The XX Factor: What women really think.

Revisiting the Victim-Blaming Roman Polanski Documentary

A post from DoubleX blogger Lauren Bans:

Marina Zenovich’s documentary on the 1977 Roman Polanski rape case (Roman Polanski: Wanted & Desired) is about to become an oft-cited source in the contentious debate about Polanski’s 32-years-removed arrest that went down in Switzerland over the weekend. In it, Zenovich makes the fair argument that the judge overseeing the Polanski case was biased from the get-go—he’s depicted as a celebrity-obsessed, press-provoking joke of a judge whose No.1 concern was his own image. This portrait probably has some truth to it; there was eventually a successful motion to remove him from the case and even the victim has said that the ensuing media shitstorm ruined her adolescense. But the rest of the documentary is a gross overwrought defense of Polanski ... (Read more in DoubleX.)

Nine, Illegal, Alone.

There’s a moment in Which Way Home, a documentary airing tonight on HBO, in which someone tells a group of Central American men that 20 percent of them will die on their way into Arizona. “Who wants to go to the United States?” he shouts after imparting this factoid. Every man cheers. It seems that no traveler considers himself part of that unlucky minority ... (Read more in DoubleX.)

HBO Seeks to Replace "The Sopranos" with "The Penis Diaries"

No longer the home of hits like Sex and the City, The Sopranos, and The Wire, HBO is looking to replace its sex-and-violence lineup of yesteryear with ... more sex. Last spring, the network issued a somewhat mysterious announcement about Hung, a dramatic comedy that debuts this summer... (To read the rest of this post, visit our new website DoubleX.com!)

Parenting Tips From Grey Gardens

Ladies, you can fret about your mothering methods all you want, but you will never, never beat Big Edie Beale.

Big Edie and her daughter, Little Edie, are the stars of the 1976 cult classic Grey Gardens, a documentary madly beloved by fashionistas, feminists, and gay men the world over. In the '40s, they were glamorous relatives of Jackie O; by the '70s, the Edies were living, Tennessee Williams-style, in a squalid Hamptons manse, locked in a toxic battle of wills (not to mention a toxic fug of cat-piss fumes). On April 18, HBO is going to be airing a feature film based on the documentary, starring Jessica Lange and Drew Barrymore. Fans cried foul at the casting of Gertie as Edie, but the official trailer has been making the rounds this week, and gosh darn it if Drew isn't spot-on. (See the O.G. Little E here and here.) And how gorgeous are those period costumes?

I did an interview once with Doug Wright, who wrote the book for the 2006 Grey Gardens musical. As Wright described it, the whole saga of the Edies can be read as a parable about overparenting:

I'll watch the film once and think, wow, Big Edie was really a toxic narcissist who forced her daughter to live according to her rules, and in doing so undermined her daughter's entire life. ... And then I'll watch the documentary a second time and think, wow, Little Edie was really ill-equipped to live in the world; thank God her mother gave her sanctuary. And I think at the end of the day, both things are true.

Something to think about for those of us (be-childed or otherwise) planning to spend April 18 fashioning turbans out of hand towels.

Is Paris Hilton the New Einstein?

You probably wouldn't have known it by looking at him, but your Dunkin' Donuts clerk this morning wasn't thrumming his fingers to the latest Soulja Boy bastardization. According to John Parker's sprawling piece in the Economist's quarterly offspring, Intelligent Life, he was probably pumping a little Pavarotti—maybe a This American Life podcast, a choice bit of Faulkner, or some Sartre on the side.

Or it could have been Soulja Boy, but only if he'd already finished Atlantic.

We know this is true because Parker says, thank God, that we're all getting smarter. It's the age of mass intelligence, where high culture reaches low IQs, transforming the ignorants into erudites—or at least ignorants with erudite taste, as in the piece, intelligence seems to be quantified by cultural consumption:

"Millions more people are going to museums, literary festivals and operas; millions more watch demanding television programmes or download serious-minded podcasts," Parker writes, and a festival director notes that her "audiences increasingly want 'the buzz you get from working that little bit harder.' "

Parker quotes Ira Glass, This American Life creator, to reassure us that it's not as bad as Paris Hilton & Co. have led us to believe. "When people talk and write about culture,” says Glass, “it’s apocalyptic. We tell ourselves that everything is in bad shape. But the opposite is true. There’s an abundance of really interesting things going on all around us.”

Glass lost me when he cited the fact that there are "really interesting things going on" as evidence for the fact that we're all doing just fine, but nonetheless, I'd love to believe Parker. I'd love to side, like he does, with Philippe de Montebello, director of the Met, who apparently "is fond of saying 'the public is a lot smarter than anyone gives it credit for.' ”

Which is why I was willing to stick it out for Parker's reasoning:

"It’s unlikely people are more intelligent than they used to be. [Blogger's note: Yes. Yes, it is.] Perhaps the elites that enjoy high culture are now bigger for some reason? Perhaps popular tastes have changed in such a way as to benefit high culture? Or perhaps it has nothing to do with changes in the audience, and more to do with the artists and institutions, who have become more skilled at attracting people? Answer: all of the above."

Unfortunately, Parker doesn't figure his explanation along the lines of his "all of the above" but instead goes on to note, among other things, that "educational standards have risen appreciably over the past 40 years" and that (shock!) people with degrees are more likely to visit museums than people without degrees.

He does take a paragraph to point out that the smartest among us often make stupid—blissfully stupid—choices when it comes to culture, which explains many of my otherwise brilliant friends' addictions to Gossip Girl, which I totally cannot relate to at all, ever. *cough*  Apparently, Parker's "elite market" is more likely to be nondiscriminating "cultural omnivores," rather than "univores," devouring both high and low culture with unquestioning enthusiasm. "One of the features of the market for mass intelligence," says Parker, "is its heterogeneity.

Which is exactly what de Tocqueville, who basically predicted this entire phenomenon, found so terrifying—that the consumer would begin to consume art produced at the lowest, most consumable level, and that art would deteriorate accordingly. He writes in Democracy in America:

"Many of those who are not yet rich begin to conceive [ a taste for the fine arts ], at least by imitation; and the number of consumers increases, but opulent and fastidious consumers become more scarce.... No longer able to soar to what is great, they cultivate what is pretty and elegant; and appearance is more attended to than reality."

And this is why I don't share Parker's self-described "Pollyanna-ish" outlook on the revitalization of mass intelligence. Yes, I believe that society is consuming more high culture, but why? Is it because we desire to learn, or because we want to appear that we've learned—that we're cultured, intelligent, and eclectic? Since, particularly due the hipster oeuvre, intelligence is the new chic.

Chic, and easy to attain. Learn to pronounce Foucault, drop a well-placed Freaks and Geeks reference, read a few Great Books, subscribe to HBO and the Economist, mix in a little ironic Lil Wayne appreciation, and suddenly, you've got class, intelligence, and culture. And everyone perusing your Facebook knows it. Appearance, not reality.

So, my question to you ladies: Are we, the masses, getting smarter, or are we just omnivorous culture frauds—plain-bellied Sneetches who sewed on our own stars?