With the advantage of hindsight, it is easy to determine the moments that precipitated important social or cultural adjustments. However, this does not mean that the individuals involved in these moments knew or were actively working to achieve them as they occurred.
“Carol Doda Topless at The Condor,” which charts the explosion of topless (and ultimately totally nude) golf equipment across the United States after the documentary’s namesake decided to dance go-go in an exposing monokini her breasts in June 1964, sometimes makes the mistake of confusing intention with the revolutionary influence of her determination. Still, co-directors Marlo McKenzie and Jonathan Parker provide an absolute treasure trove of classic footage shot on San Francisco’s North Shore while chronicling the parallel threads of their career and the cultural shift it precipitated.
Against the backdrop of the tumultuous 1960s, Doda became a lightning rod for controversy when her performance at the Condor Night Club helped transform the North Shore portion of San Francisco into ground zero for the growing striptease industry. Although some of the film’s historical consultants suggest that the waitress and dancer was consciously subverting cultural norms, McKenzie and Parker rely on periodic interviews with people who lived and worked in the area, and with Doda herself, for the real story: she received the designer Rudi Gernreich’s topless swimsuit from Condor publicist “Big” Davy Rosenberg and asked to wear it while doing his normal dance routine, and the rest is history.
Where once go-go dancing equipment required performers to wear pastels, Doda immediately popularized, uh, greater exposure and, five years later, added “bottomless” to his repertoire. She would also be among the first ladies to enlarge their breasts with silicone injections – or at least the first to publicly acknowledge this – which has led to a rise in injections and cosmetic surgical procedures. Although her attitudes in interviews were largely pragmatic, or depending on the audience, cheeky (she passed away in 2015), interviews with her contemporaries, as well as with cultural consultants, correctly contextualize how important each of these moments were and why . Her behavior, of course, is part of a larger timeline of female empowerment and changes in the broader sociopolitical climate, but the film highlights that if she cannot be credited with actively instigating many of these developments, she nevertheless deserves a part. of the lion.
In turn, Doda embraced her like a one-day star, while at the same time being suspicious of much of the gaze this generated towards her – especially romantically. (If you are known almost exclusively for your beauty, how will you know if people are attracted to you for a deeper or more meaningful reason?) She was unhappiness in love in her private life, although she reportedly had an affair with Frank Sinatra among others. famous men. She fought legal battles to be allowed to go topless and succeeded, becoming the flashing icon of the Condor sign for years. But she was also left without many of the profits she generated for the venue and was rebuffed when she tried to buy a stake in it from owners Gino Del Prete and Pete Mattioli.
Addressed but somewhat less addressed in the film is the complexity of her impact on the then-emerging feminist movement, which saw much of what she did as permission to be objectified. Given that women of that era were losing their bras (burning them, notes one commentator, was more of a fable), she was, basically, both an embodiment of next-level physical liberation and a shameful capitulation to patriarchal views. She explored the male desire for financial success while supporting the rise of beauty by delivering a profession and a perspective that encourages women to scrutinize their perceived flaws – or inadequacies in comparison to prevailing physical perfection.
While it doesn’t have that full 1,000-yard view, McKenzie and Parker’s film assembles a reasonably extraordinary repository of halftime interviews and footage of men on the boulevard that highlight just how wild and shameless red-light districts have been since their earliest days. Even better, he collects anecdotes from different dancers, musicians, and club owners of the era, who largely remember their heyday of sex drugs and rock ‘n-roll with a joyful sense of nostalgia. If so, was Doda at the forefront of the sexual revolution or was she an embodiment of what would become its most dangerous values? Again, it’s an advanced query. But the fact that her response was too big to really be contemplated in what was supposed to be the story of a pioneering person speaks only to how important she really was at this particular moment in American history.
“Carol Doda Topless on the Condor” expertly highlights a woman who changed the world in a big way. It’s up to you to figure out whether this change was accidental or intentional – and more importantly, for better or for worse.
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