The Oracle

I went to the bookstore yesterday to return two movies I watched. One was called Dona Herlinda and Her Son. Sexy movie. Sexy butts in shorts and tight pants. The second was The Einstein of Sex. Very interesting but depressing. It shows a side of German history that many do not know about.

Don Herlinda is a great film because it shows a woman that has obviously no problem with her son's sexual taste, and is willing to manipulate parts of Mexico's conservative Catholic bourgeoisie society in order to have the family that she wants. That includes a married son and a grandchild. The hand picked wife and her son's lover are woven in step by step and you are amazed at all of the characters and how their lives come to some mutual understanding. I think it is interesting. The film was made in 1986, which is part of what makes it so fun (little technological gadgets are featured, whose depiction in today's world, rivals VH-1'S I LOVE THE EIGHTIES).

The movie stars Guadalope Del Torro, Marco Antonio Trevino and Arturo Meza and is directed by Jaime Humberto Hermosillo. I will have to check Hermosillo out a bit more. He is an openly gay Mexican movie director. There was something so exact about this film. Everyone is moving in this unsaid world of the obvious. It is the actors' expression and performance of internal emotions on celluloid that leaves an impression on you. In the end, not only does Dona Herlinda get what she wants, but so does everybody else.

The other film I saw was the Einstein of Sex. It was a docu-drama about Dr. Magnus Hirshfeld. I think the title is funny, it sounds like one of those movies I used to wait up for on Cinemax when I was 10. The film itself is done in that German cinematography that makes everything look as if you are watching Masterpiece Theater on extra bright. This particular style of filming is crystal clear, almost like the cameraman has filtered out all imperfect light like a brewer of "Krystalweissen". For some films I like it, at other times I don't really. I find this optical realism makes any footage of the North Sea or the Baltic with its clear salty sky, sand dunes, shallow water and tall grass appear ab-so-fucking - lute- ly amazing. This film opens on the Baltic, so I fell in love pretty quick. The lighting was great, except for the scenes with Hirschfeld's nemesis, Adolf Brand, founder of Der Eigene. All those naked guys and Greco-Roman sculptures needed a bit more shading. Brand seemed to me to be a bit down and dirty and drunk on masculinity. Such optical clarity did a bit of a disservice to his character and the boys that played as his army of dime story lackeys. I have found the magazine Der Eigene to be great pornography but bad politics. But, don't take my word on it, read up on it yourself.

The movie is great in showing a particular German world of the "belle epoque". It reminded me of Weimar Berlin, which was notorious for its bisexual and homosexual flair. There was a CD I saw in Germany full of love songs written for men and women of the same sex, and performed by women and men. Gotta buy it when I go back.

At the end of this movie you just think "poor Herr Professor Hirshfield ", since he was Jewish, gay, and an intellectual the twine tied tight around his neck. In the end, a world tour saved his live. He just did not come back. And lucky for him, the film portrays him as a man secure in his middle-class world, and his accomplishments; therefore, he is naive about the situation. I think that could be correct, how many Jews perished because they did not notice that the water in their pot was about to boil.

Rosa von Praunheim did a great job in directing and casting the actors. I also think, since the film was done in Germany, the film has a very clinical feel that makes the subject matter of sex approachable in a way that is too charged for an American director or one with an American audience in mind. The only thing I want to take her to task for is the depiction of young Magnus's sexual awakening with coloured men dancing in the hull of a ship. There is nothing wrong with beautiful virile black men dancing to drums with 2 machetes in hand (I do it all the time), it is there empty representation because the music and ceremony are without any true cultural signs that show a real language, a real rite, or a real meaning. They are just coloured folk from all parts of the tropics dancing and chanting; and, meanwhile the 2 white boys are experiencing there desire in this hull, which smells of young Magnus's subconscious and the Eurocentrically constructed abscess of Western culture where the noble savage can descend to a Dionysian plague of lust and not be infected. Coloureds are allowed such debauchery and base pleasures, white's must rule the world.

Which reminds me, I will write about German boys later. They are not like that, but in a way they are still. A couple. I did not fuck 'em, these few. But there was something frightening in their voices and language concerning me being black or African and them being German. I think the 19th century was born between the legs of England and Germany and in many ways, maybe those countries are still between them legs. Just a thought.

Mental note.

Follow up later.

Ok . . . Einstein of Sex

Otherwise, there were some other issues concerning 19th century science and its empirical surveys of dick sizes, anal suppleness and pear shaped male bodies that bothered me. Africans were done the same way. The scientific hoax that that world of thinking was has caused so much damage for all of us in the 20th century. But I don't think Praunheim was tackling that subject, we need another movie for that.


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So, I finished the films and took them back to the bookstore after work. I talked to a friend of mine there. She lets her big afro fly and she doesn't really care about what people think and most of the time she is just doing her work and smoking her cigarettes watching people go from here to there. I will christen her The Oracle. I know it is tacky and Matrix like, but she put the law down on me in such a subtle but serious way.

We won't get into details.

You just need to know that she has a high voice, tie-dye shirt, jeans jacket, wide glasses and a manner that can seem non-threatening. Her scarves and bandannas cast her as someone that remains in her world, but she is in touch. This night, she showed me another side, like fire coming from her eyes concerning having my cake, eating it too, and where I bought it in the first place.

I just went to the back to talk to her about the movies, but we ended up talking about this guy I had a crush on and wanted to bang. The short of it and the realization of 2006 is "ASS IS A DISTRACTION!"

Thank you Oracle.

And Lawd knows I have been distracted.

THANK YOU ORACLE.

Plus, she warned me that if I do go see the Radical Faeries that I should not let them convince me not to wear deodorant. LOL


Thanks for the heads up Oracle.

You know my hardwiring bitch!


And I am grateful.