For any fans of Italian Westerns living in or near Melbourne …

… the Melbourne Italian Institute of Culture is going to show a series of six Italian Westerns, starting on 21 August. The films are (pause to swoon) (ratings are of course Strictly Subjective):

For a Few Dollars More ❤❤❤❤❤

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly ❤❤❤❤

Death Rides a Horse ❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤

The Big Gundown ❤❤❤❤❤

The Mercenary ( haven’t seen this one yet, will watch it in two weeks’ time)

The Great Silence ❤❤❤ (sorry, folks, go ahead and shoot me).

I would sell my soul to be able to introduce the series. (No, distinguished gentleman in black who vaguely looks like Lee Van Cleef, I was speaking metaphorically). Unfortunately someone else will. Oh well, I will sneak a question or two about possibilities of queer homoerotic readings.

jadedbirch:

Let’s see, exhibit G for Gay:

Hmmm…. yes, yes, I can see he’s mildly annoyed at himself for wanting to bend Silver over and fuck him on Eleanor’s desk.  It is clear as day that’s what’s happening in this scene.

“Oh no,” Flint thinks, “Don’t make me fuck the rest of the course out of you.  That would be… hot terrible.”

(Swoons while chuckling)

the-paintrist:

jeza-red:

This is a painting of Jacek Malczewski called simply ‘Death’ and it’s my favourite personification of death in any medium. 

She’s not creepy or scary, or sexy, or abstract. She is this thick woman with worn hands, dressed as normal, with a non-stylised scythe and pins in her hair: like a farmer’s wife that just came form the field and rests against the wall, catching some sun. She is not creeping about the dying one holding her scythe over their head, she is just there, calmly waiting her turn. 

This painting always fills me with peace and optimism when I think about death. She is just there, outside the window, in no hurry at all, sensible and down to earth. I can live with that.

Jacek Malczewski  (15 July 1854 – 8 October 1929) is one of the most revered painters of Poland, associated with the patriotic Young Poland movement following the century of Partitions. He is regarded as the father of Polish Symbolism. In his creative output, Malczewski combined the predominant style of his times, with historical motifs of Polish martyrdom, the Romantic ideals of independence, Christian and Greek traditions, folk mythology, as well as his love of the natural environment.

Yes. In German and English (although English has no grammatical gender for nouns and adjectives) death is conceptualised as male (the Grim Reaper). I prefer the female conceptualisation of the Romance languages, where death can be imagined as an old hag, but also as a mature, comforting female presence. There’s a well-known Italian song (about an anarchist train driver’s suicide mission!!) where death is called, in the feminine, the Great Comforting Being.

Dangerous migrants

On 14 July 1921 two Italian migrants, Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, were sentenced to the electric chair in Boston for murdering two people during a robbery. They were electrocuted in 1927. In 1977 they were officially found not guilty and rehabilitated.Their real “crime” was being Italian anarchists, importing dangerous ideologies into the United States. Thinking about them is part of thinking about how scapegoats can be used to build a sense of threat (“them” corrupting “our” way of life). Sacco’s last letter to his son encouraged him to think about others: “Share the joy of your games, don’t keep it to yourself.”