Author Archives: Mariposas

After the Oscars last year (2024), I saw Anora. I had better context for the speech Mikey Madison gave about sex workers and honoring them after she won for Best Actress in a Leading Role.  But I was also troubled by her win.  She fully embraced her character, an exotic dancer and companion in New York who experiences and whirlwind romance as part of her own, raw fairytale, but it was a role reminiscent of Emma Stone’s Frankenstein-esque nod from the prior year in ‘Poor Things’. The connective thread for me was a woman owning her sexuality, open to exploration, unashamed in her pursuits.  Does bearing your soul and being raw and vulnerable as an actress/ female actor mean having to literally bear it all?

Initially, I did question whether I was being too sensitive about the matter and maybe pulling at a thread and making a knot unnecessarily.  But then I thought back to a few other Oscar wins and nominations where soul and self-bearing performances were lauded.  Halle Berry won for Best Actress for her portrayal of a widow in ‘Monster’s Ball’ in 2002.  One of the pinnacle moments in that movie is a very graphic, painful and oddly poignant sexual encounter that her character has with Billy Bob Thornton’s character. Emma Thompson was applauded for her performance in ‘Good Luck to You, Leo Grande’, where she portrays an older business woman who has standing “appointments” with a male escort after years of sufficient yet not fully pleasurable love making with her husband.  Towards the end of the film we witness her character naked, free and reembracing her beauty and sensuality in an age and season where the societal expectation is for her to cover and lament the tumultuous tides of aging.  And in the same year that Anora won big at the Oscars, Demi Moore had a major resurgence as an actress for her role in ‘The Substance’. Her character bears herself physically and emotionally as she makes a seriously life altering decision that causes her world to completely unravel.  Her performance and that of her co-star Margaret Qualley pushed the limits of acting and made us all take a pause on considering aging, beauty and variations on body dysmorphia. 

Further bolstering the validity of my feelings and contemplations about the concept of women bearing it all as a sign of impactful acting was a segment on ‘Last Week Tonight with John Oliver’.  He presented a retrospective on women portraying “whores” in cinema and how many Oscar nominations were associated with those roles.  His diatribe included a similar contemplation and that because of this deep-seated love that the Oscars has for women in these roles, it will continue to perpetuate the need for actresses to include moments of nudity, sex as part of the base requirements for their acting to be taken seriously and deemed worthy of Oscar consideration.

While I do have an appreciation for aspects of each of the roles and characters portrayed in the earlier cited films, it is frustrating that there are still standards and expectations of female actors that their male counterparts do not have to endure.  Having folks like me raise an eyebrow and experience a mixture of emotions and question the choices made in depicting these characters is admittedly judgey, but still valid and permissible.  We are all entitled to our opinions.  For me, it is rooted in deep respect for the women who bring multi-layered characters to life and make us question our bias, standards, morals and deeply held beliefs and my desire to have all these various shades of character development and portrayal held in similar esteem to those that require more literal and figurative nakedness. 

In America, despite having political parties outside andindependent of the Republican & Democratic parties, we are still primarily a bicameral system in politics.  While in Canada, you have a range of parties representing various conservative and liberal ideological views, we in this country tend to corral various constituencies into the narrow confines of being either Republican, Democrat or Independent. The designation of Independent serves as a catch all, a collection of souls who pass through the sieve of the 2 most popular parties and are the run-off or willful dissidents from the Democrat or Republican party.

In recent years post the rise in political power and presidency of Donald Trump and the Biden administration, ideology has shifted to harder lines being drawn between the 2 predominant parties and attempts to redefine what political sensibilities ought to look like and represent in support of or against our great republic. Under current circumstances, if you are declared or are a self-proclaimed MAGA Republican or supporter of President Trump, you are considered fringe, an existential threat to our democracy & a gross deconstructionist attempting to destroy the very fabric of America.  If you are Black, you are expected to stay liberal, a Democrat & are foreign and potentially decried “racist” if you are Republican or represent ideals of a more conservative nature. If you are a Democrat, you must walk a fine line of being open to extreme leftist ideology that is a mixture of embracing socialism, proud rebelliousness and daring to shake up the status quo in Washington and in respective state legislatures.  This reach to relate all constituents, even those considered to be fringe liberals can mean breaking of decorum and render involvement in behavior that is not considered appropriate or becoming of congressional leader or politician.  We’ve witnessed this with Rasheeda Tlaib, representative from Michigan.  She is a proud, Palestinian woman whose support for her county of origin and the plight of Palestinians seeking the official recognition of a Palestinian state is unfortunately negated and twisted into the rhetoric of extremist behavior of Hamas and the politicized leadership that is predominant and taking assumed representation of all people within Gaza.   Her rhetoric is akin to what many Palestinians grew up with and laced with calls to end Israel.  Her actions and failure to clearly denounce the acts of terrorism and genocide that took place on October 7, 2023, put her at odds with her country of citizenship and dwelling here in the United States and led to her being censured by the House of Representatives.  Does freedom of speech have certain limits and defined parameters for Congressional leaders, especially when it includes speech and comments that call for the annihilation of an entire group of people?

The beauty of this country is vested and rooted so heavily in our constitutional rights.  Free speech, the right to bear arms, the right to vote, and other rights granted through judicial precedent and practice including the ability to obtain an education at an institution of higher learning are challenged and debated.  Yet even that right is being called into question by conservatives who are painting the university system within our country as incubators for pumping students full of liberal ideology that is incendiary and overshadowing other voices on campus and is turning students into extremist operatives. 

At the same time, similar rhetoric is being expressed by Democratic stalwarts and self- proclaimed standard bearers like Hillary Rodham Clinton, former Secretary of State. She has persisted in behavior reminiscent of those in Hollywood and other industries who testified before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) in the 1950s.  She has named Tulsi Gabbard, veteran and former representative from the state of Hawaii, among others, as a Russian asset being groomed by the Russians.  Do we really want to recall a time when actors such as Ronald Reagan and other Hollywood elite named friends, colleagues and associates as threats to America?   Hillary Clinton has made it her mission in recent years to take liberties in naming names.  

​One political ideology cannot dominate our country.  Part of what has made and continues to make America the great nation that it is the beautiful tension that exists in people having freedom to believe, perceive and make sense of our country and this world in their own way; it is fundamental to America’s identity.  Elections allow we the people to determine, for a time, what political system will govern the country, congress, courts, state and local municipalities for a time.  Elections place individuals and parties in power determining which political groups have power to make decisions to best meet the interest of diverse constituencies across our country and within states and cities. These regime changes are not meant to be permanent.  And it doesn’t mean that the power granted should be used to completely quash and destroy alternate belief systems for political advantage through the displacement of individuals who are exercising their right as Americans to think freely and challenge systems, processes and precedents that do not align with their perceptions of what America should be.  This is in no way advocating for extremist behavior that threatens the life and safety of Americans and those authorized to live and dwell on her shores.  It does mean that balance will sustain us; unbalanced, too much teetering to the left or right will destroy us.  If the fulcrum is off center, we perish.  

Debates and disagreements are healthy when engaged in fairly and done with an intent not for the purposes of self-gratification but to serve.  Debates and disagreements within the hallowed halls of the House and Senate are essential to drive America forward to a balanced tomorrow.  We do ourselves a grave disservice by silencing voices and points of view, no matter how distasteful, to advance gains for political capital, wealth security, per ignoring, isolating and discouraging segments of our populace.  We also facilitate such bad behavior through denial of populist viewpoints that encourage putting the needs, concerns and rights of Americans first.  Our safety, security and assuredness that the needs of every person, from our veterans to those who are homeless are not ignored, but given top priority in the way we decide how to dispense money and policies is key to sustaining and saving our democracy.

 

I still like award shows.  My favorite is the Tony Awards.  I love getting previews of theater and shows that may eventually have a traveling company that makes its way to a city near me.  

I watch other programs as well including the Emmy Awards and the Golden Globes. 

The Golden Globes, once the less pretentious and stuck-up awards show that was a refreshing alternative to the Emmy’s and Academy Awards has once again decided that the hired host comedian is the enemy.  The new applicable rule seems to be that nominees and attendees can laugh at each other and their weakly written jokes but glare at the host and treat him/ her/ them like a hostile enemy.

 Jo Koy hosted for the first time and his opening, with wit and expectedly over the top received boos and an ice cold response when it came to many of his jokes.  He got some encouragement and laughs that seemed genuine across the airwaves from the cast of “Saltburn” and the table with the “Only Murders in the Building” actors including Martin Short and Meryl Streep.  Koy kept apologizing for certain jokes that landed poorly and claimed not to write some of those that fell flat.  Somewhere between his opening, the Taylor Swift joke where he said she would be getting less camera time than at NFL games (she glared), he finally reached the “f*** it” moment where he just delivered the jokes and didn’t need to necessarily worry about how they landed. 

 Comedians make jokes and anyone in the audience is fair game.  Jokes may be snarky, a little corny, super stupid, slightly repugnant, a little tasteless, vulgar, or make you want to fall off your seat laughing your ass off.  It’s pretty much like being at a comedy show or club.  There is some scarring that may occur, but in the end, truths and tall tales are shared and interspersed with moments to make you think, cringe, and maybe look at a circumstance or instance in a difference way.  Comedians have been and are always equal opportunity offenders.   Their ongoing gift, for those willing to receive it, is that they remind us to not take ourselves too seriously. 

The greatest irony of it all at the Golden Globes was that Jim Gaffigan presented the award for the Best Performance in a Stand-Up Comedy For Television, the first time this category was presented at the Globes. And the better irony was that Ricky Gervais, formerly blasted and highly contentious Golden Globes host was the first winner.  Poetic justice or just the Globes voters continuing to screw with all of us in the aftermath of the dismantling of the non-profit version of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA) and transitioning to a for-profit entity. 

Along with this new comedy category, nominations seemed a bit “planned”.  Part of the reason for making the HFPA for-profit was to increase accountability and strangely, some programs were divvied into multiple categories.  I love the show “The Bear,” have been a fan of Jeremy Strong’s acting since Shameless, but why was he nominated for Best Actor, Comedy or Musical and his co-star Ayo Edebiri was nominated in the Best Actor, Drama? In some respects, the show is a dramedy, but it was a wee bit sketch. The male drama actor category was overloaded with the cast of “Succession” so there are still some opportunities to consider categories to not make it seem as though there is nomination manipulation.

In time, there is still a settling that needs to occur to ensure the refreshed Golden Globes are fair and earnestly celebrate the accomplishments in film and television.

For those of us who lived and were young adults in the 90s and early 2000s, Quentin Tarantino became the hip filmmaker that we were compelled to follow if we wanted any kind of street cred for an appreciation of modern cinema.  His films were raw, gritty, and unapologetic in their approach to dissecting stories and introducing us to characters who embodied the characteristics in most humans and many of us (if we are honest with ourselves) that we would rather keep suppressed, never to emerge form the darkest depths of our psyche and being.  But being able to see dark and twisty characters act on their emotions and feelings in a semi grotesque and gratuitous manner, in its own way, was like a release. His films, many with their most violent scenes with the over exaggerated spurting of blood or over the top dismemberment of body parts are horrifying yet interspersed with scenes amplifying the most basic moments in humanity, disagreements turn into philosophical discussions that then evolve further into camp and the films themselves become abstract paintings that you will ponder and contemplate for hours and days after viewing.  

To me, his work is derivative and original in the best ways possible.  As part of the infamous Generation X, I love his nods to grindhouse films, kung fu movies, 70s action stars, westerns,and entertainment nostalgia.  His films pull elements from the crazy B and C movies my brother would drudge up for us to watch or that you might catch on shows like Elvira, Mistress of the Dark, Svengoolie or the barrage of afterschool and weekendcinema that would flood household television sets in the 70s and 80s.  Kids in my generation traversed the territory of TV from the 40s, 50s and 60s and found places in our heart for crass characters like George Jefferson and Archie Bunker, embracedOur Gang, loved tough guys with tommy guns, and longed to be Burt Reynolds, Richard Roundtree and Angie Dickinson and have car chases, blow-ups and shootouts like the characters who shocked, awed, and horrified us on TV and in film.

All this form of derivation and tribute became the perfect concoction in the Kill Bill films.  I will own that I was more of a fan of From Dusk Till Dawn than Pulp Fiction at this stage of my life when Kill Bill Parts I and 2 came out.  I had not seen Reservoir Dogs and while there was many barking in my ear about how over the top the blood and guts were in his films, having some perspective on what influenced him always left me a bit tickled by such critiques.  John Travolta dancing in a café dedicated to icons is genius.  Creating a female assassin on a mission to avenge herself and take out the gang of former compatriots who beat her within an inch of her life is maddening brilliance.  From the moment she shows up at Jeannie Bell’shouse with that crazy ass homemade haircut and begins fisticuffs Black Mamba against Copperhead, I was hooked.  Up to this point in cinema and TV, most of the fight scenes we had become accustomed to in film with women were a mixture of the levels of gratuitous slapping, drunken verbal jabs, rolling around in skimpy clothing that was designed more to heighten the excitement of male viewers vs. helping women feel empowered and not inducing a great deal of broken bones or serious bodily harm.  We had Pam Greer’s Foxy Brown, Jane Fonda’s Barbarella, some good sword play in films like Sheena and Willow and my favorite all out rolling on the floor in evening gowns fight scenes from shows like Dynasty.  But in Kill Bill, women are seriously kicking each other asses.  Scenes and physical altercations are not sanitized based on gender, and though gratuitously violent in places, it’s still refreshing.   Andas you realize in this first scene where a quiet house in the suburbs is quickly descending into madness and a scene like a war zone, I appreciated that that there were no holds barred, no punches being sparred or softly landing.  Coffee tables are being destroyed.  Cereal boxes house that necessary extra gun in case the intruder who happens to be the woman you nearly killed happens to return and execute revenge culminated in a brutal and bittersweet conclusion where a missed gunshot leaves room open for a thrown knife to the heart that takes out Copperhead and leaves Black Mamba broken, yet one step closer to her ultimate goal of taking out the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad.  And the best is the brutal return to reality of suburbia when Copperhead’s daughter returns home from school and quickly must come to terms with the fact that 1) she never truly knew her mother, 2) the veneer that so carefully  covered her life and made everything seem golden has been forcefully rippedaway and 3) that she has a seed of contempt that is being planted in her heart for the strange gangly women who has detonated that bomb that has blown her world completely apart.  

It’s a beautiful, well-planned quilt of chaos.  My mind popped off in so many directions.  And it was only the first act of a drama that would play out over 2 films! The Bride/ Beatrix Kiddo/ Black Mamba is over the top.  Behavior which at first you want to liken simply to pure evil is given context and each revelation is a newly unwrapped gift.   We learn how she was nearly beaten to death, overcame a coma, a metal plate in her head, the kidnapping of her child, and sexual assault (lest we not forget Buck).  

My other favorite challenge with the Kill Bill films was figuring out which member of the Deadly Viper Assassination SquadTarantino likes the most:

• Bill (aka Snake Charmer) is manipulative, sadistic and twisted.  His ongoing need to come off as paternalistic is dripping with condescension that makes each appearance of him irritating.  We see some moments of his paternalistic side in Volume 2, but we are left to wonder just how he managed to compel each of the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad to align with his cause.

• Vivica A. Fox as Vernita Green/ Jeannie Bell (aka Copperhead) is supposed to derive sympathy based on her post assassin created life as a housewife and mother in the suburbs. Her sensibilities, while probably the most aligned with Black Mamba in terms of the desires for real life and family make her somewhat endearing.  Tarantino also opens the doorway for a compelling sequel with Vernita’s daughter coming face to face with the woman who killed her mom.

• Darryl Hannah as Elle Driver (aka California Mountain Snake) is deeply wounded, extremely headstrong, andenvious of Black Mamba despite seeming to have taken her place as Bill’s closest companion.  Tarantino creates what I believe to be the most campy, dark humorous scene with her appearance at the hospital where Black Mamba is comatose. Her stroll down the hallway of the hospital in acostume-like nurse uniform, with the singular white eye patch, matching cap with a red medical cross was so over the top.  Her disappointment in being called off from adding a little something extra to Black Mamba’s IV was the mistake that each member of the Deadly Viper gang would ultimately regret.

• Bill’s brother, Budd (aka Sidewinder) is self-deprecating.  His resistance to outright kill “The Bride” but instead bury her alive aligns with his code name and amplified the same warped sense of providing justice because of her beatingand suffering based on her perceived betrayal.

• Lucy Liu as O-Ren Ishii (aka Cottonmouth) is in my opinion Tarantino’s favorite character.  Her biracial Japanese American and Chinese background was constantly thrown back at her to question her rule over the Japanese Yakuza, a syndicate of crime organizations, so much so that she will readily behead anyone who tries to throw it back in her face.  She has her own lawyer, Sofie Fatale, the Crazy 88, her army of swordsman ready to come to her defense, Gogo, her most deadly muscle dressed in a school uniform, and scenes that receive treatments reminiscent of Bruce Lee films. Then the topper is an anime flashback sequence for O-Ren’s origin story which explains how she becomes a vicious assassin.  The fight scenes at the club with the confrontation with O-Ren are dazzling, and thoughtfully choreographed after the initial madness of using the gory amputation of Sofie’s arm by Black Mamba to get O-Ren’s attention, clear the club and proceed with her plan to eliminate O-Ren.  O-Ren is given the honor of a death in the most serene setting, a startling contrast to the mayhem that ensues in the club and ends with the final contrast of strange final purification of her soul through an honorable death with her scalping in the snow at the hand of Black Mamba and her Hanzo sword.  

The madness that plays out throughout Volume 1 and Volume 2reveals the depths of how each member of the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad has been permanently tainted. The Bride, while brain damaged is not the only member of the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad with cognitive challenges. The dissonance is pervasive and plays out in a twisted and bold cacophony of combat, revenge, and ultimate resolution.