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| Iron Man's John Lautner-inspired house at Point Dume meets its doom |
From my new column in Taki's Magazine:
With Iron Man 3 hauling in $174 million at the box office last weekend, this is a good time to pay tribute to a great architect whose hold on the American imagination is finally getting the respect it deserves: John Lautner.
No matter where they’re filmed or when they’re set, the Iron Man movies take place, at least aesthetically and psychologically, in the shiny, optimistic, future-infatuated Southern California that peaked in the early 1960s.
Billionaire Tony Stark’s Iron Mansion in Malibu is a fictitious CGI homage to the sometimes hilarious—but often surprisingly lovely—science-fiction houses and coffee shops, gas stations, and motels that Lautner erected all over the Los Angeles area from the 1930s into the 1980s.
... Lautner, a protégé of Frank Lloyd Wright, was the finest exponent of the boyish fantasy school of design—Tom Swift books turned into cantilevered Googie drive-in restaurants—that is the indigenous style of the Southern California car-centered culture in which I grew up. Lautner’s school of commercial architecture required an unprecedentedly broad and affluent middle class, one perhaps never seen in world history before Los Angeles in the 1940s.
Read the whole thing there.
Does anybody read the Tom Swift books any more? They seem to have loosely inspired Johnny Quest, which has most recently been parodied by The Venture Brothers. The books themselves are a refreshing dose of nostalgia for the era when it seemed like the only worry was ant people in the hidden valley you and your scientist dad discovered with your amazing dirigible airship.
ReplyDeleteSteve Sailer said:No matter where they’re filmed or when they’re set, the Iron Man movies take place, at least aesthetically and psychologically, in the shiny, optimistic, future-infatuated Southern California that peaked in the early 1960s
ReplyDeleteI should have been born earlier.
-The Judean People's Front
BTW, any iSteve readers who live in SoCal are missing out if they haven't hiked up Point Dume when the flowers are in bloom. Take it all in and remember just how awesome Cali can be.
ReplyDelete-The Judean People's Front
But you didn't compare & contrast with the late Oscar Niemeyer whose prestigious Trekkie output is now similarly stale and tacky.
ReplyDeleteSorry, child of the 80s here, can only muster nostalgia for Bonaventure/Nakatomi Plaza super-mall crap
This movie follows a seemingly popular modern Hollyweird trend: All the evil characters are white men, and worse than this, they hide behind a fake Islamist actor who was hired to take credit for the explosions.
ReplyDeleteThe feel for this time in relation to now the the past view of the future is captured quite well by Todd Lundgren.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrZRYzZsOOs
ReplyDeleteSince 1965 our nation has suffered arrested development. Gee, I wonder why?
Anonymous:"Does anybody read the Tom Swift books any more?"
ReplyDeleteWell, Alan Moore clearly does, as evidenced by his vicious portrayal of the character (called Tom Swyfte, for legal purposes)in his recent NEMO: HEART OF ICE. Moore seems to have found in Swift (or Swyfte) the ideal figure for expressing his technophobic impulses.
syon
To tie some of the themes together even more closely...
ReplyDeleteIn the Captain America movie, Tony Stark's father appears at the World Expo promoting a flying car. That car seems based on the real Moller International Skycar. The Skycar has been in the design and prototype stages for years. I don't know how the company stays afloat. I think it has something to do purely with their awesome-looking design...
http://moller.com/dev/index.php/sky-car/m400-specs
hipsch
ReplyDeleteWell, Alan Moore clearly does, as evidenced by his vicious portrayal of the character (called Tom Swyfte, for legal purposes)in his recent NEMO: HEART OF ICE. Moore seems to have found in Swift (or Swyfte) the ideal figure for expressing his technophobic impulses.
ReplyDeleteAlan Moore is a scumbag and base coward. A vicious portrayal from him is high praise.
The Chemosphere... that reminds me that I haven't watched Body Double in awhile. Definitely didn't have that naive optimistic feel to by 1984. There's that new wave music video playing in the background for emphasis, whose refrain goes "The house is burning but there's no one home."
ReplyDeleteThe fascination with Tiki culture was a mid-century thing, not just a post-war thing. The first Polynesian-themed bar/restaurant that kicked it off was Don the Beachcomber, which opened in Hollywood in 1934. In 1937, Trader Vic's began its Polynesian theme and quickly captivated the public.
ReplyDeleteSomething about mid-century culture wanted Polynesian themes regardless of WWII experience in the South Pacific, and likely would have been just as popular if American soldiers had never gone there.
There seem to be two different types of exoticism -- the exotic as escape, and the exotic as thrill, for lack of better terms. In more sedate periods in the culture, the escapist mode predominates -- the gentle breeze cooling you off as you sip mai tais on the beaches of Hawaii, slow-moving Polynesian babes dancing the hula, fanning you with palm leaves, etc.
The Tiki masks and statues look too grotesque to trigger your threat response. They're like kabuki masks, easy to laugh at and ignore as dangerous because they're so obviously exaggerated, not real-looking. Like, when did any predator -- human or animal -- ever make that face at its prey?
The wacky-zany appeal of Tiki went along with the broader trend toward camp and kitsch during the mid-century. A drive-in restaurant shaped like a giant duck -- why not?
The mixing of ancient and modern was done much more engagingly from roughly 1900 through the early '30s, with all the revivals of Greek / Egyptian / Babylonian / Mayan / Aztec / Etc. styles, that were incorporated into skyscrapers, picture palaces, and so on.
ReplyDeleteThe faces and poses shown are not like Tiki statues or kabuki masks, so they don't make you laugh right away. They seem more mysterious, and excite your curiosity. Their presence feels more palpable than the Tiki kind of statues, which feel as remote and safely quarantined in the past/far-off space as possible.
The effect is not one of camp and naive optimism about having moved beyond our savage origins, but an exciting and slightly unsettling awareness that the primitive still lives on within modern urban society.
The older I get, the less my liking for FLW and his school. Nothing says dignity like a good Colonial.
ReplyDeleteAll that glass! The point of dwellings used to be to get out of the rain and sun, to remove oneself from the vicissitudes of nature red in tooth & claw. Not to feel as though you're living on the savanna or in a creek.
The shapelessness of the open floor plan was but a step on the road to Geary-ville.
I should have been born earlier.
ReplyDeleteI'm convinced the first person to invent time travel will be a conservative.
any iSteve readers who live in SoCal are missing out if they haven't hiked up Point Dume when the flowers are in bloom.
ReplyDeleteAnd this is when, roughly?
JeremiahJohnbalaya said: "any iSteve readers who live in SoCal are missing out if they haven't hiked up Point Dume when the flowers are in bloom. "
ReplyDeleteAnd this is when, roughly?
I went in mid March this year. Things could be dead and dry by now, but it's worth a look if you're in the area. You could always just spend the rest of your outing at adjacent Zuma beach if Point Dume disappoints.
-The Judean People's Front
Svigor said: Alan Moore is a scumbag and base coward.
ReplyDeletePeople don't get called "base" very often these days, but it isn't for lack of deserving targets. The term needs to come out of retirement.
-The Judean People's Front
The Chemosphere is the house that actor Troy Mcclure took his bride Selma to after their wedding.
ReplyDeletePeople don't get called "base" very often these days, but it isn't for lack of deserving targets. The term needs to come out of retirement.
ReplyDelete-The Judean People's Front
Sheeit, don't get me started. We need to rehabilitate so many epithets. Paltroon, degenerate, cosmopolitan, alien, parasite, etc. I mean, I actually sat there for a few seconds trying to find a better word than "scumbag" and couldn't think of one.
I'm convinced the first person to invent time travel will be a conservative.
True, but then there's the monumental exception of the baby boomers, who have been trying to drag us back to the sixties since the seventies.
Svigor said: Sheeit, don't get me started. We need to rehabilitate so many epithets. Paltroon, degenerate, cosmopolitan, alien, parasite, etc. I mean, I actually sat there for a few seconds trying to find a better word than "scumbag" and couldn't think of one.
ReplyDeleteAll fantastic words. The beigist range of expression is pretty pathetic when compared to the shimmering, surgical invective of our grandfathers' day.
-The Judean People's Front
All fantastic words. The beigist range of expression is pretty pathetic when compared to the shimmering, surgical invective of our grandfathers' day.
ReplyDeleteBeigist, eh? You an exile.ru reader, or has that term jumped their fence?
Yeah, the "archaic" label is almost a guarantee that you're looking at a cool word. Mustifee, sambo, quadroon, octoroon, etc., jump immediately to mind.
I really should try and dig deeper, more often. "Reprobate" led to some good alternatives at AskDefine. Movie dialogue from snobby/high-caste villains is a good place to pick up these starting points. E.g., I got "reprobate" from Judge Doom.
Blackguard, cur, knave, lowlife, miscreant, pervert, rapscallion, recidivist, rogue, scalawag, scamp, scoundrel, wastrel, wretch - all pretty good (especially "wretch," hehe). "Lowlife" seems the most utilitarian (much better than "scumbag"), but didn't have a page. But "degenerate" delivered quite a vein.
If I had to guess, the left's ultimate goal is probably to render most of such words obsolete, archaic, or obscure, in favor of words with that carry specific opprobriums, which they approve; racist, sexist, misogynist, dinosaur, reactionary, homophobe, etc.
Hey, Steve, was the "Chicano" Low Rider Mexican-American culture in SoCal tied in to or influenced by this Googie car culture of the 60's? If so, you're the perfect guy to explain the link.
ReplyDeleteDefinitely. Prosperity was the big thing.
ReplyDeleteMy impression from the 1970s was that Cruising Van Nuys Blvd. on Wednesday night was basically a Mexican thing that white kids did too. It derived from the evening paseo in Mexican village squares, where the boys walk in a circle in one direction and the girls walked in the other.
Svigor said: Beigist, eh? You an exile.ru reader, or has that term jumped their fence?
ReplyDeleteI used to read Exile. Despite the site's overtly lefty politics, the aesthetic was of the right. Ames' and Dolan's feverish, inventive hostility towards the beigists really struck a cord with me way back when. If I recall there was a Celine influence in there somewhere that might explain the exile's appeal to the alt-right crowd. Aesthetically, Edward Limonov was always a bit of an rightist too, even in his early eighties radical chic days as a New York hipster. At least to me, the exile team's articulate nihilism was a refreshing change from the secularized Ned Flanders world of the prosperous 90's. Ultimately though, I tired of their toxic, spoiled "transgressive" 90's rerun.
-The Judean People's front
Yeah, I had a similar experience at Exile, except I stopped reading them when I noticed their "transgressive" thing never amounted to "transgressing" against 6 out of the 7 oligarchs, but to defending them. Or at least, their tribe.
ReplyDeleteSvigor said: Yeah, I had a similar experience at Exile, except I stopped reading them when I noticed their "transgressive" thing never amounted to "transgressing" against 6 out of the 7 oligarchs, but to defending them. Or at least, their tribe.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure that the Exile was exactly friendly to the tribe or the oligarchs. While it isn't an anti-semitic site, articles frequently made disparaging comments about various Jewish physical and behavioral characteristic. The exile team also pretty mercilessly mocked the oligarchs if I can recall. The exile writers are certainly not anti-semitic WNs but they aren't exactly Philosemites either.
-The Judean People's Front
Steve Sailer said: My impression from the 1970s was that Cruising Van Nuys Blvd. on Wednesday night was basically a Mexican thing that white kids did too. It derived from the evening paseo in Mexican village squares, where the boys walk in a circle in one direction and the girls walked in the other.
ReplyDeleteJust my off the cuff opinion, but I'm not so sure that the practice of cruising for girls is a mid-century take on the paseo. My middle class Jewish grandfather used to go cruising in the 1940's and I don't think that he got the idea from Zoot suiters. Maybe 60's/70's Chicano cruising was hold out from earlier days, much like their continuation of greaser culture and fondness for 50's music.
-The Judean People's Front
Dear JPF:
ReplyDeleteThanks. It's a real interesting question. Americans had the cars first to go car cruising in, but the Mexicans sure took to it. The great American movie about teens car cruising is George Lucas's American Graffiti set in 1962 in his hometown of Modesto. Most of the kids cruising in the movie are white, of course, but the Mexicans in their lowriders in the movie are particularly intense about cruising.
In short, American kids cruised in cars, but not in an organized fashion on foot. Mexican-Americans cruised in cars, while Mexicans in Mexico cruised on foot in formal paseos.