Notes from Velvet Goldmine Screening...5/24/2007

Interests:

Use of Wilde for creating a gay male geneology/lineage

Age of aesthetics as apocalyptic (What is that French term for an aesthetic movement that marks the end of an age, an era? Often used to describe the end of the nineteenth/beginning of the twentieth century? I know Wilde was part of this, but what are the implications of repeating this movement, of making this part of his legacy?

Wilde as alien/outsider/other-worldly…perhaps heaven-sent?

What philosophical arguments does the film make about art?

Opening quote as the movie begins: “Although what you are about to see is a work of fiction, it should nevertheless be played at maximum volume.”

Find narrated quote about history, fiction, and empire…”threatening to return”

Observations:

1854 Birthplace in Dublin, green jewel attached to the sweater in which he is swaddled (this green jewel is also the green light that makes him visible as he ascends down upon the earth)

Childhood/adulthood

Finding others, community

Citizen-Kane like structure—we only learn about characters through the lens of other characters (is there something Dorian-esque in this?)

Paying tribute to a patron saint (Brian Slade)—the purpose of this opening concert/performance

Brian Slade’s faking of his own death as vehicle for the entire plot

Glitter is “about nostalgia”

Arthur’s opening encounter with an older gay man

“being gay” isn’t something that can be faked—undeniably performed, yes, but never faked

Arthur is chosen to write about the Slade incident by his boss, “I want you because you remember.”

Scene with Arthur learning Dorian Grey in school—I think the amount of intertextuality, especially with Dorian Gray, will be crucial in this film and the other primary texts. …”Their lives had been his own”

Arthur, closeted, living at home with his parents

Dialogue interspersed with long, beautiful musical montages

Brian at Drag Theatre as a small boy—initiation—does this performance come from somewhere?

“What are you, a mod or a rocker?”
“Style always wins out in the end.”

Genderfuck, breaking gender binaries

Mandy, Brian’s “American wife turned London party girl.”

Song, “Here’s looking at you kid.”

According to his first agent (the first man whom Arthur interviews, the man in the wheelchair), Brian “believes in the future”—sexual revolution, and that his music speaks to “orphans and outcasts.”

Curt Wild (why even bother with dropping the “e”?)—Literally pours glitter all over himself on stage—as a young boy he was sent to electroshock treatment for servicing his older brother

This film very much deals with the way sexuality is continually criminalized/pathologized

The simultaneous desire to become/desire to have (isn’t it Diana Fuss who refers to this as “vampirism”?)

“Maxwell Demon”—another alter ego for Brian Slade

Juxtaposed scenes of glitter against businessman/investor/conservative dress. Jerry Devine intervenes, “I can make you a star!”

Mandy sarcastically refers to Brian Slade’s fake death: “Tricking us all in the end…authentic demise”

The film is multiperspectival—Arthur seeks multiple accounts, including agents, lovers

Clubs, bars, urban areas

Brian Slade uses the jewel first found on Oscar Wilde as a baby to fasten his scarf—how does he obtain this jewel? What does it mean that we don’t see this transaction occur?

Jack Fairy…”the first of his kind”, much like Oscar Wilde was “the first modern man” ?

What is the relationship between the music and the image? Interesting moment where the non-diagetic collides with the diagetic?

Slade seeks out Jack Fairy, kisses him

Mandy talks about art

Camera often focuses on the jewel—asks us to remember. (How else does the film incorporate the viewing audience and implicate us in the narrative? How is our viewing of this film an act of memory?)

Arthur sees Brian Slade on television, screams, “that’s me”—screams to his parents, his way of coming out. Imagined communities?

“Let’s put on a show!”

Brian Slade goes on tour in America—says he’d rather meet Curt Wild than anyone in the world. Does this bear any semblance to/relationship with Oscar Wilde’s own American tour?

Wild to Slade…”you could be my main man”—little cartoon hearts literally materialize in his eyes.

Child playing with Barbie dolls of Slade and Wilde, reenacting love scene. Haynes uses these for his movie about Karen Carpenter. What’s going on here?

Elegance, decadence, excess, camp

“Duty of life is to assume a pose”—is this an Oscar Wilde quote?

Morality and art

Dandy’s and homosexuals…followed by a Wilde quote, the legacy of witticisms! Is this portion Dorian-esque as well?

Rewriting history

Movie’s relationship to the press? The publication of scandal?

Sexual/musical onstage battles

Arthur masturbates to the newspaper—father catches him, is outraged…(he goes to his sons room when he can’t stand the loud Brian Slade music anymore)…”that’s a shameful, nasty thing you’re doing.”

Mandy, “finding two people in bed together doesn’t mean they slept together…it does, however, make for a strong case.”

What is this movie saying about evidence?

Curt…not the real Curt, the “the idea, the image, the fiction”—Mandy

Arthur visited small Cabaret where Slade’s career began

(Interesting scene at 1:25 mark…what is this?)

What are all of Slade’s aphorisms? Are they all Wilde quotes? Revisions of them?

Tribute concert to glam rock/the death of glitter

Notice the object in the sky—does this mark the birth of another aesthetic leader?

Arthur meets Curt Wild in a bar (who is it that he meets in the alley?)

Embodiment as reunion/communion

“We set out to change the world, ended up just changing ourselves.”—Curt Wild

“ A man’s life is his image”—quoted by CW

“the freedom you can allow yourself or not”

Ends with Jack Fairy singing, reprise of “Here’s looking at you kid.” “Fade away never”

In an interview, Todd Haynes: “Back when an unknown identity was attractive.” But know this identity is known…but somehow, continually morphs?

Some Articles for Future Reading:

“Metal Men and Glamour Boys: Gender Performance in Heavy Metal”—Densky, Sholle

“Men Making A Scene: Rock Music and the Production of Gender”—Sarah Cohen

Garber: “Androgyny.” Also, “Bisexuality and Celebrity.”

Butler, “Critically Queer.”

Pramaggiore, “Bisexual Spectatorship.

The City of Collective Memory—GLQ 2001 Volume 2


Questions:

What is that little girl reading aloud on the train?

Introduction

This my research journal for my upcoming English Honors thesis which explores the various ways in which theatre and media artists have remembered and re-imagined the life of Oscar Wilde.

I'll be posting notes, ideas, and questions that arise from my daily readings of my primary and secondary source materials.