An especially lucid post at JD's SH nails down the seductive lure of bashing Sofia Coppola's Marie Antoinette. It's too facile, probably, but the parallels are there:
Thus we are tempted into psychologizing the auteur: the story of the poor little rich girl, born and then again delivered into an incomprehensibly-contoured world of privilege, glamour and public visibility which would offer her anything but real experience and the possibility of being taken seriously, proved finally irresistible to [Coppola], and damn the context.
Speaking of psychologizing the auteur, Tiny Mix Tapes earns 10,000 Pogo Points for even insinuating "The Beatles Broke Up Yoko Ono." Take that, misogynist Beatles historians.
Essentially, Yoko's taste for the avant-garde style of music (concept comes before function or form) was one of the major factors in John's change in musical direction. After getting involved with her and gaining inspiration from her conceptual expressions, Lennon went on to write his best music: "Julia," "Happiness is a Warm Gun," "I Want You (She's So Heavy);" even the vitriolic attack of the stellar "Cold Turkey" bears her tremendous influence. And that's just in the '60s.
As for the suggestion that the first Tom Ripley novel prefigured glam a full 17 years before Ziggy sucked up into his mind and Marc was all alone without a telephone...why not? I love the idea of Patricia Highsmith sitting down at her desk in 1970 and exclaiming, "At last, the rock 'n roll era is over! Now I can finally revisit Ripley, since he never made sense within its context of Dionysianism and appeal to the big Other!" But I don't see the need to go and and sweep all the homoeroticism under the rug like that. The line between wanting to be someone and wanting to do someone is beautifully blurred and maddeningly unfixed, and its waverings deserve scrutiny. Then again, it's hard to argue with Zizek.
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