Images from Diseases of the Skin, Eigth Edition, 1918 by Henry W. Stelwagon, M.D., Ph.D.
Sunday, January 31, 2010
Saturday, January 30, 2010
Friday, January 29, 2010
Thursday, January 28, 2010
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
Beauty Talk + Monsters
Masha Tupitsyn's debut collection of short stories is itself a kind of monster; a hybrid constructed from fiction, personal narrative, film criticism, and feminist theory. Tupitsyn seamlessly melds intellectual thought with poignant private experience as she develops solemn and striking female voices. In her first story Diegesis, (World of Fiction) the narrator's body and the camera become one,
It's attached to me, or in me, or behind me, and I know I'm being
watched, but by whom? I am half seer/half seen.
Throughout the book there is this sense of inside and outside at once and Tupitsyn likens films to dreams, as both are steeped in our subconscious fears and desires.
Hear Tupitsyn read her story Kleptomania; a tale that exposes the grotesque misogyny of Hollywood, through the fantasy meeting of three leading ladies.
Monday, January 25, 2010
Sunday, January 24, 2010
Saturday, January 23, 2010
Friday, January 22, 2010
Thursday, January 21, 2010
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
Monday, January 18, 2010
A Children's Tale
Michael Haneke's new film The White Ribbon is a glimpse into the darker regions of human nature. Set in a small German village in the year proceeding World War I, the film follows a series of brutal attacks; the village doctor is thrown from his horse due to a wire stretched across his path, the baron's son is abducted and beaten, and the handicapped son of the mid-wife is nearly blinded. The protagonist of the violent crimes is never revealed and it's not clear if the acts are connected or simply coincidental. The school teacher is suspicious of a group of children who seem to appear from the shadows every time an incident occurs, but Haneke does not feel the need to tie up the plot. He lets the violence hang like a pervasive doom.
The visually stunning film, reeks of repression at the hands of both religion and patriarchy. The bare faced children of the film are not light and happy-go-lucky. They possess a morbid weight, a gloom generated through constant control. The pastor's children are literally beaten into submission by their father as their mother watches on with pained eyes. The two eldest children are forced to wear a white ribbon tied around their arm as a constant reminder to heed to purity of the soul.
While most of the adult men in the film reveal a violent nature, the widowed doctor is the most disturbing. Doctors are supposed to bring comfort to those who suffer, but this doctor emotionally eviscerates his lover, the mid-wife, through a relentless verbal attack. Sadism isn't the doctor's only crime. He's also conducting a sexual relationship with Anna, his teenage daughter. Anna's fate is horrific, we know she will not be physically or emotionally safe at the hands of her father. Haneke reveals that evil is not something lurking outside our door, but rather, is already resting inside our most intimate spaces.
Sunday, January 17, 2010
Saturday, January 16, 2010
Friday, January 15, 2010
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