Posted on 04/08/2016 5:30:42 PM PDT by Kaslin
HBO shocked the world on April 4 by unveiling a 100-minute documentary honoring the legacy and legislative career of Sen. Jesse Helms.
Kidding -- delayed April fool. It did, though, feature Senator Helms as a villain in a 100-minute documentary honoring the life and art of Robert Mapplethorpe, the infamous anti-Christian, penis-obsessed purveyor of sadomasochistic black-and-white photography.
This defines the ideological and anti-religious sensibilities of HBO: It celebrates those who upset Christian conservatives (and conservative Christians) most. The idea that this perverted sex maniac is a significant historical figure is laughable -- you can't watch the parade of penis pictures and fisting photos in the documentary and argue otherwise. His greatest achievement is the depth of his perversity.
So it's only natural that the selectively clipped sound bites of "villainous" Helms at the beginning and the end are the only conservative critiques that appear. Producer-directors Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato, best known for creating the reality show "RuPaul's Drag Race" on the Logo TV channel, were natural Mapplethorpe promoters. After watching the documentary, a reviewer at The Washington Post noted the filmmakers seemed most interested in focusing on the "clinical deification that has visited Mapplethorpe's life and work" in the years since Helms denounced him.
In an interview with the International Documentary Association, Bailey happily quoted critic Simon Doonan's description of their production house, World of Wonder, as "a rank, twisted Bauhaus of perverse creativity, dedicated to celebrating everything which is squalid and marginal. ... I wish them continued success in their quest to spotlight the beauty that resides in the gutter."
You get the point. They are guilty of several obvious exclusions in this film -- so obvious as to be deliberate. First, while they revel in the obscenity trial over a Mapplethorpe exhibit that premiered in Cincinnati after he died, they never note or show two of the photographs that exposed small children's genitals. They were "Jesse McBride," featuring a young boy posing naked on a chair, and "Rosie," showing a 4-year-old girl seated in a dress with no underpants, her legs bent revealing her genitals. How can the appeal to pedophiles not be addressed?
Mapplethorpe's Catholic sensibilities are highlighted, but it becomes clear that describing his work as Catholic in any way is bizarre. One expert tried to suggest that Catholic rituals are echoed in sadomasochism. But Mapplethorpe was as Catholic as Hitler was Jewish.
HBO shows Father George Stack, the Mapplethorpe's family priest during his childhood in Queens, who suggests that Mapplethorpe was morally conflicted between the angels and the devils. At least that suggestion was rebutted in the film by Mapplethorpe's former lover, Jack Fritscher, who revealed: "Satan, to him, was not this evil monster; Satan was like a convivial playmate." However, Mapplethorpe also wrote to Fritscher, admitting: "I want to see the devil in us all. That's my real turn-on."
HBO also seriously sidestepped what caused Helms to berate Mapplethorpe and his perverted images. Why did the National Endowment for the Arts, funded by millions of taxpayers who never shared Mapplethorpe's exotic views of sexuality, feel the need to subsidize exhibits promoting this pornographer's work and life?
The NEA was supporting a cultural crusade to insist that flyover country needed to fund pornographic art as an educational exercise in broadening the horizons of respectable and "iconic" art. Public opinion didn't matter; the public must be propagandized into submission to the cultural left. This was Helms' complaint, and it was a good one. To withhold the context is a form of character assassination.
This whole spectacle -- the bias by commission and omission -- presents quite a summation of HBO's shamelessness. Go to HBO's online app to see all of Mapplethorpe's filthiest pictures. Stay for their new episodes of "Sesame Street."
His photographs of flowers are quite lovely.
The central issue was why were taxpayers being forced to subsidize his “work” ?
So how long has he been burning in Hell? Must seem like forever to him.
I once saw a photo spread of Elton John’s house and in it were wall sized naked sex act pictures from this pervert.
I knew then Elton and that fruit he married bought kids for something other than parenting.
No one can convince me otherwise.
Don’t ever Google Maplethorpe pictures.
A liberal-ish attorney of my acquaintance said he was watching it and turned it off when they started showing some of the sex act pictures, that it was really repulsive stuff.
Agreed. Although I tend not to like Modern Art, I do have a fairly broad range of art that I find interesting. Some of it is “odd”. I would always oppose censoring art that someone found “too strange” — but I very strongly oppose using taxpayer money to fund art which is, let us say, questionable.
The government should not be in the business of funding culture change, which is what Mapplethorpe and people like him are all about. Why should taxpayers pay? It’s manipulative and evil.
He was an absolute degenerate who died ravaged by an STD. The world is a far better place without him.
I'm no prude, but I find sex is far more interesting when it's not stressed. I think Patricia Neal in a tight dress in "The Fountainhead" was sexy without really trying. Madonna is not sexy despite trying her hardest.
But of course the issue here is the entertainment industry determined to foist perverted homosexual acts (and sexual issues period) on the American public for some reason. Maybe HBO has a very active homosexual audience, but it can't be that large. Nevertheless, HBO seems hellbent on airing series and docs on sexual subjects.
The wife and I dropped HBO after many years because frankly we found most of its programming boring. (Yes, we're old fogies) We originally subscribed to watch "The Sopranos." We simply don't care about having their overtly sexual programming crammed down our throats. Never saw one episode of "Hung," or their other series about Masters and Johnson, or the other crap.
Is there really an audience for this garbage? I can't believe the average American viewer, even if they're liberals, will find a documentary about a disturbed individual who made repulsive photographs worth watching. I could be wrong, but I don't think so.
Ugh.
I thought his “flowers-as-chick’s-beavers” paintings were nice, until I realized that was Georgia O’Keefe.
I gotta see this upcoming season of “Game of Thrones”, but I’m not keen of the idea of paying $10 a month extra for HBO.
Mapplethorpe also had pictures of child porn.
Stop paying HBO. Watch it for free on putlocker.is.
I cancelled HBO many years ago because of their substandard programming. I had paid thru Dec 31st but they stopped service on Dec 30 because of the New Years holiday weekend. They cancelled it acc. to their convenience, not what I paid for, and I missed some of their New Years Eve specials. Thought that was shitty.
So HBO is doing a movie on Lyndon Johnson and the civil rights act, Byran Cranston stars. I guess he now has a fetish for playing communists and making them out to be heros. The trailer painted Johnson in that light.
Somehow I doubt his real life line of “I’ll have those (n-word)s voting Democratic for the next 200 years” will be included.
Yeah, I caught that. Probably going to be more like a sci-fi movie, and nevermind reviewing what nationalizing the welfare state has done in 50 years to the Black community.
Some of Roberts work was exceptional
He was a messed up homosexual ....died hard
I don’t wish that on anyone
He was used up as a twink by the bears very early
One time a group of friends were all at one of our houses, happened to be a gay man who lived alone. I came down with a terrible migraine and he let me lie down on his bed until my pill took effect. At some point I felt a little better and picked up the book on his nightstand and opened it. It was a Mapplethorpe book of photos. The first few were flowers and normal subjects. Then boom it went into naked men wearing weird leather emphasized their privates, and one with a whip inserted. I shut the damn book, placed it back where it had been, and closed my eyes again. Within a few minutes I heard the owner come in and remove the book he had left there. Yeah.
My experience with Mapplethorpe. Later I read Patti Smith’s autobiography, and her partner in crime and roommate was Mapplethorpe, I believe. Didn’t he die of AIDS?
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