July 25, 2007
Stephen Hunter captures Baltimore
Anyone interested in Baltimore should not miss this terrific essay by Stephen Hunter, the movie critic for the Washington Post (and formerly the Baltimore Sun).
'Hairspray' Is an Aerosol Version of the Real Baltimore
Hat tip to my former Sun colleague Duncan Moore for pointing this one out to me.
Hunter looks at how both Cal Ripkin and John Waters are in the news. Hunter notes how Waters transformed the view of outsiders of Baltimore into his own vision:
That image of Baltimore, changing merrily, became the Baltimore of record: so unhip it was hip, so uncool it was cool. Long forgotten is the fact that in the beginning many Baltimoreans hated Waters for his trick of processing an elegant, intellectual city with powerhouse financial, advertising and shipping chops into a kind of Happy Valley U.S.A. of mild, funky rebels and hair enameled lifeless and piled to the stars. Soon the Waters view prevailed, not necessarily a bad thing, and everybody bought into it. "Hon," that exemplar of down-home Bawlamore charm (and not mumbled, embittered Baltimore condescension), became so positive an identifier it was featured on a welcome-to-Baltimore sign on the B-W Parkway.It's okay. That's the way it goes. When the legend conflicts with the truth, print the legend, as John Ford knew. Waters is not a documentary filmmaker; he's a mythmaker, a parable-spinner, an illusion merchant. But you can't forget what's there, too, a vast, flat, hot tragedy, where young men pop each other at record pace and nobody seems to know why or what to do. In a few happy glades -- Federal Hill, Homeland, Canton -- one can live as elegant an urban life as anywhere in America, enjoying a Georgetown at Patapsco River basin prices. But go out on Federal Hill at night, and you see before you the Inner Harbor all agleam, the bold new downtown skyline, and have the sense of a town that seized on the fame and momentum Waters and Ripken lent it, and did its best to become what it seemed to be.
But don't listen to the sirens that blaze into the dark night, or pay attention to the blinking police and emergency service vehicles that look like blood-red pulsing pinpricks in the dark seen from the sleek buildings around the harbor far from where the real dying happens far too frequently.
Hunter channels Tom Wolfe's various takeouts on hair (most especially in The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby) here:
(Baltimore)'s a place of funky neighborhoods, populated by happy peasants, some of them cross-dressed. The defining mark is the hairdo, a kind of individual tower of protein, a high-rise lacquered in place by aerosol droplets so that the ziggurat is as motionless as if built by slaves on the Mesopotamian plain. As for the men, the hair is weighted with glowing unguents that play sparkle games with the light.
I think the wildly individualistic hairdos that once defined Baltimore are disappearing as the older set dies off. What you now have to visit the Honfest to see, used to be just everyday Baltimore. We seem to be getting more homogenous as time goes on.
But on to the important point. Baltimore can be Heaven, Hell, or Camp, or sometimes all three. It depends on whether you are walking along the Canton waterfront promenade or playing soccer at Tudor Arms (Heaven), getting stabbed and beaten to death with a shovel in Washington Hill (Hell, as perpetrated on a Marine on leave who was murdered, according to police charging documents by a girl I've known since she was 8 years old), or Camp (Travolta as Edna Turnblad in "Hairspray."
put pic here
Edna Turnblad (Travolta) and daughter Tracy (Blonsky) © New Line Cinema
Le Mot juste,
L'idee juste,
it's hard work, like chipping rocks in the prison yard. what do I think about this. why is it important? notice then dig then polish. My trembling fear at climbing Tikal in Guatemala .. talk about in writing courses.
Stephen can do in one aftternoon what takes me 17 revises ...
Lord of the Rings
300
Heading South
Troy -- read aloud to Lamont
300 -- read aloud to Lamont
>> laughed out loud at Baltimore Sun
Very thought provoking:
nailed it like a Michael Jordan winning threepeat hotly contested jumper. thanks on behalf of your readership
Credit to Weyman Swagger:
Unofficial Stephen Hunter Web site
Weyman Swagger: He's actually a photo editor on my old paper, The Sun, and a grizzled old truck-driver looking man, without college education and a little rough and hilly in his ways. He's also a brilliant natural editor, who has helped me immeasureably; he knows things the pros in NY don't and my books are much the better for his ideas. I don't always use them but they are usually so provocative that they jigger me into something that works. He's also a very smart perceceptive line reader, who's got a sense of voice and timing and colloquialism bar none. It's a privilege to have him help me.
I had no idea!
- posted by jbelliveau at 11:44 AM in The Neighborhood
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