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December 18, 2006

Libby Gelman-Waxner, A Tribute

Campy film criticism at its finest

By Tram

Movie criticism (like lists of "The 10 Best Bad Movies I Have Seen") is probably the greatest popularizer of Camp taste today, because most people still go to the movies in a high-spirited and unpretentious way.

-Susan Sontag, Notes on "Camp" (1964) [1]

I WAS PLEASANTLY SURPRISED last spring when I picked up a copy of Philip Lopate's comprehensive anthology of film reviews, America Movie Critics: From the Silents Until Now, and found Libby Gelman-Waxner's hilarious review of Kevin Costner's Dances With Wolves included.

Imagine that: Libby Gelman-Waxner alongside the revered likes of James Agee, Manny Farber, and Andrew Sarris! Campy film criticism was alive and well!

CONCEIVED BY PLAYWRIGHT AND SCREENWRITER PAUL RUDNICK (Addams Family Values, In & Out) since 1988, Libby Gelman-Waxner has been delighting readers of Premiere Magazine, including yours truly, for over a decade and a half with her column "If You Ask Me". Even though I no longer subscribe to Premiere, I still always check on Libby's column from month to month at the local newsstand, as if she were a dear, old friend I must keep in touch with, at all costs.

I don't remember when exactly had it dawned upon me that Libby was not — as her conversational details imply time and again — a middle-aged working mother, but actually a figment of a gay man's imagination. I'm not sure which was more weird: a) that such a revelation didn't make me feel any more or less detached to Libby, or b) that it felt like the most natural thing in the world that Libby Gelman-Waxner was, in fact, a gay man's alter-ego.

ANYONE WHO HAS READ LIBBY'S COLUMN would know that Libby is remarkably open about her life —and I'm not just talkin' about her affinity for dirty laundry airings of movie star sex dreams. Libby would casually mention her husband, Josh, "an extremely successful orthodontist", her dear friend, the "tragically single" Stacey Schiff, and her bratty teenage daughter, Jennifer Waxner, in some of her harangues.

By constructing a middle class socio-economic background around Libby, Paul Rudnick cuts through the formality that encircles serious film criticism and academia, and effortlessly draws his readers into the populist practice that is moviegoing, leaving practically nothing sacred in his, er, I mean, her hilariously bitchy wake [2].

The following passages, taken from her published anthology, If You Ask Me: The Collected Columns of America's Most Beloved and Irresponsible Critic [3], are excerpts exemplary of Libby at her best:

Libby on gossip

In Libby's review for Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1991) ["Batty"], Libby argues that Steven Spielberg's personal life may have influenced his work onscreen, after astutely noting that the film is a "little draggy":

Maybe it's because of director Steven Spielberg's recent divorce from Amy Irving. Steven probably had trouble concentrating, with all those phone calls to lawyers. I've heard that Amy may be getting as much as $100 million as a settlement after three and a half years of marriage. All during Indiana Jones, I kept thinking, Is there anybody I wouldn't marry for that kind of money? Amy, you are now my favorite actress; I'd like to see Meryl walk away with those kinds of numbers. For $100 million, Amy isn't just an ex-wife, she's a blockbuster; I want a lunch box with her attorney's picture on it.

This is a hilarious riff on today's cinematic experience and how is not as pure as it once was in this post-Entertainment Tonight day and age. For instance, I can vividly remember the time I watched Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984) in 7th grade woodshop class, and softly gasped "the homewrecker!" to myself, as Kate Capshaw made her diabolically grand entrance onscreen.

Libby on Hollywood and race

Think of Libby as Armond White-esque regarding racial matters, except a million times wittier and funnier and sassier.

The ultimate-must-read-Libby piece remains to be her aforementioned review of Dances with Wolves (1991) ["A Boy Named Sioux"], which is a subtle poke at Hollywood's self-congratulatory racial politics. In pure camp tradition, Libby plays it straight:

All of the Indians are sweet and gentle and generous, except when they are attacked by a neighboring tribe and are forced to massacre them with hatchets, arrows, and Kevin's rifles. Kevin learns to speak Lakota, a Sioux language, and he sketches and writes in his journal about how the Indians are just terrific, but Kevin gets a little Shirley MacLaine about everything; this movie is sort of like watching a Ken doll get to know the Care Bears. All of the white men except Kevin are evil soldiers; they shoot Kevin's horse and pet wolf and use the pages of his journal as toilet paper. This makes the audience cheer when Kevin and the Indians strangle the white guys with chains and drown them [4].

It is here that Libby dethrones Kevin Costner's seriously overinflated ego. She namedrops a bunch of silly cultural references (Shirley MacLaine, Ken doll, Care Bears) to illuminate, in her own way, just how silly Costner's Oscar-mongering, "progressive" epic is. Costner may be sincere in his efforts to enlighten multiplex audiences of the white man's mass massacre of Native Americans, but the Libster is not so convinced. Why is Kevin, a white dude, considered an honorary Sioux in Wolves? Libby asks earnestly.

Libby on postmodernism

When Libby is not busy insulting Hollywood's (complacent) upper class liberal politics, she's making fun of some other high almighty, divine temple of worship. For example, here's her take on David Lynch's hardcore postmodernist fanbase:

I have never been able to sit through a whole episode of Twin Peaks; it's a postmodern soap opera, which means that every time someone onscreen eats a piece of apple pie, you can hear a thousand grad students start typing their doctoral dissertations on "Twin Peaks: David Lynch and the Semiotics of Cobbler."

I know I should be offended since I'm a pretty hardcore postmodernist myself, but Libby's good-natured poke on such a school of thought was something not only inevitable but a long-time-comin'. Although my interest in semiotics is something genuine, I'll wholly concede that such an interest is inherently elitist and academic.

The average moviegoer doesn't give a damn about a multi-linear concept. The Average Joe Bloggs watches a film, consumes and interprets the imagery any way his instincts tell him at that moment — and within those two hours — is thoroughly finished with it. Paul Rudnick's insistence that film is, at its core, a bourgeois pastime, reminds me of how ultimately very sensual — as opposed to cerebral — the movies are to a lot of people [5].

Libby on awards

Awards and its predictable politics can be frustrating, if seen in a serious light. But they can also be fun to revel in, especially if you're in a bewitchingly campy mindset.

Take, for example, Libby's comments on Isabelle Adjani in her review of Camille Claudel ["Field Day"]:

Isabelle also went mad in another movie, The Story of Adele H., which I did not see because Gerard [Depardieu] wasn't in it. Isabelle likes to go mad in historical clothes. It's the French way to get a Best Actress nomination, as opposed to the American route, which involves having a real-life personal tragedy, or being old or Meryl.

NOTES

[1] Another striking quote from Sontag in Notes on "Camp" : "The whole point of Camp is to dethrone the serious. Camp is playful, anti-serious. More precisely, Camp involves a new, more complex relation to ‘the serious.' One can be serious about the frivolous, frivolous about the serious."

[2] I would argue that Camp is a feminine sensibility. It appeals to marginalized circles because it overthrows the sacredness that prevails in the hegemonic institution.

[3] IF YOU ASK ME, By Libby Gelman-Waxner. A Wyatt Book for St. Martin's Press. 236 pp. $20.95.

[4] Libby seems to be quite fond of Dances with Wolves. How else can you explain another reference to Wolves in her review of Oliver Stone's The Doors (1991) ["Sex, Drugs, and Extra-Strength Excedrin"]? "At one point, Jim takes the band into the desert for some sort of mystical drug experience, during which he sees many meaningfully wrinkled Indians in buckskins and war paint. Later, while Jim is being Dionysian onstage at a concert, these Indians reappear as fantasy figures, dancing beside him and the many bare-breasted women who run up from the crowd. The Indians serve the same function as they did in Dances with Wolves: they make the far more highly paid white movie stars seem more soulful and important and in touch with ancient truths. Do Indians enjoy being used this way, as spiritual elves or cosmic merit badges? Has Oliver met any Indians outside of Frontierland in Disney World?"

[5] Pauline Kael once famously wrote: "The words ‘Kiss Kiss Bang Bang,' which I saw on an Italian movie poster, are perhaps the briefest statement imaginable of the basic appeal of movies."

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