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Dior has a new commercial for its perfume J'Adore. Charlize Theron is the model in the ad. She strides across the luxurious floors of Versailles' Hall of Mirrors in a transparent, jewel-encrusted gown, looking like Eve ready to conquer the world. The background music puts energy into Charlize's gait with its aggressive beat. The words to the song are decadent and macabre, like a warning sign to those bothering to listen to them. Like the last days of Marie Antoinette's reign when she ignored the turmoils of the world outside her palace and feasted on cakes while bread was scarce for her fellow Frenchmen, uttering her infamous let them eat cake too, today's fashion industry stretches decadence to monstrous extremes. Charlize looks like an Amazon Android, which is the preferred model for fashion magazines these days: tall, slim, slightly androgynous, and aggressively unfeminine.
The song which Charlize struts to is called "Heavy Cross" by the group Gossip from their album Music for Men. The single "Heavy Cross" was released independently from the album, and its cover features a cross turned on its head, some heavy cross for those who turn to the devil to alleviate its powers (or so they think). The video to the song features an amoeba-like Beth Ditto, who looks like one of those nether creatures from Star Wars, or the monster Xerxes from the movie 300. A Medusa-like beast from ancient pagan mythology appears in the video, gyrating to the song.
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Ditto models in Jean Paul Gualtier's fashion shows, and adds the avant-garde freakishness that the modern art and design world craves so much. Ditto herself, besides her outward freakishness, is also a lesbian.
Charlize is now starring in Young Adult, a movie about a woman rejected in love, and who has returned to her hometown to wreak havoc on the new life, and love, of her old boyfriend. When I read the summary of the movie, I couldn't understand what enjoyment (I don't mean cheap thrills, but genuine involvement and pleasure in a story well told) I would derive from such a film. Why sit through two hours of a bitter revenge story? So I passed.
This isn't the only film with Charlize that has left me cold. She made the movie Monster which doesn't even have mildly redeemable qualities. Charlize personifies the film's malevolent, malicious, evil creature with alarming ease. Imagine, the beautiful Charlize deforming her face, and her soul, just for an acting role. Why did she do it? Could it be that she feels she has to give more than the normal Hollywood actress to earn her place, since she came to Hollywood late in life as a foreigner (from South Africa)? Despite her impressive integration into American life, one senses that she tries too hard to be American, with her carefully learned American accent and slightly exaggerated American persona. Perhaps that is why she felt she had to take on the monster role, to show that she is capable of embodying a personality, and a person, leaving her audience impressed with her acting abilities.
Many actors and actresses who play truly evil parts say that they never personally recovered from these roles. Many of them are also intricately identified with these roles, and find it difficult to find ordinary parts, and are often offered roles in horror-type films. Charlize never really acted in a significant film after Monster in 2003, although she is a talented actress (animating a monster is no simple feat). Starting in 2011 (with Young Adult re-igniting her acting spark), she's in post-production in what look like three mildly horror films, of mostly supporting roles.
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The first two images above (a and b) are of Charlize in her "natural" state, without transforming into a film role. Image (a) is pre-Monster. Image (b) is at her Oscar win for Monster in 2003 (yes she won accolades for this film, including: an Oscar for Best Actress, a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Drama, and the SAG Award), where she has lost that confident look. The third (c) is an earlier photo of her in character for Monster. I don't think she ever recovered the confident look of her pre-monster years, and her Dior ad may just be an attempt to capture it once again. Her public look now is harsh, unfeminine, and cold.
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