The Do's and Don'ts of Divadom

(Just click on the black and white thumbnail pics and you'll understand what we mean!)

Joan Crawford once said, "If you want to see the girl next door, go next door."  Granted, Mommie Dearest may not be a paragon of American motherhood, but there's no denying that Joan Crawford is a bona fide movie star - glamorous, trashy, extraordinary, and very nearly extinct. These days, whenever I go to the movies, all I seem to find is the yuppie next door in her many incarnations.  She is most obvious in the glazed-over, Armani-wearing form of Gwyneth Paltrow.

Paltrow is a prime example of the washed-out, terribly self-conscious assortment of actresses that is now paraded across the screen as pale excuses for movie stars.  I don't know if any of you know this, but movie stars used to be interesting.  Yup, there was a time when powerful, stampeding women ruled the screen in outrageous costumes, improbable plotlines, and an unfailing instinct for the high dramatics of life on and off camera.  As the supreme ruler and ultimate example of this glorious breed, I invoke Queen Elizabeth- Taylor, that is.

Elizabeth Taylor is the antithesis of the modern, unassuming, intellectual movie star and I love her for it.  I find it infinitely depressing that we are now presented with the muted tones, smug dialogue, and personality voids that I see in movies with the likes of Gwyneth Paltrow. Occasionally movies can present people as they are in everyday life, but their real function is, and always has been, to give life to our dreams, desires, and fantasies about who we would like to be.  I do not want to be a politically-correct Calvin-Klein mannequin with two speeds of emotion and about as many facial expressions to match.  Is this really today's ultimate display of glamour and magic?  Is this all I have to look forward to- good taste?  In the movies?!  God help us all. One thing that people seem to be losing sight of is that film acting is not stage acting, and being a film star requires qualities far different from those of a stage actress.  Its most vital requirement is that the actor have a face that the camera loves.  This does not necessarily mean flawless beauty is the only possibility.  There is an inexplicable communication between a star and an audience that has to travel through the lens.  Some people are able to make this communication; some are not.  The second requirement is the possession of a personality and a persona that an audience can identify and come to see again and again.  A fabulous accent and an in-depth understanding of Stanislavsky get you about as far as a tasteful little black dress in Liz Taylor's closet.  Can you imagine stars like Paltrow ever being called legends?  I mean, what is there to hold onto? Is there any personality to identify?  Could someone ever do a Gwyneth Paltrow impersonation?  I think not. Because film is a visual medium, physical appearance necessarily creates and communicates important aspects of a particular movie star's persona.  Gwyneth Paltrow's appearance is very East Coast and incredibly cold.  Her wardrobe consists of the latest creations by the most famous designers with the most classic, tasteful, uncontroversial lines that fall limply on her graceful slouch.  Her makeup, without which she looks suspiciously like a corpse, is understated and cool, just like her acting. She may have more cheek bones than Pere La Chaise, but nothing can be done to de-emphasize the deadness in her eyes.  Eyes are the prime feature with which humans communicate their emotions, but there ain't a whole lot of conversation going on there with Paltrow.

Elizabeth Taylor is the exact opposite of Gwyneth Paltrow in appearance.  Her face, like her personality, is just too much.  Because of her incredibly rich, vibrant features, looking at Liz is like eating a cheesecake- sometimes it's just overwhelming.  Her incomparable eyes blaze from beneath some very serious eyebrows.  The narrowing and flashing of her baby blues or an arch of a world-class eyebrow communicate far more than any words she has ever spoken.  Elizabeth Taylor's figure is far from perfect. She's 5'4", not always the slimmest of women, and is top-heavy with what Richard Burton termed "breasts that could topple empires."  Yet, she carries her ample little self with such sass and attitude, whether it be as a self-assured prostitute in Butterfield 8 or as vulgar, crass Martha sashaying across the screen in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? that there is no doubt this is a woman who is ready to consume whatever experience comes her way.  As for fashion, there's no way you're going to see Elizabeth Taylor in anything that resembles the "new black."  Liz has the taste of a 5- year old- she likes pretty colors and sparkly things.  You're most likely to catch her with enough volume in her hairstyle to shame Bozo, more eyeliner than Cleopatra, a caftan that looks like Morocco vomited, and bigger diamonds than God.  Elizabeth Taylor's wardrobe shows the world that she is a woman who lives her life big.  Gwyneth Paltrow's wardrobe shows the world that she has a very good stylist.

In a recent interview, Paltrow unknowingly showed her total ineptitude for movie stardom with one idiotic and telling sentence:  "I am a very sexual person."  First of all, what the hell kind of a statement is that?!  Can you imagine Elizabeth Taylor saying that?  She would never have to.  All you have to do is look at a scene from Cat On A Hot Tin Roof as Taylor, in a white slip, leans against the door frame and fixes her gaze on Paul Newman like a jungle animal, stalking her prey and licking her chops. For every self-righteous feminist ever angered by female objectification and the "gaze" in film, get a load of Liz.  She's a hero, girls.  Elizabeth Taylor is a powerful, sexy woman putting herself on display and looking boldly and lustily back at those who are supposedly objectifying her.  She is not ashamed of her sexuality and she is not a victim.  Gwyneth Paltrow seems way too eager to convince the world with words what is an obvious truth to anyone who has seen Elizabeth Taylor do it with one look.  Once again, Taylor communicates like a movie star: non-verbally.  Paltrow communicates like a women's studies major. Besides her obvious lack of cinematic allure, Gwyneth Paltrow leads a life that's about as exciting as the Jane Austen novels on which her endless stream of lackluster movies are based.  The men in her life are as intriguing and charismatic as she is, which if you haven't been paying any attention to this essay means NOT AT ALL.  Brad Pitt and Ben Affleck are as far from Richard Burton and Mike Todd as a big juicy steak is from Gwyneth's plate.  Of course, there is no match for Liz Taylor in the life-circus category.  This is a woman who has been: married 8 times (twice to Richard Burton), pronounced dead 4 times, had a movement proposed in Congress to have her banned from the country, denounced by the Vatican as an "erotic vagrant", the first movie star to publicly enter drug and alcohol rehab, the first star to earn a million dollars for a single picture, a Dame of the British Empire, the first celebrity to speak out for AIDS, and the individual to raise more money for AIDS than anyone else in the country. This is the extraordinary record of a larger-than-life personality. Granted, Elizabeth Taylor is 69 and Gwyneth Paltrow is 28, but by Gwyn's age Liz had four husbands and a million-dollar contract under her belt. Taylor is not the only star to ever lead an interesting life, I swear.  They used to do it all the time: think Gloria Swanson, Marlene Dietrich, Lana Turner.  Of course, there are other ways to rule than glamour, but at the heart of it all is a brash defiance of normality and the rejection of a bourgeois state of mind.  Gwyneth Paltrow does not possess this.   If anything mildly interesting does happen to her, like ex-boyfriend Ben Affleck going into rehab, she offers PC, uninteresting responses (none of which I can recall, or else I'd be quoting them) or insists on her right to privacy.  The difference is that where Gwyneth declines comment, Liz asks, "Could I sue the Vatican?". I'm not attacking Gwyneth Paltrow's right to exist, I am just attacking the idea that she is a good movie star and all of those who hold her up as someone exciting and glamorous are wrong.  The misguided, pseudo-liberals who are running Hollywood these days have fucked it all up. The movies are something rare, beautiful, and brazen.  The stars should reflect this.  There is no magic or mystery in these smug comments on love and life that pass for intelligence in today's movies.  Gwyneth Paltrow is the epitome of the modern "movie star" and her over-intellectualizing of the role absolutely blunts the perverse, kaleidoscopic life-force that makes Hollywood so intriguing. Movies and movie stars are not sources of moral instruction, so people should stop acting as if they are.  Personally, I think we should celebrate the freaks and the spectacle that the stars and their films used to be.  If it were up to me, any woman who could down an entire bottle of Jack Daniel's during one round of Disney Land's "Pirates of the Caribbean" would be declared a national treasure.  Elizabeth Taylor is Big Mama Earth herself: loud, powerful, loving, crass, indulgent, deviant, and eternally vulnerable.  Gwyneth Paltrow is about as relevant as her hairstyle.  Elizabeth Taylor is able to offer up the true forces of life to us through her art because she loves it and consumes it.  It's easy to picture Elizabeth Taylor as this force of nature: boobs thrust forward, head defiantly tossed back, Medusa-curls flailing en masse, mouth open wide devouring men, food, diamonds, love, perfume, illness, men, minks, experience, death, babies, booze, and men and hurling it all right back at us on film.  Gwyneth Paltrow, well, she'll just have a salad.  

copyright : Dolores McElroy
 

Even when she leaves, she still is there.
She's there!

 

Apathy is lethal ...
Donate now!