I was asked to comment on a long delirium written by a passionate admirer of Rudolph Valentino who compiles a blog titled: His Fame Still Lives - A blog focused on the life and career of Rudolph Valentino.
From reading the blog, the following is my opinion on that:
I was first of all reminded of some significant lines written by Michael Morris, which he sent to Evelyn Zumaya in an email of March, 2003, I quote:
“Film Scholarship is right now ... and so much of Hollywood history is being appropriated by special interest groups. This is my theory in nutshell. Once mere humans get caught up in the apotheosis of Hollywood stardom, they appeal to a vast crowd which connects to them in different ways.
Like the image of Christ or the Virgin Mary ... seen in various aspects by different peoples (White, blond-haired and blue eyed to Anglos while Our Lady of Guadalupe is a dark-skinned Aztec to Mexicans, etc).
True too with Valentino. He is a Latin Lover to the Italians and Spaniards, has animal magnetism to millions of females and is a closeted gay man leading a double-life to countless gays who are doing the same thing.
The word is APPROPRIATION.
All gods and goddesses undergo this process.
But the historical man or woman beneath the image, removed from Mt. Olympus, ought to be the subject of the historian. Everyone else is a myth-maker ... the fans, the cult followers, the "faithful" who keep the fire burning (often in spite of the de-mythologizing historian!)”
It is too bad this fan and blog administrator of His Fame Still Lives is blinded by profound heterophobia and misogyny. It is too bad he does not even try to read about the events he writes about with the cold eye of a serious historical researcher nor does he approach the events he writes about with sincere cultural and intellectual honesty.
Better to realize it is useless to try to reason with this person because, as they say in my Turin about any really useless effort:
“As peul nèn lavé la testa a l'aso!” (You can't wash the donkey's head)
The gentleman who compiles the His Fame Still Lives blog, goes to great lengths to collect many newspaper clippings which he then assembles as pieces of his own fanciful innuendo mosaic.
He does not seem to care if the pieces do not fit together in any logical or truthful way and I think it's not worth wasting too much time analyzing his Frankenstonian canonical blabbing or his heterophobic and misogynistic pleonasms.
