12.13.07
I’m Not There
I was not a cool kid. My parents didn’t turn me on to The Beatles or The Who or, more relevantly, Bob Dylan, when I was 8 or anything like that. After talking to or seeing my parents, a lot of times I’m left wondering how I ended up with any kind of good taste at all. The point being that, I’ve only liked Bob Dylan for a couple of years and didn’t truly fall in love with him until I saw Don’t Look Back in college and love love loved it. In that documentary, D.A. Pennebaker created this whole compelling character out of Dylan’s tour around England in 1960-something and I absolutely love it.
And I loved I’m Not There.
Surprisingly, it wasn’t even the Cate Blanchett parts, that parallel Don’t Look Back that I found the most compelling. The character that I really liked (in a totally self-loathing way) was Heath Ledger’s ultra-misogynistic but oh-so-sexy Jack Rollins (or whatever, I can’t keep all the character names straight [His character is named Robbie Clark but he plays Jack Rollins in a movie which is the name of Christian Bale’s character {also, can we talk about how much HOTNESS is in this movie! Jesus!}]) and his romance with/divorce from the beautiful French artist Claire (Charlotte Gainsborough). I think it was how I identified with/was compelled by this story and specifically by Claire, that made me go home last night and write the rant that you’ll find after the jump. I’m hiding it with a click-through because, honestly, it’s pretty ‘bloggy’ and possibly even a little ‘LiveJournal-y’ (does that still exist?) but hopefully a little interesting and a tiny bit insightful. Hopefully.
If I’m Not There, Where Am I?
An Unedited Rant Inspired by Todd Haynes’ I’m Not There.
It’s like there’s this glass ceiling in my brain that keeps me from aspiring to be Bob Dylan and doesn’t even let me consider Joan Baez. Because she’s rational and vulnerable. Talented, to be sure, but not mad. Not genius. I find that as a woman, I feel aspirations to be near genius. Near greatness. Even to lewdly have greatness inside of me. I watch Cate Blanchett’s Dylan cavort with waifish beauties and think - I could never be him, I could never be greatness. I am no genius. But if I were a little smaller and more inviting - not just in my physicality, but also in my personality and my thoughts - then I could be one of them. One of his women. A groupie, if you want to call it that. An admirer that got to be in his presence. I mean one of the girls riding in the back of the taxi with him - not his wife because she got left. She had the audacity, the confidence, the optimism, to think that he would stay with her. The blonde in the back of the car didn’t have those illusions so she couldn’t get hurt.
But then, if we take me and my hang-ups out of this analysis, the fact that Cate Blanchett - a woman - a waifish beauty, even, plays this version of Bob Dylan that I have long been enamoured with challenges the misogynist overtones of the character. Or does it inform them? It’s a choice, not by Dylan, who may be a misogynist of the worst kind (irresistible) but by Todd Haynes, who really seems to love women - doesn’t he? At the very least, he loves Julianne Moore. So to juxtapose the strength that Blanchett always brings to her - female - roles with this character who abuses woman is - brilliant - disturbing - confusing - beautiful - perfect. Perfect.
I always see Joan Baez as a tragic figure in this story, though I’m sure she does not view herself that way. She seems comfortable in her skin and in her life as anyone ever was.
But where is her madness? Where is her genius? It’s dimmed or extinguished by her beauty or lack thereof.
But she always seems tragic to me because for all her confidence, I read behind her eyes that Dylan was her one great love and he c/would never love her back. Even though she accepts this now, (Julianne Moore’s Baez - whatever her character was called - has a cat, an archetypal character trait (?) of a spinster) it’s the most tragic story in history. To offer your love, your life to someone who not only doesn’t or can’t give it back to you, but also to someone who doesn’t even want it. Who wouldn’t know the first thing to do with it.
It’s annoying - telling - again misogynist, that I find myself PITYING Joan Baez while I envy the blondes in the cab, the waifs, the models and actresses.
Wanting to fuck genius is not an ambition.
As I wrote those last words I thought to myself - without really thinking - “Besides, you’re not pretty enough.”