HOME TRUTH
Re: At home with the
Braithwaite
The column in The List entitled
‘At home with the Braithwaite’
is magic. Keep it coming. Bono sucks big dogs' cocks
and McCartney's maw's got
baws and his da's inttae it.
Jon McCue
via email
INDIAN BUMMER
Re: Bollywood and beyond (445)
At 14 quid a head and six of us attending. Yeh Hai Mumbai Meri Jaan was an expensive mistake booked thanks to your unequivocal recommendation in your pre-festival issue. ‘Trust us. We've got the measure of the world’s biggest arts festival.‘ you trumpeted prior to some no doubt well intentioned drivel: ‘Fringe shows do not come much bigger than . . . this huge musical . . . book now for this is bound to be one of the hottest tickets at the festival . . . epic musical . . .' None of which was even close to reality.
You partly redressed this in issue 447 with a one star review that concisely summed it up although I feel a more prominent and contrite article should also have been printed. Perhaps you would be good enough to educate us poor folks who pay good money to attend shows how the Traverse managed to make such a whopper in the first place. how you got sucked in, and why the theatre didn't. or couldn't. pull the show as soon as it became apparent that it was not up to scratch.
Nobody involved in this line of work could possibly have thought this show was worthy. People expect a certain level of professionalism from the Traverse and this can only have had a negative effect on the theatre's reputation with many festival goers feeling they have been ripped off by being enticed under false pretences and paying top whack for a dismal production.
2 THE LIST 15—19 Sep 2002
Letters
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Compare that to Monsoon, Ful, Fallen and Derevo's La Divina Commedia. all of which were expertly performed. packed with stunning visuals. innovative. and cost a good deal less into the bargain. Mikey-Boy via email
TIME GENTLEMEN Re: Suburban hymns (449) I couldn't agree more with Sandy Griffiths about the campaign to keep licenses to 1am in the Merchant City (or anywhere else for that matter). I used to live in England and I'm in no doubt that early closing times are much worse for creating post-pub disturbances than late.
The atmosphere in those places where everyone knows you're not going to get a drink after a certain time is far more aggressive than those with a relaxed European frame of mind. Far better to let people disperse gradually in their own time than force them out together. belligerent and rowdy. Kate Roberts via email
PORN IN
Re: Porno ag (448)
OK. Tony. concepts is it? I'll give you concepts.
My concern over the scene from The Pornographer focuses not on the film's artistic merits or demerits. nor on the pros and cons of censorship. but rather on Tony McKibbin's specious characterisation of exploitative images of women as artistic radicalism. So. the fact that l have seen none of the films he mentions is irrelevant. as is his point that women were involved in their creation. It is the widely— publicised single image and the imagined ‘what happens next scene' that matter.
Still. it was interesting to learn from his letter that the issue of male filmmaker's indulging in their erotic fantasies is ‘meditated' upon in The Pornographer — presumably while Dominique Blanc. the
female lead. is groping for the Kleenex.
You don't need me to tell you about the historic male oppression of women's sexuality via forced dependence. domestic violence. pornography and more subtle forms of media representations etc. Cinema colludes in this process. as in the scene in question. or in McKibbin's cited example of Bar'se-moi. mistranslated for British audiences (as ‘rape me' instead of ‘fuck me'). perpetuating the offensive male fantasy that a woman wants to be raped.
Images like this legitimise and commercialise male fantasies and serve to maintain the power imbalance. ie the status quo. Far from being ‘radical'. such images are deeply conservative. There is more to sexual equality than simply ensuring an equal amount of muff-dives and blow-jobs on the big screen.
Certainly. filmmakers' preoccupation with images of the phallus is understandable. given that the male organ. unlike its female equivalent (no matter how stunning). is visible. mobile and entertaining in its repertoire of stunts; it is, l have to admit. quite simply more cinematic — as demonstrated by Lars von Trier in Breaking the Waves (a truly radical film). Lisa Green Edinburgh
GIVE ’EM AN INCH Re: competition winner (449)
So, despite what your editor told me a year and a half ago. when I emailed him asking if your magazine had a small space for short stories every now and again (the reply was something along the lines of ‘it's not feasible'). your magazine has miraculously woken up now to the fact that there are people out there who write short stories and — wonder of wonders — people who may actually want to read those stories.
Well. let's see this not be just a one-off competition or event. Below are two short snappy. festival-related stories that I dare you to publish. Go on. you know you want to . . . Jonathan Muirhead via email (The List reserves the right to edit letters. etc: Ed)
BYRNE BABY BYRNE Re: No bull intentions (448) While I usually love the refreshing and straightforward film info in The List. I have to finally whinge about one little point (don't they all, eventually?) Miles Fielder. whoever and wherever he is. needs a gentle knee in the pips for his slip-up.
In his sidebar. he gives us a run down of what's-not-shite in Brit films this year. He does pretty well until the last one. Spider. where he writes: ‘populated by a British cast featuring Ralph Fiennes. Miranda Richardson and Gabriel Byrne.’
Now I could excuse an English rag for mistaking good old Gay Byrne for a Brit. but not a quality Scottish publication like The List. Really Miles: who in the film-lovin' world doesn’t know that GB is an Irishman? He was born and raised in Dublin - he's not British. by any stretch of the imagination.
To be fair. in return. many lrish tend to claim Ralph Fiennes as one of their own. based on the flimsy facts that a) he pronounces his name the Irish way (Rafe) and b) he and his family lived in Ireland (Cork I think) for many years, and c) his mother was Irish. So maybe it all balances out? Matt Kennedy via email
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