Why I Love Goldie Hawn

Goldie Hawn as Gloria, Judy, Helen and Gwen

There are some movie stars who seem to have been around for ever and who have irritated me all my life; actors who have been in the business for fifty years plus and just will not quit and will not die. On the other hand, there are some actors who have had equally long careers, but who have always made happy and for whom one feels a special affection having, as it were, grown up with them. And Goldie Hawn belongs in this latter category ...

Maybe because I have a thing for beautiful Jewish women - particularly beautiful Jewish women who are also very funny - I'm always pleased to see Miss Hawn on screen and there are at least four of her films that I will watch whenever they are shown on TV:

Foul Play (dir. Colin Higgins, 1978); a romantic comedy thriller that pays homage to Hitchcock, starring Goldie as Gloria Mundy, a sexy-but-shy recently divorced librarian unwittingly caught up in a plot to assassinate the pope. It's not a great film: but it has some great scenes involving an albino, a dwarf, and a python. Podophiles might also like to note that Miss Hawn removes her shoes whilst climbing on to a fire escape in the rain. Click here to watch the official trailer.

Private Benjamin (dir. Howard Zieff, 1980); a rather sweet and old-fashioned comedy starring Goldie as Judy Benjamin, a 28-year-old Jewish American Princess* who decides - following the death of her husband on their wedding night - to join the US Army. Again, it's not a great film, but has some great scenes and is an excellent showcase for Hawn's comic persona and acting skills (as it is for co-star Eileen Brennan, as Capt. Doreen Lewis). Click here to watch the official trailer. 

Death Becomes Her (dir. Robert Zemeckis, 1992); a black comedy starring Goldie as Helen Sharp alongside Meryl Streep as her friend and rival Madeline Ashton; the pair drink an elixir of life - provided by Isabella Rossellini as Lisle Von Rhuman - that promises eternal youth, but which invariably leads to their downfall and destruction. Although it received mixed reviews from the critics, the film was a commercial success and has since becomes a favourite amongst the LGBT community who know a camp classic when they see one. Click here to watch the official trailer.

Housesitter (dir. Frank Oz, 1992); a screwball comedy starring Goldie as Gwen (actually, it's Jessica), an enchanting fantasist, and Steve Martin as the struggling (slightly reserved) architect Newton Davis whose life she turns upside down (in a nice way) by claiming to be his wife. Personally, I can't find anything not to love about this film (again, the critics can go fuck themselves) and whilst I'm sure Meg Ryan would've done a first rate job had she accepted the role of Gwen that she was initially offered, I'm pleased it went to Miss Hawn. Click here to watch the official trailer.

* Note: I'm aware, of course, of the pejorative and, indeed, dangerous aspect of stereotypes - not least racial and sexual stereotypes such as this one, which portrays young Jewish women from a privileged background as shallow, selfish, and slightly neurotic. Although partly constructed and popularised as a post-War stereotype by Jewish writers and comedians, it's hard to disagree with those who point out elements of both sexism and anti-Semitism. Whether Private Benjamin reinforces or satirises the stereotype is something viewers will have to decide, but it's interesting that in recent years some Jewish women have attempted to re-appropriate the term JAP and affirm it as part of their cultural identity.     

Reflections on Brains in Jars

Dr. Hfuhruhurr meets Miss Uumellmahaye in

The Man with Two Brains (dir. Carl Reiner, 1983)

I.

Readers with knowledge of analytic philosophy will know of the brain in a vat idea that is deployed as an updated version of Descartes's concept of the evil demon in thought experiments concerning mind and meaning, or the relationship between consciousness and reality.

Typically, a brain in a vat scenario is used to support an argument for philosophical skepticism and solipsism. In brief, this argument goes as follows: since a brain in a vat transmits and receives exactly the same impulses as a brain in a skull - and since these impulses are its only way of interacting with the world - it's impossible for that brain ever to know for sure its own location and this has serious implications for the truth or falsity of a subject's beliefs.

In other words, because it's impossible to completely rule out that one is not simply a disembodied brain in a vat, there cannot be firm grounds for believing the things that one believes to be true (or real) with any certainty. As might be imagined, there are objections raised from within philosophy and biology that suggest this thought experiment is fundamentally absurd, but, unfortunately, I don't have time to go into these here.


II.

Readers without knowledge of analytic philosophy - but who know their sci-fi literature and films - will be more familiar with a scenario in which a mad scientist or advanced alien being removes a person's brain and suspends it in a jar containing some kind of life-sustaining fluid that is connected up with electrodes to a machine that simulates reality for the disembodied brain, thus allowing it to continue to have thoughts and feelings without these being related to objects or events in the actual world.

Think, for example, of Anne Uumellmahaye in The Man with Two Brains (1983), starring Steve Martin as pioneering neurosurgeon Dr. Hfuhruhurr, famous for his method of cranial screw-top surgery. Whilst at a conference in Vienna, Hfuhruhurr encounters Dr. Necessiter (played by David Warner), who has invented a radical new technique enabling him to (briefly) preserve living brains in jars (the plan being to eventually transplant them into new bodies, beginning with that of a gorilla). 

Of course, this is just a movie. But, apparently, it is medically possible to keep an isolated brain alive in vitro before one places it into a new body, or, as in the case of Mr. Spock, returns it to its rightful owner. This requires a method of perfusion, or the use of an oxygenated solution of various salts (i.e. a blood substitute).

Any reader thinking of playing Dr. Necessiter, however, should note that they would probably have greater success attaching a whole head to the body of another organism, rather than simply attempting to pop a brain into an empty skull. It might also be noted that so far most of the experimental research in this field has been carried out using guinea pigs and not human test subjects; certainly no such procedures using people have been reported in a peer reviewed scientific journal that I'm aware of.

Click here to watch the scene in The Man with Two Brains in which Steve Martin as Dr. Hfuhruhurr meets Anne Uumellmahaye (voiced by Sissy Spacek, although she was uncredited in the movie). 

For a follow up post to this one on the theft of famous brains, click here.  

On the Difficulty of Death for Old Ladies

Tony Luciani: Internal Reflection,
 from  Mamma: In the Meantime (2016)
(A series of photos and paintings featuring his 93-year-old mother, Elia.)

The comic actor, Steve Martin, once conceded that he'd never made a great movie. But, he went on to say, he had made several films that contained genuinely great scenes. I think something similar might be said about the verse of Michel Houellebecq; no really great poems, but many that contain genuinely great lines. 

Those critics who characterise his work as callow and clichéd, or dismiss it as insipid and ineffectual, are not so much mistaken as beside the point. For these things, of necessity, belong to a body of work that is bold enough and big enough to incorporate them; a form of writing that affirms what Nietzsche terms a general economy of the whole.

In other words, the secret of really interesting poetry, like Houellebecq's, is not the fact that it contains powerful and original elements, but that it's unafraid to make mistakes and display its weaknesses. Further, it parades intertextual indebtedness with pride and invites readers to hear echoes of other authors.
        

But this post isn't intended to be a defence of Houellebecq as an artist, nor a comprehensive review of his new dual-language selection of poems entitled Unreconciled. Rather, I want simply to indicate how some of Houellebecq's reflections on old women approaching death resonate with my own observations and experience ...

Death is difficult for old ladies who are too rich, says Houellebecq, referring to the kind of women who own antique furniture and wind up in cemeteries: Surrounded by cypresses and plastic shrubs. But, actually, death is often difficult for many women - even those whom he calls the council-flat old / Who imagine till the end that they are loved and wind up at the crematorium: In a little cabinet with a white label.

For many women - particularly mothers - simply refuse to let go and die. Men, as a rule, die sooner and with less fuss, less bitterness; they know when the game is up and they'll be best off out of it, as my father would say. Women - particularly mothers - aim to stay for as long as possible in their sordid bedrooms where they keep little objects tucked in their wardrobes - the insides of which reveal just how cruel and how futile life can be.

On and on these undying women persist; watching TV without quite catching what is said (despite the increased volume) and eating their meals without appetite (despite the added salt); growing older and increasingly feeble in mind and body: You see clearly the nothingness awaiting them / Especially in the morning when they rise, pale, / And moan for their first cup of tea.

In a very moving couple of stanzas, worth quoting in the original French, Houellebecq writes:

Les vieux savant pleurer avec un bruit minime,
Ils oublient les pensées et ils oblient les gestes
Ils ne rient plus beaucoup, et tout ce qui leur reste
Au bout de de quelques mois, avant la phase ultime,

Ce sont quelques paroles, presque tourjours les mêmes:
Merci je n'ai pas faim, mon fils viendra dimanche,
Je sens mes intestins, mon fils viendra quand même.
Et le fils n'est pas là, et leurs mains presque blanches.

This is mostly true and, sadly, often the case. Though, not wanting to be defined as a son by my absence, I'm doing what I can to provide care and ensure my mother doesn't become just another unloved body dying without mystery. It's hard work though; depressing, tiring, frustrating, boring, etc.

But so are many jobs and at least caring affords me the opportunity to listen to the little birds in the garden and read poetry on my birthday ...  


See: Michel Houellebecq, Unreconciled: Poems 1991-2013, trans. Gavin Bowd, (William Heinemann, 2017). All the lines quoted, in full or part, are Bowd's translations from the French and are taken from three untitled poems, pp. 29-33. 

For those interested in the work of Tony Luciani, click here to access his website, or here for information about his exhibition, Mamma: In the Meantime, at the Loch Gallery, Toronto, Canada.