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interview magazine launches its refurbished look in september with an ad campaign featuring kate moss in a julie newmar-esque facemask and the line ‘it’s new, …
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watched: married life. it would have made a great hitchcock thriller: a businessman, in love with a beautiful, damaged creature half his age, plans to …
is prejudice permitted in historical nonfictions if the character being portrayed seems to fit the mold? in directing class, i was criticised by a fellow director as being misogynist, and consequently i spend a great deal of time considering the ways women work in narratives. i recently watched recount, a retelling of the battle over the 2000 presidential election written by danny strong, fresh-faced actor known for classic pop lit like tv’s clueless, buffy, and gilmore girls. in it, florida secretary of state katherine harris, played with abandon by laura dern, is portrayed as vapid and vain, an empty-headed girl distracted by the shiny trappings of power and easily swayed by the powerful men who press themselves on her. to bolster its point, the film ends with clips of the real harris, trying too hard to look in control at a press conference, and, finally, riding a horse in a parade celebrating her congressional election, made up and highly feminised in a tight sweater.
from these clips, sure, she’s a daft sexpot who must have tumbled into the secretary of state position; after all, her family is one of florida’s wealthiest, and the campaign for state senate that launched her career was one of the most expensive in history. but she also attended the kennedy school at harvard, was a marketing exec at ibm and vp of a real estate firm, and studied christian theology in switzerland. this doesn’t necessarily seperate her from the ranks of the idle rich, but i’d suggest it’s impossible to come through those varied experiences and remain a two-dimensional parody of a human being. harris is an interesting character – her congressional career is filled with bizarre anecdotes, like the time she claimed a middle eastern man had been arrested for terrorism in indiana despite no evidence of any sort found to bolster the claim, or the time she argued, in print, that God chooses our rulers – yet recount makes her painfully transparent in the service of the narrative. as she’s the only major female character in the film, it’s more than a little bit sexist. but because it makes sense in the context of this narrative, because it helps tell the historical story and isn’t strictly speaking a departure from the way this person really behaved, is it reasonable?