Juarez (1939)
I’ve lost all confidence in these blogs; I feel like a selfish fool (wow, I sound like Bette Davis in this movie!) for writing them. A friend has been going through hell. She had an operation scheduled, cancelled, then rescheduled again. She was finally allowed into an empty hospital to have surgery, the nurses wore Hazmat suits — and they only told her hours before exactly what the surgery would be. There were threats that she would be unable to see her child for a month. She was expelled from the hospital an hour after surgery (and it was major stuff they did). It’s a wonder she is alive. So what in heaven’s name am I moaning about? It’s the bullying tactics though. Why couldn’t they just give her the information she needed, and let her make her own decision? Instead it was ‘if you see your child it may kill you.’ I would like to tell all public health officials that ‘scaring people to death’ is not even an effective way to control people; never mind how cruel and unethical it is. It didn’t work on my friend. She decided to see her child after the surgery and ‘risk her life,’ and they are both fine a month later. We are all being infantilised — they not only know what is best for us (thanks daddy!), but they know the best way to manipulate us — i.e. to frighten us to death. But some of us do not react well to being intimidated. It is not factual to say: ‘if you see your child it may kill you.’ How about —‘if you see your child, it is possible that you will get COVID-19?’ Am I just another whiny artist who has to stay inside for two months so I’m moaning now, hoping it will be profound? Wouldn’t I be happier if I watched Netflix? I watched ten minutes of that lion tamer thing. No, I couldn’t. I am offended by mass entertainment. Not because I’m snob but because I am philosophically opposed to it. Okay, Juarez is awful, and the critics said so when it came out. Paul Muni looks dead, apparently he spent all this time making himself up to look exactly like Juarez, and he did look exactly like him, and then he proceeded to deliver a robotic performance. Brian Aherne is as wonderful as he can be, and so is Claude Rains. (They are doing the best they can under the circumstances.) Bette Davis agreed to do the film apparently because she got to do a mad scene. It’s pretty mad. Her eyes bulge out a lot — so much so that I just had to look it up. It turns out she shows symptoms of Graves Disease, which is a thyroid condition that can lead to blindness. It was unsettling watching her, because it actually looked as if her eyes might pop out of her head. (Apparently she was sick during the film.) And John Garfield just makes me hard. Am I allowed to say that? At my age, well why not? It’s something of a miracle and kind of a lie — but he does turn me on. He’s was the first James Dean/Marlon Brando, and this was his first big picture, and he’s not only handsome as hell but so vulnerable and real, you just want to kiss him forever. Okay. That’s my review of Juarez. I should add — it’s a bloated epic. Great, because basically all big Hollywood movies since Star Wars have been bloated epics. A lot of movies I’ve reviewed have been lost acknowledged gems that nobody cares about — and movies like this killed them. Mega-entertainment has taken over our lives, which is why I feel completely alienated from my fellow so-called artists who are all excited about putting their work on line. Apparently theatre is dead (wow it only took seven weeks to kill it, don’t tell Aristotle) and theatre artists are now abjuring old-fashioned liveness, all excited about exploring the possibilities of creating digital art. I don’t know how to tell you this guys, but it’s not art if it’s online. Or let me put it this way, when a mega-musical is good it’s only by accident, because the budget went for the publicity and the stars, and no one cares about what is actually being put on stage. Same thing with your computer. It’s about money. Adorno once predicted that the subject matter of movies would someday become money. and that’s what’s happened. Mega-entertainment is about showing off all the wonderful things technology can do, which means whatever money can buy. Everything on your computer is now for sale, capitalism has eaten it, like it has eats everything — and you can’t have a ‘voice’ there. This blog for instance — is not really even on the web. I put it up every night but nobody reads it. And it’s not made for mass consumption. If too many people find out about it then it will implode, or I will. It’s supposed to kinda be a secret. Art is best when done in secret, and the only reason to make art is if you have been badly hurt and you’re not supposed to talk about it, but you do. Those two elements are very important. You have to be wounded by something, severely, and there has to be a very strong voice inside your head saying ‘you shouldn’t be writing this or dancing this or painting this — it’s bad, nasty, mean, awful evil, in fact stop doing this now.’ Then you know you might be onto something. (Not necessarily though.) Oh God. This eternal mess we’re in, this miasma, it’s like being on gas. The moon is visible out my window. I used to look forward to the full moon, but I didn’t know there was going to be a full moon tonight; I’ve lost all track of time. And I’m not supposed to go outside and look at it anyway. And it’s all misty and foggy. Maybe it’s not the moon at all, maybe it’s a street light. I live in a very poor neighbourhood, and everyone here seems to be having more fun than I am. You know why? Because their friends aren’t nice middle-class people who follow the rules. Can I tell you a secret that nobody’s supposed to tell anybody (redundant, I know)? If you go outside during COVID-19 you are not going to endanger anybody’s life -- any more than if you were to drive a car. But it’s an ‘afraid world’ now. Be very afraid. There’s something nice about being afraid. I know it stopped me having sex with men for years -- I guess fear can do the trick. People like it: zombie movies. When this started somebody called it the ‘zombie apocalypse.’ They were joking. Not so funny now. When you think about it, really think about it, going out of the house— at all — endangers everybody’s life COVID-19 or not. And there are so many things you can do by yourself. And it’s so nice that we have these lovely computers. What did they do back in 1918 with The Spanish Flu? What did they do back in 1918, period? I guess they knitted, and looked at their hands, and loved each other, somehow. I guess they read books. Times were simpler then? I don’t know. Here’s the honest truth. I wish I was capable of being afraid of COVID-19. I’ve tried to be afraid of it, I’ve had spells, moments, fits of being really really terrified. But basically, I’m not. Because frankly I’d rather be dead than afraid.
