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USE_GUYS
April 24, 2014
July 3, 2014
The Korean movie, from 2013--
"How to Use Guys with Secret Tips"
--depicts a young woman who gets her
career moving again with a set of very
strange inspirational video tapes: The self-help guru of the
"How to Use Guys with Secret Tips". video series (typically
sporting clashing electric
The *look* of these instructional plaid suits) begins making
videos interjected into the flow surreal appearences as her
of the movie is one of the more spirit guide--
engaging thing about it --
at once dorky and psychedelic. Ala "Play it Again Sam"?
What I'm interested in though
is the overall theme, the There's a touch of the
Great Question that confronts "old curiosity shop" in
all women: to use or not to use? the source of these
(Or perhaps: to sell or not to videos: a moldy broken
sell, and sell what, and for how down stand on the beach,
much exactly?). mysteriously open in the
dead of night in poor
weather...
The usual shoujo form involves relentlessly "innocent"
girls who miraculously achieve the same efect that
they would from "using men", but do so without effort
or intent (or desire?), remaining amazingly oblivious
to the effect they're actions have on other people...
They can't be accused of "using
men" because they're too dumb to "Manipulative" behavior
plan ahead that far. is exclusively the
province of the heroine's
This celebration of dumb competitor, the evil,
luck is unique to woman's false-faced "vixen".
"romance" form.
So I'm interested in
stories with the central
theme is embracing the Urban Legend Woman is a about a female
unashamed manipulation of detective obsessed with Urban Legends and
men. intent on proving at least one of them real.
Here "Urban Legend" seems to mean something
It's also visible in the like "Modern Myth". This is an entry in the
series: obscure sub-genre of "supernatural
detective" (and they actually namedrop
"Urban Legend Woman" "Kolchak the Nightstalker"!)...
"Urban Legend Woman" is a babe-detective
series, a comedy-drama (with the
emphasis on the former), the best of
which, bar none is "Detective Wanko", The premises of current
where Mikako Tabe plays a gothic lolita Japanese television
police detective with a super human shows make American
sense of smell-- sitcoms of the 60s look
positively sane.
Notably, in "Detective Wanko" they
handle the main character's flashy
style in a more conventional shoujo
fashion-- people comment on it as
being very weird, but she somehow,
unaccountably doesn't see what they're
talking about and doesn't see why
anyone would have a problem with it.
In "Urban Legend Woman", the main character
frankly admits-- in conversation with
another woman-- that she wears short skirts
and heels as a means of manipulating men--
which we see happen frequently throughout
the series: she walks up to a man, touches
his arm and smiles, and he folds up
immediately.
Few women can be unaware
of these issues-- they recur
constantly, however rarely
they're spoken of...
Something I've been thinking
about again of late:
The Case of Yoko Ono
"She played it innocent, but she
knew what she was doing."
-- Julian Lennon
(son of John and Cynthia) ~1998
"I would go as far as to say that she would not
have gotten as much flack as she did if she had
been, for instance, a blond woman."
-- Sean Lennon (son of John and Yoko)
lead quote, "The Real Yoko Ono"
There are a few different stories
about how John & Yoko met...
they're sometimes presented as E.g. on a current
conflicting though it's not clear wikipedia page.
to me that they are, really--
There's the story that John Lennon
would tell on talk shows and such,
about being dragged to Yoko's
gallery show in advance of it's
opening, and being impressed that There's another story that
she just seemed annoyed and wasn't Paul McCartney tells about
interested in giving this random Yoko Ono hustling to get
rich guy any special treatment. In musical scores together for
Lennon's story, she showed no sign an anthology she was
of having any idea who he was, but working on with John
each of them were eventually Cage. First she was in
impressed with the other's attitude touch with Paul McCartney,
toward art: he liked the positivity and he then put her in
of her messages, she liked his touch with John Lennon.
respect for the imaginary.
Are these tales necessarily
in conflict? When he
What's at stake here though? arrived in the gallery,
What do we want to hear, really? she may have been someone
he talked to on the phone
It's very important for briefly, and then forgot
Yoko Ono to be acting in about.
ignorance, for the first
meeting to be some sort
of chance encounter.
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