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There have been two fairly recent films about Coco Chanel.... [View All]

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WCGreen Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri May-06-11 12:37 AM
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There have been two fairly recent films about Coco Chanel....
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They are Coco Before Chanel and Coco Chanel and Igor Stravinsky.

Why I bring this up here in the most political part of DU is because I believe the thematic drive of Chanel was a strict adherence to form which was dictated by a simple respect for the contrast between white and black.

Bear with me for another moment.

In the first movie, Coco Before Chanel, she was finding herself in a world that defined women by what they wore and to whom they were married. Not what they did, not what they stood for, but basically how they fit into the patriarchal world of the late 19th century and early 20th century.

You can see Coco come alive as she realizes that she has the power to be defined by what she is and what she does.

She literally took womans fashion from Bustle and train to sleek figure enhancing elegance defined by simplicity of style and form.

In a way, very similar to the approach of American architect Frank Lloyd Wright.

She essentially liberated women from being objects and allowed the female form to be revealed in it's un enhanced beauty.

Again, look at the lines in a Wright building and you see form melding with function and this was just as true with Ms. Chanel's take on fashion.

These expression of Ms. Chanel came at a time of great upheaval in the order of the world. Revolution was in the air and conflict between the traditional forms of government to a more,in many places, liberating participatory government. But it also brought with it the brutal repression of the individual just when the world was starting to find value in the lone voice.

Needless to say, I was spell bound by the look and subject of these two French movies.

I have no idea why I gravitated toward these two movies but I am glad I did because it exposed me to an artist that I never took seriously and never realized what it was that she did for women.

She was, in a sense, a revolutionary figure who created the basic style of a century.

And of course, this too affected the political and social nature of the early 20th century and help usher in the liberation of women.

Now I do not care about what she did in her later life, I only knew her from her perfume and the funny SNL skits based on her commercials, but both these movies opened my eyes to what the world was like 100 years ago.

I especially loved the opening scene from Coco Chanel and Igor Stravinsky and the way the crowd reacted to the premier of Rite of Spring which now seems tame compared to what was passed off as music in the later part of the 20th century. (I still don't get John Cage.)

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