Inside Juliet

This is a re-post of a blog I posted on Saturday 14th of November 2009.  I accidentally deleted it yesterday and the lovely Blogger Team rescued the cached copy for me. http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:KOvmRvwMiyUJ:sandy-watson.blogspot.com/2009/11/inside-juliet.html&hl=en&gl=us&strip=0&vwsrc=0

INSIDE JULIET

It's difficult, isn't it, to understand why men are so crazy in love with lesbians? Sexually fantasising over them, whilst at the same time seeing them as something dangerous, something 'other'. They are at once desired and derided. Their sexual desire for other women and not men, must mean there’s something wrong with them, right? Sharon Stone's fanny-flashing murderess in Basic Instinct, a notorious and prime example of the stereotype. A beautiful woman (who probably really wants a man) but because she sticks with women, goes a bit bonkers and kills people. In the 1994 Peter Jackson film, Heavenly Creatures, a young Kate Winslet plays the stereotype again. Juliet Hulme, a pretty teenager is sexually 'confused' and by the end of the film, after falling in-love with another girl, becomes psychotic and kills someone (in this case, her girlfriends mother). The chilling factor in all of this, is that in this film, it's all true. Hulme was real, was lesbian, or at least bisexual and was a killer. Or so we were led to believe.

The new documentary film Anne Perry: Interiors is a study of the girl, now a seventy-one-year-old woman, who was at the centre of this horrific tale. A woman, whom after release from prison for the crime, changed her name and became a best-selling author and managed to keep her gruesome past a secret. Jackson's film, however, changed all that. Interest in the real people behind the 'true story' re-emerged. Hulme, now Perry, was sought out and her long kept secret and new identity were uncovered.

What's interesting is that, in the documentary, Perry denies any lesbian relationship with Pauline Parker (the other girl involved in the killing). She claims it as an obsessive friendship, but not a sexual or romantic one. On one level, that's almost a relief. Having another true-life, mad-lesbian-murderess case dug up to support the stereotype, unsettles and bothers me. But then there's a tinge of disappointment that the huge, passionate, other-worldly, love that led to the killing in the film version of the story, was 'made-up'.

The film now works better for me if I just think of it as total fiction. The 'true-story' element that can so often make a film more compelling, now fails in this case. In reality, Juliet and Pauline were just two severely unhinged friends and the obsessive, murderous, love is once more left to fiction... where it so rightly belongs.

Saturday 14th November 2009

Comments:

• sinead 17/11/2009, 22:38
• Heehee you've changed i to "occasional" not "daily"!!!!
• 
  
• PiggBox 19/11/2009, 13:10
• what about the film "Monster" about Arlene (was that her name?) a real life lesbian man killer.
• I am possibly a rare sample of the male species in being neither turned on by nor afraid of lesbians. That could be due to the fact that I have known many of them in my lifetime.
• 
  
• Sandy 19/11/2009, 14:56
• Sinead: Yeah, I changed it to occasional. :o) I'm like the lamps.
• Dido: Close... she was called Aileen Wuornos.
• 
  
• There are many more fictional and 'based-on-a-true-story' films that I could list here, in which the lesbian or bisexual woman is mentally unhinged, psychotic and/or murderous...
• The killers or 'monsters' in many films are gay, lesbian or bisexual.
• 
  
• Butterfly Kiss
• Silence of the Lambs
• Monster
• Heavenly Creatures
• Basic Instinct
• Bound
• Psycho
• Interview with a Vampire
• Wild Things
• My Summer Of Love
• Girlfriends
• Poisoned Ivy
• Fun
• 
  
• ...to name but a few, but I'm sure a little Google search or a gander around wikipedia will garner more realistic lists.
• 
  
• Here's an essay on the subject too:
• http://www.stanford.edu/~njbuff/conference_fall05/papers/brett_hammon1.htm
• 
  
• And, typing the words "lesbian" and "murder" into the IMDB site garners 290 results:
• http://www.imdb.com/keyword/lesbian/murder/?title_type=feature&sort=release_date
• 
  
• sinead 27/11/2009, 16:42
• *drums fingers*
• *hums*
• *looks about*
• 
  
• Maulleigh 30/04/2010, 13:35
• I'm not a lesbian but I've had total "girlcrushes" on women. When girlfriends have stopped calling me, etc., I've been destroyed. It happens! I totally understand having an obsessive relationship with another woman.

Carol

I accidentally came across the novel Carol [Originally titled The Price of Salt] by Patricia Highsmith only a few months ago, not even realising that a film had been made of it, let alone that one was imminently due for release.  Recently [16/11/15], and again quite accidentally, I found myself suddenly in possession of free tickets to a preview of the film.  Carol, it seemed, was quite determined to meet me, in all of her various guises.

I say that, yes, because a novel is always a different experience to a film but also because the two Carol’s I’ve met recently seemed quite different people.  The story and characters in the book and the film are the same, the skeleton of it is all there but the flesh, the body shape of each, give quite a different impression.

I enjoyed the book.  I must say, at this point, as I think it has a bearing on things, that I LISTENED to the book rather than actually read it.  I have a two hour commute to and then from work, five days a week.  Four hours of my day sat on my rapidly fattening bum.  TWENTY HOURS A WEEK.  So… I find it hard to read when being jostled about on a double decker bus.  Additionally, the majority of my commute is through some rather spectacular Northumbrian countryside, hence, I’m often distracted from my Kindle by the daily changes in the landscape as the seasons slowly turn.  Enter Audible.  I’m now an addict.*  I can ‘read’ a book and still watch the changing scenery (which, often actually adds to the listening experience).  The only ‘downfall’, if I can call it that, of an audiobook, is that a narrator can instantly ‘read’ the tone and colour of a novel and it’s characters very differently than you would yourself.**

So, although both Carol’s were beautiful, well-off, society women with a guarded, repressed, nature, the filmic Carol, played by Cate Blanchett, has a warmth I didn't get from the novel.  I still liked the Carol in the book despite this seeming lack of warmth because, in the end, she loves... absolutely.  Still, Blanchett makes her infinitely more likeable than my Audible narrator did.  It’s a subtle but simmering performance.  The beautifully structured dresses almost bursting at their silky, hand-sewn, seams with hemmed-in passion, firmly state her class and social standing from the outset.  Blanchett is elegant, intense and taut.  The chemistry between her and Rooney Mara’s Therese bubbles just under the boil throughout and is utterly believable.

Mara’s performance is a master-class in innocent but confident understatement.  Whilst Blanchett floats around gracefully in her architectural dresses, Mara dashes about in much looser, freer, clothing.  Her youthful sexuality less corseted.  The costume design plays a huge role in the storytelling of this film.  We see Therese blossom from a pretty but dowdy shop-girl into a stunning New York press photographer, modern, independent and sassy in style.  By the end of the film she embodies Audrey Hepburn in all of her most iconic roles.

Todd Haynes’ telling of this story of forbidden love in the 1960’s is just gorgeous.  Every single scene is beautiful and authentic.  His direction of the leads shows a deft lightness of touch, letting what is not said say so much more than what is.  The music and editing seamlessly float us through this story, slipping and sliding us dreamily through this sixties lovescape.

I came out of the cinema longing for that kind of intense, wordless, love.

Carol is just a beautiful, beautiful, film.  See it.

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NB: I have one teeny tiny nit-pick… I just wish we saw a little more fun in lesbian love stories.  That’s it.  That’s the only ‘negative’ I can think of.

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* My faves are autobiographies read by the author’s themselves.  Stephen Fry, Tina Fey, Jennifer Saunders, Clare Balding, Malala Yousafzai, Miranda Hart, Amy Poehler, Celia Imrie,

** I started reading The 100 Year Old Man Who Climbed… about a third of the way through I upgraded my Kindle version to an Audible version.  When reading the book myself I kept giggling out loud and thought it had a Wes Anderson sensibility about it.  I could see the quirky film in my head.  Upon changing to the Audible version… the more I listened the less I giggled out loud and the less I liked the book.  The narrator, to me, sounded like a primary school teacher reading a book to a bunch of 7-year-olds.  Patronising.  He made the writing seem childish rather than quirky.  Awful.  I reverted back to my Kindle for the final third of the book.  (Always play a sample on Audible before buying.  A bad narrator can kill a good book dead).

Office Politics: Small P & Big P

So, I’ve been in my office job for over 15 months now and I have to say that the novelty of it has, in recent months, most definitely lost it’s lustre.  Of course, weekends, bank holidays and chimbletide off will never get dull and a guaranteed monthly salary is also very nice but I’ve become more and more depressed by the duplicitous bitching and snitching.  Of course, there’s no job in existence that's entirely free of those things but the small office environment, where you essentially ‘live’ with the same small handful of people for the majority of your week (more waking hours than with your friends and family) well, this is a particularly fertile space in which these most cynical of human qualities thrive.

I’ve tried to clownishly, avoid, even ignore that sort of thing with silly, cheeky, banter.  Steering potentially explosive conversations into lighter realms.  Recently, however, rather than have a sense that the bitching and snitching might be going on... I’ve actually been on the receiving end of the duplicity a few times and it has really soured my daily experience of work (and hurt my feelings).  I no longer jump up at the morning alarm… I wish I could sleep for a week.

Other than the aforementioned issues, spending the majority of your days with people who have ‘questionable’ politics is bloody hard work too.  I hear casual racism, sexism, bigotry and xenophobia on a daily basis.  It is, I imagine, rather like living in Rupert Murdoch’s mind.  I’ve begun to picture my working day in a very surreal way… a bit like the film Being John Malkovich... whereby the door into work is a portal into Murdochland.  It’s crappy and demoralizing.

Today, the ‘Migrant Crisis’ was mentioned in passing.  A few people agreed it was awful and added a little comment or two, “Well, most people only have issue cuz they’re fleeing to countries with benefit systems!”  (So, the entire Western World then?)  “We need to sort this country out first!”  That kind of thing.  I’m not sure many people actually understand the difference between an economic migrant and a refugee.  Anyway, I kept my lip tightly bit but one colleague, even after the conversation had quickly reverted back to a work issue, kept repeating, “It’s disgusting!  We shouldn’t let ANY of them in!  I think it’s disgusting!  Send them back to their own country.  Our country’s in debt!  There’s no room!  What about British families queuing at food banks?  What about OUR homeless people?  Why can’t they help them first?”  You get the gist.  Eventually, I said, “So, we just let them die then?  Stay where they are and be bombed or try to escape and drown?”  Given the impact that the recent heartbreaking images of a toddler lying dead on a beach has had on most people, I was shocked at her response.  It’s been all over the news, she must KNOW that he drowned along with his mother and brother whilst trying to escape their war-torn homeland to safety in Canada (where relatives now live). NOT so that his dad could sign-on.  Yet, quite flatly and with no shame, the reply came, “Yes! They should be sent back!  Charity begins at home!  They come over here and they don’t even live by OUR RULES!  We have to live by theirs!”  Now, I remember a guy saying stuff like this once… oh… what was his name again?  Hitler!  That’s it!  Didn't the Jews ‘swarm’ into Germany and take all the jobs? Weren't they forcing 'their ways' onto Germany?  That age-old them-and-us mentality and the language of hate.  Cameron and Farage use similar wording.  Haven't we learned anything from the Holocaust?  Just imagine if, back then, we’d turned away the Jews fleeing certain death if they stayed in their homelands???

As for "charity begins at home"... the poor families going to food banks and the homeless she seems so concerned about now are usually called chav scum and dirty tramps or beggers. Oh, the irony!

“We can’t even say Christmas anymore.” She continued, “Our prime minister had to call it Winterfest last year in a speech!”  (A BIG and important issue, eh?  The word Christmas!)  Now, I’ve heard this ‘story’, for it IS a story, bandied around a lot by the xenophobes in the right-wing press.  I’ve searched the Internet since getting home tonight and have found absolutely NO evidence to back up this claim.  How people are comfortable repeating stuff like that without facts to back it up is beyond me.  They just regurgitate Murdoch propaganda like crazed automatons.  It just makes them look un-informed, small-minded and more than a bit silly.  Anyhooo, I couldn't find anything anywhere about our Prime Minister not being able to say Christmas.  I did, however, find an article printed in the Guardian last December in which, it was stated that David Cameron mentioned Christmas, Christianity and Christians several times in his CHRISTMAS speech.  Here it is: theguardian.com/politics/2014/dec/24/david-cameron-christmas-message-ed-miliband Though, if anyone can provide me with evidence that we “can’t say Christmas anymore” please do.

I asked if she was a Christian, to try and get a fix on why the word Christmas seemed so important to her. She isn’t but, “...why should we change the name?  It’s always been Christmas but now apparently people find it offensive”.  Now, I’m a passionate atheist myself and I don’t find the word offensive.  I choose not to use the word, not least because I’m an atheist and so it'd feel hypocritical but because that time of year now has SO little to do with Christ or Mass that I’m actually shocked that Christians aren’t trying to change the name themselves!!!  The precious anniversary of the death of their deity, reduced to a maniacal shopping and gluttony festival which plummets many families into year-long debt.  I mean, if I were a believer, I’d want to disassociate myself from the the Xmas Circus post-haste.  Anyway, I quite like Winterfest as an alternative.  I think it’s cute.  There are some more apt ones we could use, such as; Consumerfest, Capitalismfest, Spendfest, Greedfest, Mallfest, but I doubt they’d catch on.  I, myself, call it Chimble or Chimbletide.  No mass for Christ in sight.

The colleague then angrily mentioned that her home town no longer has Christmas Lights cuz people find them offensive too.  (Another HUGELY important issue, eh? Forget the drowning babies just give me my Christmas Lights!!!)  Again, I scoured the internet for some FACTS.  I couldn’t find ANY stories or articles relating to her claim but, if true, it’s most odd.  Last November and December I visited a few towns and cities (London, Leeds, York, Edinburgh, Sunderland and Newcastle) and all most definitely HAD Christmas Lights. One has to wonder then... why should her town be any different?  Apart from being a bizarre tale, it’s also a hugely daft point to make, as, the very lights that she seems so fond and protective of, actually cost each local council (and thereby the taxpayer) hundreds of thousands of pounds to commission, install and keep alight.  Money that could very easily help some of the hungry and the homeless she seemed so worried about earlier in her rantings.

Ah well.  Another bad day at the office.

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Great Pisstake: http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/society/we-need-to-look-after-our-own-first-say-people-who-would-never-help-anyone-20150907101741

Some Interesting Points: https://johnny3wishbone.wordpress.com/2015/09/08/refugee-crisis-factsheet-a-brief-summary-of-the-blog-entry