Red Star Motel

This is a series from Chinese photographers Liu Song and Chili called Red Star Motel. I'm very interested in the transformation of the same space through the varying of character and activity. The explicit violence of the series - whether sexual, brutal, or kinetic - is in sharp contrast to the drab, quotidian hotel room. I like this series particularly as a contrast to some of the other images I've posted, which have been consistently clean and distanced. These are everything but.

Bill Viola

Still ruminating about the possibility of using video in LULU, I started to think about the painting that is created in Act One and persistently sticks around through the entire play; how in the last act Lulu's devastated body pales in comparison to the image of her former beauty; how Alwa, Schigolch, and Geschwitz kneel before the icon in worship of their now dissipated goddess. The painting's fixed impression of Lulu is integral to the story, yet isn't the act of painting portraiture somehow dated in a modernized production? How else could Schwarz capture the image of Lulu?

The following images are stills from video installations by Bill Viola, whose slow-motion portraiture could be an eerie reference point for a less-dated approach to the ever-present picture of Lulu. Click the links for the full videos.

"Acceptance"
2008

"Silent Mountain"
2001

Guy Bourdin

Speaking of the Male Gaze, these are some photos from Guy Bourdin. He was a French photographer who shot for Vogue as well as Charles Joudan's shoes. Notice how the legs are completely disembodied. I believe that these two are from his shoe campaigns, which would seem to strip these female appendages of even more meaning. The legs are simply exhibited so to sell the comodity which they display. I love the bright colors.

And this one below is a very interesting take on the question of blood. Highly styalized - almost cosmetic.

The Drive Through Strip-Club

This is actually in Pittsburgh. You drive up to a little diamond window (see below) and apparently watch whatever stripper is performing on stage inside.

Last week I was trying to articulate to Michael why I'm so interested in stripclubs and peepshows - I think it has something to do with the male gaze that Kendra posted about. The peepshow both heightens and demonstrates the act of viewing, makes it more illicit. It is not voyeurism because the object of desire is aware of the viewer. It is a complicit relationship between the object and the observer. How can we make our audience feel complicit in the action, yet alienated from it?

Also, think about Act Three, in which there are several layers of observation. Alwa oogles Lulu during their tryst. Rodrigo and Geschwitz spy on Lulu and Alwa. Schoning watches Rodrigo and Geschwitz spying. And we as the audiece watch Schoning watch Rodrigo and Geschwits watch Lulu and Alwa.

Glee's Lea Michele in Marie Claire UK

http://www.marieclaire.co.uk/celebrity/pictures/29545/14/lea-michele-glee-marie-claire-november-cover-shoot.html#stop

This photo in particular:

Is a little bit of what I imagine the painting of Lulu could be. Dr Goll is into Lulu's dancing and also likes the little girl thing- just flatten the boots and make them, the tutu and the hot pants pink. The whole spread reads, to me, uncomfortably little-girl-playing-at-sexy. Maybe that's me putting my "Rachel from Glee" baggage on the adult actress? I'm also a little distressed at how thin she looks. She lost a lot of weight between the first and second season of Glee, presumably to fit in in Hollywood. It's just another way women- real actual human women- need to work really hard to appear as the idealized image of woman.

The 4th image in the slide show also strikes me. Her face, the high angle, the rope in the background, and her pose all put us, the viewer, in a position of power. We, the viewer, are about to do violence to her. Sexy, sexy violence. It plays into the old tropes of sex as something that harms women, how hot it is to degrade women and "take" them sexually, and that penetration = domination.

Kohei Yoshiyuki - 公園/ Park

This 1979 series by Kohei Yoshiyuki is brilliantly disturbing, capturing (with an infrared flashbulb) various couples making love in two Tokyo parks while surrounded by numerous, sometimes intrusive, strangers/gawkers. The original exhibit was presented in a dark gallery with patrons holding flashlights to see the photographs. I love the ghost-like quality of the men; it reminds me of Lulu's line about Dr. Goll's ghost:

• I dream that his burial was a misunderstanding. That he’s here, as if he’d never left. Only now he walks very softly, in stocking feet. The fact I married Schwarz doesn’t anger him in the least. Just a bit sad. But then he’s easily frightened, as if he were here without permission.

Anyway, I like what Wikipedia says: "the photographs raise questions about the boundaries between spectator, voyeur and participant."

Lucinda Devlin - Photos

These are photographs from Lucinda Devlin's two series "Pleasure Grounds" and "The Omega Suites". Her work deals with empty spaces that reveal the culture of it's use. "Pleasure Grounds" focuses on discos, tanning salons and fantasy hotel rooms, while "The Omega Suites" is a survey of execution chambers and other associated interiors. I am extremely interested in the voyeurism inherent in these death-rooms - especially the similarities between these observation rooms and the peep show.

Visual Pleasure and the Narrative Cinema

Here's a link to the PDF of the original.

Laura Mulvey wrote the article in 1975 and it's where the idea of the "male gaze" comes from.

Analysis/simplification coming soon, but for now, read it and ask me questions.

More About Madame X

This further explanation of the painting and the model reveals that the model was treated pretty similarly to Lulu- she hated the painting but didn't own it herself and therefore didn't have the power to destroy it. The painter loved the image of the model but not her personality (he complained that she was "lazy"), which calls to our attention the differences between the celebrated images of women and the mostly hated group of people, women. The painting apparently ruined her reputation because being sexy, not even necessarily sexual, is a very bad thing for women to be.

The link above is basically a fansite for the painter, John Singer Sargent, so read it with a grain of salt. I just ordered the book those long quotes are from and I'll have some much better analysis pretty soon.

Hi!

Dear hos and johns,
Welcome to the Lulu dramaturgy blog! I'm Kendra, your glamorous and dedicated dramaturg. Please comment on everything, all the time! Tell me what's helpful, what you don't understand, what else you'd like to see. I'm here to help you make a smart and powerful show, so talk to me, trust me, and I promise not to lead you astray.
Love,
Kendra!