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Showing posts with label human sexual response. Show all posts
Showing posts with label human sexual response. Show all posts

Friday, July 29, 2011

The Little Theater Screen

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OK, this is for Saturday morning. But pipe down when you watch it---Dad's still sleeping!



I think this is one of Fleischer Studios' best and most diabolical cartoons ever. I can't think of another with so much nonstop visual invention. The only breaks in the action are there to inject suspense or move the anti-plot in a new direction. And the surreal thread that these scenes are strung upon writhes like something that the coroner might have tweezed out of Edgar Allen Poe's brain through a nostril. Except for the appearance of our special canine guest star and the awesome, fetishistic Radio City Music Hall finale.

Yes, they really did show these cartoons on TV in the 1950s, when there was a scarcity of made-for-TV animation. As I've mentioned before, though, Fleischer cartoons were not produced for Depression-era tots... at least not until Hollywood set up the Hayes censorship office and they put a dumpy housefrock on Betty Boop.

As a point of semi-interest, this short was released to theaters 80 years ago last Sunday (24 July).

Bimbo's Initiation, Dave Fleischer, Director (1931, A Fleischer Studios Talkartoon; Grim Natwick, Animator), via YouTube, embedded for noncommercial critical discussion and educational purposes.

"The Little Theater Screen" was invented by Frazier Thomas.

Saturday, July 2, 2011

Rich asshole framed for rape?

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Based on what New York prosecutors have discovered about their client regarding the DSK rape allegation, we may actually have a case here in which a bona fide member of the global elite community may have been falsely accused of something. Sez the New York Times:
Investigators with the Manhattan district attorney’s office learned the call had been recorded and had it translated from a “unique dialect of Fulani,” a language from the woman’s native country, Guinea, according to a well-placed law enforcement official.

When the conversation was translated — a job completed only this Wednesday — investigators were alarmed: “She says words to the effect of, ‘Don’t worry, this guy has a lot of money. I know what I’m doing,’ ” the official said.
But then again, maybe not. Press leaks about an allegedly lying rape victim do not constitute an acquittal of the accused. Outside of the Gucci law office that is a privilege of a gentleman of DSK's standing and the Manhattan District Attorney's office, we  know only a few things for certain. One is that a person is innocent of an accusation until proven guilty. Another is that raping a woman who lies, or may even be a "gold-digger," is a crime nevertheless.

Beyond those things, there is a certain conjecture (for a hypothetical case, naturally) that may not be automatically false; namely, a case in which two nasty, cynical people might simultaneously try to do something horrible to each other at different coordinates of human experience, so to speak. For example, a hardened woman without conscience might be willing to entrap a rich asshole into raping her in return for a huge payday, and a misogynist asshole may follow his dick and the woman's "script" into committing an act of sexual violence. Interesting legal and existential questions follow for the ages, not to mention a zillion insipid talk show interviews, a tell-all book by those "who have knowledge" of the situation, and a Hollywood blockbuster based on a true story.

Many other conjectures are possible, too, so the one put forth above means approximately nothing.

Meanwhile, based on what I heard on NPR this morning, irrespective of what may have happened in that Schrodinger's cathouse of a hotel suite, I think that a majority of French citizens will jump at the chance to greet DSK as if he were a returning war hero and rid themselves of the ridiculous President Nicolas Sarkozy in next year's national election. After all, at least one conspiracy narrative emerged very quickly on the heels of DSK's May arrest. It's feasible that Sarkozy could find himself as an unwilling partner in a metaphorical menage a trois.

Editor's note: I saw this story first at Balloon Juice.