attention (in praise of) chilly women

“helmut lethen has attempted to distinguish cynicism from coldness or ‘the cold persona’…for lethen, coldness is related to cynicism but in some ways distinct from it. like boredom, it involves a lack of affect, a decided understatedness and distance, a disinclination to say what is on one’s mind. but like cynicism, it is a calculated and calculating way of behaving, very much in keeping with urban modernity, where one constantly creates distance from other people and one’s own emotions, not to mention the unpredictability of the times. coldness, like cynicism and like boredom, involves a mode of anticipation and reservation, a mode of being present and yet not being there at all.“ 

—patrice petro, “world-weariness, weimar women, and visual culture,” in aftershocks of the new: feminism and film history