Capitalism - Feudalism without the Kings
Tax the Rich

 

Movie Monday

 

Cornell West, who can bloviate at times, got it right recently when he said that Obama was a disaster, but Romney would be a catastrophe. The difference to me is that Obama will defend social programs in his second term (that is, if he doesn't get a veto proof Republican Congress) as long as maintaining them will not hurt capitalism while Romney will gleefully wield his red pen and slash away at them. In spite of all the false accusations calling Obama everything from Muslim to Marxist, he can proudly claim to have saved capitalism as the 1% know and love it in his first four years. Not much of a legacy to his scores of 2008 progressive/liberal supporters but it'll look great on his resume if and when he ever enters the corporate world.

 

Marijuana criminalization, Julian Assange/Bradley Manning, abridgement of the Bill of Rights..... it's a very long list I'm thinking about as I decide if this November I'm going to vote for a presidential candidate. (No, in spite of my disappointment my option was never Romney.)

 

Ultrasuede: In Search of Halston (2010) is the movie I saw this week. It only got a 5 on IMDb and looking through professional critics, it didn't fare much better with them.

 

I've always found the fashion world extremely frivolous but it is also a most reliable gauge for understanding capitalism. Fashion will produce any kind of product as long as it has a buying public. Frivolous? Unnecessary? Practically unwearable? What? They worry? The goal is that consumer base. Produce it. Create the demand. Sell it. Retire it. Produce again. Create another demand........ Like last year, when I read that pink was the new black. In the billion dollar fashion world that may be. Not in the world where we mere mortals live.

 

In spite of the faults critics find with Ultrasuede, intentionally or unintentionally, it shows viewers the 1970s with its drugs, sex, and wild living which got chronicled on the evening news and helped bring forward an opposition which coalesced into the fundamentalist right we "enjoy" today. Although the hi-jinks portrayed in this film may not have visited the US heartland, places like Studio 54 in NYC were located in the media center of the world and that's what got reported on the evening news. Ultrasuede, while centered around Halston's rise and fall, presents fully a life style which unfortunately became the warning metaphor for what a society would look like if it were ruled by the "left." 

 

So, if you ever ask: How did the right get so entrenched that it wields such a mighty moral sword on the political stage today? take a look at Ultrasuede and see the 1970s as portrayed on TV. A lot of it wasn't a pretty sight.

 

There are two section of Ultrasuede which got highlighted in my brain. One is when someone is explaining Halston's genius by saying that he would put the fabric on the floor, visualize the final garment and just cut. The narrator then said something like: I wish Halston had spent the time telling how he was able to do this but he was more interested in telling about all the famous people who bought his clothes. While I don't like high fashion, Halston started out with sleek, minimalist designs. They were probably all cut on the bias (more expensive; uses more fabric) so they draped well on most figures. I would like to know today how he did it, not whom he dressed.

 

The second section is peppered throughout the end of the film, first when Halston sells the rights to his name to Norton Simon. He apparently was the first designer to license himself. I'm sure he made scads of money, (he spent scads of money; apparently $100.000 yearly for flowers) but as time went on he found he sold him soul to the devil and he wasn't getting it back. Then came deals with J.C. Penney and others. Selling out for money only gets you money and for a creative person, that's the death knell. The life style of drugs, parties, fame and sex didn't help this boy from Iowa either. 

You can watch Ultraseude on two levels: a cautionary tale for creative people and the world before the fundamentalist right came to power. Maybe not a great documentary, but archivally important.