Elizabeth Taylor photographed by Richard Avedon, 1964
A few reasons why I love this photograph:
1.
Medusa was my first introduction to Greek mythology. I was about five and had no idea what myths were, but then the beauty of mythology is it’s organic. I think children, especially, understand myth. Myth turns the unspeakable, the good, bad, beautiful, ugly, uplifiting and terrifying aspects of life into stories. Children understand stories.
Anyway, I was about five and watching TV in my grandparents’ basement. My legs were splayed out on the scratchy red shag carpet and I clutched a sticky glass of pink cream soda. And then, she appeared on the screen. She was terrifying and gorgeous, repulsive and enticing. The snakes writhing around her head and the lazer focus of her eyes should have sent me quaking underneath my blankets, but I was spellbound. I had nightmares about snakes for years afterwards.
I don’t know if this photo is meant to suggest Medusa, but the suggestion is there. She’s stunning, her skin and bone structure like marble, her brows hinting of villainy, her beauty threatening to turn men to stone.
2.
Liz Taylor was in the movie The Blue Bird, a completely strange, terrifying movie that we were addicted to for a year or so when I was in grade school. We’d just got a new colour TV and, even more thrillingly, our first VCR. . . and cable! We’d tape movies from cable to rewatch on video whenever we wanted. Perhaps we got a little carried away, particularly that Christmas when we taped every single Christmas special that aired between Thanksgiving and New Years. 1988 was the hallmark year of cheesy, melodramatic holiday film (It Came Upon a Midnight Clear, anyone?)
So we taped The Blue Bird and watched it over and over and over again. I didn’t love this movie. I didn’t even particularly like it, but I couldn’t stop watching it. It was a little like The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, if CS Lewis had been on LSD and had access to technicolour when he wrote it. Two children go on a quest for the Blue Bird of Happiness and, thanks to a magic diamond that Elizabeth Taylor’s queen gives them, encounter the human personifications of the animals and elements they meet on their way. Even as I type this the familiar shivers run down my spine – the creepy cat, the annoying dog, yelling at the children to escape the frighteningly out of control party.
Ms. Taylor played the gorgeous, lavish, hedonistic Queen and the children’s humble, dowdy peasant mother. I think that was part of what made the movie so terrifying – the duplicity of the mother’s character, and the lack of middle ground. She was so beautiful in both roles, and so sad. Even when the children discover the Blue Bird was in their backyard all the while their mother seemed doubtful – even mournful. This photo captures that unforgiving beauty tinted with sadness.
