nourishing obscurity

This is one of those which came out of a conversation between three people. I’ve permission to re-run it for your delectation aggravation:

Chuckles: For some reason the cling tenaciously to their pet theories, and persist with them to absurd lengths. e.g. the psotmodernists were much enamoured of Freud, Jung and co, and persist in regarding their writings almost as Gospels, exciting much derision from the psychology community who discarded them decades ago.

Likewise dietary myths and medical received wisdom, much beloved of womens mags and the like. They also have particular objects and people they worship e.g. Titanic, Marilyn Monroe, Che, Roosevelt etc etc

e.g.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2281422/Camerons-shame-1919-Amritsar-massacre-PM-make-historic-visit-shrine-379-shot-down.html

Haiku: Hey – I like MarilynM – terribly misunderstood, she was – and with that low-down pressi-dent scum taking advantage of her, treating her like a sex object …

Imitator:

James: Oooooo, what I wouldn’t give to be treated like a sex object.

The real thing:

Chuckles: ‘Torture me! torture me!!’ ‘No.’ K WIlliams

“Haiku, she died 50 years ago. Yet there is this endless stream of ‘new’ photographs and breathless articles about her. Yes she was decorative at times, but she was a second rate hack actress who ‘just wanted to be lurved’ or to ‘serve the community as a (w)hole” or something some websites usually run at least 3 posts a week about, that’s beyond OC.”

James:  Yup.   That’s it.   [Think we've deeply wounded haiku now.   Lurve is lurve after all.]

Haiku: The last photographs are Marilyn were of course shot by Bert Stern for Vogue.

Interest in Marilyn Monroe has surged recently, no doubt thanks to “My Week With Marilyn,” and now Taschen has the ultimate Monroe-themed gift for any major fans of the late, great star: “Norman Mailer, Bert Stern, Marilyn Monroe.”

Priced at $1,000, the limited-edition tome brings together Norman Mailer’s 1973 biography of Monroe with Bert Stern’s now-legendary photos. Only 1,962 books have been printed and all are signed by Stern. If you’re feeling particularly generous, there is an even more limited and exclusive edition priced at $2,500

The interviews for the photographic magazine – basically a number of photographers replying to the question “what do you remember of her” – were very revealing, showing a side of Marilyn generally unknown to the public.

As I remember it all reported her as being intelligent, yet very insecure, She was always late – one photographer reported her as arriving “one week late and two hours early”, another “her lateness never bothered me: I would prepare the set, then continue with my day until she finally arrived” – but when she arrived she focussed totally on the shoot and never left until all (especially her) were happy with the results … which was why she was always late. She also did small things, like sending a photographer a thank-you note for making her look good.

And one of the photographers – Schiller I seem to recall – credited her with teaching him how to take photos of females. She could see that he was young & inexperienced, so she kicked everybody out of the room and …

Something I didn’t write about in this book, was that she never told me how to take pictures, and I never told her how to pose. Sure, on our very first day together, she did give me some direction, I was 23 years old and nervous, and she could tell. But here’s the thing: At that point in her life, she had been photographed by every major photographer in the world, from Avedon to Milton. So this 23-year-old kid comes to photograph her, and she had to protect her asset — and her asset was Marilyn Monroe. She taught me a lot in the first five minutes and I never forgot it — ever.

…..

So has Schiller seen last year’s film My Week with Marilyn? “You know the director of that film (Simon Curtis) came to one of my openings not long ago and asked if I’d seen the movie and I told him I hadn’t; he couldn’t understand why not. So I told him, ‘When you’ve experienced the real Marilyn, it’s difficult to watch a movie about her.’ I didn’t want to have the memories of my experience tarnished in any way.”

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/susan-michals/3-things-about-marilyn-mo_b_1579841.html

Deviant art version:

James: Let’s run this as a post.

[File under "Any Excuse"]

Filed under: Art, Chuckles, haiku, Literature & performing arts