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“You vill give uz ze memes?”

The Ur-Panther

Don't you hate it when you have a perfect, *perfect* way of describing somebody or something, but it's been ruined by overuse and misuse (applied to anything even vaguely similar) until it's become a cliché and just makes you look like you're unoriginal and stupid?

Case in point: Conrad fucking Veidt and cats.

All kinds of people throughout history have been described as feline, or walking or pouncing like panthers or tigers or what have you. And oh dear, is bad romance fiction ever full of clichés like that--it's almost right up there with azure orbs and limpid pools.

But what the fuck do you do when you have found the most feline guy to ever have graced the silver screen? Who also happens to have piercing eyes--yes, piercing, *transfixing* you like no one else's? And whose wooings can only be described as ravishments--yes, exactly what we've tried to clumsily convey for years with "noncon but s/he likes it, really" and wringing our hands to dodge the other, nastier R-word when we know very well this is about something else entirely? And whose elegance is beyond compare, who makes other androgynes seem neuter(ed), who fucking well *purrs* his lines?! Just how many times have those descriptors been used for any old insecure fellow in a crumpled, rented tuxedo walking like he's divorced from his hips and whose delivery lacks enunciation to the point where it's a mumble?!

Seriously. I am always aware of this while writing, and it really fucking bugs me that there will always be several astute readers rolling their eyes over my having called him a cat again, for having written Jaffar uttering a purr in a quivering Pwinzezz's ear before a Wild Ravishment because he is A Beast. And every time he does something with his elegant boypus--I mean hands. And every time his eyes pierce someone and transfix them in place.

AARRRGHHH! It's like finding out you've been copied, plagiarised, almost--because you're in possession of the original, the undiluted concept and then ersatz imitations have flooded the market. It's as awful as when historians discover something ancient and some newspaper or commentator thinks it's witty to call it "a bit like an ancient version of [modern-day trendy thing]", a reference that will date so quickly nobody in 20 years will get it. And you're the historian holding back the Fist of Death (are Dilbert references too old for Tumblr?)

Not that I'm saying Connie invented the cat walk or the slink or the piercing stare (he probably got his way of being from his mum, Max Reinhardt, Romantic literature and cabarets. That last one includes the drag and the bi, naturally). It's just that he *embodied* those qualities so perfectly it's like he was the quintessence of them, a deity/incarnation of those forces. So it's like... well. It's a fight you can't win, writing about him with accuracy, especially if you are like me and hate wanky, "modern" ways of saying something in an unusual way just to sound less clichéd. You can go so overboard with that that it becomes not just an interruption in the narrative flow, but also (especially if it's a deliberate use of ugliness used to mock the beauty of the surrounding text) a huge fucking nuisance that can sink into right old arty-farty pretentiousness.

If I'm arty-farty and pretentious, at least I always lean towards the beautiful and the Romantic. And I revolt, *revolt* at that foolishness that has cheapened and dulled and stupidified so many perfectly apt and beautiful descriptives into commonplace clichés, things who the unimaginative idiots who are the *opposite* of poets use. (I wonder if the scents and tastes of lemons and mint and such were actually exquisite, were they not used to death in household and oral hygiene products. You know?)

Anyway. It's frustrating. I write about that which I experience and see, and if it's been misused, that's hardly my fault, now is it? It's a bit like sex in a way--lovely and pleasurable and beautiful and healthy, an expression of the Life Force, but rendered its exact opposite by far too many people abusing it and thus giving it a bad name. But that doesn't stop me from penning down the thing exactly as it is and how I experience it.

So if you see me going on about those panther glides and purrs and pounces and piercing stares and Wild Ravishments, rest assured that it's absolutely not a lack of imagination on my part. The slinky bastard just WAS like that and there's no other way of describing it, without dishonesty.

And I'm damned if I'm going to hold back from the truth--you get a tell-all on the fucker. In all its hot and wet and sticky and sublime and terrible and awesome majesty.

Conrad Veidt attempting one of his wild ravishments with Lucy Doraine in Schicksal (Fate), 1925. Doraine also produced the film.

What the actual fuck

So, apparently, there's now an adult chat platform called...

...Sext Panther.

WHO IN THE ACTUAL FUCKING FUCK HAS BEEN PEEKING INTO THIS FANDOM?!?

I hope that Connie is happy, wherever he is.

Looks Like Breadare

The problem with the BFI’s copy of The Wandering Jew is that while it does have 24 minutes of material we don’t have in our older copy, it still features all kinds of infuriating edits where they’ve cut down some of Connie’s trademark elongated, slow and dramatic movements. See, for instance, this glare he whips out at the Spanish Inquisition (nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition... except Conrad Veidt). In the older copy, we can see how he does this absolutely wonderful, slow, measured, heavy turn of his head and uses those eyes of his like a lash, really packing a punch into that glare--whereas in BFI’s edit, they’ve cut the entire head turn out! The first frame in the lower gif is the first frame of this shot you see in the film. So the dramatic impact of the glare is taken out--which is exactly what you shouldn’t do with Veidt, because this kind of body language, this kind of balletic, highly choreographed physical acting was exactly what made him so hypnotic and so involving to watch. 

I don’t know about you, but in my view, cutting down on Veidt Balletics is like cutting out a speech by Claude Rains or a swordfight by Basil Rathbone.

Lovv ze haz yet zu leeernn

Imagine what a show-off Jaffar would be in bed, though :') Massive thunderstorm outside the window, invisible bondage with which to suspend his Pwinzezz from the ceiling (or to tie her to the bed, whatever's more comfortable), lanterns lit with colourful spells. Invisible toys she will be unable to see (anything from feather dusters to canes) and which he'll wield with perfect Veidt Motor Control And Glidiness while looking bloody gorgeous while doing it, Those Eyes staring into her very soul and filling it with crazy butterflies.

And then he'd Ravish her so Wildly he'd end up bumming the butterflies, too, as he goes, derping and flailing and making high-pitched meaowing noises and slobbering all over her with that crazy tongue and stupidstache and wonky teeth. ❤️❤️❤️