Mode, SOFA, Skirts & Cubes

I know I promised “media solutions” weeks ago in a post, but I’ve not been emotional up to it as of late. With WSJ closing its prestigious boston bureau last week and some personal toss-ups along the way, I’ve had to re-evaluate a lot of industry factors. I still believe that news reporting and development are essential to democracy, can be accomplished effectively on a living wage, and can even save the industry. I also believe that “magazine” publishers are probably the best poised to roll with the new economic realities of the industry. (magazines are in quotes for a reason that I’ll get to later.) Rest assured I may be lazy, but I am diligently so.

Now for the round robbin’…

Okay in case any of you were wondering, yes I am still obsessed with Ugly Betty, or Yo soy Betty, la fea, as it’s known around these parts. (It’s in primetime on Univision again.)

I got really bored with it in the middle of season two, and mad when they made Rebecca Romijn’s transgender character Alexis a cartoonish murderer. Seriously?! For getting GLAAD awards all the time, the show isn’t that trans-positive.

What I do love about the show is the attention to detail in the set design. The mis-én-scene work is hilariously fun and plays off many design and publishing industry inside jokes adding a depth and richness to this high-style farce. Check out the hallway themes in each episode or the crazy video display in the elevator to see what I mean. The art department even goes so far as to mock up full layouts for each episode’s edition of MODE magazine. They even go back to capture the look and style of past issues. It is this kind of attention to detail that kept me from totally abandoning the show as it seemed to go off the deep end.

What really brought me back this year is the portrayal of Justin entering High School. They are actually taking on “being different”, let’s face it, queer in school and they’re doing it in a really interesting way. They show him searching for identity, trying to be hyper masculine, withdrawing from his mom, looking for role models, being beaten up for his gender expression and all those things that happen to LGBT teens as they come into their own.

Then this morning I read the NY Times. The styles section ran a big article on how schools are dealing with dress codes and gender expression.The article goes into some depth on concerns and even showcases some fairly progressive attitudes displayed by principles. It does seem to me that thinks are changing for the better. Generationally, I think today’s kids will finally bust this gender myth wide open. When my sister and her friend dressed in 70’s male drag for a school dance, complete with tweed jackets and 1970s press-on mustaches BTW, our parents were called in and both girls were threatened with suspensions. I was never so bold. The hyper-masculine world of an all-boys Catholic school put a stop to anything like that right away. (I agreed to go mainly to avoid the poundings I received in public middle school.) That said I did push within the limits of the strict dress code. Instead of the straight blue blazer, I would find and hem in bright plaid and tweed sportcoats. I would also flip up the cuffs of my dress shirt as I noticed the emerging famous lesbians were doing at the timeand, Art ties! Basically, I dressed as my fithy-minded hero — John Waters. I kind of see the previous generation as the gender explorers, my generation (those in their 30’s to 40’s) as the settlers, and the upcoming generation as the revolutionaries.

Design + Craft

SOFA, the Sculptural Objects and Functional Art Fair, was kind of a let down. The craft and quality were high but I didn’t really see anything new or “functional” for that matter. There was a lot of glass and pretty objects, and some good sculptures too. I just get tired of artists trying to be “provocative”. Genital-shaped pendants and gun-shaped wheel chairs lack any subtly in form or ambition. It is like when my magazine would get poems laced with profanity. “Fuck” is not an artistic statement people! That’s what I got from SOFA; a lot of well crafted yet, cheap and easy statements.

And finally…

My creative energy has been zapped lately. Along with all the workplace shuffling of roles and bosses and stuff, I think it is just the environment. In an effort to look professional but have a “fun” environment, they have engineered all the collaboration out of the system. Here’s a link to someone who I think has diagnosed a lot of the problem.Good design doesn’t stop at the shell of the building, and different professions use the same space very differently. I’d like to see a banishment to the so-called efficiency of the cubicle.

Tags: Art + Design, Chicago, dress, gender expression, high school, john waters, magazine, mis en scene, mode, NY Times, robert propst, sofa, transgender, ugly betty cubicles

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 8th, 2009 at 2:43 pm and is filed under Art + Design, Media, Personal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.