PLAGUE DIARY 2: SKY WRITES REVIEWS OF OLD BAD HOLLYWOOD MOVIES TO KEEP HIM SANE DURING THIS TIME OF HORRIFIC INSANITY

War Nurse (1930)
I will not make it to the end because a friend interrupted me, but what is it with TCM showing War Nurse and The Body Disappears? Well somebody’s thinking, and therefore so must I. This film has lots to offer. The dialogue is pretty filthy, and there’s Zazu Pitts (who I knew from the 1950s sitcom My Favourite Margie) who has a very funny face. I identify with Zazu because when the nurses first get to the French ‘hospital’ which they have to clean and set up themselves, all of which they do with admirable pluck (War Nurse was co-written by a woman — Becky Gardiner — look her up, she was one of the few female writers in Hollywood ,and most likely knew a lot about pluck) and some girl is screaming about the rats, Zazu makes a funny face and says “I have wonderful pets like that at home, they swarm all over me.” It’s a pre-Hays code move so they can get away with murder. But as a gay man and a slut who somehow lived through the AIDS crisis I’d love to say ‘hey calm down about this Coronavirus shit, I’ve had rats all over me.’ But I know I shouldn’t, so I won’t. But there are incredibly poignant scenes, like when a solder is writhing in agony and a nurse hurries to his side and then goes away to get a doctor, and then the soldier dies, and she just says — ‘Il est parti’ (she’s a French nurse). There are two couples: Robert Montgomery/June Walker (the nice, not too attractive couple), and Robert Ames/Anita Page (the cursed n’er do well blondes). But I am so angry that people are going on about how ‘Coronavirus is like a war!” Well after seeing War Nurse — I have to say, it’s not. Because why did all these nurses go to France? Was it to help, was it heroism, was it goodness of the heart? Were they of-one-mind with all the Coronavirus altruists who say ‘stay at home and stay alive?” No sir— they went to France to get laid. At the beginning of the movie, all the soon-to-be-nurses are sitting decked in furs, smoking and having cocktails (I told you it was pre-Code) and when one of them argues “it’s not our place to go to France,’ another intones: “With five million men out there — it’s our place, darling!” And the central moral dilemma of the movie is whether or not June Walker (who is a nice girl) is going to give in to Robert Montgomery’s advances. She endlessly resists with smart quips until they are in a bombing raid and then finally she relents and kisses him, and does God knows what else. But we know what else. After all, when the ugly ex-teacher nurse with glasses (early on in the film she asks one of the pretty girls ‘do you think they’d take me?’ — and you know it’s a laugh line) refuses to go to the wartime dance in France, one of the other ‘prettier’ girls says “It’s better to walk home alone then never to have been able to take a ride at all.” These are very wise words. I like to think Becky Gardiner wrote them, as they certainly exemplify my philosophy of life. No it was completely different in wartime. The ever present danger meant everyone was devoted to screwing and realising themselves.  All the modern civil rights movements — feminism, anti-racism and gay rights — got their start in World War II. It was the opposite of social distancing. And in World War II everyone was encouraged to get out of the house and go to movies, because the powers-that-be realised everyone needed an escape. A friend of mine told me about her mother who was a little girl during World War II. All she had to look forward to was the movies. But she was a poor kid and didn’t have any money, so she would stand in front of the movie theatre and beg people to give her change. And people would give her money, because she was cute and pitiful. But the movie ended after curfew so these kids ran home along the railway tracks. Yeah. So that’s about as unlike our situation as anything I can think of — the danger of war gives us all permission to only live once and have sex and  escape to the movies. No so much now with coronavirus. I can’t tell you anything more about War Nurse because my friend came over and interrupted the movie. But I looked up the end on Wikipedia. There’s lots of melodrama after the kiss in the car (isn’t there always?). Of course Anita Page doesn’t end up with Robert Ames because they are both bad blondes, so he has to die. But June Walker does end up with Robert Montgomery after he is freed at the last minute from a prisoner of war camp. Is that what is going to happen to us? Will someone free us? That’s what I was talking about with my friend, but then he had to go, and now once again I’m kinda alone, and bored out of my friggin’ mind.

PLAGUE DIARY: SKY WRITES REVIEWS OF OLD BAD HOLLYWOOD MOVIES TO KEEP HIM SANE DURING THIS TIME OF HORRIFIC INSANITY

The Body Disappears (1941)
I got quite lost after The Body Disappears and almost couldn’t find my way back again; lost in one of those black internet holes where you’ve fallen and you can’t get up and can’t get out. The Body Disappears is a mildly entertaining comedy with two big stars — Edward Everett Horton and Jane Wyman. Of Jane Wyman nothing more needs to be said than that she was achingly beautiful — although she could act too — but I won’t hear anything against beauty in general, there is such a thing and she had it. If you see her, that face that is all eyes and cheekbones, and then the lush curly red hair! I can understand why Ronald Reagan married her. And it’s Edward Everett Horton that led me down the garden path of no Hollywood return. But just to do my duty and speak of the movie itself before I get lost in Wikipedialand, it must be mentioned that Edward Everett Horton’s black assistant in The Body Disappears is Willie Best who was in countless films (11 films in 1939 alone) and his character name is also Willie (by that time he must have been so well known that he could play a character with his own name). In The Body Disappears he plays the classic ‘Stepin’ Fetchit’ role; he is a black actor who specialises in being bug-eyed and tremblingly scared. He really is quite good — but like Edward Everett Horton — was always cast as a regrettable a stereotype. I promise to speak of Edward Everett Horton himself, soon, but first I have to talk about the invisible monkey. It just seems so relevant. In one scene the professor — Edward Everett Horton — is chasing an invisible monkey (he is a professor who can make people invisible and mistakenly gives a soon- to-be-married young man a pill after the young man’s bachelor party — a pill that makes him invisible — not bloody likely, but it’s that kind of film.). And it is an invisible monkey of his own making, or rather Edward Everett Horton made the monkey invisible and he can’t figure out how to unmake him invisible. What could be more relevant to the Coronavirus? I mean really. I can’t help thinking that one way or the other this dilemma is of our own making. Anyway it’s certainly a monkey loose in all our lives, and it may right now be shitting on our floor without us knowing it. And whether we made it  up — because Coronavirus is just some weird variation of the flu that we have ruined our economy for — or it is in fact the new plague everyone seems to think it is — we just can’t find that monkey. As for Edward Everett Horton he is famous for playing gay characters in Fred Astaire films. Well not gay of course openly, but pretty much so, one need only watch him petulantly whine to Eric Blore in The Gay Divorcee “I never ring for crumpets.” In The Body Disappears film he is a professor, which is still, today an effeminate profession in American eyes. But the cul-de-sac that I got lost in was when I went to Edward Everett Horton’s Wikipedia page and that led me to a Wikipedia ‘talk’ page (have you ever seen one of those? They’re crazy—) where they were arguing endlessly about whether Edward Everett Horton was gay or not. And someone mentioned Gavin Gordon who was maybe his lover, so I ended up on youtube looking up Greta Garbo and and Gavin Gordon in Romance (1930, one of the early talkies) and Gavin Gordon is evidently gay, which is probably why he never made it as a leading man. And Greta Garbo is just so — well she’s even beyond Jane Wyman because she’s not only beautiful but absolutely real, at every moment. How did she ever get into a Hollywood movie? She is the opposite of fakery. So as you see I got lost in a Hollywood wormhole there and now am repeating that mistake here, but suffice it to say that Edward Everett was obviously gay and obviously Gavin Gordon’s lover, and why would anyone bother to argue about it? And finally, there was a moment for me in The Body Disappears which was very gay — it was really only a gay moment between myself and the movie — because the invisible man is only completely invisible when he is naked, because when he is dressed you can only see his clothes of course (special effects!) .And at one moment the invisible man who is a rich young athlete — a golfer — is naked and talking to Jane Wyman, and Jane Wyman’s character is being quite clear about how sexy she finds him, and all I could think of was ‘wow, she’s talking to a naked man who she’s attracted to but she can’t see him naked,’ which is an awfully sexy situation, at least to my gay brain. Oh yes and one more thing. On some nerdy film page they say The Body Disappears was a rip off of Topper. And Topper frankly made me the man I am today. It was a 1937 film starring Cary Grant and Constance Bennett about an invisible couple — George and Marion Kerby — who were killed in a car accident, and come as ghosts to live with Cosmo Topper. I used to love the series when I was a child (they did a remake of it for TV 1953-1955, so I was at that time about 3 years old). But I remember it. I remember how witty, carefree, and just plain fun the Kerbys were, and how little they cared about life or death (which I think is somehow relevant to the situation all of us are in right now). And I think that you can now officially stop asking the age old question — because yes, the answer is this: Topper made me gay.

COVID-19 And The New Puritanism

I have a friend who was raised in Mennonite country, and he has been torturing himself over COVID-19. I don’t mean he has the illness; he feels responsible.
 “The guilty voice in my head keeps telling me that COVID-19 is my fault.” “Why is it your fault that people are dying of COVID-19? “God is punishing the world because of all the bad things I did.” (My friend is very kinky and very sexual. A lot like me.)
Well, of course it’s crazy to think that immorality caused COVID-19. Or is it? What is happening now seems to have a lot more to do with virtue signalling than science.
Science can’t tell us how to treat this disease, or how to cure it, or how it is passed on (do we get it from asymptomatic people or not?) But the government denies us testing (sorry, there aren’t enough ‘kits’). But when asked questions like ‘Does the virus evolve and mutate?’ or ‘Once you get it are you immune?’ we get ‘Sorry, but we’re working on that.’ There is no vaccine in sight. And no there is no idea what the real statistics are because increasingly it kinda seems like everybody has it, or could have it.
I’m not blaming the scientists or the medical profession; I just think our cultural emphasis should be on facilitating the work of scientists and doctors, not on social distancing.
We are being told to stay indoors, not to see our friends, not go to see plays, not drink in bars or eat in restaurants, not go to the gym, not go to libraries (where are we supposed to get the books we supposed to read at home?). We are being told not to have pleasure, not to have fun.
Let’s put this all in perspective. In Italy — the country that has been hit hardest by COVID-19 in the west — there have been 2,158 deaths from COVID-19.  In the same country in 2014 there were 20,183 deaths from diabetes.
For those of us who lived through AIDS, all this hysteria this all seems more than ridiculous — it’s insulting. In 1982 — before the syndrome was even identified — there were nearly 500 deaths from AIDS in New York City alone. The men who had it were shunned. And they died in agony, demonised — helpless and abandoned. As another one of my friends said ‘Remember AIDS, when we were afraid to touch our friends for fear we might die? But we still hugged. And we still did other things…as safely as we knew how.’ Why? Because we knew that loving each other was an important part of staying alive.
Now all of us face a hugely less dangerous challenge than AIDS, and yet we have decided to punish ourselves by not having fun — and oh, by the way, destroying our economy at the same time. I have no doubt that international travel and large gatherings of people should be cancelled — and people should certainly practice the recommended hygiene. But what we are seeing is virtue signalling on a nightmarish scale. It started with Wet'suwet'en blockades and is climaxing with COVID-19. People can’t stop talking about how virtuous they are, and about how much they care about the ‘vulnerable’ — making sure to remind us that they are not vulnerable themselves. This is about showing off—  not about protecting ourselves from disease. How many emails have I received from places like the Pickle Barrel assuring me that they are concerned about COVID-19? (Do I care?) Everyone wants to show that they care about the older and the vulnerable. But while scientists fumble around from lack of funding and support, we are denying ourselves fun. Well I am one of the older, vulnerable people. My ancestors came over on the Mayflower. In fact I come from a long line of humourless, music-abjuring, self-flagellating puritans but I’m not going to deny myself that soul-nurturing essence called human pleasure — because I know that to do so might make me more ill than touching my face.
Okay, yes I am a ‘bad.’ I will continue hugging my friends, kissing them, and maybe even….’other things.’
Arrest me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_AyuhbnPOI&feature=emb_title&app=desktop

Goodbye! — from an old one to the young

With this Coronavirus thing a lot of us old ones won’t be around much longer. I can’t speak for everyone, and don’t intend to do so here. But a lot of us will be sorry to go.

Here are a few bits of advice. I know — it’s tough to listen. We left you with climate change, populism and economic stagnation, so what do we know?

All that aside (is it possible to put that aside?) here is some advice that I think  is important for you to know.

1. READ

This means books. Remember, you don’t read real books online — usually just bestsellers or blogs. Real books were, many of them, written a long time ago. A lot of real books were written by white men — Shakespeare, Proust, Tennessee Williams, to name a few. But there’s also Virginia Woolf and Emma Goldman, to name even fewer (Emma Goldman is VERY important!) and Amiri Baraka (just to name a fabulous non-white one). READ THEM. I know it may seem like a waste of time, at first. But if you sit down, turn the light on, and concentrate, it will open another world.

2. DON’T IGNORE HISTORY

It’s boring, I know. But people made a lot of mistakes in the past. You could learn a lot from a particularly significant historical mistake: The Holocaust. It’s something horrifying that you must never forget. You need to understand history, but if you absolutely don’t care, then just remember this. All of history can be summed up in a single phrase: ‘human beings are capable of limitless evil, and often in the name of the noblest of causes.’ 

Please, please don’t forget that, ever.

3. SEX

Have it. Every consensual sexual act is an act of love. I know a lot of you aren’t having much sex anymore; declining birth rates in the west tell us this. And I know that sex is messy, inconvenient, and often embarrassing. It’s tough to get naked and mix it up with another living breathing human — but you can’t pretend that what goes on ‘down there’ is not important! You have a physical body. It has desires! (Ones you don’t even know about!) If you shame yourself for your desires, you do so at your peril.

4. LOVE PEOPLE AND TOUCH THEM

This is perhaps the hardest one. Have any kind of love, anywhere with anyone. Even if you feel particularly unloveable — join the club. Like the Beatles said — ‘all you need is love.’ You will die without it.

5. AND, FINALLY….HUMAN BEINGS ARE IMPERFECT: AND IT IS THAT IMPERFECTION THAT MAKES THEM BEAUTIFUL!

Yes, computers are more efficient. Yes, every day we replace more and more bodies and minds with cyborgian parts. I also understand that human beings are extremely flawed; they have flawed bodies and flawed minds. But it is those flaws that bring us closer to ‘The Goddess. ’ Or  whatever it is you believe in. 

Thanks. I just had to get this stuff off my chest.

The New Censorship

The new censorship is subtle. It’s not about governments banning work. True, the Globe and Mail reported that the Arts Council of England  revealed last year that it presently adjudicates applicants according to “relevance not excellence.” But the government does not need to get involved in actual censorship, either officially or unofficially. The notion of prioritising ideas over form has been internalised by artists — and specifically by critics — and is now treated as de rigeur. We now create and judge art only for its content

Unfortunately, it no longer matters how a play, novel, or poem presents itself; beauty is dismissed as a bourgeois value. Now all that matters is the clearly communicated message that the work of art contains. Tragically, this notion runs contrary to the very nature of art, which since the time of the Greek sophists, has been more concerned with creating imaginary worlds than with teaching a moral or political lesson. 

Adorno (a 20th century Marxist philosopher) was once famously paraphrased as saying that ‘there can be no art after The Holocaust.’ This statement has been widely misquoted and misinterpreted. What Adorno meant was that a play or novel that dealt with extermination of the Jews did a particular disservice to that horror if the play or novel was explicitly about The Holocaust — because the resulting art would be merely ‘sad’ or ‘horrifying.’ This would be an inadequate response to the human capacity for evil. Does that mean that artists should not, or cannot, respond to wrongdoing? Does it mean that art should not be political? No. It means that art must make it’s statement through form. Adorno spoke of Beckett, in this respect. He theorised that Waiting for Godot — through it’s poetic dialogue, and hopeless, aimless characters — says more about The Holocaust, than any play which refers specifically to the events of World War II.

It’s great to come out of a musical humming the title song; but I’m afraid it is not so great to come out of a play with a clearly articulated message for changing the world. Why? First of all; just because you ‘saw it in a play’ doesn’t mean you are going to do anything but repeat the ideas in tweets and Facebook posts that constitute a self-perpetuating, self-congratulating ‘virtue signal.’ But, frankly, preaching is best left to the pulpit — and the pulpit does it much better. These days the pulpit has been replaced by social justice speeches and political platforms. Plays, novels, poems, and paintings should — instead of telling us how to change the world — raise questions and stir emotions. I mean contradictory emotions and contradictory ideas; difficult emotions, and difficult ideas. Ideas must be in plays but plays must not be about ideas.

Why take my word for it? Because my opinion is backed up by the history of art — and by common sense. It’s fine for people to get angry about ideas and promote them; but art is not a soapbox. If we make it into that kind of place, then we lose what art is and should be, a special, sacred, holy communication with the human spirit.

I know that sounds high-falutin’. 

Sorry. 

It is. 

 However, the government does not need to get involved in actual censorship, either officially or unofficially. The notion of prioritising ideas over form has been internalised by artists — and specifically by critics — and is now treated as de rigeur. We now create and judge art only for its content

Unfortunately, it no longer matters how a play, novel, or poem presents itself; beauty is dismissed as a bourgeois value. Now all that matters is the clearly communicated message that the work of art contains. Tragically, this notion runs contrary to the very nature of art, which since the time of the Greek sophists, has been more concerned with creating imaginary worlds than with teaching a moral or political lesson. 

Adorno (a 20th century Marxist philosopher) was once famously paraphrased as saying that ‘there can be no art after The Holocaust.’ This statement has been widely misquoted and misinterpreted. What Adorno meant was that a play or novel that dealt with extermination of the Jews did a particular disservice to that horror if the play or novel was explicitly about The Holocaust — because the resulting art would be merely ‘sad’ or ‘horrifying.’ This would be an inadequate response to the human capacity for evil. Does that mean that artists should not, or cannot, respond to wrongdoing? Does it mean that art should not be political? No. It means that art must make it’s statement through form. Adorno spoke of Beckett, in this respect. He theorised that Waiting for Godot — through it’s poetic dialogue, and hopeless, aimless characters — says more about The Holocaust, than any play which refers specifically to the events of World War II.

It’s great to come out of a musical humming the title song; but I’m afraid it is not so great to come out of a play with a clearly articulated message for changing the world. Why? First of all; just because you ‘saw it in a play’ doesn’t mean you are going to do anything but repeat the ideas in tweets and Facebook posts that constitute a self-perpetuating, self-congratulating ‘virtue signal.’ But, frankly, preaching is best left to the pulpit — and the pulpit does it much better. These days the pulpit has been replaced by social justice speeches and political platforms. Plays, novels, poems, and paintings should — instead of telling us how to change the world — raise questions and stir emotions. I mean contradictory emotions and contradictory ideas; difficult emotions, and difficult ideas. Ideas must be in plays but plays must not be about ideas.

Why take my word for it? Because my opinion is backed up by the history of art — and by common sense. It’s fine for people to get angry about ideas and promote them; but art is not a soapbox. If we make it into that kind of place, then we lose what art is and should be, a special, sacred, holy communication with the human spirit.

I know that sounds high-falutin’. 

Sorry. 

It is. 

Not a Fan of Pete

 I know, it seems perverse of me. Because I must admit that he’s an amazing young man. He’s evidently brilliant, attending Harvard and then Oxford (as a Rhodes scholar), and speaking seven languages. But then just hearing ‘Mayor Pete’ hold forth during the 2020 presidential campaign is enough. His studied articulation of the middle-of-the-road democratic party platform is astute, to say the least. And just as a bonus, he’s charismatic. And he’s kinda cute — in a puppy dog sort of way  way — with his furry eyebrows, pug nose, and toothy smile.

So what’s not to like?

The problem is that Pete is not only gay, and married, and a Christian, but he is recently gay (he came out five years ago) and recently married (for a year and a half) and most importantly, he is not just Christian — but terrifyingly devout. So devout, in fact, that he can’t seem to mention his sexuality without mentioning God. Dare I say that being so recently out — and so recently married — might mean that Pete may have some emotional baggage to deal with quite outside of running for president?

But that’s not my concern here.

My concern is that if we gaze for too long at this pesky little pup in his perky little suit, we might just forget that Stonewall ever happened. It may become a little too convenient not to remember that during the late 50s and early 60s Mayor Pete-style homosexuals carried signs and wore suits claiming to be ‘just the same as you and me,’ but achieved precisely nothing on the road to gay liberation. It took a bunch of randy bull dykes, sex trade workers, drag queens, and effeminate gay boys at Stonewall to win that fight. Pete seems to be trying to convince us that if we were all just nice, devout,  middle-class, multi-lingual Rhodes scholars we too might get our homophobic Dads to love us.

But I have other concerns as well. What will happen to our queer lives post President Buttigieg? Well, exactly what happened to black people after Barack Obama. Obama’s presidency confirmed — for so many — the agreeable fantasy that racism was over. Having a gay president will once and for all confirm that the-love-that-dare-not-speak-its-name had better finally shut up. Buttigieg’s presidency will also further polarise America, as it drives homophobia deeply and quietly into the psyches of the Christian right. If you think they hate us now, just imagine how they’ll feel after some  little Christian fellatio artist becomes commander-in chief?

The homophobic attacks have already entered the mainstream, but no one will acknowledge them. Recently Biden railed against Mayor Pete’s effeminacy, charging that while Biden was busy doing big manly stuff — like negotiating the Iran deal and the Affordable Care Act, Buttigieg was busy in South Bend — “installing decorative lights on bridges.” So  what if Mayor Pete can’t make American great again. After all —like any gay man — he is certainly more than capable of sprucing it up.

All this is not to say that Pete Buttigieg doesn’t deserve to be be president. Or that he shouldn’t be president. But sadly, a Mayor Pete Presidency will probably not make the world a better place for people like me. In fact, Perky, Pesky Little Pete, will probably make it much, much worse.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            

Do You Know About ‘Wannabes?’

A ‘wannabe’ is apparently a person who wishes to amputate their extremities; usually an arm or a leg. It’s very important for you to know about wannabes. Of course I’m sure it’s true that they’ve been around since the dawn of time. Because — after all — there  really is no limit to what fantasies the human imagination can, and might, entertain. So, why talk about wannabes now? Because the central obsession for wannabes has become the central obsession of our culture today.

No, it’s not that there are suddenly a whole bunch of people who want to hack off their limbs. But according to Elizabeth Loeb “wannabes increasingly frame their arguments for redefining their own sense of corporeal integrity by making reference to transsexual practice.” This means — in plain English — that wannabes think their situation is similar to that of transexuals, who modify their bodies in order to change the gender they were assigned at birth. More than that, it means wannabes think that they should not only have the right to self-amputate, but that they are should be considered normal, mentally healthy individuals, and that any and all medical procedures related to their self-willed amputations should be paid for by the government.

A tall order you say?

Well, let’s not sweat the small stuff; I think adults should have the right to do anything they want with their bodies, as long as they are not physically hurting anyone else by doing so. And I’m not going to waste time in this little essay musing on how the government spends their money, or pondering the nature of mental illness. I ask instead, what is it that draws transgender theory and the ‘wannabe’ movement together? Clearly, both have fantasies of who they wish to be. The transgender children’s movement, for instance utilises the apropos and touching image of a ‘mermaid with a moustache’ to exemplify their fictional musings about themselves. The wannabes invoke the inspiring image of a starfish, who — when it loses one point of it’s star — just grows another one back. These are eloquent icons that represent significant and moving fictions. 

Human beings have always loved fiction, and always will. But it’s terribly important to separate art and reality. The best fantasies, of course, seem to be real. But they are not. Have young people forgotten this, as they increasingly live their lives playing computer games like Jumanji, where their online avatar can change gender, skin colour, whatever — completely, at any moment, without consequence?

This article is not an invitation to persecute transgender people or wannabes. Leave them alone. They have a right to do whatever they want to themselves. And don’t ban Jumanji; video games are not the problem. The problem is that transgender theory and disability theory have now elevated personal fiction into public fact. 

We are not starfish or mermaids. We cannot cut up our bodies without consequence. And, sadly, sometimes our most beautiful dreams are not destined to become reality.

I just thought you should know.