Showing posts with label pippa. Show all posts
Showing posts with label pippa. Show all posts

10.5.11

Hillary, Pippa and Peeping Toms

The battle’s between the rear and the mouth. Pippa Middleton is now known only in hindsight, or as hind site. Ridiculous as it may seem, the new Duchess of Cambridge’s sister has an Ass Appreciation Society that boasts over 200,000 members dedicated to her. They will celebrate her ‘day’ after her birthday on September 9. Will she be as “pert” then? Even if such adulation must irk her, subconsciously she will become conscious.


The brain behind the bottom, Jimmy Wevell, said: “I watched the royal wedding and the only thing that was entertaining me was Pippa's ass, I have to thank her for it.”

How can it be entertaining? I shall not get into the objectification argument because all such events objectify someone or the other and if you televise a private occasion live then the occasion is the object. However, it tells us a bit about how hollow lives have become that people need to seek not heroes but parts of them. A nose here, a pair of eyes there. One can understand admiration, even emulation if it is restricted to style and mannerisms, because individuality is effortless and some people need to put in some work to just be themselves.

The hypocrisy is that the $5m for one scene she has been offered in a porn film is considered crass. Vivid Entertainment’s founder Steven Hirsch saw what the rest did, and what the rest did was a snowball effect. Not everyone can notice a butt at the same time and with the same intensity.

This is really about images, in this case the televised walk holding the trail. One might dismiss it as just another fancy. It is. This too is voyeurism.


Just as no one has a problem over the two million hits on Hillary’s photograph in just one location (Flickr) looking in what appeared to be shock – wide eyed and open-mouthed, they said. How did they know whether her mouth was open since her hand covers it? It became a testimonial for the nature of the goings on in the ‘situation room’ at the White House. What meaning were people looking for, what reassurance, what condemnation? She later clarified, “I am somewhat sheepishly concerned that it was my preventing one of my early Spring allergic coughs. So, it may have no great meaning whatsoever.”

Pictures are subject to perception and we do know that what happens in a fraction of a second is not only a fraction of the truth, it is probably not the truth at all. So, if this applies to Hillary – no shock, and no Miss Universe moment of OMG, I won – then all images can be suspect.

Why not a cheep of protest over the images leaping out now – pictorial and verbal? I am not a buffet person who goes around a pre-arranged table consuming what is offered. I like it a la carte, especially if I am told it is available. The chef cannot just say he’s cooked it, describe the recipe, put it on the menu and then tell me it’s not worth it, it won’t suit my palate. The chef says it to everyone. Not everyone has the same palate and taste buds or visits restaurants for the same reasons.

My ‘voyeurism’ – the right to know really – has been vindicated by these two ‘harmless’ images of the ladies. Interestingly, the men are not analysed.

Well, not unless they took ‘herbal Viagra’. How everyone is lapping up all this information. Avena syrup, an extract of wild oats, is marketed as a natural Viagra. There are many natural aphrodisiacs available all over the world. But you say Viagra and the potency of the image leaps out. I read a bit about oats and they add to fructose content and are not all that great for several other reasons. And if the dead man suffered from kidney failure, he was cured with watermelons!

There is no need for aphrodisiacs. People can just get off on such imagery.

During the Bhopal gas leak, we got to see some rather ‘artistic’ award-winning pictures, with slippers carefully arranged near a child’s half-buried body. It was half the truth, which was way more horrific.

The picture of Pippa reduces her to one thing and Hillary’s, the ‘hitters’ hope, stands for something more profound and revealing. Neither is factual but impressionistic. These give vicarious thrills and not the reality.
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Updated:

An unseen photograph of Princess Diana in her dying moments will be shown in a film at the Cannes festival. As a report says:

The documentary 'Unlawful Killing' is backed by actor Keith Allen and Mohammed Al Fayed, whose son Dodi also died with the Princess of Wales, reports the Daily Mail.

The 90-minute film will include a graphic black and white close-up of the late princess taken moments after the Mercedes carrying the couple crashed in a Paris underpass.

The distressing image, Diana's blonde hair and features clearly visible, has never been publicly seen in the UK.

It will be shown around the world but not in the UK, prompting Allen to say: "Pity, because at a time when the sugar rush of the royal wedding has been sending republicans into a diabetic coma, it could act as a welcome antidote."

Al Fayed is an opportunist, but I found Allen's statement more so. Yet, unless the film is an expose, such a picture will only be exhibitionistic.