It's worth noting that Time/Life always saw itself as protecting mainstream
(American) moralities, including sexual, by this treatment of underground
and bohemian arts and subcultures. Underground film was certainly one, Beat
poetry and culture another, as was "the gay world." There's an article on
all the emerging Beat writers from sometime in 1958 I think, just before
Naked Lunch was published. It pulls the same bait-and-switch that David
Tetzlaff describes - unremittingly nasty and then suddenly some respectful
words about Burroughs' talents. This happened over and over again. By the
mid-80s they were making fun of Ginsberg's partial paralysis, describing
his face as "one [eye] wide and innocent, gazing at eternity; the other
narrowed and scrutinizing, looking for his market share." (Quote in Barry
Miles' biography.) Of course, Ginsberg had early on attacked Time in his
poem America ("Do you want your emotional life to be run by Time
Magazine?"). And watch Pennebaker's "Dont Look Back" if you want to know
how Bob Dylan feels about Time.And what Chuck says is also true: even negative articles were valuable to people isolated from the phenomena they describe. There's a whole chapter in Martin Meeker's book "Contacts Desired" devoted to an article Life published in 1964 on gay men in San Francisco, and the impact it had on isolated gay men across the country. Among other things, there was a photo spread of the inside of a leather bar, showing men socializing, and that was a big deal. For those interested, it's at: http://www.solresearch.org/~SOLR/cache/pubn/mag/Life/19640626-Gays.pdf Sorry to take this far out of film - just thinking about one way of contextualizing the underground film articles. Andy Ditzler On Sat, May 31, 2014 at 10:07 PM, Chuck Kleinhans <[email protected] > wrote: > > On May 31, 2014, at 6:24 PM, Jonathan Walley <[email protected]> wrote: > > Okay, here it is: "In the Year of Our Ford." Fred was right - the > article I cut-and-pasted earlier is nothing compared to this one. It is > truly sickening. Why TIME would choose to go on the rampage against handful > of avant-garde filmmakers getting small grants at a moment when MUCH > "weirder" stuff was getting much more widespread media attention (and $$) > is beyond me. > > > Although Time had unsigned articles back then, you could often determine > the reviewer/writer by looking on the masthead staff list. > > > > Chuck Kleinhans > > > > > _______________________________________________ > FrameWorks mailing list > [email protected] > https://mailman-mail5.webfaction.com/listinfo/frameworks > > -- Andy Ditzler www.filmlove.org www.johnq.org Graduate Institute of the Liberal Arts, Emory University
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