did other things, and might be fun to watch in a group, but don't plan on sitting down and giving it your undivided attention. If you happen to find yourself in possession of this movie (as I did) it's worth sitting through at least the lesbian scene in the hospital (which may be interesting if we imagine the over-sexualized other patient as an embodiment of female sexuality that Daniella manipulates to escape), then maybe skip to the very end to see how it compares to the beginning. You'll miss the rape scene and the boring picaresque turn of the mid-narrative, but get all the essential content.

Ten Sexy Singers (Plus One)

Mariah Carey

I'm going to get on to more sophisticated stuff later on, but you're going to have to permit me a little horndoggin up front. She has the kind of body that I would just love to do things to. Many things, over and over again in many different ways. And the kind of persona that makes me think she'd let me do all of it, plus a couple more things I couldn't've come up with on my own.

Anyway, I know I'm going to have to defend this, my inaugural choice of my Ten Sexy Singers series, but as with everything on this blog, I'm just going to tell it the way I see it.

I was never interested in Mariah Carey, felt nothing but contempt for everything I knew of her work. Then one day I'm flipping past VH1 & notice, hey, there's that guy, where do I know him from & what's he doing in a Mariah Carey video? The guy was Jerry O'Connell of course and the video was for "Heartbreaker." I figured out I knew the guy from Sliders, so I was about to change the channel when I saw Carey's outfit. Tight jeans, ok, pretty hot, but it was her top, of course, that really caught my attention.

Loose knit, like it'd been crocheted with a hook two inches around, the neck plunged real deep, showing her decollette to great effect. Set a little too far apart for some purists of breast aesthetics, from my standpoint they're real nice. And then she started moving, and they started moving, and, well, I was entranced, hypnotized. Then it got better with the hot cat fight, and then it got even better with the cute little cartoon in the middle, so, needless to say, as soon as it was over, I had to see it again.

After seeing the video a few times, I began to notice that, overall, she's pretty darn cute overall. Her fun, flirty face changes easily into a charming coy expression of mock anguish. Her lips are not only full and pouty (blowjob lips, I learned from a man on the bus one day, essential tools for giving good head), but expressive. She sings every syllable with emotion, a deep trembling conviction. And, yes, I even began to like the song.

A couple years later I bought the album Rainbow when I found it in a bargain bin for a dollar. My wife finds the cover inherently offensive and wants to get rid of the album--she mentions it whenever we talk about freeing up space on the CD rack, but I don't want to. Not only do I like the come-hitherness of the cover, but I kinda like a lot of the songs. She may not be a great artist, but she sings with sincerity and conviction, and constructs a persona of a soft and vulnerable woman, emotionally yielding but not spineless, a good combination of feminity and strength, like women in hats.

And she's got great breasts.

Not Alone

I am glad to know I'm not the only one who thought these Finding Nemo on Ice costumes obscene.

Airy Parrish and Wet Waterhouse

Maxfield Parrish and John Williams Waterhouse are similar in some ways--temporally they overlap, they both use classical motifs and subjects, but at heart they are very different. Yes, I know, one is an illustrator, working with watercolors while the other is a painter working in oils, but the main difference between them is sex, well, a particular kind of sex. Both of their bodies of work are suffused with desire: Parrish's work by a sensual adolescent desire, while Waterhouse's desire is erotic, physically sexual. Parrish's desire is purified, rarified, airy. Waterhouse's desire is grounded, earthy, corporeal, and, above all, wet. Parrish paints mountains and lofty crags, with water in the background in the form of waterfalls and fountains, whereas Waterhouse paints the lowlands, the pools and hollows filled with water. Mucky plants and bodies dripping with surprisingly viscous fluid.

Here is Parrish's Daybreak, which I've read is the most reproduced piece of American art. Here we have a naked man and a woman asleep. Where might this go . . .? But, no, it's nothing like that. There is a sensuality here in the thick, misty air, the unbalance of the canvas, making the elements unstable, as if they might tumble together, her leg raised, her skirt tumbled up above her knee. All the possibility is there, but like the trees, they are held at bay by the cool marble and serve only as a frame.




So here's another Parrish piece: waterfall. Two lithe young women in loose tunics of purple and white. Water gushing, seething, rushing past. And these women have a sensuality, you can see it in their tunics, especially the woman in purple, whose leg is raised, close to her friend, creating a shadow beneath its hem. And her gaze includes her friend. But the women are safe above the spray and they watch with detachment. This desire is stable, frozen as the water, and these women will never succomb.

In contrast, consider Waterhouse's Hylas and the Nymphs:

The nymphs are right down in this stagnant pool. This water isnt rushing, seething, or gushing, it's already infused everything. The ground, the nymphs' hair, and it drips on their bodies. More than that, it is part of them and they are part of it (they are nymphs, after all, or more properly naiads) women are water and water is sex, and poor Hylas is about to fall in head first.

Spacially opposite, but thematically identical is Waterhouse's the Siren. Here, the woman sits high on the dry rocks, while the man drowns below. But, of course, she's the only reason he's in the water in the first place, and she is not, after all, completely dry. For a siren, she is remarkably human. Many sirens, like mermaids, turn fishy well before their genitals, but Waterhouse here gives his siren an almost complete female body, and the point where she becomes piscine allows her to blend right into the water. So, again, woman is water and water is, well, sex. After all, look at the man: he's definitely whipped. I think it's neat that Waterhouse elects a different fate for this poor sailor than I always heard described for the victims of sirens. Instead of being dashed on the rocks, this man has made it to some place where he can tread water, and he does so, too enamored of the siren to pull himself out. He has reached up. He has the ledge, but he is slack-jawed, weak, soaking in the fluid that drips down off the sirens legs.

I'd like to say this is a place I've never been, but sadly I know this man's fate all too well.

Literature & Genre

So what is the point of literature, anyway? I learned in an English class long ago that the purpose of literature is to represent the human condition, a definition that I think works well enough. The purpose of literature is to grasp the totality of human experience, condensing it into a readable microcosm. A true work of literature attempts to construct a universal narrative of all humanity as viewed through the prism of a finite number of subjects, whether a relatively small number (even 1) or a large Tolstoyan cast. So a work of literature has to contain a little bit of everything: education, aspiration, love, sex, work, failure, disillusionment, all the things people find in their lives.

Genres are born when people focus on particular aspects of the human narrative and either diminish or exclude other parts, and the focus becomes its characteristic action or setting. In its most degenerate form, a genre text completely stops the narrative in order to indulge in its characteristic action. Consider the first attempts to make video games literary: all the story happens between the missions, which exist simply as shoot-em-ups or RTS conflicts but don't make any difference to the plot, other than that you succeed (plot advances) or fail (plot does not advance). And how many musicals have song/dance numbers that basically say "I love her (him)"? From a literary standpoint, these things are a waste of time, no matter how much you may personally enjoy them.

Now, pornography. In narrative pornography, there's some plot, but it's completely broken up by sexual encounters involving every combination of characters on the screen. The sex scenes go on for a while, often emphasizing the mechanics of the act, and there's nothing at stake narratively.

In All Ladies Do It, it's completely different. The narrative never stops, and in every sex scene, the characters have something at stake. The most instructive is the very explicit scene when Diana is giving her husband Paolo a blowjob about midway through the movie. The scene shows all the parts working together, but never do they become mechanical, and the scene shows us how this couple's emotional and sexual lives mesh, how they were under different understandings of what their relationship was. The fact that narrative is more important than titillation is shown when the blowjob breaks off because of the emotional tension between Paolo and Diana.

Tinto Brass knows how to film asses. He brings the camera in low and focuses on them, bare or clothed, making them extremely enticing and arousing. That notwithstanding, he is not a pornographer, but someone who tells stories about sex that do not shy away from sex. I'm not saying All Ladies Do It is a great movie and that everyone should run out to see it, but it's an important counterpoint to movies like Belle de Jour, in which the erotic is dealt with without any explicit sex or nudity at all.

Tinto Brass: Pronounced br-ASS

Sometimes I wonder whether I'm a pervert. It bothers me a little, because I really don't want to be thought of as this totally depraved guy. Fortunately, there are men like Tinto Brass, whose "art" shows that even if I am perverted, I'm not alone.

I had seen CALIGULA a few years ago and thought it was pretty sexy, but not all that interesting otherwise. I recently saw COSI FAN TUTTE, and was actually struck by it. Not only is it very sexy, but it's an interesting movie about love, marriage, and sex, and how hard it is to balance the three. Like all Italian movies that I've seen, it lags about three quarters of the way through, but there are a number of really touching scenes where the characters have to confront, and overcome, the tension between their perversions and their love.

The basic story rotates around a wife, played by the extremely cute Claudia Koll, who begins to desire anal sex after this guy almost gives it to her in the bathroom at a party. Her husband, on the other hand, has a fetish for the stories she tells him about her having sex with other men. He thinks they're all made up, but many of them are true. He won't give his wife anal sex because he doesn't like the thought of it. When she meets the man from the party in Venice and he gives her what she wants, she tells her husband about it, and at first he's turned on, but then he realizes it's not a story, but the truth, and he gets mad.

I've read descriptions where people want to call this movie porn, but it's not at all. It is explicit, and it does have a lot of sex, but it's not pornographic. The reason why it's not is, I think, essential to the way genre works, and I'll address the functionality of genre in an upcoming post.