Orientalism

Orientalism:
- something considered characteristic of the peoples and cultues of west, east, or Central Asia

For the last five summers, I do little "supernumerary" jobs at the American Ballet theatre. This means that if you see Giselle, Swan Lake, or any of the other summer ballet productions, chances are that the little spearman or litter-carrier is me. Right now, I'm a Tiger-man in La Bayadere. La Bayadere is the story of a beautiful temple maiden who falls in love with a handsome prince, but their love is doomed by a jealous priest. It is set in a wonderfully theatrical version of Ancient India, complete with dancing golden idols, poisonous snakes, monks, and rajahs. In any case, in the begining of the ballet, the prince shows off a tiger he has just killed, and it is carried by four guys. I'm one of those guys. The hours are long, the pay is not enough, but you get the great experience of watching all these ballets from the wings. So I'm not going to complain...that much. My only problem is the amount of time I spend sitting (or standing) around in costume. I get pretty bored, so I try to brush up on my reading.

The New Yorker is always a good read. I found an article about the 1920s fashion designer Paul Poiret and his new exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Apparently, he is the guy who managed to get the corset out of fashion, and introduced the first 'couture trousers'. Many of his clothes were inspired by "the hyper-refinement of an imaginary Orient." [The article also describes an amazing party: "Three hundred guests consumed nine hundred litres of champagne, while parrots and monkeys screeched in the shrubbery, and semi-nude black houris and jinns circulated with platters of exotic delicacies."] Poiret began to decline the same time Chanel (who is a real person I discovered) started to rise. “For whom, Madame, do you mourn?” Poiret is said to have asked Chanel, alluding to her favorite color. “For you, Monsieur,” she replied." Wicked burn Chanel.

After that I was pretty much stuck sitting in the dressing room, bored out of my mind again. I headed over to Barnes & Nobles to pass the time, hoping to perhaps find a new Star Wars book. Instead, I browsed through the graphic novels, and found "The Sandman Papers." Now, just in case you don't know, The Sandman is an amazing comic book series by Neil Gaiman, which completely revolutionized the comic business by injecting some fresh blood into the regular superheroes by the way of British gothic literature. [The Sandman is the anthropomorphic manifestation of dreams, and he wanders the human world being super cool, super powerful, and super emo. "A Midsummer's Night Dream," one of the chapters of the series, is the only comic ever to win a World Fantasy Award for short fiction. ] "The Sandman Papers" is a collection of papers that various people have written about the comic series for their discussions at their little english-major meetings. One of the papers is about the story "Ramadan" from the comic. "Ramadan" is about the king of an imaginary Bagdhah who summons Dream (the sandman) to preserve his city, in all it's glorious golden flying-carpet sexy-men-and-ladies splendor. The author discussed how this story dealt with Orientalism. He defined the Orient (east) as the complete opposite of the Occident (east). He said that Orientalism was how all Europeans (like Marco Polo) defined the West, when it was not completely explored or understood. So the more we learned about Asia, China, and India, the more the mystical worlds of La Bayadere and the Other Baghdad (as Gaiman describes it) disappeared. It's really too bad.

I think that Adriana and I are experiencing a little bit of what the old Europeans experienced when the encountered the West. I mean really, how much do we know about the Factory, or rockstars, or partying in the 70s? I have tried my best to brush up on Andy Warhol: I watched Factory Girl, Basquiat, and the 4-hour PBS documentary. I read one of his books. I read his Wikipedia article. I run around in my wig and glasses but I still know that I'm not really capable of impersonating him truthfully. And people accuse me of participating in a fad, but you cannot deny the fact that his art was completely revolutionary in his time, and that his presence still resonates in today's culture. (I have no doubt that if he were alive now, he'd be running around with Paris Hilton). I think that we should just enjoy our fascination in this mysterious world, and try not to shoot down the flying carpets. Thank you for reading this possibly incoherent rant.