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The children of Marx and Coca-Cola was how Godard described the two main characters of his 1966 classic Masculin Féminin, though I can't find anywhere how Andy Warhol described the main characters of his 1971 Bad. Since MF just came out on DVD, I thought I'd reflect on the crumbling New York City of Bad, replete with the creepy lady in Queens who runs both an electrolysis business ("hold still, hold still!") and a charming string of female contract killers out her home. In Bad, trash is everywhere in the streets; a baby gets thrown out the window; and later we see Brigid Polk tell two women who look like precursors of Laverne and Shirley: "You gotta kill a dawg, and you gotta kill him dirty." Polk's character hates her neighbor and his dog, which she describes in great length. (Hopefully you've read The Philosophy of Andy Warhol or the Diaries to read other dizzying manifestoes, such as about apartment cleaning, by Warhol's female pals.)
How to contrast the imperial superego of mid-sixties Paris of MF and Godard's later Weekend with the early filthy id of New York City? I won't bother. Rent the DVDs and watch these charming worlds in flux, then reflect on how compared with our big cities five years into the new millennium, things probably weren't that bad back then after all. Both are brilliant movies worth watching over and over.
Tags:
andy warhol, bad, godard, masculin feminin
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Posted on 9/23/2005
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