Reader Spotlight: Angelica Jade Bastién
Thursday, August 8, 2013 at 12:01PM The Reader Spotlight series features you, The Film Experience community out there in the dark, watching movies and commenting or silently absorbing the conversation right here. I started this interview series because a) I'm grateful for your patronage and b) you're fascinating! Today we're talking to Angelica Jade Bastién who writes Madwomen and Muses.
TFE: Hi Angelica, do you remember your first movie?
ANGELICA: Honestly, I don’t. In my youth (can I say that when I am only 24?) films weren’t that important to me. I was quite a raconteur (which continues to this day) but I told my stories through poetry and painting. It wasn’t until I went to an art high school that I fell in love with film turning to words to tell my stories through scripts, essays and prose. The three films that changed my life and sent me into a heady love affair with cinema, particularly classic cinema, are To Have and Have Not, The Sting, and The Third Man. I haven’t been the same since.
Why do you read TFE?
Even when I don’t agree with your conclusions I feel you bring such a fascinating perspective to looking at film. I started to look at why I love (or hate) certain films and actresses differently and was able to articulate my beliefs just a bit better from engaging with your site.
a few of her favorite things
Three favorite actresses?
Fuck me gently with a chainsaw, this is difficult. I will have to go with my cinematic spirit sisters/madwomen Bette Davis, Gina Torres and Barbara Stanwyck. Ask me tomorrow and the answer will change, although Bette Davis will always be in the lineup.
Take away an Oscar. regift it.
Funny enough, I am not at all obsessed with the Oscars. They’re on my periphery vision.
Babs in "Clash By Night"Since you're so into classic cinema, what's the last one you watched before this interview?
The last classic film I watched was Clash by Night (1952). I am currently writing an essay called Viper Slut: Reclaiming the Sexuality of the Femme Fatale. I am circling around the femme fatale archetype and how she has permeated into other genres and also been used to characterize real women (Elizabeth Taylor and Ava Gardner, for example). So, I have been rewatching a lot of my favorite films that have that character type some are noirs, some aren't. Barbara Stanwyck, Bette Davis and Gloria Grahame films have been playing a lot in my home because of this essay. Which isn't out of the norm! I also delve into my own history, sexuality and being a woman who has been labeled as transgressive. In essence, I believe that the femme fatale is a woman trying to gain power in a world that wants to make sure she wants none.
Which movie would you want to live inside of?
I am already a walking, talking Douglas Sirk film. So I would say Written on the Wind crossed with The Lady Eve seen through the lens of Some Like It Hot. Just more diverse, since someone who looks like me didn’t exist in the classic films I love!
Other lovely ladies interviewed for this series:
Grace Mao, Mysjkin, Lynn Lee, Ester, Leehee, Jamie and Dominique
Reader Comments (15)
Fun interview. Now I want to watch some Barbara Stanwyck this weekend.
I have been catching up on Suits right now for a series I'm writing, and am in love with Gina Torres. She's utterly spectacular-awesome choice!
John t - Gina was great in the Serenity/Firefly years but i haven't seen anything else she's done i don't think.
SanFran -- right? I haven't seen CLASH BY NIGHT and when i went to fetch a photo for this post i was like "omg this movie looks awesome". I loved every still I saw.
Very interesting interview! Good to see diversity in her choices -- in more ways than one.
F**** me gently with a chainsaw, but I do love this reader spotlight. Nathaniel, you do meet such interesting people.
Right now I'm trying to imagine what Written On The Wind crossed with The Lady Eve would be like. I'm imagining slapstick melodrama with bizarre color palettes. I would have loved to see that!
Thanks so so much for including me in your reader's spotlight, Nathaniel! I feel so honored to have my lil' cinema blog mentioned on your amazing one as well.
Thanks for all the lovely feedback everyone. This is just the pick-me-up I needed after this week starting off in the most insanely melodramatic way possible. I wasn't kidding when I said I am a walking Douglas Sirk film!
Y'all need to see CLASH BY NIGHT! It is one of my favorite films and has such an interesting inversion of the kind of female archetypes. Marilyn Monroe is a hoot in it too. I could talk about that film for ages (which I actually do in that femme fatale essay I am hoping to get published).
Angelica, your blog is fantastic! And I know what it's like to not have many role models of color in classic cinema. Good thing Barbara Stanwyck, Bette Davis and other stars were so damn awesome you forgot about it as soon as the movie began. :)
That was such a great interview that I don't even mind that you're not Oscar obsessed. Written on the Wind crossed with Lady Eve and Some Like It Hot- so it ends with Dorothy Malone and Barbara Stanwyck on a boat? I love it.
Manny- Aww thanks :) Being a woman of color and loving classic film may seem like a hard thing to do given the lack of interesting roles for people who look like me in old Hollywood. But, the emotional landscapes given form by women like Bette Davis is something I connect with much more than in modern films.
AR- I thought I would get some heat for not being someone interested in Oscars, Ha! But, I am glad the rest of the interview makes up for that :)
And yes the film of my life ends with me, Dorothy Malone, Barbara Stanwyck and Marilyn Monroe on a boat. As all things should.
Brains and beauty. And Gloria Grahame.
Oh yeah.
Oh yes to living in Written on the Wind. Texas bars, technicolor, dancing manically with Dorothy Malone, and stay at a distance from crazy Robert Stack while protecting poor Lauren Bacall. I'll take your Lady Eve cross-over and play cards with Stanwyck as Henry Fonda falls all over the place the moment Rock and Stack are fighting it out.
I don't remember the last time I was this attracted to a woman. Awesome interview
I first became aware of Gina Torres watching the TV series Cleopatra 2525. (Although I didn't realize before that Gina sang the theme song). That was a fun show, with 3 female leads, but our favorite was Hel, played by Torres.
She's one of those actresses that whenever she's on, I wish the camera would just follow her and take up her story. Since she's in Suits, I just bought season one, and I'm sure I will daydream about what's happening with her character when she's off screen.
Thanks for all this great feedback. Y'all are just too sweet!
Hi Jade (Still can't call you Angelica :))
Just a small insufficient message because it was a nice surprise to read this interview. You might not even remember me without my outstanding American accent but I do hope you are still doing well and keep wishing you the best.
We do need more Jade in this world ;)