Turner Movie Classics was playing ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’ the other night, and I was once again drawn into the magnificent madness of Tennessee Williams, and the delicate treatise on the cruelty and kindness of humanity. The brute aesthetic of Marlon Brando’s Stanley Kowalski was echoed in this blog post, because it’s fun to get dirty for a photo shoot, while the rough and tumble shower scene was re-interpreted in this slightly-racy sequence. Trying on the guise of brutal physicality, of dense and impenetrable hardness, was a fun step out of my comfort zone, and I always intended to do an interpretation of Vivien Leigh’s Blanche DuBois, which is where most people assume my natural inclinations lie. But that seemed too easy, too simple, to don a wig and some macabre eye-make-up, and the truth is I simply don’t make a very pretty woman, of any age to be painfully honest. That doesn’t mean I can’t embrace my own middle-aged manhood and cloak it in feathers and ruffles and sheet gossamer wonder. In fact, that sort of hybridization is what has fueled this blog for almost two decades.
Rather than a recreation, as I’m far too old to even approximate Blanche DuBois (who was actually only around 30, and already being urged out to pasture) I’m simply luxuriating in her silk and satin trappings – all feathers and lace and pearls. As a gay man, I empathize with Blanche’s race against time, when being attractive is currency and a means of survival. When that begins to fade, a certain panic sets in if you haven’t devised a life apart from appearance, or if your appearance has been your only way to succeed. And though I do not know that level of attractiveness, I know the chilling effects of age. We will all know that, sooner or later.
“I never was hard or self-sufficient enough. When people are soft – soft people have got to shimmer and glow – they’ve got to put on soft colors, the colors of butterfly wings, and put a… paper lantern over the light… It isn’t enough to be soft. You’ve got to be soft and attractive. And I… I’m fading now! I don’t know how much longer I can turn the trick.” ~ Tennessee Williams
“Yes, I have had many meetings with strangers.” ~ Tennessee Williams
“I don’t go in for that stuff… compliments to women about their looks. I never met a dame yet didn’t know she was good looking or not without being told. And I’ve met some of them who give themselves credit for more than they’ve got.” ~ Tennessee Williams
“We’ve made enchantment!” ~ Tennessee Williams
