City Arts: Presidents in Lust

Armond White — Thu, 13 Dec 2012 18:30:01 +0000

Historical man-sharing in ‘Hyde Park on Hudson’

Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s deification–once the preoccupation of Depression and WWII survivors–comes to an end in Hyde Park on Hudson, a tell-all semi-bio-pic that is really about the women in FDR’s harem. Screenwriter Richard Nelson’s presumptuous aspersions present FDR’s wife Eleanor (Olivia Williams) as a lesbian, his secretary Missy (Elizabeth Marvel) as a pragmatic concubine and his fifth cousin Daisy (Laura Linney) as a self-sacrificing frump, the film’s sentimentalizing narrator.

Bill Murray as FDR in Hyde Park on Hudson

What’s going on here outdoes the hero-worship of films like The Queen, The Last King of Scotland, The King’s Speech; there’s a new cynicism that accepts the failings of political leaders, adjusting public disappointment to decadent approval–uncannily like the rehabilitation of Bill Clinton at the recent Democratic National Convention; his all-is-forgiven adoration where a former sex-scoundrel President’s absolution led the way to a current President’s consecration.

In Hyde Park on Hudson, Roosevelt’s perfidy becomes a quasi-feminist standard where women submit to a dominant male’s peccadilloes out of sexual and patriotic fealty. An idiosyncratic genius like Ken Russell might have exulted in the perversity of such arrangements, but Roger Michell’s technique is so drab, he simply accepts the historical perversion as part of dull revisionism. Linney’s Cousin Daisy is too bland to hold FDR to any accounting; she accepts her lot like a worshipful electorate.

Using the visit of stuttering King George (played by Samuel West) to a diplomatic Upstate New York picnic where he is forced to swallow the American delicacy hot dogs, Michell’s film idealizes hero-worship through a metaphorical act of consumption. FDR commands “Show him how we put on the mustard”–a symbolic slathering of compliment/condiment on phallic privilege. This is the Monica Lewinsky film Hollywood has been reluctant to make.

Murray’s clever yet bland FDR impersonation is negligible and Linney’s quasi-incestuous mistress bores. After giving FDR a hand-job, her moment of conscience occurs in a voyeuristic sequence of interminable, unwatchable day-for-photography. She describes an era “When the world allowed itself secrets” no different from today but it’s a way of admitting the dishonesty we accept while pretending it doesn’t exist. Hyde Park on Hudsonmay be a signal movie of the laissez faire Obama era. (Like the Cahiers du Cinema’s famous deconstruction ofYoung Mr. Lincoln, the President’s phallus is this film’s structuring absence.) Yet it’s also one of the most nauseating films of the year.

Follow Armond White on Twitter at 3xchair

New York’s Most Dangerous Bridges

NYPress — Wed, 06 Jun 2012 13:37:17 +0000

Despite mandates, Comptroller Liu says DOT is slow to respond

The tricky Brooklyn Bridge - photo by PeterKellyStudios

Don’t forget your swimmies.

Comptroller John C. Liu said yesterday that after a 2009-10 city audit on the safety of its bridges, the Department of Transportation still has yet to make some obligatory repairs. And considering bridges can already be somewhat eerie, that’s a bit disconcerting.

This audit, performed by the Audit Bureau, found that, of 122 “Red Flag” defects, which are dangerous defects and must be fixed within six weeks of DOT notification, 71 were not acted upon in time and, furthermore, were not being monitored for further deterioration.

The DOT did act quickly on all but one of 112 Prompt Interim Actions after the initial report, which are defects deemed very dangerous and require remediation within 24 hours, but Comptroller Liu’s statements, over two years later, do make one think: On which New York bridges should I hold my breath?

A new April 2012 list was released with bridge-safety overall “ratings” and the DOT deems that any rating below a five on total scale of seven denotes a “deficiency” in bridge safety. Furthermore, in 2009, Crown Point Bridge, a pass between northeast New York and Vermont, was deemed too unsafe and destroyed with a 3.375 rating.

Below, based on this consensus, are New York’s most dangerous bridges:

Triborough Bridge on Randall’s Island, crossing over the FDR – 2.89 rating
Brooklyn Bridge crossing over I-278 Brooklyn-Queens Expressway – 2.94 rating
Brooklyn Bridge crossing over the FDR at Pearl – 3.78 rating
Part of the FDR crossing over South Street – 3.73 rating
Part of the 11th avenue Viaduct crossing over the Long Island Railroad West – 3.75 rating

These bridges, although not all major overpasses, and not all named, are consistently deteriorating, so hopefully Comptroller Liu’s words will hold some weight in the eyes of the DOT, and we don’t all re-enact an Indiana Jones scene.

Don’t look down.

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City Arts: Presidents in Lust

New York’s Most Dangerous Bridges