watched: bernard and doris. the word ‘scene’ is used to describe the relationships and attitudes of a particular group of people interested in a particular thing at a particular time. it crops up frequently in music – the seattle grunge scene of the early 1990s, or the nyc hipster scene in the early and mid-2000s – and is also used by movie piraters: groups who regularly release pirated editions of movies online are referred to as part of the scene, while those who act alone or trade via other methods are not. there is the scene, and then there is the world outside the scene, and to a certain extent this is important to my definition – a scene is small enough that its borders are understood by most members, whereas i feel a subculture is a slightly larger beast, with harder-to-define edges.
this is all traditional dick hebdige stuff, but what i’m fascinated by are the little scenes that crop up everywhere. whether it’s the culture of marketers at business conferences, or that of bartenders in a small beach town who drink at the same after-hours place, people’s lives are filled with mini-scenes that they join and leave, constantly renegotiating their membership and status. bernard lafferty, doris duke’s valet, was part of the scene of servants to aging female celebs: he had previously served peggy lee and liz taylor, and, as bob balaban’s film makes clear, grew close to duke, becoming a confidante and sometimes controlling figure in her life. for whatever reason, he was concerned with his place in duke’s life, and alexander walker’s biography of taylor argues that he ordered duke to donate $1mm to taylor’s charity to win her favor back as well. he liked being involved with these people, and he had gained the knowledge of just how to do it. there is an entire subculture of people who serve the wealthy and the famous in this way. the film’s great charm for me lies in being in part a sort of ethnology of this subculture, through the lens of lafferty’s life; while it tells a compelling narrative, there’s some distance in the storytelling that doesn’t push us to sympathise with or against ralph fiennes’s lafferty. instead, we watch how he moves through this world, and it’s sort of beautiful. balaban covers the same ground that dominick dunne has for years, but while reading dunne is somewhat greasy with the guilty pleasure that gossip brings, balaban’s film has the purity that makes it, well, art.
watched: above the below, harmony korine’s documentary about david blaine’s 44-day fast suspended above london. i’ve always really been bothered by gummo and julien donkey-boy …
watched: bernard and doris. the word ‘scene’ is used to describe the relationships and attitudes of a particular group of people interested in a particular thing at a particular time. it crops up frequently in music – the seattle grunge scene of the early 1990s, or the nyc hipster scene in the early and mid-2000s – and is also used by movie piraters: groups who regularly release pirated editions of movies online are referred to as part of the scene, while those who act alone or trade via other methods are not. there is the scene, and then there is the world outside the scene, and to a certain extent this is important to my definition – a scene is small enough that its borders are understood by most members, whereas i feel a subculture is a slightly larger beast, with harder-to-define edges.
this is all traditional dick hebdige stuff, but what i’m fascinated by are the little scenes that crop up everywhere. whether it’s the culture of marketers at business conferences, or that of bartenders in a small beach town who drink at the same after-hours place, people’s lives are filled with mini-scenes that they join and leave, constantly renegotiating their membership and status. bernard lafferty, doris duke’s valet, was part of the scene of servants to aging female celebs: he had previously served peggy lee and liz taylor, and, as bob balaban’s film makes clear, grew close to duke, becoming a confidante and sometimes controlling figure in her life. for whatever reason, he was concerned with his place in duke’s life, and alexander walker’s biography of taylor argues that he ordered duke to donate $1mm to taylor’s charity to win her favor back as well. he liked being involved with these people, and he had gained the knowledge of just how to do it. there is an entire subculture of people who serve the wealthy and the famous in this way. the film’s great charm for me lies in being in part a sort of ethnology of this subculture, through the lens of lafferty’s life; while it tells a compelling narrative, there’s some distance in the storytelling that doesn’t push us to sympathise with or against ralph fiennes’s lafferty. instead, we watch how he moves through this world, and it’s sort of beautiful. balaban covers the same ground that dominick dunne has for years, but while reading dunne is somewhat greasy with the guilty pleasure that gossip brings, balaban’s film has the purity that makes it, well, art.