Minnelli Milks Madame Bovary
http://vimeo.com/24034005
“Minnelli’s queer
modernist madness”
—David Gerstner, “The Queer
Frontier: Vincente Minnelli’s
Cabin in the Sky,” Manly Arts:
Masculinity and Nation in Early
American Cinema
First Minnelli milks Harlem—
With “Cabin in the Sky” (1943).
Then she milks Gustave Flaubert’s
Classic Madame Bovary (1949).
Minnelli rehearses her mad—
“Feminine” artistic aesthetics
Against the grain of racist
American cinema discourse.
If 1930s queer and African—
Film cultures found a unique
“Common ground” confusing
Both white & black critics alike…
Then what about Academe—
Madame Bovary as the Slut
Starring Jennifer Jones and
Louis Jourdan the Pimp?
With faggy James Mason—
As Gustave Flaubert flaunting
The queer ideal under the nose
Of butchy American capitalism?
___________________
“You asked for something
that consumes while it burns,
that destroys everything it
touches. I didn't want to be
destroyed.”—Louis Jordan
as Rodolphe Boulanger
Queer & African American cinema—
Dancing across the French classic
Stage to showcase divinely perverse
Minnelli in Madame Bovary drag.
An old Tennessee Williams trick—
Posing as View Carré “Blanche”
Putting the make on Brando &
Even the innocent paper boy!!!
Instead of “Cabin in the Sky”—
It’s cabin below deck, my dears,
Nothing like another Titanic flick
To add to the Box Office bucks.
Minnelli milks Madame Bovary—
For every tear & exquisite throb
Every excruciating love-jet that
She can milk outta Louie Jourdan.
_________________________
“The movement of the bodies,
the conceptualization of art
and/as bodies, and the centrality
of an urban-modernist milieu all
contributed to Minnelli’s queer
realization of the cinematic
experience.”—David Gerstner,
“The Queer Frontier: Vincente
Minnelli’s Cabin in the Sky,”
Manly Arts: Masculinity and
Nation in Early American Cinema
If “Cabin in the Sky” is a film—
Significant as cultural by-product
Of New York City’s sophisticated
and queer black aesthetics…
Then “Madame Bovary” likewise—
Shows how Minnelli milks the male
Hollywood butchy/faggy filmic Zeitgeist
Aesthetically of cultural queer excess.
Bringing together black, white, gay—
American directors & audiences into the
Troubling queer waters of “Polyester”
Mapplethorpe & “Fire-Belly” Wojnarowicz.
Along with Minnelli’s “Tea & Sympathy”—
“An American in Paris,” “The Bad and the
Beautiful,” “Designing Women,” “The
Reluctant Debutante” & “The Sandpiper.”
