Kids these days need to take their Alexander McQueen heels and get off my lawn: Camille Paglia on Lady Gaga

I’m honestly thankful for those moments wherein someone hails me and goes “Natalia! Camille Paglia’s written some bullshit again somewhere!” – because it keeps me blogging. Due to various professional and personal commitments, I don’t blog nearly as much as I used to. Sadpants, etc.

Then, Camille Paglia writes a piece on which some editor cleverly slaps the phrase “the death of sex” (forgetting the standard “ZOMG!!!1!!!ELEVENTY!!!” we of Generation Gaga have been fond of), and it’s game on again.Continue reading “Kids these days need to take their Alexander McQueen heels and get off my lawn: Camille Paglia on Lady Gaga”

Lyubimvoka & Gogolfest: plays in Moscow & in Kiev

So I had a reading at the Lyubimovka festival in Moscow this past Friday. It was part of a special project called “PGT” – which refers to a denomination dreamed up in Soviet times for small towns that are bigger than villages, but aren’t quite towns in the strictest sense of the word.

Both of the other authors involved in the project are Ukrainian, and live in Ukraine. My situation is wildly different than theirs, nowadays, but we both have that common denominator. After the readings, when they had us up on the stage, I felt myself reacting very strongly, even painfully, to the criticism levelled at the other two authors.

Without patting myself on the back too much, I can say that my play was the most well-received of the three. I think this happened because it fit the format of the festival much better. The other two plays were more “global” – mine was extremely personal (I even went as far as name the heroine “Toosia,” which is a diminutive of “Natalia”). The other two readings were “imported” – the director was a guy from Kharkov, the actors were also from Ukraine; my play’s reading was directed by a Russian, and the actors were Russian.

At the discussion afterward, the moderator said that my play didn’t attempt to answer socio-political questions: In my case, the potential theme was the “is religion needed?” question, because one of the main characters is a widowed Orthodox priest, and the play’s big climax involves something that may or may not be an exorcism (I’m saying “may or may not”, because it was important to me that people make up their own minds – though as the author, I would lean toward the notion that yes, it was an exorcism, or something like it). The moderator said, “this play paints pictures,” referring to the fact that the text had a different context. This made me extremely happy, and it was one of the best things that anyone had ever said about my attempts at playwriting.

When I was a kid, I had this fantasy of painting pictures and handing them out to people on the sidewalk, and seeing what they think. This past Friday, I saw that fantasy fulfilled. Although the context of the project presumes a conflict between rural and urban life, when I wrote it, I had to wage bloody battle against the idea of “simple ol’ country folk vs. corrupt city life,” because I could feel myself slipping into that familiar trap, and it blew. To have someone publicly tell you, “hey Natalia, you avoided that bullshit” was good news.

And, once again, the format of the play appeared to fit the format of Lyubimovka.

All of this brings me to the fact that on Monday, two of my plays, including “Daughter”, which was just read at Lyubimovka, will be read in Kiev, as part of the LSD (Laboratoriya Sovremennoi Dramaturgii – the Laboratory of Modern Drama) project at Gogolfest. I will not be able to be there, and I have no idea how it will go. Will the plays be totally out of context in a Kievan setting? Will there be a disaster and a debacle, or – even worse – a total muted failure, of the sort that one doesn’t even want to gossip about? My cousin is reading the lead part in “Daughter” – so I know for certain that there aren’t likely to be any fuck-ups there. Also, the guy reading the part of the Orthodox priest is Dima Yaroshenko, one of my favourite young actors, so you know that shit just got real. Still, I’m nervous.

It would have been interesting to see the differences between how a play in Moscow is read, vs. how it is read in Kiev with just a few days in between. I think this is one of those instances where a director’s work – what directors do and how they do it – would be exposed and apparent.

On Thursday, at Lyubimovka, there was a scandal involving a young Ukrainian playwright who, five minutes into a completely disastrous reading of his play, walked out. Then he walked back in again, and called everyone “idiot”, and called the lead actress a “whore” (a great example of male Ukrainian playwrights keeping it classy). I think this kind of behaviour sucks and would never do it, even if it is a way for the author to rescue himself in what is an essentially unfair and painful situation. A simple walking out would have been way classier than the trash-tastic screaming and fighting that followed. I only caught the end of it, and I was honestly irritated by what I saw and heard (it was hysterical, though, because I found myself surrounded by Russians who were asking me to translate what the guy was screaming – as he was screaming in Ukrainian).

The debacle was a clear example of how a completely awful reading can kill a good play, though.

The actress who was called a “whore” was telling me outside just a few minutes later: “WE WERE UP UNTIL 5 A.M. TRYING TO FIGURE OUT HIS STUPID, CONVOLUTED TEXT.”

Even laying aside the fact that she was emotional after having been publicly insulted, I still think that what happened is representative of a certain problem. If the text is “stupid” and “convoluted” to begin with – how about you give it to someone else to read?

Bono, Bloody Bono

Thanks to Ed for the title of this post.

There was an “intervention” on behalf of Bono in regards to the destruction of the Khimki forest? Where is the evidence of this intervention?

Unless he comes out and says otherwise, he didn’t bring it up with Medvedev. According to at least Chirikova (a prominent defender of the Khimki forest), he actually didn’t make any promises regarding the issue.

Bono and his stupid glasses can waltz in to this country and then waltz back out again with no risk to himself or his career, express “regret” for failing to raise any actual issues with the president, and then try to make himself look cool by aligning with someone like Yury Shevchuk. I’m wildly impressed.

Shevchuk was badass enough to enter into an argument with Vladimir Putin, while Bono had a nice chat with Dmitry Medvedev. Yes, I understand, it was a gesture of goodwill on part of both Bono and Medvedev, I’m glad they enjoyed themselves, but there was nothing political or “intervention”-like about it,  so SPARE ME.

And I mean, I still like a lot of U2’s stuff. BUT SPARE ME ANYWAY.

Some of the posts on this blog will be password-protected from now on

Not due to any serious issue – just dealing with some folks who are getting all up in my business. Well, I guess we can call those folks stalkers. Not dangerous, but annoying. It’s nothing this blog hasn’t seen before, I just have less time nowadays to carefully screen the sort of information I post. So I feel that something is a little too revealing especially in regards to my location, I’ll go ahead and stick a password on it.

If you and I are friends, and you’d like a password – you know where to find me.

The delightful priggitude of the American workplace

There’s nothing quite like the righteousness that many Americans express when it comes to office dress-codes – so readily illustrated by the comments to this older Salon advice column I noticed a while back but never commented on, until now.

As the column and the comments illustrated – a woman who works in your average office has two options: be sexy, or be taken seriously. This is actually an oversimplification, when you think about it: a worker can be sexy, as long as she follows certain norms. Cleavage, particularly if the breasts on display are substantial (smaller-chested women can get away with so much more – as one of my mother’s well-endowed friends once said to me, “but I envy Tatiana in the summer. She can wear a tiny tank-top without guys yelling ‘ho’ from cars.”), is a no-no, but heels, on the other hand, tend to go over OK. Dramatic lipstick is more tolerable than dramatic eye-makeup. And so on.

Though then again, there are exceptions, and it all depends on who is looking. In another, recent piece on Salon, Beth Aviv writes of the young woman who replaced her on her teaching job:

…All I have to say to my girlfriends is, “knee-high boots, four-inch heels,” and they scream: “We hate her.”

The truth is, I can’t really say anything bad about Alex, who’s smart, hard-working, and liked and respected by her students and the teachers in our department. Except maybe she’s too pretty or dresses too sexy to be a high school English teacher….

Aviv’s piece is beautifully written and heart-breaking, and what it’s REALLY about, I think, is the crappy job market that teachers all across the country have to deal with, but its hook is the idea that an older woman was pushed out from a job by a younger, prettier woman. Even when we realize that Alex was most likely hired instead of Beth because Alex’s salary would be lower, that aftertaste remains.

Americans tend to view physical beauty – particularly physical beauty in women – as something extraordinary and even suspect. It can’t simply exist, it must have a purpose – usually, a nefarious purpose. Or just a slutty one.

In this situation, beauty also has a tendency to blind. As one of the commenters to Aviv’s piece pointed out – it’s very likely that pretty Alex is a recent graduate with oodles of student debt (a situation I am more than familiar with). But her skinny jeans have the power to obscure her possible life challenges. Aviv is too good and too self-aware a writer to outright trash Alex, and she explores her own tense, disappointing working situation wonderfully, so I don’t have a beef with her (and let’s face it, most Salon commenters are way more sympathetic to men who get “distracted” by pretty women at the office, as opposed to women who get overlooked in favour of them). I do think it’s important to note that Alex is a real person.

When we use words such as “tasteful” and “appropriate” to discuss workplace attire, what we are really doing is pointing out certain class-markers. It’s “trashy” women from the lower classes, or else powerful heiresses and entertainment figures and the like, who are expected or, at the very least, allowed, to put the goods on display. Madonna has spoken about eating popcorn out of her cleavage during business meetings – and there’s a reason she can get away with it. Madonna will do anything to get attention, but that’s because attention is a career strategy. Continue reading “The delightful priggitude of the American workplace”