Tag Archives: shirley temple

status system: picking through the wreckage

…With the Keynesian economy operating at full throttle, it can be said that idleness and wealth have been scattered with a generous hand, and everyone is condemned to be a consumer to some degree. The heady atmosphere of abundance has … Continue reading

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argo: the boatmen cometh

Excerpts from an article by John Pilger, far lefty analysis that raises some good issues, but more meaningfully, the template he reports on is not a new phenomenon but an alliance between Hollywood as entertainment complex putting the good face … Continue reading

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tower of celebrity

The tall boy. Robert Wadlow. Drwbacks to being the tallest man in the United States. At age five, he was 5 feet 4 inches, the same height as his mother… Wadlow was a popular student with both his teachers and … Continue reading

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hollywood brotherhood: circle the wagons

I’s going to make a gobsmack of money. But its total crap.Disposable, forgettable and into the scrapheap of built in obsolescent consumer culture. The genius is how minute decisions are made to respect a violation in the spirit of the … Continue reading

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moods of modernism… berlin to the bayou

Post war American movies were locked into a pattern that began when Shirley Temple saved Hollywood studios from completely going under and were “rescued” by Morgan and Rockefeller money and then the post WWII era saw the norm being movies … Continue reading

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children being cute

Children being cute as a metaphor for superficiality. The new image of the child being born in innocence and the painter to capture that ripe moment of angelic realm before the inevitable gradual tarnishing of the soul. It was a … Continue reading

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sour grapes

There is a tendency to romanticize the past; to look back to an earlier epoch in America and the elusive “kindler, gentler America” that is referred to in such reverential tones. Truth is, the past was not so idyllic though … Continue reading

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the live adventures of norman and normal

Norman Rockwell’s paintings are impossible not to recognize.The first inclination is to dismiss his work as kitschy, sentimental drivel of an earlier more naive time, which does tend to pacify our own anxiety by touching the chords of a false … Continue reading

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back to stovall’s plantation

On the one hand, what could one possibly expect from the entertainment industry. Its “product” serving as the servile public relations arm of the financial/industrial complex. And its been that way since the Hays Code of the 1930’s which coincided … Continue reading

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rubber stamp of approval

To place Franklin Roosevelt’s passion for collecting stamps and to a lesser degree him maritime collection in a meaningful context is not really possible without the backdrop of the depression. He worked on his stamp collection almost to his death. … Continue reading

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