SantaCon

photo: Jim.henderson

Democracy is a fine thing, but there is a price to pay by some individuals for the rights we offer to others. One of these is the right to congregate. Without whittling down our liberties, democracy does propose limitations such as the famous Schenck decision in which Oliver Wendall Holmes argued that it wasn’t alright to shout fire in a crowded theater. Which brings us to SantaCon which just occurred this past Saturday. Hundreds of twenty somethings dressed in Santa Outfits descended upon Manhattan bars, giving early warning signs as to what the actual fall of Western Civilization will be like. The Birds not withstanding, Hitchcock couldn’t have dreamt up SantaCon, which had all the worst aspects of the heinous and ubiquitous New York Street fare and parade rolled up into one. The Mayans prophesied that the world will end on December 21, but while it didn’t on December 15, Santacom was a death rattle, its vulgarity and stupidity, brazenly turning the iconic Miracle on 34th Street into A Clockwork Orange. SantaCon is like a nightmare in which Santa goes on the rampage, marauding and pillaging. It wouldn't be surprising to find a new release by Stephen King entitled SantaCon where Santa like the family pet in Cujo turns vicious.

The Double

John Grimonprez’s film Double Take is based on a Jorge Luis Borges story, August 25, l983, which in turn is based on Dostoevsky’s The Double. In the Borges story, the narrator, who is 61, dreams himself into a future date when he, or his double, is 84 and on his deathbed. Alfred Hitchcock’s double, Ron Burrage, a waiter who worked at Claridge’s, plays a major role in the film. Double Take is deceptive since it’s not really about Hitchcock, but about the way he walked into the outline of his own image in the famed ‘50s series, Alfred Hitchcock Presents. The infamous Nixon-Krushchev debate at the American exposition in Moscow, the Bay of Pigs, and the image of a body falling from the World Trade Center, captured like a New Image painting, are also elements in this piece of meta cinema, along with cuts from The Birds, Folgers coffee commercials, which provided the commercial spots for  the Hitchcock TV series, and excerpts from the cold war thriller Topaz. Time and history drive the diegesis. There is l960, the year Borges’s short story takes place, 1963, the year The Birds was released and Kennedy was shot, and l980, the year Hitchcock died. The notion of the alter ego, which survives Hitchcock survives  in the form of the voice of Burrage and Mark Perry, who imitates his voice, is almost as haunting as Tippi Hedren’s recollection of being bitten by the birds that Hitchcock used for his film shoot. “If you meet your double, you should kill him,” Hitchcock is quoted as saying. Double Take is pure Borges. It will never be mistaken for Hitchcock.