{"id":89,"date":"2010-12-07T10:02:05","date_gmt":"2010-12-07T10:02:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/outthere\/wp\/?p=89"},"modified":"2010-12-07T10:02:05","modified_gmt":"2010-12-07T10:02:05","slug":"hats_off_to_the_ghosts_of_us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/outthere\/2010\/12\/hats_off_to_the_ghosts_of_us.html","title":{"rendered":"Hats Off to the Ghosts of Us"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Digital inebriates,<\/b> slow down for just a moment. Anyone invested in media currency and the gives and takes of reputation is entitled to a rest, and an antidote. I’d like to offer a holiday reminder that the value of our gawking intercessions may be weighted and elucidated by a smart salute to the past. (And to a young James H. White, who produced the film above.)<\/p>\n
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Historians know I’m right, for their present, crossing the street, always looks both ways. Also, because I recently visited the original Disneyland in Anaheim, I was driven back to my own teacup history. You will not be burdened with wide-eyed tales of my Uncle Irving’s gift of early Mouseketeer ears, or my later boyfriend’s dirty-feet-overhead apotheosis at “Pirates of the Caribbean” — yo ho, long-gone Michael.<\/div>\n
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Hats<\/b><\/div>\n
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Like John F. Kennedy, I could never wear a hat. Any hat turned me “into an organ-grinder monkey,” someone who may have actually seen such a curiosity on a New York avenue told little me a long time ago. But hats were once the crowning definition of polite citizen. And they were canvases for artists of the silhouette.<\/div>\n
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The topic is now the predictable melancholy of the past. Most of us have no real, tangible sense that real people lived more than a few decades before we did, which is why photos and films of ordinary folks a century ago make some of us profoundly upset. A written record of this or that significant figure is never the same as a moving image of some plain Jane in cumbersome frock musing and smirking at an unknown man with a camera. She laughs without sound at your grave thoughts, a scythe in her gloved hands.<\/div>\n
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Paris. Here’s Paris. 1900 Paris.<\/div>\n
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\"Paris<\/a><\/div>\n
Here’s the same view, from the Trocadero, but wait! Who is the man in the hat?<\/div>\n
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\"Paris<\/a><\/div>\n
And then, at the very left, the angular woman in her hat. Any relation?<\/div>\n
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\"Paris<\/a><\/div>\n
She’s walking in front of the camera, ruining the view, the modern cameraman says.<\/div>\n
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They are spirits, of course, ghosts of the 20th century. I suggest we greet them, wherever they may have wound up: as early trench fodder, grizzled Vichy cowards, MGM extras, loving gay spouses. Their hats, at least, provide an entree to the future and an invitation to all of us to write.<\/div>\n
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For an automatic alert when there is a new Out There post, email jiweinste@aol.com<\/font><\/a><\/st1:personname>.<\/span><\/div>\n
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  Digital inebriates, slow down for just a moment. Anyone invested in media currency and the gives and takes of reputation is entitled to a rest, and an antidote. I’d like to offer a holiday reminder that the value of our gawking intercessions may be weighted and elucidated by a smart salute to the past. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[231,233,230,232,229],"class_list":{"0":"post-89","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-main","7":"tag-digital","8":"tag-disneyland","9":"tag-hats","10":"tag-history","11":"tag-paris","12":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/outthere\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/outthere\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/outthere\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/outthere\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/outthere\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=89"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/outthere\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/outthere\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=89"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/outthere\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=89"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/outthere\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=89"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}