Was Camelot Stormy?

You may remember Robert McNamara tearfully repenting of his role in the Vietnam War. He was a formidable presence with his scholarly glasses and slick backed hair. Camelot was not always what it was billed to be. In fact The White House pool area often had the look of one of those seedy spas with Caesar in the title— so popular during the 70s era when NY was a wide open city. In her memoir, one of Kennedy’s assistants recounts how the president issued executive orders for her to pleasure a friend while he'd watched. Sounds reminiscent of P. Diddy no? Don’t believe for a minute that Jackie was oblivious to what was going on. Of course Access Hollywood is hard to top. Would that Stormy Daniels had simply created her reputation as a meteorologist with the National Weather Service.

read "The Waste Land" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

and also read "Punk" by Francis Levy, Vol.1 Brooklyn

Materialists

Nathaniel Kahn's The Price of Everything was about the commodification of the art market. Materialists, closer to the bone, centers on a matchmaker, Lucy (Dakota Johnson), who  trades in human worth. At one point a client bridles at being "a good catch" protesting that she "is not a fish." If art is a tangible asset, love should ideally be unquantifiable, an "intangible asset." Note the movie is Materialists, not The Materialists. Is speciation the  subject? But what happens when the seller of flesh finds herself on the auction block? Prostitution is of the film's subliminal themes. Lucy has two suitors John (Chris Evans), an impoverished actor and sometime waiter and Harry (Pedro Pascal). One plays nothing to the other's everything. The conceit which is fleshed out at Lucy's agency, Adore, ad nauseam, can be tiresome. However, the director, Celine Song, cleverly introduces devices. Love and worth are, it turns out, not fungible currencies. In this sense she is heir to the romantic comedic tradition of Preston Sturges in which a sociological idea, whether political corruption, The Great McGinty, (1940) the plight of the disenfranchised, Sullivan's Travels 1941) or the  love of money, Palm Beach Story (1942) is the igniter. Song, like Sturges has a gift for pithy exchanges which epitomize her satiric point. That including her gift for unexpected turns of plot, which appear just in time to rescue the script from moments of tedium, is not surprising, since Song is also a playwright. 

read "The Waste Land" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

and also read "Punk" by Francis Levy, Vol.1 Brooklyn

They Fight With Cameras

When you visit Omaha beach, you're astounded by the Sisyphean nature of the task the invading allied armies faced. Soldiers stared death in the face. One can't imagine mustering up the level of courage required to scale those cliffs under enemy fire. Nina Rosenblum and Danny Allentuck's They Fight With Cameras tells the story of Walter Rosenblum, the famed photographer who filmed D-Day, Dachau and numerous signposts of invasion, as a member of the Signal Corps. It's a rather amazing document that will break the composure of even the most hardened souls. The film also tells the story of its own inception through lost letters, miraculously retrieved, that Rosenblum had written to his first wife. But it's particularly significant today, since it trades in empathy and sentiment, two notions that are in short supply in the current universe of self-regard. Soldiers risked their lives and cared about their compatriots from other countries. Sounds obvious, no? Not in the transactional hell, the world of Trump, Putin and their minions where no human being does anything for anyone, unless there is something in it for them. "Lasciate ogne speranza voi ch'intrate" abandon all hope, ye who enter here" are the words that graced the gate of Dante's Inferno and that should be the warning to visiting dignitaries like Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Cyril Ramaphosa who dare to enter the current White House.

read "The Waste Land" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

and also read "Punk" by Francis Levy, Vol.1 Brooklyn

Slumming

favela of Rochinha in Rio

No one is accusing anyone of being a snob but you may, on the other hand, be guilty of slumming. It's what well-to-do educated people prosecute when they hang around the tough part of town. As a kid you may have been afraid of getting beaten up. So one day you joined a dojo or boxing gym. What's the result? You remain a sissy who's basically still afraid of their own shadow. Here is a comment from a prosperous friend: "In the past 10 years I have been in two scary situations. In the first, crossing 21st and 3rd, I gave the bird to some guy who was honking me. He pulled over and threatened me with his MMS abilities. I smelled alcohol on his breath. Situation #2--I stupidly made eye contact with a loony on an R. He started provoking me, calling me “grandpa” etc. I have replayed this back and forth in my head. What if I had  sat right smack down next to him and upped the ante? Of course I walked away with my tail between my legs in both instances. I have no street smarts. I mean niente, nada! I am still that kid, tormented by the neighborhood toughs who threaten you with rocks in socks on Halloween.”

read "The Waste Land" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

and also read "Punk" by Francis Levy, Vol.1 Brooklyn

Is the Earth Square?

Galileo and Copernicus were charged with sacrilege for demonstrating the earth was not the center of the solar system. There are those in the QAnon metaverse who have changed things back. Not only will the earth be the center, but also square. So along with those vaccines which cause autism you have to make sure not to fall off. The human brain often mistakes interiority for the empirical universe. The unconscious is a rife with conspiracy theories.

Listen to "Shake Your Groove Thing" by Peaches and Herb

Esther

closeup of "Esther Preparing to Intercede with Ahasuerus" (F. Levy)

There are the greats of the past, Rembrandt, Vermeer,  Velasquez and those of the modern world de Kooning, Pollock, Rothko, Johns and Rauschenberg--who all emerged in America during the 50s. The current "The Book of Esther in the Age of Rembrandt," on exhibit in tandem with the Purim holiday at the Jewish Museum, illustrates how geopolitics and culture create not a classic paradigm shift but a paradigm. The show’s titular painting is luminescent in a sui generis way. It is neither one of the masks or "tronies" by which the master demonstrated his gift for role-playing, nor the usual tincture of darkness out of which say an early self-portrait, also in the show, emerges. It’s as if the mercantile forces which allowed for freedom were epitomized in this singular portrait of an iconic biblical icon. On a more overarching level, any Rembrandt show is a challenge to the present. Clement Greenberg the ideologue of the abstract-expressionist revolution would temble in his grave, but to rephrase Saul Bellow’s famously reactionary quote “Who is the Rembrandt of the 9th Street Bohemians?”

read "The Wasteland" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

and also read "Punk" by Francis Levy, Vol.1 Brooklyn

Fighting Your Way Out of a Paper Bag: Lesson #1

The Rumble in the Jungle

There are two basic ways of fighting yourself out of a paper bag, but the most important thing is to protect yourself at all times. You have to keep your hands up. Have you ever seen someone fighting themselves out of a paper bag? It’s actually a familiar sight in this age of ear buds where people always look like psychotics having animated conversations with themselves. But you have to be there! Man v bag. If the bag is big enough to fit over your head, you won’t be able to see.The one fighting their way out of the bag in question at a distinct disadvantage. Since they are momentarily blind, they can’t see the woods from the trees. Lots of energy is spent by blind men who punch at air.

Listen to "Shake Your Groove Thing" by Peaches and Herb