My little niece Hosetta was
enchanted by the iconic color photo of James Dean, which I had recently cut out
from a magazine, framed, and hung on my Dead Celebrities Wall between Barbara
Payton and Linda Lovelace.
At
her request, I recited what I knew about the revered cultural hero: that he had
made a few films a long time ago before turning into a singer and starting his
own pork sausage business . . . that he eventually entered politics, where he
became embroiled in the Watergate affair . . . that, in order to spare his best
friend Richard Nixon, he took the blame and was tried, found guilty, and
executed at Guantanamo Bay. That's what happens, I explained, when a person
turns his back on his art, only to be seduced and corrupted by politics.
'Was
James Dean a mean man, Uncle Hose?'
'No,
darling. Just a bit sick in the head. Sort of like your mother.'
'But
what gang was he in? See, he's making a gangster sign with his hand.'
Hot
damn. I hadn't noticed. There he stood in his white tee shirt and red jacket,
comfortably slouched, his right hand contorted into a gang-like salute in front
of his chest. There's something weird going on here, I thought, moments before
reality splashed my eyes and soaked my soul.
James
Dean's cigarette had been airbrushed, or Photoshopped, out presenting a sweet,
fascinated nine-year-old girl with a false image of a famous legend who wasn't
even around anymore to see himself so crassly misrepresented. He was now not
only a non-smoker, he was being portrayed as a gangsta to impressionable
children. The very foundation of our nation's future was being slyly
brainwashed, and my own delicate sensibilities were being waterbagged.
When
Goldfinger was first shown on ABC in the early '70s, the villain's line
'American motorists kill that many people every year' was seamlessly removed.
(So was the last shot of Goldfinger being sucked out of the plane's window, but
that was just standard censorship.) The spoken words were deleted because the
film's airing was sponsored by an auto company. I was upset by the alterations
but somewhat assuaged when the network at least allowed James Bond to end up
with his Pussy (Galore). By the next day, it didn't really seem to matter too
much. I mention this only because I now see that broadcast as a starting point
for my increasing obsession with a mysterious, powerful group; some sort of
cultural lobby I've come to call the Revisionist Nazi Bastards.
Whether
it's San Diego State's Aztec mascot being recognized as 'demeaning' or
Disneyland's Pirates of the Caribbean ride being bowdlerized after 30-some
years to wipe out a reference to historical misogyny, it is intelligence itself
that is being corrupted.
This
all ties in with an item I mentioned last month: the 'smoke a cig, get an R
rating' threat made recently by the Motion Picture Association of America. But
this alteration of photographs Ð removing cigarettes from smokers' hands Ð is
to me, idiotic, criminal, and frightening.
In
1984 there was a 20-year-anniversary re-release of the Beatles' U.S.
breakthrough record I Want to Hold Your Hand/I Saw Her Standing There, complete
with a reproduction of the original photo sleeve. I didn't buy it, having saved
my original (still have it) but a lot of my friends got it, and they were
really (as we'd say) jazzed. And I was happy for them until I saw the item for
myself. Another iconic picture, now back in mass circulation. But this time,
the cigarette was missing from Paul McCartney's right hand. Besides being a
victim of a corrupt action, the pose looked vaguely idiotic now, something I've
always felt the Beatles had been able to avoid. It reminded me a bit of the
airbrushed nudist magazines of the early '60s (or, come to think of it, what
Playboy often looks like these days, for a whole different Ð even voluntary Ð
cultural reason, but that's another story).
On
Sunday, June 17, the national newspaper tabloid Parade had a cover story on
John Travolta, once the lead singer of the early rap group the Sweathogs before
finding fame and happiness in movies, airplanes, heterosexuality, and
Scientology. It contains a picture of Travolta in Saturday Night Fever that
over the decades has itself become iconic. It's relatively small, but in color,
and I began turning various shades of red and purple myself while looking at
it. Steam literally began to shoot out of my ears (in the cartoon version of
this column). John Travolta's cigarette has been removed, it appears, by some
rusty surgical instrument. The hand is pathetically maimed, disfigured. The
Revisionist Cultural Nazis have struck again, and this time it's really a
howler.
What's
next? I envision wholesale digital removal/replacement of smoking in just about
any movie ever made, if they have their way. Don't call me crazy.
Unless
you mean it. But be prepared to take it back when you watch, sometime soon,
Casablanca or Up in Smoke or, heck, even Deep Throat; you're likely to see a
lot of people on the screen licking a lot of lollipops. All executed for
society's benefit by people who love to manipulate the truth. And funded, in
part, by some big candy company....
It
was nearly midnight when I suddenly snapped out of my troubled trance of
memories. I told little Hosetta it was time she headed home. She hugged me,
thanking me for having earlier shown her Love Slaves of the Cannibal God on
DVD, and asked if she could see a James Dean movie next time. I said sure, as
long as it was okay with her mom. (Heck, I'd even show her Saturday Night Fever
if I thought the wardrobe in that one wouldn't give her nightmares.) I slipped
two dollars into her tiny hand and she merrily skipped away toward the bus stop
half a mile down the street.