Happy Thanksgiving

It's that time of the year again. The time for being grateful for what we have, for helping others, and for recognizing that not everything was hunky dory between the Native Americans and the pilgrims.

tldr.someecards.com

Not only can Thanksgiving be a difficult time to navigate the morality of United States history, it can also be a difficult time to navigate family relations and political discussions. I'm lucky that my Thanksgivings have passed with little conflict and great joy but not everyone has had such a good run. I came across some links that I have found helpful. Slate provides a "guide to your Thanksgiving dinner table arguments" and  The Atlantic gives suggestions on how to deal with political discussions at the dinner table. Although, with so much strife in the U.S. this week and with so many important issues on the (figurative) table, who knows? this may be a year when you don't want to avoid political discussions.

mentalfloss.com

On the topic of avoiding difficult conversations, did you know that the first turkey pardon was done by Ronald Reagan in 1987 to avoid the question of who he might pardon from the Iran Contra scandal? NPR also lists some other interesting events in its brief political history of Thanksgiving.

I do wish everyone the happiest of holidays!!!! Here is a video to send you off:

Georgia O'Keefe Painting Breaks Sale Record for a Female Artist

Last May, a painting by Joan Mitchell from 1960 became the top grossing painting by a female artist in history when it sold for $11.9 million. At a recent auction this record was broken when Georgia O’Keeffe’s painting, “Jimson Weed/White Flower No. 1,” sold for $44,405,000. This beat O’Keeffe’s previous sale record of $6.2 million by a landslide! Now these may seem like exorbitant sums of money for anyone to pay for a painting, but it is still a fraction of the price that the works of top male artists go for at auction.

Jimson Weed/White Flower No. 1
image courtesy of Sotheby's

A little over a year ago Francis Bacon’s painting, "Three Studies of Lucian Freud," broke the record for the most paid for a work of art in a public auction when it sold for $142.4 million. Paul Cezanne’s “The Card Players” holds the record of most expensive painting sold. It sold for $250 million in 2011. A list compiled of “the top 10 lots by women artists sold at auction” only has 5 sales that go over $10 million. Wikipedia’s list of most expensive paintings (as of November 2014) does not include any sales less than $60 million. It also does not include any works by female artists. So are female artists not as valued as male artists? Art critic Jonathan Jones feels strongly that the answer is yes:

Even as modern society has changed, and the structures  that controlled art before the modern age - suddenly, in the early 20th century women became far more visible as participants in such movements as dadaism and surrealism - the achievements of women as artists have been subtly underplayed and undervalued. They still are today, in the age when names such as Richter and Kiefer have so much more cache, somehow, than Emin or Sherman or Whiteread, and so many more TV programs are made about David Hockney than they are about Bridget Riley. Women are allowed to do art, nowadays, of course. They are just not permitted to be great at it.

An article in Blouin Artinfo from 2012 featured interviews with several women within the art world and addressed whether the trend of male artists outselling female artists is changing. Linda Blumberg, the Executive Director of the Art Dealers Association of America, acknowledged the slow but steady progress of gender equality stating, "I think it is a general cultural attitude. It was reflected in the workplace, it was reflected in the art world, it was reflected in all kinds of areas. As that began to change culturally, it began to seep in all over." Art gallery owner Gwenolee Zurcher seconds this opinion saying that "right now, today, there are so many good women artists, They do get some attention but obviously they could get more... there is definitely change taking place in the culture and the market for women artists, but... the process is painfully slow."

One Direction, One Ethnicity

www.popjustice.com

Boy band sensation, One Direction, just released their music video for their most recent single “Night Changes.” The concept behind the video is clear: You, the viewer, get to go on a different date with each of the five boys in the group, ranging from a romantic dinner to an evening at a fair. It’s certainly a cute idea! Your favorite member can look at you fondly, win you a stuffed teddy bear, and reach out to hold your hand… but that’s where the video gets tricky. 
You see, the video does show several of the boys holding "your" hand, but that means that the video also shows "your" skin tone, and, in every scenario, your skin tone is white. Unfortunately, if the intention behind the “Night Changes” video was to give every fan the opportunity to have a date with One Direction, it has failed because it makes the assumption that every fan is white.
You can watch the video below.

Cheers to the Commander in Chief

www.contrarie.com

Mark Will-Weber has just published "Mint Juleps with Teddy Roosevelt: The Complete History of Presidential Drinking". This not-so-typical history book details American presidents' most interesting interactions with alcohol. Apparently Andrew Johnson showed up drunk to the vice presidential inauguration and gave a slurred and lengthy speech while Lincoln just about died of embarrassment. Thomas Jefferson was a wine aficionado and had to sell part of his personal library to pay for providing libations to the many guests he entertained. After being verbally harassed, Teddy Roosevelt knocked out a rancher in a saloon bar fight before calmly returning to his seat. Eisenhower made his own gin in a bathtub at Fort Meade... during prohibition. If you are interested in seeing a more human, less moral, and more inebriated side to the 44 presidents, you might want to go and check out this book!

Oh, and as a bonus, The Washington Post has a list of all our presidents' favorite drinks.

Veronica Lake's Victory Rolls

www.imbd.com

Veronica Lake was a 1940s Hollywood star, instantly recognizable for her sultry blonde waves that covered one eye. Lake reached the height of her career during World War II and women everywhere were trying to replicate her signature hairstyle. This star worship became problematic as women working in factories to help the war effort got their long, beautiful, Veronica Lake locks caught in industrial machinery. Lake had such an effect on what young woman wanted to look like, that the government pressured her to set an example for American women and change her hairstyle. Thus, Lake styled her hair in victory rolls, named after the movements of fighter planes through the sky. Victory rolls were seen as both glamorous and practical and they became an iconic hairstyle during the war.

Celebrities may come and go but their influence remains evident long after their names are forgotten.  Lake's career began to fall apart by the late 40's due to alcoholism and mental illness. She died in 1973 at age 50. Lake's years in the spotlight are commemorated by her films, her star on the Hollywood walk of fame, and her impact on the war effort where she served as pin up girl for soldiers, promoter of war bonds, and style icon for young female factory workers.

Kim's Racy (and Racially Insensitive) Photo Shoot

Warning: several links are NSFW

If you have been on any news sites that includes an entertainment section within the past 24 hours, you've probably seen a photo of Kim Kardashian, oiled up, smiling, and butt naked.

SOHH.com

The reality tv star is appearing nude in Paper Magazine's winter issue. This issue has already spawned a number of interesting conversations and debates. Here are some that I have encountered: Are these photos powerful and body positive or trashy? What does this issue mean for the print magazine industry?  What does this say about women? What are the underlying racial problems with this photo shoot? Is it appropriate for a mother to pose naked? What's Kim's role in current celebrity culture? Is the use of photo shop ok? My own personal question: Who knew that Kim Kardashian could make people think so much?

Heterosexual Hollywood Harmonies

It is undeniable that the genre of the musical film is neither solely created by, nor solely enjoyed by heterosexuals. In fact, the musical film has historically been hugely popular within the gay community. The irony is that the classic Hollywood studio musical is all about the formation of the heterosexual couple and it works very, very hard to deny the possibility of homosexuality.

Gene Kelly and Donald O'Connor in Singin' In The Rain
theatlantic.com

In Rick Altman’s essay “From Homosocial to Heterosexual: The Musical’s Two Projects” Altman examines the openings of Hollywood musicals which most other writers on the genre have ignored in favor of an analysis of endings. In fact, in Altman’s previous work, he himself had only analyzed the beginnings of films to see how they supported a film’s ending. He primarily considered the resolution of the plot through the formation of the heterosexual couple and the dramatic musical numbers that often accompanied this event. Altman now criticizes his previous statements that the beginnings of Hollywood musicals do not have shared commonalities in the same way as endings, saying “on what basis I made this claim I have no idea.” So Altman turns his attention to the openings of musicals and the message he might find in them outside of the context of endings. Altman points out that while the endings of musicals focus on the heterosexual couple, the beginnings are largely homosocial in nature. They show one or both of the characters that make up the main couple in the company of a single companion or a group of friends and colleagues of the same sex. 

The start of Grease
www.collider.com

Over the course of the film, the characters eventually come to find their true place in life through the centrality of a relationship with a member of the opposite sex. Altman states that musicals are actually about this move from homosocial to heterosexual.

The ending of Grease
www.hitfix.com

Altman presents two different hypotheses to address the effect of this structure of moving from homosocial to heterosexual. Altman’s first hypothesis is that the homosocial relationships at the start of musical films provide examples of wrong couples that emphasize the rightness of the final heterosexual romance. This hypothesis supports the traditional theory that the plot of the musical is the formation of the couple and that the character dynamics of the beginning are in service of the film’s conclusion.

Altman’s second hypothesis is that opening the musical film with homosocial relationships is not just to stress the ultimate rightness of the heterosexual couple but also to subvert the formation of a homosexual couple. Altman claims that the development of the heterosexual romance is a rite of passage for the members of the couple. The characters’ growth and maturation goes hand in hand with abandoning homosocial ties in favor of heterosexual ones. 

The Jets in West Side Storywww.lens-views.com

Through presenting the heterosexual couple as a natural replacement for the homosocial relationship, the musical does not leave room for the formation or even a consideration of the homosexual couple. By previously only focusing on the ending and the creation of the heterosexual couple, Altman realizes that he had missed the message in the opening of the Hollywood musical, which was a specific argument against the homosexual relationship.

Tony and Maria
rogerebert.com