HBO's Fetish for Mapplethorpe

Townhall.com ^ | April 8, 2016 | Brent Bozell

[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."

[Impy]

So I watched “All the Way”, the JBJ movie.

Cranston give a compelling performance as an extremely petulant (if Johnson was really like that, wow) megalomaniac.

They put in a version of his famous speech to his tailor (done over the phone in real life, in person in the movie) about giving him extra room for his testes.

Needless to say, it was full of inaccuracy and profoundly unfair to Republicans. Particularly, William Moore McCulloch (a man who supported civil rights long before Johnson did, and yet they acted surprised when he supported the bill) Ev Dirksen, and Barry Goldwater. And it ignored lifelong racist Lydon Johnson’s true motivations, replacing them with nobler ones.

Hubert Humphrey was made out to be a paragon.

It’s portrayal of MLK was interesting, they made him out to be every bit the politician, rather than a 1-dimensional noble hero. There was a needless supblot about J Edgar Hoover spying on him. Not that I didn’t enjoy noted character actor Stephen Root in that role.

Robert Byrd briefly appeared, by an actor I know as the dad from a show I watched as a kid, “Clarissa Explains it All” and Pete Campbell’s father in law on “Mad Men”, he was also in several commercials. It was pretty hilarious to see this guy play Byrd. IMDB says it was Harry Byrd but the caption in the movie said Robert, I’m pretty sure.

It overdramitzed the cloture vote on the Civil Rights act, which passed with room to spare thanks to Dirksen (the film inaccurately made it out that Johnson brow beat him into voting for it) and way overdramitized the election which Johnson led by a huge margin throughout.

Johnson’s hard negative campaign against Goldwater was inaccurately portrayed as being retaliatory in nature after Goldwater somehow got the liberal NY times to print “lies” about Johnson. LOL.

So basically it was an enjoyable work of complete BS fiction.

[fieldmarshaldj]

I watched it as well (and commented on it elsewhere, as I wrote you). Cranston had to walk a fine line between portraying LBJ as a caricature. They left out a huge amount of things (where was RFK, his Attorney General ? Sen. Albert Gore, Sr., who filibustered the ‘64 CRA, he was never mentioned or appeared !). Trying to compact it all into 2 hours did the whole subject a disservice.

They soft-pedaled him too much, though. He was a lot cruder and they didn’t show any of his plethora of women he screwed regularly (surprising, given that they threw in a g/f for MLK, Jr., though we never saw her face). The actor that played MLK was a subpar choice. He looked so little like the real man that it was disconcerting, surprising when you consider the lengths to which they went to get look-alikes for many of the people.

I’m not a fan of Bradley Whitford, he always plays weasels (or seems like a weasel), and he played Hubert Humphrey like a meek toady of LBJ’s. Humphrey was a lot more likeable (few people could say they disliked him as a person in either party) and stronger-willed in reality. Sadly, for him, he got saddled with LBJ’s messes going into 1968.

They always have weird portrayals of Hoover. I didn’t remember him threatening to burn down the FBI HQ if his red stapler wasn’t returned to him, though.

WV’s Robert Byrd had a rather corpulent actor playing him, when Byrd was always very lanky.

Republicans were barely present in the film, and of course, got no credit for the CRA.

[Impy]

I didn’t realize it was Whitford till half way through, dude doesn’t look good.

The guy playing King gave a rather sedate performance, was King really so devoid of personality? Whitford’s Humphrey had the same problem, it’s almost like they didn’t want anyone to take the spotlight off of Cranston.

I didn’t know Johnson had a homo aide (de facto chief of Staff?) that got arrested.

“They always have weird portrayals of Hoover. I didn’t remember him threatening to burn down the FBI HQ if his red stapler wasn’t returned to him, though.”

LOL.

I don’t know why they had Hoover in this movie, they could have used the time for more relevant plot points.