Pinned
Reblogged curioscurio
Is that a valid argument in your pants or is it just a phallacy?
Reblogged
On the fifth day of Christmas my true love gave to me
SHENANIGANS
And to the left we have Feisal ibn Hussein ibn Ali al-Hashemi and Thomas Edward Lawrence throwing cushions and toilet paper, in lieu of bullets and blasting gelatine, at the enemy during the Paris Peace Conference.
When Feisal heard the initial news that a commission was to be appointed, he drank champagne for the first time in his life. He was confident, as was the ubiquitous Lawrence, that it would confirm Syrian independence under his rule. The months in Paris had been frustrating and boring for both men. A flight over the city helped relieve their feelings. "How dreadful, to have no bombs to throw upon these people," Feisal exclaimed. "Never mind, here are some cushions." Lawrence became increasingly difficult, playing silly practical jokes such as throwing sheets of toilet paper down a stairwell at Lloyd George and Balfour one evening.
— Margaret Macmillan, Paris 1919: Six Months that Changed the World
12. George Antonius writes: 'It is related that when news of the decision reached Faisal's ears he drank champagne for the first time, and drank it as though it were water. Then he went for a drive past the headquarters of the American and British delegations and threw cushions at the Crillon, the Majestic, and the Quai d'Orsay, saying that as he had no bombs, he could only express his feelings in that way. George Antonius, op. cit., p. 288.
— Ali A. Allawi, Faisal I of Iraq
Shout out to @nerdyhistoryenjoyer for enabling me 🫡
Reblogged
Lawrence of Arabia 2nd half thoughts:
Dryden is such a fascinating character. He’s so often silent. Entire scenes will go by with him simply observing, yet it’s difficult not to watch him closely. Kind of feels like a billboard saying “the house always wins” in human form. It’s a great performance; he’s so funny sometimes yet the overall effect is quietly sinister.
Sherif Ali ibn el Kharish is another fascinating character. When he’s introduced he comes across as violent (genuinely scary even) and unscrupulous, but during the second half of the film we discover (as he does) how unprepared he is for the scale and brutality of the war. He also seems to be the only one who truly recognizes just how badly Lawrence has been damaged by his experience being tortured (and how dangerous that change makes him).
Part of this is that Ali is representative of a broader shift in the movie. In the first half T.E. Lawrence is the clear point of view character for most of it. He borders on audience surrogate: eager for adventure, in love with the romance of the desert, a white man as yet unschooled in local custom. It’s a classic colonial adventure story. Ali is this representative of a kind of (deeply orientalist and very romantic) portrayal of Arab masculinity. He’s violent and unpredictable, but under the surface deeply honorable. His relationship with Lawrence is not romantic per se but there’s a similar sort of allure and repulsion to a gothic demon lover character.
Then, in the second half of the movie, there’s a shift in perspective. We spend more time exploring the needs and desires and perspectives of the people around Lawrence. He’s no longer someone the viewer can identify with, at least not to the same extent. The torture he experiences is this moment of rupture where he is literally off screen experiencing things we can’t comprehend while we instead watch Ali waiting for him. The viewer (presumed white) has themselves “gone native” and takes the position of Ali, unnerved by the change in Lawrence, unprepared for the extremity of the violence (for the first time we see the bodies of civilians lying bloody in abandoned structures), and dreading the inevitable betrayal by the British.
Reblogged sailorsally
As promised, some quotes and highlights from the Lawrence of Arabia bonus features, under the cut to spare your dashes.
Peter O’Toole:
- “[Omar Sharif] is a graceful and beautiful man.”
- On Claude Rains, after doing some impressions: “And SMALL. I had to do quite a lot of telescopic acting.”
- “David Lean would be sitting there with his cigarette holder, puffing away, and I’d say, ‘Vacant or pensive, David?’”
- “[The bit where Lawrence looks at his reflection in the dagger] became a feature of the film, because in the later battle scene, David asked me to take the knife out again and look at this bloodied figure that he’d become, from this…touch of wedding, touch of first communion, touch of frisky boy, a touch of all sorts of things. The innocence of it is ruined by the killing and the death; the innocence of it is gone, and he realized what he’s doing. And, you know, this is human life that he’s playing with like a ball. It’s a profound effect on what was a scholarly, intellectual archaeologist. Do understand he was a young man, T.E. Lawrence.”
- “I read Seven Pillars as a duty when I began to do the film, but about fifteen years back I read it again, and it is LITERATURE of the highest order.”
David Lean:
- “It’s not far off a sort of movie opera.”
- As he pushes all the wardrobe assistants out of the costume room: “Omar knows better than you what he should wear. What do you think of a black costume, Omar?” (“Very good, David.”) “Remember, Omar: you’re a TIGER.”
Anthony Quinn:
“I had Charlie Parker, who’s a great friend of mine, put on a nose for me and give me a beard. It was hot. My goodness, it was a hot day, about a hundred and fifty or sixty [degrees]: one of the hottest days I’ve ever experienced in my life. Then I had to go around a hill to meet David. And I wanted to meet him as casually as possible, with makeup, so he’d have an idea of what he was gonna be seeing on the screen. So as I walked out of the cabin where they were making me up, the men under the cliffs looked at me, and one of them said, ‘Auda. Auda Abu Tayi?’ And pretty soon everybody was caught by it. Everybody started calling out the name Auda: ‘Auda Abu Tayi! Auda! Auda!’ So as we walked down, David Lean was directing Peter O'Toole and I realized that I was disturbing the scene. So David Lean says, ‘Cut!’ And he says, ‘What the hell is that?’ He sent the first assistant out and he said, ‘Find out who that is.’ And the assistant came back and he said, ‘They’re calling that man at the head of them “Auda Abu Tayi.”’ And he said, ‘Well, I’ll be damned. Yes, yes! My, he IS Auda Abu Tayi! Yes, can’t we fire this man Quinn that we hired for the picture?’ I almost got fired!”
Assorted non-quote highlights:
- Peter O'Toole learned how to ride a camel from one of Auda Abu Tayi’s grandsons.
- While learning to ride said camels, Peter found the wooden saddles so uncomfortable that on one filming break, he went out and purchased some foam rubber to stick under the top blanket. The Jordanian extras copied the idea and soon had O'Toole requisitioning yards of the stuff for every camel-riding Bedouin in the area. For his inadvertent “contribution to Arab society” (Peter’s words), he was nicknamed “‘Ab al-‘Isfanjah” (أب الإسفنجة), meaning “Father of the Sponge”.
- Apparently Omar Sharif considered outright refusing to play some background/bit part in Lawrence (which is all that producer Sam Spiegel offered him) since he was already a huge star in the Middle East, but finally decided to sign on anyway because he wanted the opportunity to work with David Lean. (Obviously, Omar later got a much bigger part, but Lean had to fight Spiegel tooth and nail for it.)
- The first thing David Lean did when Omar stepped off the plane was to do a double take and essentially check him out. (#relatable)
- When they first tried shooting the scene in Feisal’s tent where Selim recites from the Koran, it ended in disaster because Peter and Omar couldn’t stop giggling. They kept losing it because of how hard Selim’s actor was concentrating on not flubbing his lines, as not a single word is to be altered when reciting the Koran. Sir Alec Guinness, being Sir Alec Guinness, was very grumpy and unamused until he finally broke down and giggled himself. At that point, David Lean fell off his chair laughing and they gave up shooting.
- When they’d finished all the shooting in the desert (ending with some pickup shots in Morocco), Peter O'Toole hopped in his car, gunned it across the Atlas Mountains to a casino in Casablanca (where Omar and the others were waiting), had some drinks, and finally flung wide the double doors of the hotel lobby, hollering, “THE FUCKING PICTURE’S FINISHED!”
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Lieutenant Colonel Henry Blake's plane was shot down over the Sea of Japan. It spun in. There were no survivors. M*A*S*H 4077 bids Henry Blake a reluctant and affectionate farewell. Henry Blake was our C.O. Henry was okay, from the navel out in every direction. He sure was. Henry never made it home. You're beginning to sound like Blake: soft. What a slob that man was, may he rest in peace. Henry would've loved this. I really miss him. What about the Henry Blake Memorial Bar? Sorry, Henry. Colonel Blake tried it over there, but he found it worked better over there. Blake's gone, son. Henry got killed and they're still coming. Maybe Colonel Blake put him in for it. Old Henry Blake was like his father. The late Colonel Blake said I was the best rubbish officer we'd ever had. Colonel Blake gave it to me, just before he...Your late predecessor, Colonel Blake, rest his soul, took him under his wing and sort of helped him grow into the job. Folks around here were awfully fond of Henry Blake when he ran this fort, weren't they? Well sure, the colonel was a top-notch kind of guy. You bet he was. Henry Blake...Rest in peace, Henry. Wasn't Colonel Blake already here when we were assigned? Yes, you're right, God rest his soul. Hawk told me it belonged to Colonel Blake. It's for all the men who never made it home.
Reblogged chief-surgeon-who
i think that fundamentally people are wrong when they yell at hawkeye unless the person yelling at him is a woman in which case they are 100% justified bc hawkeyes original sin is misogyny. and margaret is right when she yells at people unless the person she’s yelling at is klinger radar or sometimes one of the nurses in which case she’s wrong bc margarets original sin is actually believing in the army
also everyone who yells at klinger is wrong bc the only sin klinger has committed is dressing well and having fun
to further elaborate: bj is wrong when he yells except when he's yelling to stand up for hawkeye in which case he's right and also sexy. charles is basically always wrong but it's okay bc dos is a comedy god and therefore it's always hilarious. mulcahy is right when he yells but even more right when he punches people. nobody should ever yell at radar but also the one time radar yelled at hawkeye he was wrong bc he was being a little baby about hawkeye being upset that he almost got radar killed bc of comphet. trapper doesnt yell he just goes straight to medical malpractice and attempted murder which is a bold choice and i respect it.
@stillbelievinginfireflies wait you can’t leave this in the tags
Reblogged curioscurio
i’m boreddddd let’s forgive ourselves for our failures
Reblogged renee-niles
I mean the whole damn point of the Nativity story is that the supposed son of God (interpret Jesus how you fucking want, of course) was born to a couple of poor, exhausted peasants in the stable for the inn, and his first bed was a feeding trough for animals. That would nowadays be like a poor couple where the mother gives birth in a parking garage behind the motel because they couldn’t find a better place and nobody else would take them in. It’s a pretty gritty setting, and the idea is that God was reborn in some of the rock-bottom lowest circumstances. The only thing majestic was all the angels and shit, and of course motherly love
I get that a lot of the art portraying Madonna and Child as fabulously wealthy europeans in splendid robes and golden light was meant to glorify God + whichever nobility was sponsoring the artist, and while of course it’s genuinely beautiful art, it just always struck me as horribly missing the point, which is that the supposed son of God started in incredibly humble circumstances, among the kind of people that everyone else looks down on
dupionianddamask
‘Massacre des Innocents’ by Leon Cogniét, 1824. Although the Feast of the Holy Innocents is in a couple of days time, this painting is still really relevant in that it portrays Mary as how She really was: a scared refugee mum, so fearful that Her son was going to be one of the Innocents killed by King Herod.
My new favorite mordern interpretation is this work, José y Maria by Everett Patterson (http://www.everettpatterson.com)
cannibalcoalition
I had to look at this like FIVE TIMES to register all the layers of symbolism going into the piece by Patterson.
The hoodie as a veil.
Weisman cigarettes
Each of them is haloed by an advertisement sticker.
No Vacancy sign on the motel.
Dove sticker over Maria’s head.
Neon sign with a star symbol also over Maria’s head.
The crown over the ‘Dave’s City Motel’ sign. “New Manger.”
The sign behind Jose’s elbow likely says ‘Herod.’
The wee little plant growing through the cracks at their feet.
It’s like a New Testament ‘I Spy.’ I love it!
Ugh.
New favorite interpretation of the nativity.
Ezekiel 34 15-16 on the phone
Good news sticker above José
Maria sitting on a donkey
Shepherd Watches advertisement in the newspaper
Gloria sticker on the payphone
from an exhibit of nativity sets in barcelona (2023), with jesus born next to atm machines (top), in a war-destroyed movie theater (middle), and in an alley (bottom, featuring graffiti saying “coronavirus”, “no human being is illegal”, and the anarchist symbol)
Reblogging to share art without inviting “actually it wasn’t a stable” correction discourse
Reblogged horrorknife
reblog and put in the tags what you think will fix you