July 31, 2009
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Culture Wars continued:
Again with the...ALLURE at The New York Times.
For previous notes on
allure at the Times, see
St. Luke's Day, 2008,
and its links.Teaser at the top of
this afternoon's Times's
online front page:"Vampires Never Die:
In our fast-paced society,
eternity has a special
allure." (With fanged
illustration)--
Yesterday's afternoon entry was
related to both the July 13th death
of avant-garde artist Dash Snow
and the beauty of Suzanne Vega.A reference to Vega's album
"Beauty & Crime" apppeared here
on the date of Snow's death.
(See "Terrible End for an
Enfant Terrible," NY Times,
story dated July 24.)The Vega entry yesterday was, in
part, a reference to that context.
In view of today's Times
teaser, the large picture of
Vega shown here yesterday
(a detail of the above cover)
seems less an image of
pure beauty than of, well,
a lure... specifically, a
vampire lure:
What healthy vampire
could resist that neck?To me, the key words in the
Times teaser are "allure"
(discussed above) and "eternity."For both allure and eternity
in the same picture
(with interpretive
symbols added above)
see this journal on
January 31, 2008:
This image from "Black Narcissus"
casts Jean Simmons as Allure
and Deborah Kerr, in a pretty
contrast, as Eternity.For different approaches to
these concepts, see Simmons
and Kerr in other films,
notably those co-starring
Burt Lancaster.Lancaster seems to have had
a pretty good grasp of Allure
in his films with Simmons
and Kerr. For Eternity, see
"Rocket Gibraltar" and
"Field of Dreams."For less heterosexual approaches
to these concepts, see the
continuing culture coverage of
the Times-- for instance, the
vampire essay above and the
Times's remarks Monday on
choreographer Merce Cunningham--
who always reminded me of
Carmen Ghia in "The Producers"--
Related material:
"Dance of the Vampires"
in "At the Still Point"
(this journal, 1/16/03).
