In 1963 Pier Paolo Pasolini put together a sort of cut and paste film entitled La rabbia (Rage) using different bits and pieces of images sampled from the news and mixing them in unusual ways with photographs of paintings taken from art books or images of celebrities from magazines.
Giorgio Bassani and Renato Guttuso were then called to read a prose poem Pasolini had written to accompany the images that featured clips about different subjects, from the atomic blasts in the late 50s to a celebrity visit by Sophia Loren to an eel festival, from the exploitation of workers at a Fiat plant (how relevant even nowadays…) to the war in Korea, student demos, tortures in Algeria, Marilyn Monroe and so on.
The prose poem represented Pasolini's act of indignation against the falseness and hypocrisy of bourgeois society and was used to oppose to the latter the reality of a very different and more real and genuine society.
I honestly wake up every day with one thought in mind: doing a sort of remake of Pasolini's film using bits and pieces of fashion shows/events/catwalks etc and accompany it with a prose poem that criticises all the worst aspects of the fashion industry (banality, frivolity, hypocrisy…the list is long).
It is hard to admit it but I’m starting to find it difficult to write about fashion and just think about art and beauty. It is indeed very very difficult not to think about what surrounds the fashion industry.
So far I’ve met and mingled with a very small part of this industry, but I can assure you it has been enough to make me miss writing about less "glamorous" subjects such as criminality and politics.
Years ago I met and interviewed criminals who were less duplicitous than some press agents I met a short time ago. It’s really amazing, but, believe it or not, ten years ago I seemed to have an infallible instinct: I could say if a person was honest, dishonest or dangerous straightaway, just looking into their eyes. I was younger then and less experienced, but my instincts never failed me. Yet maybe that was because ten years ago I still hadn’t met the fashion circus.
Since entering this world I’ve indeed found myself in very unpleasant situations, but one has particularly annoyed me, receiving unconvinced praises about my work (somebody even claiming I should have been teaching in this or that university without even asking me if I teach already) by people I had never met before.
Sadly, later on I discovered such people worked in the fashion industry and were just trying to suggest me what/who to write about. Obviously such people also pretended I didn’t exist anymore when they realised I never promoted the people they wanted me to promote. Amazing.
I sometimes go to bed at night and wonder why people can’t just be honest and say ‘hey, I just stumbled by pure chance into something you wrote, I work for so and so, can you promote him/her’. This would make me much happier and restore faith in many human beings out there.
PR agents in disguise and rather strange characters (sorry I still haven’t managed to understand what their jobs are…) working in the fashion industry who send bizarre emails aren’t the only thing that has been annoying me, there is indeed something else, young designers who, after praising my work, highlight how they would like to be published on a specific site/magazine/paper I collaborate with (but not on my blog – strange since they like how I write…) because that’s the "perfect platform" for their work.
Well, I guess that if you like writing about finance and you’re 21, you naturally think the Financial Times is the perfect platform for your articles. Now, while nobody should stop you from getting there, you should also remember that before getting a job at the FT you will definitely have to work hard for a long time.
There’s also something else I hate: people who offer you free things to convince you to write about them. I usually don’t need such things unless the thing in question is a book, record/film and I actually need to read/listen to/watch it to be able to express my opinion about it.
Yes, I know, refusing freebies is probably rather uncool in the real fashion industry, but I can assure you that a free dress/bag/pair of shoes/sunglasses/whatever rarely make you more educated or help developing great ideas, though they can influence your ideas in the wrong way.
So, I'm afraid that, while I plan my "Fashion Rage" project (provisional title – oh, don't worry it will be very different from Sally Potter's own Rage) and select images (wouldn't mind being able to keep the bit from Pasolini's La rabbia with the rich women at the opera in their expensive dresses – see clip at the beginning of this post)/write the prose poem to accompany them, future Autumn/Winter 2010 fashion week reports on this blog will probably be intertwined with more rants about what I hate about this industry.
In the meantime I will also hopefully succeed in finding the truth about a few people who recently happened to be on my path. Social suicide? Ah, better having very few friends than an entire world full of annoying liars claiming they are your best friends and admirers.
Member of the Boxxet Network of Blogs, Videos and Photos
http://www.boxxet.com/my/badgeBN.80.15.js?boxxetId=u23036
Member of the Boxxet Network of Blogs, Videos and Photos
http://www.boxxet.com/my/badgeBN.160.30.js?boxxetId=u23036
Add to Technorati Favorites
http://www.lijit.com/wijitinit?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.lijit.com%2Fusers%2Fabnet75&js=1Lijit Search
Rispondi