life off balance

sunday night at the dc independent film festival was really interesting, in a completely different way than i expected.

i was so excited to see kiefer and speak to him, in the form of asking him a question at the q&a. i went out of my way to come up with a question that was about the movie, not about his personal life or anything. turns out, i ended up almost leaving before he came out on stage.

by the time i had hung out at the reception, waited in line to enter the theater, sat through the closing ceremony of the film festival, and watched 3/4 of i trust you to kill me for the second time, i didn’t want to meet kiefer. it’s not that i lost interest in meeting kiefer, i actively did not want to meet him, and i wanted to leave before he came out on stage. i felt the same way i do about seeing animals at the zoo. kinda sick to my stomach.

one of the things i love about kiefer sutherland is his raw honesty. i like that in anyone, but it’s pretty amazing to see in famous actor. that is what is compelling about i trust you to kill me. you can see it written on his face, you can hear it in every word he speaks. his devotion to the band. his emotion for his father. his lack of self delusion. his struggle to live up to his own expectations and no one else’s. that is why people want to see this movie. and it’s absolutely clear that the only reason we are seeing these things is because he believes in this band with all of his heart. it’s a calculated move on his part — he is capitalizing on our odd desire to connect with this famous person in order to promote a band that he truly believes in. he’s consciously prostituting himself just to support a band that he loves. that is the only reason he did the movie. that is the only reason he was at the dc independent film festival. that was the only reason *i* was at the dc independent film festival. so about 3/4 of the way through the movie, sitting among all the crazy kiefer sutherland fans, i started to feel queasy about being a “john” in this transaction. 

the only reason i didn’t leave before kiefer appeared was that i wanted to see the band play after the q&a. that was the only reason kiefer was prostituting himself, to promote the band. if i left before the band played, it would go against his entire purpose for being there, and what would that solve? what’s the saying… in for a penny, in for a pound?

so i stayed, and he sat there through the q&a and was very gracious. he allowed us all to be in his presence in exchange for coming out to see this movie and watch this band.

in my world, i am a crazy fan. there’s not many other people i’d be as excited to meet as kiefer. when i was picturing this event, i must have been picturing a room full of hipster independent film fans and i’d be the most rabid kiefer fan. well, i wasn’t even in the running. it’s not like the festival was a madhouse, it wasn’t even full to capacity. but there was the adult man chanting “kiefer! kiefer!” during the film festival award proceedings, impatient to skip right past the awards and movie and see kiefer. there was the young woman who came up to the microphone during the q&a to ask him out for a drink and the fourteen year old girl who joked that she’d do the same thing if she were only old enough to drink. then there was the other young woman who used her turn at the mic to ask for a hug and cried when he (very sweetly) came down off the stage to give her one. needless to say, i didn’t get up to ask kiefer my question.

turns out i’m not a crazy fan at all. i like to talk about my crush on kiefer and blog about him, but i really don’t want to meet him after all. it’s bizarre, this desire to see our celebrities, talk to them, touch them. why? why are people so compelled to have this personal connection with them?

thank god some people actually asked questions about the band and the movie. the last question was the best. someone asked: did he think that his fame ultimately helped the band or hurt the band? he gave a very honest (as always) answer, analogizing to his own past. he said that being his father’s son surely opened doors for him, but the trade-off was that he had to work harder to prove that he deserved the opportunities he received. ultimately, of course, he must believe that he is doing more good than harm for the band or he wouldn’t have been sitting there.

back in college my favorite classes were art history classes. one of my favorite paintings became manet’s olympia. (see above.) paintings of naked women were common in the art of the day, essentially soft core porn disguised as high brow Art. on the surface, manet’s olympia is just another painting of a naked woman. but look a second longer and you can see that it is actually a brilliant commentary on society. this isn’t some idealized depiction of Eros. the details of the painting — the flower in her hair, the choker around her neck, the cat, the maid bringing flowers from her “suitor” — bring the painting into the reality of the day and make it clear that olympia is a prostitute. unlike most nudes, she is not depicted in a pose of abandoned passion, eyes closed, begging to be ravished by what art historians and women’s studies professors love to call ”the male gaze.” no, she’s a naked prostitute waiting for her next customer. most shocking of all, she’s looking right at us. she makes it clear that she has no illusions about what she is selling, and she doesn’t let us have any illusions about what we are buying. by sitting there so matter-of-factly naked, looking right us, she implicates us in the transaction and thereby subverts that ever-problematic “male gaze.” you can imagine that the typical art patrons of the day weren’t so comfortable with that painting. maybe it even made them think about the objectification of women in their society.

i trust you to kill me is the olympia of the cult of celebrity. seeing it under the circumstances i did last sunday made me profoundly uncomfortable with my role in the objectification of kiefer. i went back and gave the movie an extra half star in my review for that. and i have no more interest in meeting kiefer sutherland.