RIP BB

On the sublime pleasure of Brigitte Bardot

Trying to write an obit for Brigitte Bardot today I realized I couldn’t come closer to what I loved about her than in an appreciation I did on her 70^th birthday for the publication formerly known as Salon. I offer it here, edited, expanded, and amended.

It’s the hair that always got me. Yes, her body was fabulous, but the magic took place from the shoulders up. Those sparkling almond eyes; the laugh (“a soft brusque laugh that broke into shining crystals” — Rimbaud); the full lips always slightly parted in anticipation, revealing a fetching gap between the two prominent front teeth; and above all, that messy blond mane. The sight of Brigitte Bardot’s hair, as luxuriant and inviting as a love-tousled bed, will always go right to my blood stream. Ever since I first saw her in a movie, I have loved Brigitte Bardot without reason or cessation. She is my ultimate.

Bardot, who died today at age 91, gave up movies on her 40^th birthday, largely to devote herself to animal rights. “The myth of B.B. is finished,” she said. “Perhaps in five years people will have forgotten me, maybe not.”

As a movie star, she has been just about forgotten in America. In France, Bardot is far from forgotten, and there may some not at broken up to see her go. though it’s unlikely that her 70th will bring her many happy returns from the public. Bardot embraced the fascist politics of Jean-Marie Le Pen (and his daughter, Martine), marrying a member of the party. She was penalized several times for inciting racial hatred in her writing and public statements (almost always against Muslims). One of her books reportedly condemned homosexuals (“fairground freaks”), interracial marriage, unemployment benefits, and women in government. Her response to the MeToo movement showed she didn’t understand it as anything more than an enflamed response to passes and pats on the fanny.

Do I find this an ugly legacy? Yes. Does it affect my pleasure watching Bardot? No. I know there are people so repulsed by an artist’x statements or actions, they’re repulsed by the thought of watching them. That’s an understandable human reaction. (The problem is when those people think no one else should be able to experience the work of the offending artist.) But I also believe the refusal on the part of so many to separate the art from the artist is an easy out that allows for the moral comfort of disapproval without having to struggle with the ugly reality that horrendous people can produce pleasurable and even profound art.