Love & Lust on Film: Scarface, Bridget Jones and Lessons Learned
Published May 27, 2004
Candice is the ultimate example of all these gorgeous girls I see riding the subway to and from work every day, flitting about in museums and publishing houses and literary agencies. These girls who've known how to do perfect eye-make-up since the tenth grade; who get Brazilian waxes by Edith and go to spinning class three times a week, and buy their clothes at Talbots or Anne Taylor or Banana Republic or J. Crew (all of which are basically interchangeable, just like the people who wear them); who all have the same platinum highlights from the same Newbury Street salons; and the same Kate Spade or Coach bags. Honestly, they're like their own tribe. The truth is, for all of their put-together prettiness, I can't tell them apart.
They are the girls who flirt in the office and fuck married men and betray other women and then scream bloody murder and cry and hide and scream about how unfair it all is when it happens to them (Candice). They seem stuck-up and cold and like they fuck for validation, not for the sake of fucking, and if they come at all, it's cinematic , preplanned and delivered in a lady-like "oooo" or drawn-out sigh, and if there's a mirror nearby, I bet they check how they look at The Moment.. It's just so self-reflexive and boring. They are the girls who worry about whether their butt is giggling while they're doing it, which I understand, but drop it already. Men don't worry about their butt giggling. They just don't. As they say in The Full Monty, "Fat is a feminist issue."
See, Tony Montana is absolutely right about Elvira; she does need to be fucked. All these pretty but homogenized girls, who live by what they read in magazines and master the new look of every season and carry the "right" handbag and spend way too much of their lives looking for "husband material", quickly assessing every date, what's become known as the Is This Going Anywhere issue, dreaded by guys everywhere and an embarrassment for girls like me. These are girls who don't know how to live in the moment.
How are we to understand the contemporary preoccupation of young women searching for a husband before they turn into a pumpkin instead of enjoying Peter Peter Pumpkin Eater in the now. It's so sad that they could be missing their present life and so many experiences, for what is frankly, some glossy magazine future - some Martha Stewart Weddings fantasy that doesn't even exist. That what they think of as liberated I would consider fettered.
The notion of putting off the Right Now Guy and the long hunt for Mr. Right means a lost opportunity for experience of what could have been a great conversation, a drunken evening rolling on the lawn in the park, or meeting a new friend, or laughing at an old film and cuddling on the couch, or just a soppy night of athletic love-making that will be a great memory when you are old and grey and doing the ironing or the dishes; the sweet memory of a boy who made you howl with laughter and explored every curve and you were young and alive and beautiful. Who knows: maybe he'd even wind up being the guy you do marry. But you'll never know, because intense and immediate assessment of "husband material" is enough to turn even the best guys away, because no one wants to be reduced to a mental checklist to see if they qualify as what is essentially a prop in someone else's fantasy.
- Love & Lust on Film: Scarface, Bridget Jones and Lessons Learned
- Published: May 27, 2004
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- Section: Video
- Writer: Sadi Ranson-Polizzotti
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Comments on this articleComments
----these are girls with giant blue vibrators tucked away in their Pier I night-tables----
Sadi, I did not want to know this!!!!
Nice work, and interesting to see things in your perspective - though you use the word "fuck" more than Tony Montana!....;-)
apologies for language, and i think you're right ... i hadn't realized it was so full of bad language. i promise to be better next time!
thanks all for reading... hope you found it interesting... very gratifying to know it's being read...
of course, it's just my opinion... and grateful for all feedback.
sadi
ahhh...i see the typos and i am so sorry. so now with the language and the typos, i hope i haven't totally lost anyone... though maybe for other reasons. I will be more careful in the future. thx. to all for reading... and please keep posting comments if the spirit moves you. i plan to write every week... so now Onward to next topic !~ Thx for being such a receptive audience; your comments mean everything.
sadi
S, if there are typos (I fixed a couple) please fell free to go back in and edit. I reedit my own posts all the time. That's why they are perfect.
Sade
I thought your colorful use of language was totally refreshing (you write in the way I talk)- and suited the topic perfectly!
I really enjoyed the article and your style. Bravo!
awww, shucks. glad to hear it, Anthony! Working on other stuff, so you'll have to check that out too... if the spirit moves ya. ;)
keep cool
sade
Sadie, just because you've had a few bad experiences in life doesn't mean true love doesn't exist..and NO I do not believe "the virginal bride" is a "silly charade." Love is hard though no doubt.
"true love" requires as much or more work than false love
Sadi sez: "...I feel most beautiful when I am alone in my garden, wearing that slightly see-through slip that I love and my Doc Marten gardening boots and no underwear and no make up and my high-lights have grown out and I'm covered in freckles and my breasts are loose in my shift and I feel full and ripe and full of life and that the world is mine for the taking."
Whoa.
Sadi, coupla things:
* got jpgs?
* Universal Law #33: ALL men are either gay or insensitive pricks; there are no exceptions.
* ie. You shoulda been a lesbian; women are great!
* "Masturbation: Sex with someone I love!" -- Woody Allen
* I've never been one to define myself relative to others' expectations, but man, thanks to age and wisdom, all that crap means even less. God rewards the patient survivors with enlightenment coupled with flaccidity.
* got jpgs?
hey Shark: excellent points all, and jpegs exist, but alas not for sharing.... ;)
the older i get, the more i wonder about this "true love" business. Yes, Eric is right; if it does exist (my issue), then it requires as much or more love than false love, no question. But i wonder how we define true love anyhow? One may know what is true for onesself, but what of the other and how they feel? How do you know whether or not their love is true?
Yes, without a doubt, i should have been and almost was a lesbian, and odd you mention since i was just saying this to my friend P. today, who was agreeing with me. I was deeply in love with a woman who is a lesbian many years ago, and we were and are good and dear friends but things did not progress for myriad reasons - too complicated to get into here, and i think though, to the point, much to the regret of both of us likely. It's too bad. Things would have been totally different for me and for her too, no doubt. Life would be nothing like what it is today.
Shark says All men are either gay or insensitive pricks, which i hate to believe, but experience is showing me that this may have more truth than initially believed and i do not WANT to believe that, so am happy to be proven wrong at any time. Please... show me that this is NOT the case.
That's all i have to say. Shark, my dear friend, i would send you jpegs, but we're not that close, are we, so how can i do that? sorry sweets...
love to all,
sade
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Whoa, that's something Sadi, thanks and welcome! Never has gardening sounded so appealing.