"Viewed as a transition the face of Garbo reconciles two iconographic ages, it assures the passage from awe to charm. As is well known, we are today at the other pole of this evolution; the face of Audrey Hepburn, for instance, is individualized, not only because of its peculiar thematics (woman as child, woman as kitten) but also because of her person, of an almost unique specification of the face, which has nothing of the essence left in it, but is constituted by an infinite complexity of morphological functions. As a language, Garbo's singularity was of the order of the concept, thatof Audrey Hepburn is of the order of the substance. The face of Garbo is an Idea, that of Hepburn, an Event."
--Roland Barthes, from "The Face of Garbo," in Mythologies (1957).
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Also, as a post on AmericaBlog reminded me, today is the 36th anniversary of the Stonewall Uprising in New York City, one of the signal events in the long history of gay liberation/LGBT equality and human rights struggle in the US, and really, across the globe.
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ahh, where would we be without our Tuesday morning rumination on visuality and subjectivity vis-a-vis Barthes? Coffee breaks just wouldnt be the same without him...
ReplyDeleteFrank, c'est vrai, ça c'est vrai!
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