Anora – no shock as to why it's won big

A rom-com that takes a darker turn, director, writer, producer and editor Steve Baker’s mega award-winning Anora tells the story of the titular character, who prefers to be known as Ani. A stripper at a club in Brighton Beach, an American-Russian part of Brooklyn, she is introduced to a young Russian, Ivan ‘Vanya’ Zakharov, the 21-year-old son of a Russian oligarch, because she can understand Russian.

He is supposed to be in the US studying, but this spoiled brat spends most of his time partying and playing video games. When he and Ani hit it off, he asks if he can pay her to be his girlfriend for a week. She agrees and, with some of his friends, they fly to Las Vegas.

While there, Vanya expresses disdain for his parents and Russia, and then impulsively asks Ani to marry him. Despite her initial disbelief, she agrees and they wed before returning to New York, to the mansion Vanya has been living in.

But word gets back to his parents and they set off from Russia, having ordered his Armenian godfather/US babysitter, Toros, to arrange an annulment and hold Vanya for return to the motherland. Ani, on the other hand, has no intention of simply quitting.

This is not Pretty Woman. For one thing, it’s no happy-ever-after fairy tale – it’s a lot grittier and doesn’t play with tropes about ‘poor’ sex workers who need saving. It’s Baker’s second feature about sex workers after Tangerine and he never treats them with any sense of moral judgmentalism. On top of that, it never makes sex work look sleazy/pornographic.

Also, Ani can do charming, but she’s not afraid to spit venom, use violence and not simply acquiesce to the demands of others.

Filmed with a nod to 1970s New York crime dramas, Drew Daniels’s cinematography has a look that entirely matches its subject. It rolls in at 139 minutes (long for me), but never feels over-stretched. The final scene is a wallop to the guts.

Mikey Madison won the best actress Oscar a week ago – and it’s not hard to see why. She gives this everything she’s got and is spiky, funny and charming by turns. It’s a nuanced performance that leaves us wondering – at least to a degree – about her motivations.

Mark Eydelshteyn is very good as the spoiled Vanya, as are Karren Karagulian as Toros, and Yura Borisov and Vache Tovmasyan as two hoods that he hires.

Absolutely no surprise that this has done so well on the awards circuit – and well worth a watch.

Currently streaming on Amazon Prime.

Beryl Cook/Tom of Finland: a stimulating exhibition

It might seem a strange idea to stage an exhibition of works by both Beryl Cook (1926-2008) and Touko Laaksonen, who was better known as Tom of Finland (1920-1991), but that’s what Studio Voltaire in Clapham has done. And it works a treat.

It’s a concise selection, but carefully chosen and with curator’s notes that avoid the pretentious and actually provide good context.

Cook is famous for her paintings of voluptuous women, predominantly working class. They’re often skimpily attired and seen with very high heels, drinks and/or fags in hand. Importantly, there is no sign of them being ashamed of their bodies – and they have the temerity to be having fun.

Victoria Wood described Cook’s paintings as being “like Rubens with jokes”.

She was self-taught and, entirely predictably, like LS Lowry, the British art establishment was sniffy. Even when she died, obituaries referred to her saucy seaside postcard as ‘naïve’. But she was – and continues to be – incredibly popular, while some major galleries now display paintings by her.

Tom’s works are more overtly and explicitly sexual. He took his name for the sake of anonymity, when by the late 1950s, he was an illustrator for US magazine Physique Pictorial, which portrayed muscled men in homoerotic activities that would just scrape past the censor.

Looking at his works of extremely muscled and well-hung hunks now, it’s easy to think of them as reflecting tropes of gay culture: the cowboy, the sailor, the leather man. All very Village People. But then that’s because Tom helped create such an incredibly influential aesthetic.

Like Cook, his figures are predominantly working class. The hyper-masculine nature of them was a direct challenge to the idea that gay men were effeminate. They are also clearly happy in their own bodies – and they’re having fun.

The styles of both artists are very different. But they’re instantly recognisable, beautifully executed and absolutely suit their subjects.

Of the works on display, there are several standouts. Cook’s 1976 painting The Lockyer Tavern (pictured at the top of this review), shows women drinking in a Plymouth gay pub – the artist was very much an ally – is iconic.

Personal Services

There’s also Personal Services from 1987, inspired by the life of famous madame and dominatrix, Cynthia Payne. It was used as a poster for the Terry Jones film about Payne, of the same title.

Ladies Night (Ivor Dickie) from 1981 portrays women surrounding a male pole dancer/stripper and laughing and straining to see as he pulls down his thong.

There’s also a display of some of the photos she took to help her work, which is illuminating.

Much of Tom’s work was graphite on paper – and untitled. I have selected three to include here, all of which showcase his skill and the points I’ve made above, but all of which are (just about!) ‘safe’ to see.

Studio Voltaire is a small exhibition space and this is a small exhibition. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t offer an experience that breaks away from mainstream exhibitions to represent and celebrate communities and groups in a way that is really welcome and thoroughly life-affirming.

Ladies Night (Ivor Dickie)

Beryl Cook/Tom of Finland is at Studio Voltaire until 25 August.

It includes explicit artistic representations of gay sex.

 

May December is uncomfortable viewing – rightly so

It would be all too easy to get the tone wrong in a film about grooming and child sex abuse, but Todd Haynes’s May December makes for uncomfortable viewing in just the right way.

Gracie Atherton-Yoo is a notorious woman after having groomed and seduced a 13-year-old boy, Joe, when she was 36. Discovered in flagrante delicto in the storeroom of the pet shop where they both worked, she was sent to prison, where she gave birth to a girl.

Fast forward 23 years. She and Joe are married and have three children. Honor is at college, while twins Mary and Charlie are set to graduate from school.

And Gracie’s story, which scandalised the nation, is set to be retold in an independent film, where she will be played by Julliard-educated Elizabeth, who is famous for a light TV role and is looking to push her career further.

Elizabeth is visiting Gracie and the family in preparation for the role, with the latter hoping that this movie will ‘set the record straight’, unlike the tacky tabloidesque TV film that we see in the background of one shot, and all the sensationalistic, gossipy magazine stories that the former has gathered as part of her research

Based on the real-life case of Mary Kay Letourneau, Samy Burch’s screenplay is at once high camp, in the fashion of All About Eve, for instance, but also deeply serious.

By the end, there is no obvious resolution to the story; when is Gracie lying/gaslighting and when not, for instance? How much can we trust her word? What will happen to her and Joe now that all their children are leaving the nest – and he is still only 36?

Yet we see, throughout the film, her microaggressions of bullying and control on all her family – including Joe. There’s a scene where she and Elizabeth are in a shop, as Mary is selecting a dress for her graduation, Gracie ‘compliments’ her daughter for having the ‘bravery’ to select a dress that shows off her upper arms. Result? Mary backs down and selects a different dress.

Late on, we learn that Gracie had been abused by her elder brothers – a classic path to becoming an abuser oneself and it is important that the film acknowledges this. Yet she denies it to Elizabeth – suggesting she is gaslighting her own son from her first marriage who gave Elizabeth this information in the first place.

Who – and what – do you believe? It’s a superb look at gaslighting and at personality disorder, and at the effects of abuse on all those around whom it happens.

Julienne Moore is superb as Gracie; brittle and vulnerable and threatening all at the same time.

Natalie Portman is equally good as Elizabeth. The theme here of performing roles – not least, our socially expected ones – are important throughout the film.

Charles Melton, as Joe, has already won a number of awards and it is no surprise why – he manages a poignant subtlety that acts as a stark and important contrast to the campness mentioned earlier. This is a painful performance for him.

And the ending should harrow, in terms of what it suggests – well, what you as the viewer decide to read into it.

It is a really very fine film.

A tale of vaginas and how some expect us to behave

Just don't

It’s been a wonderful couple of days for vaginas.

Only yesterday, news emerged that, addressing the Cambridge Union Society earlier this week, good old Germaine Greer observed that trans women weren’t real women because they don’t know what it’s like “to have a big, hairy, smelly vagina”.

In the meantime, news – and admittedly I use the word lightly – reached these shores that Gwyneth Paltrow is promoting the steaming with herbs of said vaginas to keep them nice and fresh and the owner ‘energised’.

Then today, the hashtag #NoHymenNoDiamond appeared on my Twitter timeline.

Although this appears to have actually started at least as early as last autumn, it’s today picked up a lovely head of steam (though there’s no evidence that steaming breaks or heals a hymen).

There’s also no evidence that those who tweeted it actually thought about how they’d check such a thing before the wedding day.

But then again, we’re not talking about people with big brains.

And as if all that wasn’t enough, it’s pretty much a racing certainty that life at the Daily Mail this past week has seen editor and champion of women everywhere, Paul Dacre, illustrating his notorious talent for ‘double cunting’: there’s a reason his editorial meetings are known as ‘the vagina monologue’.

So, is there a common theme here – beyond, y’know, stuff about cunts?

Well there’s certainly a steaming pile of irony.

Greer’s views on trans women are not themselves news, but although she slammed the views of some other feminists in the same speech, she shares with many radical feminists essentially the same attitude toward trans women (I don’t know if they have any opinion on trans men).

More than one rad fem has suggested that not having a womb discounts trans women from ... well, being a woman.

In other words, these feminists do precisely what they supposedly object to – and create an idea of womanhood that comes down to biology and sexual organs.

It’s no coincidence that rad fems in the US in particular have made unholy alliances with reactionary, Christian fundamentalist political groups and individuals. They are a form of reactionary fundamentalism.

I can’t answer for anyone else, but I know that I don’t want to be defined by whether I have a womb or whether my cunt is smelly.

Who would?

And who would imagine that those doing precisely that would, at the same time, equally want to say that women should not be defined in such a dreadfully limiting way by others?

I have no more right to define anyone else’s experience of their sex/gender than anyone does of mine.

As someone who has been described, by a long-time friend, as a “gay man in a woman’s body,” I’m well aware that there are many ways in which I do not personally conform to any conventional idea of womanhood.

But surely it’s precisely those ‘conventional’ ideas – and expectations and, with them, limits – that feminism seeks to combat?

If you want women to be able to escape lives based on restrictions imposed because of bodily functions, then it hardly seems sensible to use these same things to define women.

Many have found the obituary of best-selling author, and acclaimed scientist, Colleen McCullough, in Rupert Murdoch’s The Australian, to illustrate precisely what still faces many women.

It opens thus:

“COLLEEN McCullough, Australia’s best selling author, was a charmer. Plain of feature, and certainly overweight, she was, nevertheless, a woman of wit and warmth. In one interview, she said: ‘I’ve never been into clothes or figure and the interesting thing is I never had any trouble attracting men’.”

There’s so much wrong with this that it’s would be difficult to know where to start. Thankfully, Twitter users came up with #MyOzObituary to illustrate the insanity.

But choosing to remember a successful and talented woman in such a fashion is no different in its limiting terms to claiming that her sexual organs are what defines a woman.

And this, perversely, has something in common with the idea of the vagina – via the hymen – of that previous hashtag.

That’s about ownership. It’s about defining a ‘good’ woman on the basis of sex and an idea about what identifies a woman who has had sex. Commenting on her looks is about defining her by them.

The #NoHymenNoDiamond hashtag is particularly dumb, of course, not least since many things can break the hymen, from tampon use to riding a bike.

But that’s the point: none of this is sensible. None of it employs common sense. None of it employs the matter between the ears.

According to the biological definition of a woman, anyone born with Mayer Rokitansky Küster Hauser syndrome (ie without a womb) would not qualify.

So it serves – once again – to illustrate a number of things.

One, that rad fems are not, for the main, really interested in women as a whole and in overcoming the limits that our society does place on them.

Two, that said radical feminists push an agenda that is yet another form of intolerant, bigoted and limiting reaction against progress, and we should not be suckered in to treated it as an intellectually-sound matter.

Three, that radical feminism is a form of secular fundamentalism that has nothing whatsoever to do with what the majority of women think and experience.

And four, that whatever some claim, the main issue that faces us today – that is, ALL of us – is still a class-based one, with a ruling class/supra-national corporatocracy etc using all its weight to gain yet more wealth, and damn everyone else, whether male or female, straight or not, trans or cis, black or white etc etc.

Just look at TTIP – and the ISDS clause in particular – to see this.

Dividing human beings along lines of sex and/or gender, into whether or not they have a cunt that smells or not is idiocy and ignores all the really important questions that face us ALL.

But hey: what a vagina of a few days it’s been!

21st-century hysteria, click bait and the absence of common sense

It’s a sorry state of affairs when something that should be blindingly obvious that it requires no comment demands digital column inches to point this out.

It appears that veteran Channel 4 news reader Jon Snow dared to admit that he had thought about colleagues in terms of S.E.X.

This provoked an outcry – not just on Twitter, but also in the Spectator and, inevitably, in the pages of that bastion of hypocrisy, the Daily Mail.

Such was the response to this admission of being, err, a human being, that Felicity Morse penned a short piece on the topic for the Independent, pointing out that this is entirely normal for a normal human being – we are sexual creatures, after all – and adding that not only is he hardly the only one who has entertained such thoughts, but that … wait for it … women have too.

Of course this also comes at the same time that a certain organ (fnar, fnar) was berating the performance of singer Beyoncé at the Grammy Awards.

Oh My God! She wore something that wasn’t as modest as a burka! She gyrated! Alongside her husband! Our boys will be turned into rapists and our girls into sluts!

I bet you won’t be able to guess which media outlet was leading the charge on that one, will you?

Of course you will.

It was indeed our old friend the Mail that shrilled: “Is this really what little girls should aspire to, Beyoncé? Parents attack ‘vile’ display at Grammys”.

Apparently they found one parent was quoted anonymously, plus a couple of the professional ‘won’t-somebody-think-of-the-children’ brigade, Pippa Smith of SaferMedia and Vivienne Pattison of Mediawatch-UK.

Let’s clarify this: the Mail is the same rag that publishes lashings of pictures of women in as little clothing as possible – mostly to point out that they have put a bit of weight on/lost a pound or two/got cellulite.

The pages of the dead tree edition are bad enough: the online version sees this obsession squared.

And on top of that, as I and others have illustrated previously, it uses its website to publish pictures of underage girls with creepy, sexualising captions and stories alongside – describing an eight-year-old child as “a leggy beauty” is but one of the more notorious examples.

It’s so depressing to have to point out that Morse’s piece is common sense.

It’s equally depressing to point out that Ally Fog’s latest Guardian article, in which he called on people to stop pretending all teenage boys are becoming violent because of porn, is another example of a situation of there being an apparent need to state the bleedin’ obvious.

Fog uses the article to press the case for serious reform of the sex education situation in the UK, where some schools are still using materials related to the homophobic Section 28, and where others are censoring what they tell the children on the basis of religious beliefs.

It’s difficult to understand who would consider it progress that such articles need writing – primarily as a response to plenty of idiocy in a media that is increasingly given to straightforward sensationalisation in order to sell copies or as click bait, and in the case of Fog, he acts as a bit of a counterbalance to the extremist voices of the likes of Julie Bindel and her misandrist, transphobic friends.

How on earth do they get away with it?

Is the British public at large really so puritanical (when not consuming and being scandalised by vast amounts of titillating gossip) that it actually considers it abnormal or surprising that their fellow humans might look at other people and consider matters sexual?

Or that they think that Beyoncé’s dancing will turn their daughters onto a path of sexual promiscuity?

Or that all teenage boys are internet-porn addicted abusers?

But then, there are apparently parents around who do not want their children to have an open and proper sex education.

Part of the problem, though, is that spouting the sort of bile and myth that in these pieces was being rebutted, is irresponsible, and risks giving a sense of justification to bigotry and intolerance and sheer stupidity.

Only yesterday, I read of a court case where two men escaped prison after beating a trans woman in her home, with their lawyer telling the jury that they were “having a laugh”.

The likes of the Mail, when it lets Richard Littlejohn spout transphobic bile and the Guardian, when it let’s Julie Burchill et al do the same, do nothing to stop a culture of seeing trans women (because it usually is trans women) as ‘odd’ and, therefore fair game.

And that leaves us with a pretty sad state of affairs: both that such articles need writing and that at least some people do believe all these sort of myths and more.

A sensible decision – and an outbreak of stupidity

Caster Semenya: living proof of gender/sex complexity

In one of today’s rather more positive items of news, it appears that Germany is to allow babies to be registered as of ‘indeterminate sex’ where it is not possible to immediately see whether the infant is male or female.

It’s a move that will, hopefully, help to avoid situations where parents are forced to make a decision on gender, with the result that doctors may then perform drastic and irreversible surgery that may not actually tally with what the individual feels as they grow up.

You could be forgiven for thinking that it would be difficult to view this as anything other than a sensible and sensitive decision.

The very recent case of South African athlete Caster Semenya should illustrate how the matter of sex is not always a matter of absolutes – and Semenya is far from unique.

And the life and early death of David Reimer (and his brother) is another example of the tragic consequences of an obsessive need to categorise gender/sex too early (and of male circumcision).

So what could possibly be controversial about the news of this decision in Germany?

Well, when the BBC allowed comments after publishing the story earlier today, it unleashed a remarkable mount of ignorance and downright bile.

“This says everything you need to know about Europe and its God despising politicians. We need to get out of the EU IMMEDIATELY,” screamed one poster.

“This will just confuse the children even more. Look to the Lord God our Savior and let Him decide.
Man should not be making these sorts of decisions, the rapture will come soon to punish those acting in the name of the Lord God Our Father,” said another.

“Next we'll have legal marriage between three people under the banner ‘we deserve it it’s our right’ – what a joke. Are we going to have have to fit everywhere with 3 sets of toilets: ‘Male’, ‘Female’, ‘Not quite sure’ – life is tough, get on with it,” read another.

Then there was this little classic: “God created WOMEN from the rib of MAN. God did NOT create another gender. THIS IS BLASPHEMY.”

And this simplistic summing up: “Ridiculous – they either have a Y chromosome or not – end of story. The sooner people stop thinking that gender is a matter of choice the better.”

Then this fantastic piece of expert medical advice: “A boy is medically different from a girl, just ask the doctors to put their glasses on! It’s only in extraordinary circumstances that we should meddle.”

And this piece of paranoid lunacy: “And so depravity rules eh.....Haarp anyone? Something in the water. SIck society, the end is nigh.”

This one starts with a good old laugh at those Jerries: “Well their language works like that so masculine, feminine and neuter probably seems more natural to them,” before going into loony terrain: “Meanwhile back in the real world outside of the halls of the BBC and Westminster, a third gender is creepy and unnatural. why do we have to keep putting up with this nonsense in Western society?”

I have quite deliberately not edited a single one of these: they are exactly as published.

To be clear, there were also many, many comments that reflect compassion and, if not a scientific understanding, then a readiness to accept that the issue exists and that this is a sensible and sensitive way to deal with it.

But boy, oh boy, there are also a remarkably large number of these negative comments. Well, not simply “negative”, but stark staring bonkers.

Even within their apparent own belief systems, some fail to exert internal logic.

For instance, if you believe in a god that is – as the Christian god is traditionally believed to be – omniscient, omnipresent and omnipotent, then it was that god that created those babies whose sex/gender is not clear at birth.

Are some people really trying to pretend that no babies are ever born with, say, genitalia that is not limited to one sex, and are thus saying that this story is based on a lie to start with?

The EU comment is simply the sort of raving bonkersness that probably comes of care in the community.

Not that such people limited themselves to simply posting such crap.

For instance, you have to wonder at the mentality of whoever it was who, within seconds of this calm and sensible comment being posted, marked it down:

“Generally speaking, unless there is impaired functionality (as with cleft palate or “hare lip”,congenital cardiac defects &c.) “correcting” inter-sex features immediately upon birth might be -- in some cases -- more traumatic than beneficial.It will require a lifetime of medication with hormones.May be better to provide effective counselling to parents & focus on psychoemotional &social aspects1st.”

What? In marking it down you suggest that you think (I use the word loosely) that instant surgery is absolutely the best option, regardless of any later problems that it creates if it turns out the physical characteristics that you’ve chosen for the child do not meet the emotional ones that they subsequently possess?

I mean – come on: really?

This isn’t about ‘creating’ a third sex – it’s about a country finding a way to help ensure that children who are born with indeterminate sex are not rushed into situations that could be negative for them in later life.

These children exist – the condition exists.

What’s to get so hot and bothered about?

A century ago, Magnus Hirschfeld – the world’s first sexologist – was campaigning to increase understanding, decriminalisation and greater tolerance of homosexuality and homosexuals.

We’ve come a long, long way in the time since – at least in some parts of the world. As Stephen Fry’s recent look at homophobia showed very clearly, there’s still a very long way to go in some places in particular, but you do look at these sort of comments – and there are plenty of them – and you wonder at the continuing intolerance, deliberate misunderstanding and just downright stupidity that seems to exist among sizable amounts of the population.

Is it really too optimistic to hope that, at some time, we could actually have entire populations that are educated to a point where they don’t come out with such drivel?

Or will we need to develop a fourth way of categorising people for those who are simply stupid beyond help?