This kind of thing is how Scott Ridder lost his credibility.
Wait too much longer, and it won't be perving.
I'm just making the declaration. I, of course, won't be perving, but I'd hate for others to miss their chance.
Ritter.
Starring in Three's Company didn't help, either.
I can't believe I just wrote a comment taken almost verbatim from the post. All is cold and prickly.
Take solace in the fact that I thought you might be up to something clever.
That's how I get by, most of the time.
Pshaw. I'm pretty sure your relentless modesty is your worst trait.
Take that!
A friend of mine has been not-perving on Hermione since Chamber of Secrets, using the argument that he would have found her attractive when he was 12. People read the books on behalf of their 12 year old selves, so why can't they not-perve on the actors on behalf of their 12 year old selves, the argument goes.
Unfogged does not endorse perving on Chamber of Secrets Hermione.
She doesn't do much for me. That said, I also think that, like Alexis Bledel, the feeling she inspires in older men isn't quite perviness per se. We're not talking about the young Lindsey Lohan or Brittney Spears here. In longing for her, one isn't really fantasizing about teaching her a thing or two. The fantasy is about building a time machine and asking if she'd be interested in studying calculus or French together after school some time. Really, it's very different. Not pervy at all.
Who the hell is Alexis Bledel? Why do you have such well-formed opinions about the fantasy you don't have?
I think the answer may be that the first sentence in my post shows a lack of self-awareness.
One of my coworkers has already taken up the the perving on Hermione cause. He has cutouts of her mixed in with his pics of Paris Hilton and Salma Hayek and she's even his screensaver. It would be creepy if we weren't all certain that he was really teh gay.
There can really be no discussion of perving or not-perving without at least a mention of Natalie Portman in Beautiful Girls. Herewith, that mention, and may the learned discussion continue.
Ok people, when I said "perving," I was thinking of something along the lines of:
"That was a pretty good movie."
"Yeah."
[pause. silence.]
[Awkward; said only to a buddy] "Hermione's kinda hot."
[Disturbed, scrunched face] "Yeah, she is."
His screensaver?! Dios mio.
I googled Bledel; she's attractive and legal. Hell, she's even French mistrissable. Not a good reference point.
Looking at the official site, Hermione seems a bit young for me, but she should be ready for Ogged in three years or so. But you know what's disturbing? The Chinese girl, looking very childlike, in profile with glowing boobies. Jeez.
Alexis Bledel! The only Gilmore Girl that really matters! And she's older than me, so it's totally not perving.
Natalie Portman in The Professional is rather nymphet-esque, as well.
Yes, but Bledel's been on TV for a while, and she's most well-known for playing a high school character.
OK, but that raises a separate question: if your wife (assume in her 30s) acts out a fantasy of yours in which she dresses up as a Catholic school girl, is that perving? I vote yes, but I'm iffy on this.
23- I vote no. As long as a strong element of fantasy remains, the perving aspect seems minimal.
is that perving?
Perving is a bad thing now? Was anybody going to tell me?
"Who the hell is Alexis Bledel? Why do you have such well-formed opinions about the fantasy you don't have?"
Damn, Ogged, it's a disappointment when one's heroes turn out to have feet of clay. How can I trust you to make fun of pop culture if you don't even watch Gilmore Girls?
And, I'd just like to state definitively that the hottest Gilmore Girl is Lane.
The glasses, the punk rock, or tthe asian thing?
She's a very pretty LITTLE GIRL.
Jesus, people.
But soon she'll have titties And she's very good at calculus.
You people are sick.
Me? I am just reporting an ineluctable and disturbing fact about the way Warner Bros. chose to light that picture. Did you see it?
Take that!
Ack, I am slain.
You people are a bunch of perverts, and I'm way out of touch with pop culture. I don't know what any of these people look like, or how old they are. (Natalie Portman's an adult, right? I saw the first Star Wars movie, and that was years ago.)
I saw the first Star Wars movie. I hear Princess Leia is hanging out with Maureen Dowd now. Maureen Dowd--rrowr!
"I don't know what any of these people look like, or how old they are. (Natalie Portman's an adult, right? I saw the first Star Wars movie, and that was years ago.)"
Damn, what's wrong with you people? _Beautiful Girls_ is a must-see movie, a movie that tries to really and honestly talk about the fact that
(a) a man can't construct his life around how pretty girls look but
(b) damn, they do look pretty don't they --- mighty, might hard to resist.
And it does this without dissolving into the various cliches you can imagine cropping up in such a movie.
I don't know with movies like this. On the one hand, I recommend them to women as giving some insight into what it's like being male. On the other hand, perhaps that's just spitting in the wind --- perhaps many or even most women are going to approach a movie like this with a certain attitude to the world and men already formed, and are simply going to catalog it as a long sorry list of the crimes of men rather trying to actually get the point of the movie.
Alex is Bledel is a little girl of 24. I thought we called them "women," myself, but I may not be keeping up with the latest theory and usage.
Natalie Portman is also 24 years old, albeit 3 months older than Bledel.
I'm pretty sure B meant Emma Watson (Hermione), who is fifteen.
Hmm. Interestingly, Portman was 15 at the time Beautiful Girls was released. Also, it explicitly goes the pjs route and invites us to consider Portman as a potential romantic, but not sexual, partner. And it totally makes sense in context; it's the mirror image of a 15 year old girl's crust on a thirty year old, and it comes off as sweet. It seems like it should be pervy, but in the movie, it really isn't.
Also, it was a great flick.
Okay, I'll go in the opposite direction. Diane Keaton nekkid may be the hottest 59-year-old I've ever seen. Never thought I'd say that.
(I shan't say what I thought of Keira Knightly in Bend It Like Beckham, except that she was a jolly good actor.)
a 15 year old girl's crust on a thirty year old
Now that's pervy.
This is so important, I'm commenting on vacation. Here's my thing: the promoters of the film are sexualizing Emma Watson. I saw a spread of her in EW recently, alongside the Potter kid and the Weasly kid (who just keep getting uglier as he gets older, poor noodle), and she's wearing a tight t-shirt accenting her (presumably new) tits, gazing at the camera with fuck-me eyes. This is the studio pushing this image of her.
Am I wrong to buy into it? Am I not just a victim of brilliant, confusing marketing? Because the pictures are telling me she's h0tttt. Who's really the victim here?
Natalie Portman must've been 12 or 13 when she filmed The Professional. Great movie, but a little "edgy."
Did anyone see the SNL skit with Lohan as Hermione? Really, I think this is the natural consequence of, you, know, time.
Michelle Wie: pervable? Or, since she's legal (in Hawaii), past pervability?
Hmm... Gilmore Girls season two was brilliant (not that it got bad later, but that I haven't seen the later episodes, so I don't know), but despite (or perhaps because of) my age being much much more closely with Alexis's, Graham is clearly the GG of choice.
Portman was constructed to be hot - or if you insist, hotT - she was the kid in the adult movie, the Lolita to Jean Reno's purportedly reluctant character. Then she was the nicely agenda- free character in Beautiful Girls, showing up those women played by, you know, post-pubescent actors. Since then I believe her acting life has had to do with sacrificing herself from grief after childbirth and shaking her ass for Clive Owen. She's all vamped up on a lad mag last I saw her.
I hope Emma Watson doesn't come to this, and I'm not even the parent of a daughter. In my Friday newspaper insert she was prettied up but definitely clowning with the boys of Harry Potter.
Portman's career has focussed largely on roles that are aided by her native charm, the sense that she's somehow off-kilter. In her world, she's the normal one and we're the strange ones. When she tries to step outside those types of roles, she turns a big ball of suck (see: SW Eps. 1-3).
THat being said, I've had a crush on her since Beautiful Girls which, when discussing it friends, I've always described as a feeling of "Man, she is going to be something when she grows up."
Keira Knightley, I felt no guilt whatsoever perving on from the instant I first saw her in Bend it Like Beckham--she had already crossed the critical threshold of 16.
I just saw Knightly, whom I believe is 21, on the Daily Show. Jeebus, is she beautiful. But again, I don't know that she evokes perving in the way that Brittany Murphy, for example, evokes perving.
There are so many kinds of perving. One perves on Hermione simply by thinking about her, just in virtue of her age. So, even though the typical Hermione-inspired thought is, "What a fine-looking, spirited young lady. I daresay she's attractive," it's still perving. Brittany Murphy, on the other hand, inspires thoughts like "Holy shit, I bet she'd be down with [dirty sexual practice of your choice]."
I'd like to perv more on Brittany Murphy, but I can't help thinking "...and then I'd catch something nasty."
I'd like to perv more on Brittany Murphy, but I can't help thinking "...and then I'd catch something nasty."
Typical Democratic cut-and-run bullshit.
OK, look, here's the deal. Hermione, Portman of Beautiful Girls, etc., are romantic longings for moments that have never, and can never, exist. A longing for a beauty that is not subsumed by sexuality. Not un-sexual, but not really sexual either. More quasi-sexually charming/endearing. It's a longing for the moment before things get complicated; for the moment after a girl becomes a women but before the women learns certain social expectations. A longing to introduce our most completely developed self while not leading with the aggregation of a concealing socially necessitated communications style. Romantic to no particular end other than itself.
Hermione and Portman are both portrayed as head-strong, knowing, and innocent(ish). Clever for the sake of itself. Traits that cannot be appreciated until after they are long gone. Sure, they are hot, which is what makes them perfect, but it's also, kind-of, beside the point.
Frankly, I think that these longings are the desperate gesticulations of repressed homosexuality. This would explain a great deal about my life. But, as I am not long for introspection, I will just project and say, "You are ALL teh gay!"
Why does this make us gay? Doesn't it make us pedophiles? Aren't pedophiles the ones who can't deal with the complicated realities of adulthood? Or maybe we're just sentimental, or, if we were lucky, nostalgic.
In any case, you're about thirty minutes too late: I just watched the (legal!) clips here of the new Potter movie's Fleur Delacour naked in some French film, and I thought, "Meh, too boyish." I'm straight! Woot!
(I note that the comments to those clips are eminently skippable, and generally vile.)
Ogged has enabled the gizmo that records who clicked on that link, and is totally e-mailing your advisors.
Hotdog just wants to keep the little French hottie for himself. Click away, folks! You can trust me!
Woot, Inded!
clearly, Ogged is not "teh gay", mostly I just wanted to get down with the hip Unfogged lingo. I am an embarassment to comment sections everywhere.
Sentimental is, more or less, the right word for one's (read: my) feelings for these Lolita's of a different stripe. Maybe others look at this class of teens in the more proper (or, less proper) sense of "Lolita"; but I have always been slightly put-out by my inability to really slot my reactions to the Beautiful Girls circa Portman.
And my inability to deal with the adult world does not make me a pedophile, it makes me Self-Indulgently Full of Shit.
I just watched the (legal!) clips here of the new Potter movie's Fleur Delacour naked in some French film, and I thought, "Meh, too boyish."
From now on I will envision ogged as le mec in that clip.
Forget Hermione- I want to see how they do Ginny's role in book six for the movie version.
Brittany Murphy, on the other hand, inspires thoughts like "Holy shit, I bet she'd be down with [dirty sexual practice of your choice]."
I also get the feeling ogged reads that blog quite regularly.
Children, Creepy Middle-Aged Weirdos Caught Up in Harry Potter Craze.
"There's never been anything like Harry—it's simply a phenomenon," said [San Diego's Gary Minton, 41,] creator of the "Unofficial Hermione Granger Fan Page" and whose house neighborhood children have been warned never to enter. "And the movie is perfect, especially the casting of Emma Watson as Hermione. She's even prettier than I imagined. I hope she reads the Hermione Granger fan fiction I sent her."
Ralph Fiennes managed to be naked in this film as well. Always naked, that man, even in children's films.
Yes, he was naked in Harry Potter, though in more of a gross/not too revealing way than a sexy one. But I just imagine the conversation with Mike Newell. "I feel that my character really needs to delve into his primal self here..."
Or he started on about the seduction of evil, and Newell talked him down to malign skank.
I saw that movie yesterday, and anyone who says Hermione isn't hot is a damn liar, or possibly, as the only one in the group I saw it with who didn't think so was, gay.
This is unseemly.
Also, no one has mentioned Yglesias' tragic crush on Portman when they were at Harvard together. Or wherever Portman was.
Some say that his rejection by Portman led Yglesias to his present impasse.
Also, Roth's "My Life as a Man" has a letter from the student whose teachers all hit on her to her desperate 28-year old instructor: "I can't save you. I'm only twenty years old", she explains.
I just watched the (legal!) clips here of the new Potter movie's Fleur Delacour naked in some French film, and I thought, "Meh, too boyish."
I could understand "legs too like pencils", but "too boyish"? I just don't understand.
Portman was at Harvard, and I knew a guy, Randy X-, who totally lusted after her. Scrawny little weasel.
I should let him tell the story himself, but what the hell! My roommate ran into Natalie Portman at a party during the DNC (therefore after college, where they might have had a close or two together). She introduced him to company as "Mike Yggles." Don't tell Hi/lde!
"I can't save you. I'm only twenty years old", she explains.
Jeebus. That's lovely.
Scooped by the Onion again.
The shifty-eyed French guy in the film clip was gay or a wanker or a Communist or something. The girl was too skinny, despite the boobs.
I think that the highminded scruples here are having a very damaging effect on all the hott fifteen-year-olds who can only be made happy by one of you, but to whom you are denying yourselves. By the time they're eighteen, they'll be too damaged to help, and it will be your fault.
Jeebus. That's lovely.
Yeah, but any twenty year-old who could write it probably could save you.
I'm missing something obvious. What does this "saving" entail?
Nobody wants to be the Philip Roth character in a Philip Roth novel, especially not Philip Roth characters in Philip Roth novels. There's no salvation for them, though.
Mordecai Richler writes Philip Roth novels at least as good as Roths, but nobody would give any credit to a Canadian.
Even though Saul Bellow is really a Canadian.
I haven't read the book, but I imagine it means delivering them from their own desperate, self-imposed, pathetic loneliness.
I think ogged is close, but not quite right, SB. But Beautiful Girls is basically about said saving; if you see it, you will know.
Mordecai Richler writes Philip Roth novels at least as good as Roths, but nobody would give any credit to a Canadian.
(a) "wrote" (he's dead)
(b) I don't think even Richler's best is as good as American Pastoral or The Human Stain.
The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz and, you know, the other one are pretty good, though.
>anyone who says Hermione isn't hot is a damn liar
w-lfs-n is correct. We need to confront the facts on this.
I'm reading The Human Stain right now. It makes me want the world to be destroyed in a nuclear holocause. Is all of Roth like this?
(a) "wrote" (he's dead)
(a, i) "wrote" (he's deaded)
It makes me want the world to be destroyed in a nuclear holocause.
'Splain please. You mean, it's depressing? Or you don't like it?
I am continuing to have a problem with the word "hot." "Hot," to me, sounds Maxim-ish, and means "fuckable."
Perhaps you all mean that Hermione is pretty. Or beautiful. Or lovely. Or, as someone said, will be a knockout in a few years. Or perhaps you mean, "if I were still in high school I would totally think she is hot." Or perhaps you mean "I have a crush on her, in a sweet kind of way, as opposed to a jerking-off-while-watching-Harry-Potter kind of way."
But if you do, in fact, mean that she is "hot," then ICK.
Well, there should be a "t" on the end there; but yeah, slolernr, because it is so deeply depressing, because of how dreadfully the characters treat each other and themselves. Coleman Silk's leavetaking of his mother, for example: merciful heavens, this is abominable! And for what, in the end? It's a brilliant evocation of the meaninglessness of human existence and suffering, but it sure takes the fizz out of my Fresca.
I'm sure some might claim that the use of more sterile terms such as "lovely," is bad faith. And for some, I'm willing to believe it is. Whether or not such people are commenting here, I do not know.
The "Iff I were in HS..." thing is interesting. We to some degree remember what it was like being at younger ages, such as 15. It might be the case that we are able to in a limited extent put ourselves back into that mindset and worldview, enough so that we can feel attraction in the same way and in the same depth that we did back then.
This is mostly theoretical. I do not find Emma Watson to be hot.
And, to be fair, the guy jerking off in the theater is probably more an exhibitionist than an Emma Watson fan.
84. I read the first two pages of Do Androids Dream... and found the characters to be over-the-top awful people and just put it back.
I remember thinking Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep was an awesome novel, but I also remember thinking this only after I'd made it more than halfway through.
I barely remember it now, except that I thought it was much better than the later movie of a different name.
You know, I read that novel (DADoES) and remember it hardly at all. Except that the Harrison Ford character was married, that his wife was a piece of work, and that Johnny Carson was a replicant. Also, there are no animals. So, basically, Michael, your sense was correct: the future as imagined by Phillip K Dick invariably sucks.
I am continuing to have a problem with the word "hot." "Hot," to me, sounds Maxim-ish, and means "fuckable."
Ok, well, probably not that.
But there was also a weird pseudo-religion and a whole twist involving possibly implanted memories and parallel investigations. So much more complicated, and bleaker, than the movie.
"84. I read the first two pages of Do Androids Dream... and found the characters to be over-the-top awful people and just put it back."
Well, they're not exactly realistic descriptions of realistic people in a realistic world, so I can't say your description is inaccurate. Just somewhat akin to looking at Picasso and noting that the people seem to unrealistically unpleasant looking.
I also wouldn't advise reading Dick if one is incapable of being insensitive to prose style.
"...the future as imagined by Phillip K Dick invariably sucks."
So true. (Unless, perhaps, you prefer a future as a talking appliance.)
[true story: after harry potter movie #3]
me: hey, friend. that girl who plays hermione, how old is she? 17? she's a cutie.
friend: no, me, she's 12.
me: (long pause). oh. ok, this conversation never happened.
(for the record, i thought it was mandated by statute that all actresses playing young ladies must be much older than their characters. 42 U.S.C. 1635, the Gabriel Carteris Act of 1993.)
true stroy #2:
my old band once caused natalie portman to run (literally) from a bar in boston, in '00, i think. good times. she, too, was an attractive young lady. i am quite proud of one of my friends, who managed to drunkenly hit on her for close to a half hour without ever realizing who she was.
And for what, in the end?
Yeah, so, if your question is Roth always like this then the answer is more or less yes. But then isn't that pretty much the definition of comedy?
Can anyone doubt that Philip Roth is perving on Hermione? (Well, he probably doesn't go to the movies, but he would.)
Re Richler: I was disappointed in Barney's Version; it seemed a little soft-centered and self-pitying. Basically Barney wasn't really enough of a jerk to set everyone else off. Also there are some plot goofinesses that I can't discuss without spoiling. Though there were some very good bits. But from the not-that-much Roth that I've read, he does it better.
Man, you guys really are into Roth. I guess that "desperate, self-imposed, pathetic loneliness" appeals to you.
for the record, i thought it was mandated by statute that all actresses playing young ladies must be much older than their characters.
All those who prefer to perv on the safe & legal side should be perving for Ana Claudia Talancón, Gael García Bernal's love interest in El Crimen de Padre Amaro. (Link SFW)
