Spring Fever

It feels like the first day of Spring today, which got me thinking about the trends this Spring/Summer. As always, so much is in fashion, and fashion moves so fast, that nothing is really out of fashion. But the words on everybodies lips from now until September is 'colour-blocking', and it's cousins Neon and Fruit. The colour of the year is honeysuckle, a reddish bright pink - a major counterpoint to last year's in thing, coral, which is a reddish orange.

Spot the difference.

Prada's gone fruity loopy, and Dior was all 1940s and bright colours. Which means only one woman can step up to the fashion plate as our style icon this season.

Carmen Miranda.

I'm fine with this.

Odette/Odile

"Black Swan" (2010, Darren Aranofsky)


“We all know the story. Virginal girl, pure and sweet, trapped in the body of a swan. She desires freedom but only true love can break the spell. Her wish is nearly granted in the form of a prince, but before he can declare his love her lustful twin, the black swan, tricks and seduces him. Devastated the white swan leaps of a cliff killing herself and, in death, finds freedom.”


I’ve always liked the idea of a horror or thriller where the audience sees through the eyes of a protagonist with paranoid schizophrenia. The wildest persecutions and the scariest experiences are outside of reality and take place in only two places: in film and in the mind of the psychotic.

The horrifying final reveal in Rosemary’s Baby is that she hadn’t imagined anything. I thought it would be creepier to have a character who is deluded but cannot snap out of it. Devil worship is rare, but mental health problems are common and the subjective experience can be just as terrifying for someone with delusions of persecution.

Darren Aronofsky’s new film has made a film along these lines. It’s set in a ballet company so it’s ticked a lot of my boxes.

The film uses the archetype of the doppelganger – the self’s double. Nina first sees corps dancer Lily out of the corner of her eye and she comes to represent the good time girl counterpoint to uptight and shy Nina. This is as in Swan Lake, the ballet they are rehearsing for. Nina must dance both the innocent white swan and the vampy black swan. Nina and Lily represent these opposites and, as Nina’s split with reality progresses, she confuses Lily with herself. Just as the white swan and black swan are danced by the same performer, Nina takes on some of Lily’s rebellious characteristics until the two young women become one in Nina’s mind. An ‘either Madonna or Whore’ personality is all very well in a fable, but impossible to sustain in reality. Even Nina’s reality. This reaches a climax (literally. Ha.) when Nina hallucinates Lily seducing her, presumably while Nina is masturbating. She has, like the prince in Swan Lake, been seduced by the black swan. She is now able to self-actualise, a rounded performer who is both the white and the black swan. But don’t forget what happens to the swan at the end.

Sex, Lies and 11th Grade.

"Easy A" (Will Gluck, 2010)

bril·liant /ˈbrɪlyənt/ [bril-yuhnt]
–adjective
1. shining brightly; sparkling; glittering; lustrous: the brilliant lights of the city.
2. distinguished; illustrious: a brilliant performance by a young pianist.
3. having or showing great intelligence, talent, quality, etc.: a brilliant technician.
4. strong and clear in tone; vivid; bright: brilliant blues and greens; the brilliant sound of the trumpets.
5. splendid or magnificent: a brilliant social event.


It's about time I wrote my reviw of Easy A, which I went to see over a month ago. I have had internet problems, and then it seemed too late to write it, but then I just couldn't waste the blog title I had thought of in the cinema. Consider this an early review of the DVD release.

Easy A is in the long fine tradition of charming, witty American High School comedies. Self-aware and knowing without being tongue-in-cheek, Clueless and Mean Girls are the classics of the genre. I would add Glee to the list as a small-screen variation.

Starring Emma Stone (alumnus of that charming, witty American college comedy The House Bunny), Easy A is one of those rare treats - a Hollywood movie that doesn't talk down to it's young audience. There were jokes I laughed at alone. Fine. There were jokes that went right over my head. Fantastic. Just don't spell them out. And if you can make a serious point about sexual double standards at the same time as making me laugh, so much the better.

Yes, Easy A is the Scarlet Letter set in a high school. Everything changes, but some things never change. And look how much she looks like a young Lindsay Lohan!

Classic literature is a goldmine of teen movies. I'm hoping to see the vampire craze satirised in an updated Northanger Abbey some time soon.

Mean Girls 2 is due for release soon. Do yourself a favour and see it's spiritual sequel instead - Easy A.

"I've always thought relaxing was awfully common"

Interior designer and celebrity Nicky Haslam has famously, over the years, declared many things to be ‘common’. So imagine my horror when I looked for a definitive list on the internet and couldn’t find one. I resolved to do some research and write the list myself.

First, we need to know Haslam’s definition of ‘common’. He once gave this answer in an interview:
‘It's nothing to do with some Nancy Mitford-esque horror of someone putting their knife on the plate. It's those little clichés that make you cringe, like someone saying: "My garden's got its own microclimate."’

And now for the list!:

• Saying "please"
• Cufflinks
• Anyone Scottish,
• The Caribbean,
• Tassled loafers
• Celebrity chefs
• Bottled water
• The sun
• Swans
• Queuing outside Annabel’s
• Organic food
• Sushi
• Saint Tropez
• Champagne flutes
• Christmas parties
• Non-Russians with Russian girlfriends,
• Film stars
• Complaining about the smoking ban
• Pronouncing the 't' in trait (it's a French word)
• Pronouncing the 'e' in furore (it's also a French word)
• Coloured bath towels,
• Drinking cappuccinos after eleven
• Art Deco
• Scented candles,
• Garlic on your breath,
• Framed photographs of anyone non-Royal
• Morocco
• Not knowing the words of hymns
• Fur coats on men
• Three-quarter length trousers on anyone
• Jet-lag
• Wheat intolerance
• Relaxing
• Loving one's parents

Folks roamed the earth like big rolling kegs

"Hedwig and the Angry Inch" (John Cameron Mitchell, 2001)


After a disappointing live experience, I decided to watch the movie of Hedwig and the Angry Inch again. And just as I remembered, it has so much more heart and depth than the production I saw.





The meaning of Hedwig hinges on the song Origin of Love. As the young slip of a girly-boy Hansel, Hedwig was a philosophy student who developed his world view according to a speech from Plato’s Symposium by Aristophanes. The lyrics of the Origin of Love describe how, in the beginning we were all part of a two person being joined at the backs. The Gods became angry and split us in two, leaving us mourning for our literal ‘other half’. Our life is a quest to find our missing half- our soul mate- and become complete again. And this is how love came to be.



After I saw the play I had the nagging feeling that Hedwig, as both man and woman, was her own soul mate. But I couldn’t develop the idea further until I rewatched the film.

Throughout the film it’s suggested that Hedwig and Tommy Gnosis are in some way the same person and therefore each others’ soul mates. If all pairs of soul mates started out as one person it’s the same thing. For example, when Hedwig is stripped of drag at the end of the film he looks very similar to Tommy. There are other clues earlier in the film such as a mirror making their faces look like one.



It’s not just Plato’s creation myth which features in the film, the story of Adam and Eve is mused on by Tommy. In this story, one lover is created from the other as Hedwig makes Tommy Gnosis out of Tommy Speck. Tommy praises Eve for taking the apple, discovering knowledge and sharing it with the one she loves. He asks Hedwig to do the same for him and she does, she teaches him to be a rock star.

Hedwig believes that Tommy is his missing half, even after Tommy betrays her. At the end, Tommy sings to Hedwig, admitting that he has done her wrong and cares for her but also that we are alone in this world and there is no ‘missing half’ we are destined to be with.

Hedwig was torn apart not at the dawn of time but when she underwent her brutal ‘sex change operation’ maiming. This caused a split in her personality. Hansel Schmidt was naive and bookish. Hedwig Robinson is fierce, campy and over-confident. The song ‘Wig in a Box’ describes how we can manipulate our appearance to become someone else, literally making a mask out of make-up. Hedwig did not choose to live as a woman and keeping up the artifice clearly puts a strain on her sense of self.

In the finale Hedwig finally breaks down. He strips himself of his clothes, wipes off his make-up and accepts himself as himself, no longer pretending to be a woman. But because he has no phallus he is symbolically not a man either. He is part man, part woman, and he is whole. His tattoo of two ying-yanged faces morphs into one face, representing the resolution of his gender identity and the simultaneous realisation that there is no soul mate out there who can complete him. Plato’s creation myth is just a myth.

Hedwig and the Angry Inch. Just a camp, trashy musical? No way.

Until I Wake Up

Review of Hedwig and the Angry Inch, Marlborough theatre, Brighton (Edinburgh preview).


Hedwig and the Angry Inch started as an off-Broadway play in 1998. It has since been revived many times, made into a film in 2001, and become a cult favourite. The show is presented under the pretext of a gig by East German transsexual Hedwig and her band the Angry Inch. Hedwig tells her life story with each song representing a different stage in her life. And she doesn’t hide her bitterness about the musical success of ex-boyfriend Tommy Gnosis, who we are told is also playing a gig tonight in the same city but in a massive arena.


In this production Hedwig is played by a woman, which works well with the queer genderfuck theme. However she can’t compare to the original Hedwig, John Cameron Mitchell. She doesn’t display the over-compensatory bravado and camp confidence that the character of Hedwig has. I suspect the actress is a singer without much acting experience and without a natural comic skill, she stumbles over her words on occasion and some of the jokes fall flat due to the delivery. She just doesn’t have the acting chops to carry off what is essentially a one man/woman show.


The songs were much better than the banter and story-telling in between. For a start, the score is superb. Songs like The Origin of Love and Wig in a Box can only ever be fantastic and the band and singers were all very talented. The cast made the best of the tiny stage they had to work with which was barely big enough for the band, and the use of the fire exit was inspired. But over all, this was just a mediocre production of an excellent play. Compared to the film this was a bit flat and didn’t induce the same emotional extremes.


I did have a good night out, but I can’t help but feel I would have enjoyed watching the film on DVD even more. That option would at least have meant I avoided the annoying ‘fans’ in the front row who for some reason decided to show their appreciation by repeatedly shouting things out and speaking over Hedwig. To her credit she shot them down like a pro, wasn’t flustered, and stayed in character while she was doing it. After the show an annoyed audience member spoke to these people, quite rightly pointing out that their behaviour had been out of order. Bizarrely, one of them replied “Well I’m sorry but.... [long pause while he tries to think of an excuse] clearly you’re old and don’t understand. And should be in bed.”


Best of luck to the team for their Edinburgh fringe run, starting next week.

Entry for Brighton Fashion Week blogger competition 2010

I’ve chosen an outfit from the Chanel Couture Spring/Summer 2010 show at Paris Fashion Week. I love this futuristically feminine ensemble because it’s so unbelievably pretty and girly, but with a few high fashion twists. It’s a shimmery, lacy knee-length shift dress in a creamy, sugary pastel pink.


The dress is topped off with a tweed bolero jacket. In a Chanel show of waistless wonders the jacket creates an empire-line waist on the dress. As head designer Karl Lagerfeld has done in a few of the most recent shows, the classic Chanel suit jacket has been frayed around the edges. Here it has also been cut high, above the natural waist. This is typical of Lagerfeld’s latest work for the house – a modern twist on classic Chanel.


The hair on the model is a wonder in itself; it seems to reference celebrities through the ages - the elaborate pompadours of Marie Antoinette and Edwardian Gibson Girls. The dip in the middle of the hair brings to mind Lady Gaga’s hair bow. The overall effect appears to be influenced by Amy Winehouse’s beehive; who Lagerfeld dubbed a fashion icon in 2007. The hair is topped off with a fabric bow and camellia, the signature flower of Chanel.


The shiny, silver, Barbarella-esque tights set off the pink of the dress and jacket. This outfit is styled for an unusual but pleasing blend of 1960s science fiction character and regency era Jane Austen heroine. This makes for a very innovative look which hasn’t been seen before. Two such different looks could have just clashed, but they look harmonious and so fresh.


From the Winehouse meets Gaga hair to the silver lame heels, this is the perfect outfit for walking on the moon on the arm of a perfect gentleman.