Контент 18+ (лексика)
The instigator of a lot of the furor over the film “Matilda” was this prosecutor cum member of the State Duma cum Defender of the Russian Orthodox Church cum borderline demagogue lady Natalia Poklonskaya, who seems to be the officially sanctioned, modern-day Savonarola in Russian politics. That she is attractive and charismatic no one can deny even though she is now persona non grata throughout Europe, Canada, the USA, and even Australia and Japan (I must confess that the reason for the latter two nations making sanctions against her puzzles me a bit.). Poklonskaya, who published a 39-page document detailing her objections to ‘Matilda’, was featured on First Channel where she denounced the film (“blasphemous) and the choice of leading man (a former male porn star — or so it is rumored, and so Natalia believes !) who portrayed Saint Nicholas. It is ironic that such a media icon as Natalia cannot see the levity in all of this. But that’s Religion for you, and she is VERY Religious.
I guess it was the ‘porn star as saint’ element that really the iced the cake for this fine lady and stoked the passionate fires of her purifying nature. And I guess — if you descend far enough into the basic psychological need so many seem to have to deny the animal side of our nature — it makes a kind of schoolyard sense. I mean, guys, if someone were to make a film of your deceased mother’s life, would you want the actress portraying her to be some Boy Toy trollop who had been with every man in the village? No, probably not. Even for those of you for whom deep analysis is not an everyday event, something would probably jar.. Guilt by association, or just the humble and sincere wish that a nice lady would have been selected to play the part of the good and great woman (obviously) that was your mother. I understand and commiserate.
But life is an illusion — or don’t you see it? Few if any of the various Madonna’s, Earth Women, Florence Nightingales, and Virgin Queens were REALLY like that. Come on, accept it!
After JFK’s assassination in 1963, Americans tried to canonize the grieving widow Jackie Kennedy — and she hadn’t even died !! But then she went and married a Greek shipping tycoon and everyone felt betrayed. How could a modern-day saint DO such a thing? Later it was discovered that not only “Jack” but Jackie as well had had multiple lovers during his brief presidency. Princess Diana was known to put herself about too.
So what?
Think of it this way. Your own mother, sacred to YOU, nevertheless was (and maybe still is) a LOVER, surely to your father, but maybe, earlier on, to other men as well. Does that detract from her status as your sacred mother? It’s kind of hard to think about your own mother doing the same things with HER men as you and your girlfriend or wife do yourselves on a regular basis, isn’t it?
But she did (and perhaps still does) because she is HUMAN..
I remember that after my stepfather died, very suddenly and unexpectedly, my mother started writing letters to him, telling him all the things she never said while he was alive. I found a box of them one evening, quite by accident, when I was probably searching for some marijuana I had hidden.
She had written them as therapy: out of a sense of unspoken love and passion and the guilt associated with it. She wrote: “Honey, today I visited your grave. I brought flowers and fruit. The dogs are fine. How are you? Are you OK?. O how I love you. And want you, my dear, my dear.”
That was my Mom. Another man’s grief-stricken LOVER.
These, my friends, are life’s REAL lessons.
So in answer to Natalia Poklonskaya, it doesn’t matter if a former porn star played the role of Nicholas. It wouldn’t matter if he were gay. What matters was how well he played it. And, even more important, HOW GOOD WAS THE FILM?? Was it rubbish? Was it brilliant.?
And another thing that Poklonskaya apparently does not know is the fact that many of the Virgin Mary’s that you see in the Italian and French, etc art museums, were, in fact, PROSTITUTES because, because, because… these were the only women that the struggling artists could afford.
So the next time you are in a famous art museum and you see Mary giving solace to the fresh-born baby Jesus, or consoling the handsome (but full-of nail-punctures) Jesus as he dies, remember that the countenance of the woman (if she is not too idealized) is quite possibly the face of a woman of the streets. And the Jesus maybe a real life pickpocket.
Does that make her less a Madonna? Or Jesus less than the ideal? Or less saintly?
My answer is NO.
Think of it this way. In America, during the great filming years of the big studios, most of the starlets got their roles in a movie because they had agreed to sleep with the Big Fish who had the power to cast them or not. And there was no shortage of leading men: James Dean, Marlon Brando, Sal Mineo, Rock Hudson, etc., who were AS GAY AS IT GETS.
Did that detract from the films? Those women portrayed as faithful wives and the men as war heroes, honest cops, and hard-ridin’ cowboys– did the quality of the films suffer because, offstage, some of these people were very naughty indeed? Did it reduce the worth of the final product that many of the great American actors were short little guys (Clark Gable, Robert Redford) for whom that era’s version of special effects had to be employed to render them tall enough to be taken seriously by both the public and that generation’s women’s ideal of the perfect man? Did it matter that Richard Burton was a drunk or that Frank Sinatra had mafia connections? Not when they were on the film set or on a stage with a mike in their hands,
Miss Poklonskaya refuses to accept the degree to which life is simply an illusion and make- believe. It involves a stupendous amount of fakery: false ideals, false lips and breasts. faked orgasms, faked affection. What usually counts is not how things truly are but how they APPEAR to be. Like GREEN Corporations. And nobody understands this more than both the Russian and the American governments. Illusion, treachery, deceit, and DoubleSpeak are what they excel in.
Finally, it is also true — significantly so, I feel — that Miss Poklonskaya (‘Miss’ because she is unmarried) has a daughter, maybe from her former fiance’. I point this out, NOT to slander Poklonskaya at all — surely her daughter is the magnificent gem of her life — but merely to demonstrate the obvious double-standard we are dealing with here. Do I really need to explain?
The Tzar is to be denied the same freedom of choice that the Duma member has exercised for herself? Ah, but she does not claim to be a saint.
Neither did Nicholas.
So to conclude, Is it too much to ask simply that we should be permitted to see the film if we wish and judge for ourselves — without being vilified by the Church or put in fear of our lives? Church and Art have had their brilliant moments together, that’s for sure (go visit the Sistine Chapel sometime), but too often they must inevitably part company. The Church is didactic by nature: it instructs us how to live. Art is a mirror that holds us as its reflection, and reminds us of who we really are..
====Eric Richard Leroy===
2017-11-07 17:59:00
eric, movies, truth, nicholas, mathilda
