CAMERA EROTICA EXPOSURE
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I've placed quite a few pictures on the preceding page. I hoped
that by putting them all together with a minimum of words would
help me figure something out.
(Ask me later if I have.) Click on the photographs on the other page to go to explanations of what exactly held my Gaze for so long. Or scroll down this page to read my witty and insightful commentary. You will also find links and credits to people and places where you can find more information. |
robbing the cradle -- high school angst
Actor Nicholas Brendon
plays "Xander Harris" in the WB series Buffy the Vampire Slayer. What I like about this character is his self-deprecating wit.
(Read classic Xander one-liners
and inspirations.)
Xander experiences all the awkwardness of high school -- being a
geek and being not-so-smart -- and deals with it by depending on
his biting humor and on a coterie of outcasts. Xander has his
dark moments as well -- having unrequited love, being the butt
of the joke, becoming posessed by the spirit of a wild hyena --
and this results in a potentially complex character.
Even though he is not a "jock" or a "brain" (according to the high school status quo as I remember them), I don't think that Xander is a "geek" or a "loser." His sense of style is definitely retro, which is "in" these days, but it is his insecure wisecracking in scary situations which seems to bring him down in the social food chain called public high school. Vampires, demons, and nightmares are nothing compared to active hormones, geometry exams, and public humiliation. In all, if I had to be a high school boy, I would wish to be Xander. As far as Nicholas Brendon goes, however, there's not a whole heck of a lot I know about him. And I don't presume much since I believe that all interaction -- especially interviews -- are just performances in themselves. He likes old movies, driving, and reading... sounds like he is the person already inside of me.
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rebellion
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I have gazed upon actor Johnny Depp since before I knew people actually made serious academic study about gazing.
Since his shot to stardom in Fox TV's first hit, 21 Jump Street, to whatever his latest role might be in an off-beat or independent film, the appeal of Depp is in his wounded deep-set eyes and rebellious attitude. There is nothing so attractive as a bad-boy that you think you can cuddle.
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ABD - all but dissertation
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When I first started reading about actor David Duchovny, I thought that I had found a prettier male version of myself. Here was an Ivy grad who thinks too much and gives interviews to mass media speaking in post-modern tongue.
Then as I fell deeper into that dark hell called fandom, I realized that I was just as attracted to the character of Fox Mulder. More so, because he was fictional and a fantasy was safe. Then, I began to realize that every interview Duchovny made was just as much a performance as Fox Mulder was. He's just a figment of my imagination. And the truth is, he is just a damn good-lookin' slipcover for my fantasy. Duchovny acknowledges the power of the camera in an Entertainment Weekly article "No Wonder He's Called Fox." (We will please ignore the title of the article.)
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honey-coated voice of a news anchor
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Larry Potash is a news anchor for the WGN-TV Morning News and the WGN-TV News at Noon.
Unfortunately, people outside of the Chicagoland area are not
able to receive the Morning News broadcast on the WGN superstation
because of FCC syndication laws. Too bad! You unlucky folk are
missing out on some spectacular programming... or at least programming that's a spectacle.
During the UPS strike, the morning news crew thought they'd help
out by using their traffic copter to deliver an egg to a farmer
in the outskirts of Chicago. Robin Baumgarten, the traffic
reporter dropped the tightly packaged
parcel out of the window of the copter into the empty field.
Later that hour Farmer Curtis meandered directionless through
the field to finally find the package. He opened it up as the
copter's camera zoomed in on his figure and he triumphantly
waved the egg above his head! Television history, baby.
Okay, so you probably had to be there. Potash anchors the news with a serious sparkle in his eye and informs viewers of current events with a rich baritone that gives me chills. From my ecstatic recounting of Morning News Team's antics, a reader could gather that my obsession has less to do with my actual ogling of Potash now than it does with my appreciation for the show itself. That would be entirely correct, but I have to admit that the reason I started watching in the first place was because of Larry Potash. The camera seems to have given me a new group of friends -- as I would like to imagine it in the groggy morning hours -- I can count on Bill and Paul to be zany, on Sonja to be sweetly patient with them, on Robin to give as good as she gets, on Joanie to be too brightly bubbly for the ungodly hour she's up, and on Larry to be serious until the news segment is over. It is then that I can see he's going to be just as wicked as Bill and Paul.
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studio star
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Actor Tyrone Power
was one of the last of the studio-groomed stars. In browsing the "classics" section
of the video store, I came across Second Fiddle which, from the back of the
box, seemed to be exactly the self-reflexive commentary on Studio Hollywood's Golden Age
that I was in the mood for.
The old Studio system was never so clear to me as it was when I watched a few of Power's movies sequentially. The mucky-mucks of the Studio cultivated an image and found roles to work with it. Dark-haired, smooth-talking, and a tad bit cynical, he was a leading man for sure. There is no foo-foo soft lighting of Tyrone Power, but the camera lingers over his too beautiful face which is relieved by a full and strong browline.
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 Colleen Green and Tyrone Power in Nightmare Alley (Twentieth Century Fox, 1947).
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Other movies to rent: Irving Berlin's "Alexander's Ragtime Band,", In Old Chicago,
Blood and Sand (Bullfighting I) and The Sun Also Rises (Bullfighting II).
Blood and Sand (left) is worthy of study because the portrayal of the female entity as "virgin" or "whore" while the male character is the helplessly subject to female power. In the movie, Power plays an ambitious young bullfighter (Juan Gallardo) who marries his childhood sweetheart. As an unworldly (and fairly stupid) male, Juan succumbs to the temptress Dona Sol who moves from one trophy male to the next. Torn between love and lust, the fate of Gallardo -- in life and in love -- is not of his own making. |
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chameleon
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I had no idea who Billy Zane was when my screenwriting teacher told me that she had a dream about him. Turned out that I had seen the actor in a number of different character roles without knowing who he was. To name a few: In Memphis Belle, he played the arrogant Doc. In Orlando, he played the man who was a woman... er... he plays the love interest. And he played the title role in The Phantom.
The reason he is on this elite list is because he is the only soft one here. Soft like amorphous, soft like malleable. He will totally transform himself in appearance and action.
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