What my nail polish stash says about society at large and what OPI thinks of their customers in a worst case scenario.

Before I moved to Honolulu to study abroad for the final year of my BAs I had little experience with nail polish. Up until then it was something I would randomly smear on my nails whenever a significant occasion would present itself and then gradually pick off over the course of the following days/weeks (depending on how many boring lectures I'd attend). I had already been to the US for vacations prior to my move and knew it was a shopping mecca for a heavily taxated North European, so for months before going I refrained from any material temptations. As a result I arrived in Honolulu with savings specifically dedicated to shopping and an empty suitcase. 

As those savings emptied I discovered a nifty trick: A bottle of nail polish could spice up almost any boring old look at the passable cost of 5-8 dollars, and so the seeds to my polish infatuation were sown. Before long I could intuitively spot the outline, shadow or logo of a bottle of Essie or OPI at astonishing distances and would track it down without any hesitations like a cat in heat, thinking to myself "is that a bottle of Big Apple Red?". Soon I would roam the streets of Honolulu hunting for new polish joints. The best places would always be the dodgy drug marts / souvenir shops where a large plastic bin would typically hold the potential promise of delivering an amazing find. Before long I had, needless to say, accumulated a solid collection of varnishes (and a ditto tan). Life was good. 

Not so many decades ago, women had to search long and hard to locate more than a dozen or two of colors if they wanted to paint their nails for special occasions or everyday indulging. That all changed in the early 1980's as two of the now leading brands of lacquers, OPI and Essie, saw the light of day and largely changed the way women thought about nail varnish. The signifiers of their products were not the then usual numbers that had previously been used to identify that burning coral red or the subtle baby pink; instead (I don't know who started the practice, both brands are recognized for it although OPI tends to do more word play that Essie, the more conservative one of the two) you could now go to the salon and have your nails painted in the hue of "Ballet Slippers" or "I don't give a Rotterdam". It was a brilliant move, not only filling a gap in the consumers' life they didn't even know existed, but giving those gaps names that would stick even after the polish had been removed. Since then the market for nail lacquers has exploded, it's an affordable luxury item. Today a quick google search will reveal an excess of nail bloggers who will review formulas, swatch colors (nail/color lingo for uploading - preferably - high quality photos in good lighting that displays the true color of a polish as it may be impossible to tell all the qualities of a color while it's in the bottle) and analyze the details of new collections (brands like OPI and Essie typically release 4-6 collections per year), identifying dupes  or duplicates (colors that are indistinguishable from each other across brands and years), debating similarities between China Glaze's For Audrey and Essie's Mint Candy Apple (one has more green) and listing detailed facts about personal polish collections sufficient in size to repaint The White House into a thousand similar, slightly different whites. Surely, the internet has made this galore possible, but one may ask herself as she's about to buy her 5th cobalt blue polish (they're not the same, they're similar), what's in a color? 

As my own collection has grown (yet not to the point of making possible a White House paint-job) I have been increasingly confronted by this question. Not so much by myself as by my better half with whom I've cohabited for two years by now, and with whom I've moved from Canada to Switzerland. I mention this as it was the first incident when the matter of my tendency was brought up. It was, for the apparent reason that if you're suddenly faced with the need to transport 7 kilos worth of nail polish across the atlantic in a check-in bag, you may find yourself endeavoring to devise a protective russian doll-like construction of nail polishes in ziploc bags in socks in shoes. This venture will be noted. And comments will be made. In my case they were not understanding. 

Since then I've been much more aware to keep my 'hobby' under the radar, because I know he will never understand it, similar to how I will never understand the need to own five pairs of skis or four pairs of soccer shoes. Yet they represent the same material refuge from everyday life: when you're painting your nails, racing across that field, flying down that slope, you're not thinking about your tax returns or the constantly returning task of vacuuming your white tile floors - You're simply suspended from reality for a short while. But at some point a collection of anything material grows beyond the point where it's a simple afternoon or hours worth of serene, thoughtless refuge. 

As pastime hobbies and leisurely pursuits are being transformed from exactly what they are - relaxing diversions from the stresses of modern life that we engage in solely for our own, selfish enjoyment - into resources increasingly seen and thought of deliberately as a way of investing in our ability to be ever more efficient workers, producing ever more cost-effective, streamlined labor in all aspects of our existence, exorbitant collections of nail lacquers, skis or soccer shoes may serve as a form of seizure of power against the fiscalization of our lives. Yet they do so through the means of it, thereby possibly mocking it further. "Oh, how joyous it is to be the owner of something as useless as 500 bottles of nail polish!" In your face, cost efficiency society. I refuse to play your game.

But there is another aspect of the polish-mania that I can't help to notice. It's a product loaded with so much femininity, an almost mythical femininity. Being a little girl in the 90´s I still remember some of the nail polishes my mom would wear, and I would sigh at the thought of getting to wear them myself, they were like breasts - aspirational and completely representative of the womanly. My parents were openminded people, but they didn't feel it was appropriate for their 6-year old child to sport a vampy red nail color, and thus it was forbidden and therefore even more alluring to my greedy eyes. And I can still visualize the results of my renegade polish heist one afternoon; my fingertips covered in lumpy red paint and my moms reaction when she discovered the marks on the couch. There's something so ridiculously femme-fatale-sexy, in that stereotypical understanding of what sexy embodies, about red nails. Today the range of colors considered appropriate to wear is ever expanding and I can wear red any day if I want to, the aspirational level inherent in the product is of course intact even as one reaches polish maturity.

Given the thoughts I've been giving to my silly obsession it struck a cord in me lately when I saw that OPI had released a Bond Girls-themed collection of colors. (Yes, as in James Bond; they often pair up with singers or film productions.) Now, sure I'll buy a polish from a Shrek- or Muppets collection, but were they really designing and selling women nail colors representing the possibly most blatantly misogynistic series of films ever produced? (If you're a cultural dyslexic or just plain forgetful, here's a list of examples of some of the stellar sexism brought to the world by James Bond over the years. http://movies.uk.msn.com/features/james-bond-sexist-misogynist-dinosaur?page=8#image=1) Were OPI mocking those who bake their bread and churn their butter? I had the feeling they were. What was I to make out of this? What aspirational level was implied in this line of products? As I stood there, examining hues like "Pussy Galore" - sure, naming the female lead 'Pussy' is totally fine, not discriminating at all - I suddenly lost my appetite for color. 

For reasons entirely selfish I don't want to call nail polish a latently misogynistic type of product, but there is a conflict between the way it is marketed in for instance OPI's Bond Girls collection and the way it's consumed by women. Women who, in spite of these products being affordable (yet OPI costs 23,90 francs per bottle in Switzerland making it significantly less affordable than it is in North America where the going rate for a bottle is between 9-11 bucks) still need a certain financial leverage to accumulate collections as large as those I've seen documented online, thereby obviously being independent members of society. What do we fantasize about when we paint our nails? I think I need some more time to sort through it, and maybe there'll be a part 2 some day if it turns out there's any more to it, but for now rest assured that you won't see any Pussy Galore on my fingertips any time soon. 

The Place Beyond the Pines

The Place Beyond the Pines

From the moment the film starts I am pleased. We're at a traveling circus and we're following right behind Luke (Ryan Gosling) as he's walking through the grounds to the tent in which he's simultaneously being presented. Here he tosses his smoke, gets on his bike and accelerates off into the perfect visual metaphor which the globe of death is, in which he makes his living as a stunt driver. On the carnival grounds we feel the stickiness of candy floss and we smell the burnt popcorn as he post-show is confronted with an old flame; Romina (Eva Mendes). Not many words are exchanged, but oh, don't we feel the gazes between them holler out for the past? 

This is a difficult movie to review without spoiling it, and therefore I have to be as wordless and yet as descriptive as our two former lovers. One thing I might as well reveal straight off; I enjoyed this film and did not, in spite of its length (almost 2,5 hours), check my watch even once. I tend to have the attention span of a golden retriever, only if there are treats or cuddles awaiting me will I dedicate myself for such a wealth of time, but for this I remained calmly in place.

The film very clearly functions as a play in three acts, each focusing on its own main character, ensemble like. Luke and Romina have had a brief, but seemingly passionate affair last time the circus was in town, for as we learn a baby boy is now the result. Luke (always wears t-shirts inside out, overly tattooed) sees the boy and quits his job on the spot to stay behind and provide for his new family. But he's an outsider to society and the only way he's successful in raising money is by robbing banks which is going pretty well due to his…. stunt driving capabilities. Yes. Ding-ding-ding, the bells are ringing; and if you saw Drive from 2011 you know what bells I'm talking about. I'm still impressed by Drive, sadly most by its enthralling aesthetics and score, and not so much by the underdeveloped characters. Here Gosling also plays a mythical, mystical stunt driver who acts as a getaway driver for hire for bank robbers. This particular character is apparently on stock in Gosling and although I couldn't think of anyone else to portray Luke, I had the feeling that Gosling is slightly overcast and doesn't do enough to shake off Drive. Gosling does what he's good at, and what producers and directors hire him for, he delivers great close ups of his puppy-dog-macho face which most of the films he's in takes consistently advantage of. It's fair play, but I miss seeing more. (As a matter of fact, Gosling recently announced his retirement from acting which disappoints me as I have a feeling we haven't seen all he's got yet.) 

After a series of good runs things turn sour for Luke however, and in steps Avery (Bradley Cooper), and idealistic lawyer turned street cop who's now on the hunt for Gosling. But life is hard on a good man like Avery, probably harder than it is on most, because he suddenly finds himself in a hornet's nest of corruption at his workplace. Avery represents the discrepancy between theory, the law, and practice, the police force in which he's working his way up, and the film largely operates from within this vacuum between the two, refreshingly without much judgement or presupposition. And this is the greatest virtue of The Place Beyond the Pines, which it unfortunately lets increasingly go off as the film moves into its 3rd act which is the most troubled of them all (for good reasons that I won't mention here out of respect for those who like surprises.)

In a peculiar way this film is at the same time completely clear in its agenda, it is also elusive and vague. There is an obvious and weighty thematic of father-son-relationships that remains somewhat floating, there is the thematic of human morale which is similarly afloat but to my great joy. This leads me to my ultimate problem with The Place Beyond the Pines; it is a difficult excersise for a piece of fiction to not pass judgement on morale, and although it does in glimpses, it remains surprisingly free of it. But there's a fine line between letting a motion picture speak for itself and washing it out in oblivion. 

The Place Beyond the Pines is tilting towards washing itself out for me as I ultimately left the cinema with an unsettling feeling that director Derek Cianfrance (Blue Valentine) wanted more to make a great film than a great film with a voice. The fact that Cianfrance recently made the plunge into directing cinematic film from having established an entire career on making TV documentaries ("Black and White: A Portrait of Sean Combs" from 2006; the title alone describes the issues of The Place Beyond the Pines pretty well), and we're still seeing remnants of his inner documentarist. Although the documentary genre, when well done, possesses some of the same qualites as cinematic works of fiction, they too have to balance fine lines. I would claim that whereas great documentaries (and I didn't see Cianfrance's Sean Combs portrait, no.) utilize storytelling as a technique to bring alive and appropriately dramatize a story that the director is cutting like a diamond (preexisting before his interest, latently waiting), cinematic film needs another level of nourishment to come alive and stand out, and Cianfrance doesn't deliver enough. Perhaps this will be his trademark, but he clearly has his stories to tell, and I think I'd like to see more of those.