I saw Disclosure Day last week: it’s a story about a conspiracy (and counter-conspiracy) to disclose the presence of Roswell-like aliens here on earth. To be clear—it is bad in a variety of ways: it’s predictably moralistic; there are good guys (Emily Blunt and Josh O’Connor) and bad guys (Colin Firth, who maybe isn’t bad—despite his attempts at murder, because he’s kind of just going through it). O’Connor plays a boy who is good at math; Blunt is a girl, so she is good at feelings. There are a series of just-by-the-skin-of-their-teeth escapes that are the cartoon fantasies of children (if we hide behind this rock, the bad guys won’t find us). There is also an extended sequence in which the good guys are quite literally invisible to the bad guys—kids’ stuff in a way that is interesting to me. Why has Steven Spielberg made a movie about regression? That is, the movie is both about recovering the good guys’ repressed memories and about giving the audience the dimly remembered enjoyments we renounced as we crossed into adulthood. In both cases, it is the magic of cinema itself that provides the key to this lost satisfaction. Blunt’s non-verbal telepathy is not even schoolyard stuff—it is infantile omnipotence; there are no separate minds yet, just wish and its fulfillment. But it is no baby, but rather Blunt, botoxed, veneered, plumped, who experiences this boundless power (she is, I should note, excellent). In Spielbergian fashion, the movie is superficially about movies and myths (Saint Eustace by way of ET—sure, why not?). The underlying narrative fantasy is that there just might be some cosmic mommy or daddy who will arrive, ex machina, to save us from ourselves. It hangs on real boomer stuff, the movie’s belief in the power of truth and broadcast media to “bring us back together.” But more important than the narrative fantasy, which is flimsy and dumb, (no one is coming to save us) is the experiential fantasy (when we are “in” the movie, none of this reality-tested bullshit matters). Spielberg knows us better than we know ourselves: he pulls the keychain from his back pocket and jangles it before our eyes knowing that we will not look away. The movie is bad and I think you should see it.
I had a very healing weekend that I am also still recovering from, if that makes sense. I hope yours was a good one too. Shoutout to America—you are a mess but you can do this.
To the listings!
I am aware that this is not super practical to purchase, but maybe we can all just enjoy the image. Brown and red. Whodathunkit. Friend of the stack Camilla sent me a bed from this auction last week that is really fabulous. Clap if you think she should buy it.
OK, you guys know I love single-owner estate sales. Even better is gay guy couple estate sales, like this one. John Shank and Joseph Matthews had real jobs, then became dealers together. This is their estate and it does look like what you think it might. This is kind of an outlier. They are gay in the way that there is Chinoiserie, but in the way that there is a bunch of art with guys with abs in it. Although this kind of is that, but still. Bliss (1925-1981), American, painted this in 1970.
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