Day 12:01 am

  • The Notorious Bettie Page and the projecting of dreams…

    The Notorious Bettie Page-2005-Gretchen Mol-Mary Harron-Guinevere Turner-Afterhours Sleaze and Dignity-2

    One of the things that struck me on a recent rewatching of 2005 film The Notorious Bettie Page is the way that society and culture can sometimes project its wishes, ideas and iconography onto a particular person or idea.

    Take Bettie Page…

    The Notorious Bettie Page-2005-Gretchen Mol-Mary Harron-Guinevere Turner-Afterhours Sleaze and DignityHer becoming an icon stems in part from how she looked, photographed and the curious ability she had in images to be both the playful cheesecake gal next door and also when required something a touch darker – sometimes in the same photograph…

    …but still, from amongst many hundreds or thousands of women who posed for pin-up and the like photographs back when, over the years she has come to represent something more over and above her contemporaries – a pinnacle, focus or distilling of a 1950s pin-up dream and imagined culture.

    Although it’s a fair while since I’ve read it, for further unearthing’s of the story The Real Bettie Page: The Truth About the Queen of the Pin-ups could well be a start.

    Visit the film in the ether here and here.

    Peruse the film here.

     

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