Emily created/proposed a form, here: Thoughts while watching The Quiet Earth (littleedie.blogspot.com)), and I roughly described it as "fashion-blog-post-via-cinematic-outfit-commentary," and I have a zillion actually good movies in mind for such a form (and, thus, for fashion-mining), but I'm actually wanting to say something about the way that the filmic image (including as it manifests in regular old crappy TV shows) creates a vessel and a paper doll and overlay:
As a quite perimenopausal lady and a lifelong insomniac, I'm up in the middle of the night often. And what I do to distract myself from not-sleep and hope that I slip into sleep is: watch shows that must be the perfect combination of not-particularly-engaging & still entertaining enough to supplant my thoughts about not-sleep.
Such a show can be nearly anything, but I tend to prefer a grey-blue pallet, a moody soundtrack, and middle-aged ladies doing some kind of work with some kind of competence. Because of course everything is racist and fucked up, often the ladies are white and skinny and upper middle class and cis.
(An exception includes Sort of, which has amazing outfits and a very soft narrative space.)
But I'll watch almost anything if it fits the bill for (my) middle-of-the-night viewing.
Honestly, I've dipped into a lot of copaganda. And melodramas. And primetime soaps.
But what I'm often after is the way that a show (and my god I know it's all fucked up and protagonist-syndrome-y and holy shit the ramifications for our failures of representation and also holy shit I still have a space for believing Plato and seeing that this edge of reality to which I attach myself is all lies) creates a vessel into which to pour the self, a paper doll onto which one might attach their own head.
How that might turn, the next morning, into an overlay on all of one's movements during the day:
I'm walking from the train to campus and I'm an exhausted cop whose life is falling apart, I'm a divorce lawyer, I'm a Wyoming sheriff who is drunk on duty, I'm a martyring wife to an absentee husband and I have five adult children.
Something here about suddenly, in the past year, becoming attached to clothes that hang nicely, bougee looking fabrics that are both comfortable and flattering, a previously unknown to me interest in "the elegant," all black or grey or large blocks of pleasant color, something like a ballerina working at a hardware store, an editor who is on the train home from a casual lunch, a woman in a backyard who was pretty and is now haggard and likes blue t-shirts and flattering jeans. And then I get all angry at it all, want only refusal, to only define myself in terms of my rage at the stupidity and hubris of everything.
Knowing that you’ll likely leave the bed in the middle of the night and lounge somewhere else, I wonder what you choose to wear on these nightly journeys. Because it's not going to bed. It's going to bed and--. It's hopping around. It’s watching with interest. It’s a fan or an ice cube, maybe. Do you wear clothing to bed with the expectation that it’ll later be caught by something cool and grey-blue lights and non-bed pillows? What do you want the screen to see?
ReplyDelete“fashion-mining” I love this. This phrase. This phrase sounds like a potential experiment.
ReplyDelete“a paper doll onto which one might attach their own head”
I wonder what a refusal explored through the medium of paper dolls would look like. A rage filled paper doll. Delicate yet furious. A medusa of sorts? A closet full of women who resist.