Here is the link to my piece on Chris Hedges from this week’s Time Off. Click here.
Tag: culture
A culture of fantasy
Bob Herbert offers one of the more interesting takes on Michael Jackson that I’ve read so far. The commentary so far has been a mix of fawning, celebrations of his life and work (he was a pop icon who made important and, early on, groundbreaking work), or weird dismissals.
Herbert, on the other hand, uses Jackson to get at the peculiar mix of immaturity and fantasy that has plagued our culture for going on three decades.
Death of an icon, whose image lives on
An icon of the 1970s has died.
Farrah Fawcett, whose poster graced the walls of millions of teenaged boys in teh mid-1970s, died this morning after a long battle with cancer.
Farrah was, for most men my age (I’m 46), our first celebrity crush. We had our poster (see on left) on our walls, watched Charlie’s Angels religiously and wondered what it would have been like to have been Tom Bosley.
Her post-Angels career was less than stellar, except for her role The Burning Bed, a shockingly well-acted performance as a battered wife. There were some other interesting roles, but her star faded again and she essentially disappeared.
In many ways, her trajectory matched her sex-symbol predecessors, most of whom had less acting talent but whose bombshell looks — which began as their entree into the limelight — ended up being the albatross that stalled their careers.
And yet, the bathing suit poster stands alongside the handful of iconic images of the pinup genre, permanently etched into our cultural memories in a way that few other sex-symbol images have been and, perhaps, few ever will be again.
Hank Kalet 