"Do you know where you're going to?" asks the theme to Diana Ross's 1975 movie Mahogany. Well, do you? Turns out it doesn't matter, because Mahogany doesn't know either. Is it a fashion movie? A love story? A political thinkpiece? A treatise on how photographers are gay predators who suckle your breasts and try to kill you? The answer: All of the above! And yet, so much less. After seeing Ms. Ross on Oprah this week, we've had a craving for her old films, and Movieline has chosen to reexamine the nuttiest one of all. The one where she fornicates with Norman Bates.
Diana Ross plays Tracy Chambers, a simple gal who works in a Chicago garment factory and dreams of becoming a celebrated fashion designer. Spoiler: She becomes one, but not before meeting boring and/or rape-y characters. Let's get "boring" out of the way: Here's her turtleneck-afflicted boyfriend Brian (Billy Dee Williams without his Lando regalia), an unsuccessful politician running for alderman in the Windy City.
Christ lord of the Death Star, he is dull. He wastes our time talking about timely racial issues and convincing Diana to stay in Chicago to be a part of his grassroots movement. Excuse me, Billy Dee: Tracy has prismatic cheekbones and doll eyes. She has no time for your "importance." Upside-down you're not turning her. Get out of my movie.
Onto "rape-y": a photographer named Sean stops by Tracy's factory and snaps hundreds of pictures of her, because she's beautiful, enigmatic, and obviously Diana Ross. This guy is the type who tells his subjects, "Show us your tits" and "Still too horny, honey; be more virginal." He is a male chauvinist pig. He is this man.
Yes. Oh, yes. It's Anthony Perkins, the most misogynistic, heterosexual bastard you know. A real lady-thumper -- if your idea of a lady is the coquettish Tab Hunter. Movie! I love you!
At first we think Tony Perkins is enjoying a breakthrough role as a confident, urbane type with snarky underpinnings. Hell, he anoints Tracy with the nickname "Mahogany" because she has dark skin, and he loves renaming his models -- or as he helpfully calls them, "objects." I'm serious. But before we can deem Mahogany a turning point for Mr. Perkins, we come to find he's playing yet another sexually frustrated psychopath, a slightly cosmopolitan update of Norman Bates who might own a ritzy chain of "L'Hotel des Bates" across Europe. It's a shame that Tony Perkins was so typecast in his lifetime, but it's a pleasure for all viewers of Mahogany. Look at how uncomfortable he acts after he wins Tracy's affection, woos her into modeling, and tries to have sex with her -- unsuccessfully. If you know what I mean. And I mean erectionlessness.
"It doesn't matter, Sean. Do you hear me? It doesn't matter," Tracy/Mahogany assures him. Yes, that's correct: Anthony Perkins has no wood for Mahogany. Let me get this straight, director Berry Gordy: You're casting Anthony Perkins as a secretly gay villain who pretends to adore women. You're doing this? In 1975? Years before the world will write blogs about things like "meta pop-culture moments"? I'm speechless. I'm titillated. I'm speechless again. And somehow, I will go on.
Let's not forget that Diana Effing Ross is the star of this smutty vaudeville. Start this clip at 2:00 to watch her shimmy and cavort through the gayest "fashion" montage ever. Our photographer allows Tracy to wear her own designs in her photos, and this is how she becomes a fashion mogul at age whatever. Montages, I find, are a great way to illustrate that your movie is sick of talking. The feeling is mutual, Mahogany. We'll use this time to marvel at the makeup! Blush at the catsuits! Listen to the theme song, which has already played 45 times this movie! Wonder how Tony Perkins can hold up that camera with the atrophied stalks he calls arms! Be on the lookout for his darling pancake ass, too.
Two awesome scenes remain in Mahogany, and my favorite is the confrontation during a party between Billy Dee and Anthony Perkins. Diana's chosen to fall in love with Billy Dee at this point, but rape-eyed Tony has other plans -- specifically, to shoot Billy in the face. Unfortunately, Lando Calrissian has a BMI of more than -28, and thus he overtakes Tony and forces the gun in his mouth. The spectacle contains what you might call homoerotic implications.
I haven't seen this much phallic imagery since the first season of Bravo's Work of Art. Don't worry -- turns out there's no bullet in the gun, and we're spared a head-wound that belongs on a suicidal Titanic captain. This delights Tony greatly.
If that round of bizarre penis antics didn't thrill you, perhaps you'll relish when Tony traps Diana in a car, drives it at 100+ MPH down an empty Italian highway system, and forces her to pose for photos before flying off the road and killing himself. Tah-dah. It's Speed 3: 'Supreme' Command! Start at 0:50 to watch Norman Bates use his taxidermy skills to stuff a stolen car with gay panic.
Did you find
a favorite frame in there? Here's mine.
And so it ends for Tony. Diana lives and gets back with boring, political, gun-penised Billy Dee, and we're thrilled (bored) for her. If you're a little nonplussed with how the film wavers between Diana's love life, career(s), passions, and problems, you've thought about Mahogany too much. For when it comes to appreciating a senseless romance mired in melodrama, turtlenecks, and demonized homosexuality, you can hurry love.
(Or, kidding aside, if you hate Mahogany, you can recycle your angst from this Sunday's Oscars and direct it again at telecast writer Bruce Vilanch. Why? Because he made his film debut in -- you guessed it -- Mahogany. There he is, sewing away at Melissa Leo's shimmersparkles.)
