Just a quick announcement: I just noticed last night that the “Email This Post” link wasn’t working. By the looks of it, it’s not been working for a long time — maybe all year. I fixed the problem last night, then spent the rest of the evening smearing lipstick on my face, staring at the bathroom mirror pulling my hair, punching my head, and repeating “bad web guy! bad web guy!.”
No, really.
Down to Neeb Hall last week to hear Jane Fonda speak on ‘Sex, Gender & the Journey to Wholeness’, ASU’s Women and Gender Studies ‘Women of the World’ lecture.
Always had a soft-spot for Jane, as her resume is a mass of all-too-human contradictions: daughter of an American icon yet counter-culture icon in her own right; advocate for media freedom yet (ex)-wife to one of the biggest media magnates in the world; self-confessed Christian that practices Buddhist yoga; supremely talented actor who arguably delivered one of the key cinematic performances of the 20th century (Klute) yet suffered for years from cripplingly low self-esteem and a need to seek the approval of others; anti-war activist, subject of FBI surveillance and victim of Nixonian COINTELPRO-like disinformation yet best selling 80’s video workout queen…
Jane Fonda speaks at the National Conference for Media Reform Jan 2007, and makes some great points on media ownership, bias and freedom
Add to that a supporter of environmental, human rights and female empowerment causes, ex-wife to one of the Chicago 7 and future Californian State Senator (Tom Hayden), successful author and movie producer… truly, a Curriculum Vitae that emphasizes the Vitae.
Back to Neeb. The audience was a real mixed bag - backpacking students with skateboards, faculty members wearing tie-dye tees, a couple of Scottsdale-type babes who had either wandered in to the wrong place or were making a profound post-modernist statement, and about twenty Vietnam Veterans, there to make their feelings known in regard to the ‘infamous’ picture of Ms. Fonda in Hanoi, 1972, sitting in an NVA gun emplacement - an incident over which she has, and continues to express her regret over.
The generous applause she was introduced to muted the few boos that drifted in from the back, but, audience seated, the Vets proceeded to try and make their point. They had, however, already alienated the audience through their appearance. They wore bandanas, sawn-off leather jackets and tees, and sported large tattooed biceps. Rather than play on the image of sharp, disciplined GI’s, medals and ribbons gleaming with respect for the uniform, God and country, they came off looking like a renegade bunch of bikers out for a few beers and someone to lay a beating on. This served only to intimidate the audience rather than get them on their side.
They threw a few insults - and then, strangely, just left. Ms. Fonda invited them to stay and discuss their grievances in the Q & A following the lecture, but they rather meekly filed out, rather like a group of naughty schoolboys. The last one disappeared to a perfectly-judged valedictory of “Thanks for coming!” from the stage; the ensuing audience laughter lightening a mood that had quickly grown tense and ugly.
Not sure whether it was the 12-hour airport layover and the lost baggage she had endured in making the lecture on time, or whether she is always this way, but the next 45 minutes saw a tired and emotional speaker talking with a suprising intimacy of detail.
She related the personal - how society’s role modelling led her father and various men she had known to separate head and heart - to the political: “we keep electing Presidents that are bifurcated!”. Less lecture than confessional, the audience were delivered an unguarded exposition of a troubled psyche’s path to some form of redemption or resolution.
In the Q & A she moved from Social Inoculation Theory to Reviving Ophelia to The Vagina Monologues (”the people that protest the Vagina Monologues are frightened of their vaginas”). Some idiot tried to veil a contemptous diatribe against (again) her appearance in the gun emplacement photo as a question, but all he could really manage to ask was whether she thought her actions had been naive.
How do you respond to that? Somebody asking if something you did nearly 40 years ago might have been naive? Hell, screw 40 years, how many of us can stand up and honestly say we have not been guilty of the same thing in the last 40 days? Or 40 minutes? Cheap words, so carelessly thrown. And, in a way, already pre-empted by an earlier segment of the lecture where she memorably referred to the name-calling and baiting of proponents of non-violent solutions as ‘a toxic masculinity governed by shame’. Winner.
And total National Treasure, contradictions very much included.
Classic radical Fonda from Jean-Luc Godard and Jean-Pierre Gorin’s “Tout Va Bien”
A fantastic ‘behind the scenes’ on Klute and early 70’s New York City. A great example of how location - particularly a city - becomes as important an actor in a film as the leads.
Following up on the ‘Downtown Phoenix’ re-branding, I can’t let the logo go without comment. Apart from the fact that it looks like it was put together with clipart by an intern, ‘X’ marking the spot is firmly and anachronistically rooted in pirate-treasure lore; this symbol is now more commonly used as the standard signifier for ‘Prohibition’, such as ‘No Smoking’ or ‘No Entry’. So, ‘No Downtown Phoenix’.
On another level, the cross in a circle is so totally and utterly wrong it beggars belief that the City have approved it.
Name one positive non-religious connotation that a cross in a circle brings to mind?
Now how about these for negative ones…
1. The Church of Process, a Scientology offshoot with links to the Manson Family that possibly influenced the ‘X’’s they carved into their foreheads
2. The Zodiac Killer’s symbol
3. The symbol used by White Supremacists and Neo-Nazis
4. And perhaps the worst of all because it’s so close, the American Front logo
Not to mention its uses in Occultism and its close parallel to the Celtic Cross (how about that for the separation of church and state). Hey City Hall, in future please use design consultants that pay a little more attention to the associative psychological implications of their work. Shame on you.
Downtown Phoenix Logo
The late French Author, C.W. Ceran, once said “Genius is the ability to reduce the complicated to the simple.” And it was these words that came to mind today when I read about the new name the Downtown Phoenix Partnership and Scottsdale-based SHR Perceptual Management have come up with after a year of research. For the past few years, DPP has been trying to find a way to get the word out that downtown Phoenix is actually becoming a pretty cool place to hang out. Their first attempt, branding the area “Copper Square,” failed miserably. So, they began looking for a better brand about a year ago. What they came up with is, I think, pretty damned good. The name?
I know — I laughed when I first read it, too. Especially, when one considers they’ve spent several million dollars coming up with this. But, wasted money aside, I’m really pleased with their decision to not get in the way of what we’re already calling the area. As another writer for hoozdo said when I told him the news:
“Well fuck me. They made the right choice.”
