analysis
Femme Fatale
Monday, September 8th, 2008 | analysis, mythical, sex-appeal, style | No Comments
There is a figure in today’s modern mythology that I found myself very fascinated with when I was a child. Oh, and in my early teenage period, too. It was the sublime, mysterious aura of so called femme fatale: the seductive, incentive woman that captures them all. Eyes, men, whatever. She had to have style and wits, and to posses that indescribable charm that was beyond beauty and glamour. Her sexuality was strong, dominant and enslaving, and there was no hope for the poor butterfly heading towards her light. A modern, powerful, superb witch.
Even though this image has blossomed fully during the ‘40 and ‘50 decades, in the period of the American “film noir”, I have to admit that one of my favourite bewitching characters is the cabaret dancer Lola Lola from 1930’s “Der Blaue Engel”. As everyone who has seen, or even heard about the movie that made Marlene Dietrich a star knows, the lovely Lola pushes Professor’s Rath life on a downward spiral using nothing but the power of lust that she so irresistibly awakens. The power behind a femme fatale ’s silk eyelashes is always meant to bring destruction in the aftermath of every sin, as her ravishing force will ultimately escape all control, even her own.
This was the black-and-white archetype that marked my age of restlessness. Surely, I eventually got to learn that it is only the incarnation of femininity’s destructive and unstoppable potential, and that it has nothing to do with reality. I have never met her in flesh and blood, only pale, wannabe roleplayers. As for any other common archetype (the mother, the maiden, the prophet, and so, so on), there is no human being that simple to match it completely. Humans are way more complicated than black-and-white figures, and even though our lives may, sometimes, resemble old thrillers, they have a little bit more meaning and underlying layers, don’t they? However, for short moments only, I can see her very glow in the shape of one of my female friends, or acquaintances, or other random girls I happen to randomly meet one place or another. And there she is, charming and dangerous, filling men’s hearts with desire, only to disappear some seconds later. Strange, glamourous epiphanies.
Or maybe just my imagination, as I truly, deeply love my inner world and its ghosts. So, reality check here: have you ever met Her?
Thrill and Temptation part I
Thursday, September 4th, 2008 | analysis | No Comments
It came as a surprise for me some years ago, when a dear friend of mine, extremely in love with her significant other, confessed she was being strongly led into temptation by a new, rather insipid acquaintance. Her boyfriend was out of town for the summer, and we all know how summer is… However, during a long period of time, there had never been a more faithful, reliable and wife-material girl than her. So, what the hell was going on?
Women don’t have the huge amount of hormones that awards the hunter title to basically normal, even bourgeois men. Women are genetically programmed to look for stability. And same blah-blah goes on and on. After all, there’s Penelope who’s continuously waiting for Ulysses, and not the other way around.
But as the main essence of femininity is contradiction, we find a donna mobile next to every Penelope, and, needless to say, even beyond the latter’s one endurable figure. A wandering eye or a wandering mind are both rooted in the oh very special, heartbeat-fastener thrill of new, unknown, unconquered territories. Especially when you’ve spent ages being a good girl, dangerous, mind-twisting affairs appear infinitely appealing. Sometimes it even doesn’t take a lot of looks or brains to make you click, just a fairly reasonable average subject and a moody overall period. Or some feeling-lonely time. Or neglectfulness. And as you find yourself getting closer and closer to the common sense borderline between flirt and guilt, you start admitting it is interesting. The whole situation becomes more and more movie-like or novel-like, and you start getting all the attention, compliments and whatever-else you were lacking lately. Plus the thrill. Double thrill, actually: it’s new, it’s unknown and it’s forbidden.
Quite a spell, right? Enough to make your knees shake, at least. But beyond it, the big picture of what you really want and feel is totally different. See now what I mean? Trouble.
[to be continued...]
Fairytales
Thursday, July 31st, 2008 | analysis, mythical, style | No Comments
Oh, those sweet old times! How trendy they prove to be today! We’re always in for some candlelight or vintage furniture, aren’t we? It’s just the charm of living brand new lives in brand old eras that steals our soul. It’s that beautiful, oh-so-polished image that wraps us into some novel/movie/whatsoever character and that usually lasts until candlelight goes out and the lightbulbs go in. Cause fairytales are just fairytales, right?
Truth is fifteen minutes of poetry won’t make up for 15 hours of prose. And we always come back to our daily life and those overused contemporary myths: The Strong Woman, The Self Made Man, The Success. It seems like The Princess, The Hero, The Accomplishment have transformed overnight in their Business-World-Equivalents. That’s the model for today, nothing else we’ve got in stock, so take it or leave it.
I was not aware of my own, personal need for fairytales until some years ago. Back then, I was in the middle of some love-affair and way too preoccupied with being cool about it. Being cool was cool, right? So I was being so cool that one day I realised it wasn’t fun anymore. I was looking on the window, smoking in silence, my dreams were blocked somewhere on the way, there was no thrill, no thrill at all. I was feeling strong, the night was warm, there was no wind blowing and no sense of adventure. Nothing could have been more boring. My lover was a nice, calm, almost passionless person and I wasn’t looking for commitment. Everything was awfully clear and there was nothing to fantasize about. Suddenly, I realised I was living an uninteresting solitude, as my experiences were losing their meaning, and I got extremely sad. And out of that, of course, because that boredom thing wasn’t making feel like a novel heroine at all.
What I came back to was not idle dreaming, but a world full of sense. An interesting solitude, where you could plant fairytales and let them grow. And then I actually realised the value of being able to wait, hope or fight for something. It’s not the adventure that makes our hearts beat faster, but the possibility of it.
So, the prose? It will always be there, but when you do have something to wait for, something to believe in, well, it just turns to poetry a lot easier. And then we can just get rid of all those models and write some true fairytales. True fairytales rule.
Innocence and when does it fail
Monday, July 28th, 2008 | analysis, mythical | No Comments
Innocence. I truly, madly, deeply want to talk about this. We tend to consider innocence as some angelic phase in somebody’s evolution. So appealing, that we even want and try to prolong it.
Children are innocent, and this is because of their immense ignorance. Even though thinking of childhood fills me with a peace that is older than me, I don’t remember my childhood as being serene. I was a happy child, having all I could possibly need, but my life was full of internal conflicts, of questions, of contradictions, of small-sized dramas that meant the world to me. I had absolutely no responsibility, so I was innocent. I knew nothing, and my ignorance was preserving and protecting my innocence. I was not good, as I didn’t knew what good actually was. I was simple, instinctual, selfish, narcissistic. And that was natural, I was a child. However, my continuous struggle for knowledge, my growth, and each new everyday experience tore my innocence to pieces and that was exactly what had to happen. Being innocent I wasn’t at all pure, cause no efforts were made from my part to achieve anything. Being innocent was no quality, but the lack of them, my mind was like the fertile ground waiting for its seeds.
Innocence was from heaven, because was the one and only remainder of the prenatal state. It kept me close to heaven, but that heaven was one of the unconscious, while reaching out for reality was tough and painful. Still, if I was to grow up and become a real humane being, my conscience had to grow too. There was no room there for denial, I simply had to leave that sweet, warm heaven and face the world, my whole being was urging me to this.
When now, as an adult, I try to speak up and talk about my innocence, I’m usually wrong, and I only do it out of cowardice. I try to escape responsibility, and this, my friends, is no longer possible. I try to limit my consciousness, and that makes a part of me wanting to scream out loud the truth, the whole truth. I try to pretend that I’m ignorant about one thing or another, but I keep forgetting that, now, I’m the one to blame for this. That’s because I’m not a child anymore and I have to assume full responsibility for almost everything around me.
I’m only human and I make all kinds of mistakes. I see all kinds of things, that may or may not affect me. I sometimes act when I shouldn’t or keep still when I really should be doing something, anything. My thoughts and feelings seem to have a life of their own in many cases. But closing my eyes about this would be the biggest of mistakes. I must get out of that womb and try to know, feel, live, and this is the long, everlasting fight of the wannabe-individual against innocence.