September mini-reviews

Celeste and Jesse Forever

Andy Samberg is smoking hot (almost as hot as Michael Pitt who plays the ever kissable pouting Jimmy Darmody on Boardwalk Empire SPOILER ALERT I’m so depressed Michael Pitt got shot at the end of the second season. Is there any way he can come back to life – as a semi-naked ghost in a see through nightshirt and that deliriously sexy haircut -- in the third season?). Yes and the movie was okay too.

The Words

Ughg. Um why are great writers always supposed to be like Ernest Hemingway (drunk, smoking, fucked up, straight) not like Tennessee Williams (drunk, smoking, fucked up, gay)?

You tell me.

The Master

Wow. Joaquin Phoenix. Wow.

Show Stopper: The Theatrical Life of Garth Drabinsky

It’s kinda depressing to see all those great performers sucking up to a shyster producer just because they want a job from him when he gets out of jail

Wagner and Me

Double ughh. Stephen Fry trying to show us how cultured he is. For old ladies who don’t go out much.

Yes! Shit Girls Say IS Offensive!

It was a tough one coming up with an opinion about Graydon Sheppard and Kyle Humphrey’s Shit Girls Say. Someone sent me the link ages ago; I found it funny-ish, but nothing to write home about. I didn’t think about it much, because it was one of those silly viral videos that I figured was viral for faggots alone. But low and behold, it gets shown at TIFF -- and suddenly women are getting offended. And everyone is wondering if Shit Girls Say is misogynistic.

Someone has to call a spade a spade. Because behind all this (although no one is talking about it) is the idea that gay men are by nature misogynistic, and, of course, that drag is inherently misogynistic too. Let me say it now, once and for all, gay men are not misogynistic and neither are drag queens -- at least not more so than anyone else.  Men don’t prefer to have sex with men because they dislike women. In fact a lot of gay men I know like women a lot better than men. (Is this news to you? We don’t always LIKE who we screw….). I would venture to say that nothing could match the misogyny that you would be privy to if you happened to eavesdrop on a bunch of young straight dudes discussing their girlfriends. But the fact of the matter is that our entire culture is racist, sexist and homophobic. So I don’t think you can blame anybody in particular, just patriarchy in general.

But, although neither gay men nor drag queens are essentially misogynistic, Shit Girls Say IS.

So ahh…how did that happen?

Do Graydon Sheppard and Kyle Humphrey hate women?

We’ll never really know. But I think what has happened here is very interesting. This ruckus all has to do with the mainstreaming of gay culture.

I don’t think Graydon Sheppard and Kyle Humphrey are particularly misogynistic, but I would say that they know how to make a buck, and they sure know how to get their names in the paper. Beyond that they aren’t too thoughtful.

You see, Shit Girls Say is camp humour. It’s about how silly and stupid women are. This kind of thing belongs is in a gay bar on a drag stage; it belongs ONLY there.  Straight men don’t need to see demonstrations of how stupid women are. Why? Because, unfortunately, they are all too often quite eager to believe it’s the truth. The oppression of women is based on the idea that women are dumb; that oppression is still alive and well.

Everything depends on context. Who watches drag shows in gay bars? Well -- gay men, lesbians, straight women, and the occasional straight guy who stumbles in (supposedly by mistake). If you’ve ever seen one of Toronto’s great, nay brilliant drag performers – queens like Keith Cole, Donnarama, Miss Conception or Georgy Girl -- you would notice that despite the outrageous things they do and say, they create an atmosphere that is inclusive (and equally abusive) to everyone -- male, female, straight, gay, white, and non-white.

But more importantly, gay men have a special relationship to women and to femininity, which is directly related to homophobia. As much as we try, we will never in our lifetimes be ‘real men’ in the eyes of straights – who will never forgive us for all the sexual acts that make us appear essentially feminine in their eyes. Camp culture is about owning our femininity – rather than having it hurled at us accusingly or gossiped about behind our backs.

What Graydon Sheppard and Kyle Humphrey have done is taken camp – true camp (it’s as serious as it is funny, and involves devotion to women as well as making fun of them) and drop it into the middle of straight culture, saying – ‘we’re all the same, aren’t we, and we all laugh at the same things, don’t we?’

Well sorry to repeat myself yet again, but -- we’re not, and we don’t. Nothing distorts and misrepresents gay culture quite as much as yanking it out of context and dropping it into straight culture and hoping straight people will like it.  It’s like taking your mother to the backroom of the Eagle on a Saturday night.

Am I saying gay culture SHOULD be a secret? No. I’m simply saying that like it or not, it IS a secret, and always will be, as long as there’s gay and there’s straight.

Probably Kyle and Graydon are just hopelessly optimistic -- like a lot of gay men are right now. They think they’re doing gay men a favour by pulling our culture out of a darkened gay bar and into the light.

It’s an unfortunate but true fact about oppression that none of us are ready for that.

Why is the Avant-garde so Over?

                        J. Kelly Nestruck’s recent article about ‘one person audiences’ certainly made me think.

Toronto’s Globe and Mail theatre critic talks about the rising number of shows that feature performers acting before a single audience member, sometimes behind closed doors. Many have treated this trend as a particularly new and experimental form of theatre. (And if that is not said outright, it is certainly implied.)

            Well I doubt this is anything new. After all, there is nothing new under the sun. I remember performing a one man show directed by Hrant Alianak many years ago in the Poor Alex Theatre. The play was a monologue about s/m sex (oddly enough NOT written by me) in which I talked for a good hour about graphic s/m sexual experiences. Well that Sunday matinee only one person turned up for the show (gee…I wonder why….). I dutifully performed, and Hrant watched from the wings. When it was done I duly stepped forward for my little bow and the single audience member just sat there looking at me. Afterwards in the dressing room Hrant shook his head: “The least that bastard could have done was clapped!”

            Alright, so my experience with ‘one person audiences’ may be by accident and not particularly positive -- but I’m sure there must have been intentional ‘one person audiences’ before this. I know that Clare Coulter used to go to people’s houses to perform a Wallace Shawn play years ago. I’m pretty certain there were at least two ‘innovative’ things going on there – after all few people would be watching the performance, and in their own home.

            But what really irks me is the notion that these ‘one person audience’ shows are experimental or avant-garde. One problem is that they seem to be all form and no content. For instance, Adrian Howells at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2011 wrapped his audience ‘in a towel and hugged them.’ Isn’t this pretty much the emotional and intellectual equivalent of The Sound of Music?

            Earlier this year I was asked to invent a ‘one person audience’ show. I refused, for two reasons. I said that I was just a little bit famous in Toronto, and I therefore feared ending up alone in a room with A Sky Hater. But this fear of mine – along with the fact that apparently a lot of these ‘one audience shows’ involve bigger celebrities than me, made me think that the whole idea is not so much about creating a challenging theatre experience as it is about creating an opportunity to be alone with a celebrity.

            But also, my definition of avant-garde theatre involves a performance that --instead of confirming each audience member’s cherished and most closely held beliefs –- causes audience members to question their premises. When I was asked to do a ‘one person audience’ show it immediately occurred to me that I could, possibly a) get naked b) take a shit on the floor c) say some really horrible stuff about myself d) commit a sexual act with myself e) just fucking swear for awhile.

All this may come as no surprise. A critic once said “Sky Gilbert’s work is all about saying ‘screw  you!’ to Mommy and Daddy.” Well, I prefer to think of it as sticking the proverbial finger up the ass of the patriarchy. 

            So, to be honest, it wasn’t so much that I didn’t trust the potential single audience member with me; I didn’t trust myself with that single audience member.

 I think the kind of spectacle that makes theatre interesting involves acts that would get you arrested if you imposed them, behind closed doors, on a stranger. However, if instead those things are done on a stage in front of lots of people with a ‘4^th wall’ in between, well, you usually don’t get arrested -- you just end up offending a lot of people -- cuz it’s a play.

            No. I am convinced that much of what is being touted as ‘new’ and ‘experimental’ these days is actually a chance to meet celebrities and hang out with your cool friends. Or else, frankly, Punchdrunk’s New York City megahit Sleep No More wouldn’t be so popular.  Yes, yes, I too have hung out in the preshow bar watching all the trendoid New York fashionistas trying to pick each other up at Sleep No More. And  -- as fun as that is to do, and as fun as it is to watch -- Tamara (1981) by John Krizanc, directed by Richard Rose, was a lot more avant-garde.

            I’ll say it: maybe capitalism has devoured the avant-garde like it has devoured everything else. Maybe that money-munching technology we all love so much has driven us to imagine that giving people a hug while surrounding them with a towel is somehow revolutionary.

 Maybe there just is no avant-garde anymore.

            Oh well.

A rather long mini-review of Hit and Run

I went to see Hit and Run because I saw the husband and wife creative team (and stars) Dax Shepard and Joy Bryant on Pierce Morgan talking about the movie. So call me crazy (and I know you will) but I’ve always had a thing for Dax Shepard, as he seems to me to be kinda gayishly cute. Anyway, the couple talked about the movie as an ‘indie’ film, meaning that it is not your typical mainstream fare. I also noted that on Rotten Tomatoes the movie was semi-dismissed as ‘raunchy’ -- which of course made me really want to see it. Not for the reasons you might think; it just seemed to me that everyone who was talking about the movie was talking in code. Well I saw it yesterday. Sure enough there is a gay cop in the movie replete with badly dyed red hair. He’s cruising people on ‘pouncer,’ which is of course a NOT very subtly disguised reference to the gay cruising app ‘Grindr.’ The gay cop is a major/minorish sort of character. But there’s also Dax’s tendency to ramble on about gay stuff. At one point he makes the somewhat offensive but rather accurate remark that black men view white men as women (ie vulnerable and effeminate) and also, that white men view Asian men as women (ditto). These remarks could of course be viewed as racist, sexist, and homophobic (the triple whammy of political incorrectness!). The film tries to head off such perceptions by having Bryant, early on, castigate Shepard for using the word ‘gay’ in a derogatory way.  She says -- “I mean, would it be alright for me to call my purse the n-word? Like no!”  -- or something to that effect -- which does make a kind of  funny, wacky sense in the context of their conversation. What I’m trying to say is that this movie is -- well, um, smart -- and even (God help me!) well written at times; it toys with deliciously dangerous stuff in a witty way. But of course the film is being promoted as a ‘raunchy’ comedy. Dax and Joy are obviously a pair of sharp cookies, and they were somehow able to sneak a teensy bit of intelligence into a run-of–the-mill Hollywood car chase movie, by advertising the film as a ‘raunchy’ sex farce, ala American Pie, albeit with an ‘alternative’ flair. I’m just kind of amazed that amidst the endless tedious remakes of Spiderman and Total Recall there exists, in a Hollywood movie, somewhere, the tiniest germ of an idea or two (however politically correct or even offensive those ideas might be). I hope the Hollywood Bigwigs don’t find out; it seems they are pretty dead set on keeping even a flash of actual adult braininess out of most standard flicks.

A Modest Proposal: Arrest All Women Who Have Had Abortions!

 An editorial in the Globe and Mail on July 11, 2012 criticized a recent United Nations report that calls for all nations of the world to refrain from criminalizing HIV.  The Globe says: “And where the report seems to go astray in its laudable concern for the rights of persons living with HIV is in the realm of disclosure. It labels as ‘counterproductive’ laws that  ‘criminalize HIV transmission, exposure or non-disclosure of HIV status.’” The article then goes on to imply that because AIDS is  a life-threatening illness, those who continue to have unsafe sex without disclosing their HIV status should be put in jail.

This editorial comes at an important moment in Canadian history. The Supreme Court of Canada is on the verge of making a landmark decision about whether or not there should be legal penalties for HIV positive people who have sex with others. And law courts in Ontario are presently refusing to dismiss sexual assault cases against HIV positive people who do not disclose, even when they use condoms.

Surprise! For much of the general public (and for the Globe) the issue is a no-brainer. They say “Why shouldn’t people tell their sexual partners their HIV status? If they’re going to have sex with a lot of people, it’s their responsibility to disclose, and if people can’t accept that, then they should be put in jail!”

But this kind of reasoning makes very little sense.

Consider an analogy.

I posit that criminalizing people who have sex without disclosing their HIV status makes just as much sense as jailing women for having abortions.

First:

In both cases, some people assert that a human life is at stake and some people don’t. This is because many people avidly believe that to destroy a foetus is murder; while others say that’s a crazy idea. Many believe that HIV is a death sentence; others say that’s a preposterous notion.

Second:

In both cases some say that a jail term will discourage these activities, others don’t.  This is because some think that if women and their doctors were jailed for performing abortions then it would discourage people from having abortions. Some also think if people were jailed for not disclosing their HIV status, it would encourage people to be more honest. But is this true, or would the threat of jail actually drive these activities underground?

 Abortion is unpleasant; no one wants anyone to have an abortion. HIV is very unpleasant; no one wants anyone to get AIDS.

But one should not arrest women for having abortions, and one should not arrest anyone for having unsafe sex – because the issues involved cannot be scientifically proven.  Think about it. The following two questions are ultimately unanswerable  -- Is a foetus already a life?  Who exactly gave me AIDS?

I would suggest that the issues of abortion and HIV disclosure are alike in  another very significant way. Most people weren’t too concerned about HIV disclosure when AIDS was just a ‘gay disease.’ Now that AIDS is an equal opportunity infection, non-disclosure is a huge issue. Why? Because those who favour the criminalization of HIV, see themselves (quite wrong-headedly) as protecting women. But it does not protect women to disempower them. Instead of empowering women to speak up for themselves (i.e. assuming they are capable of demanding men use condoms, or of making their own choices about abortion) the patriarchy seeks to disempower women (by telling them they need to be protected from abortions, promiscuity, and men who want to have unprotected sex with them).

            Of course this kind of paternalistic, puritanical thinking appeals to fundamentalists everywhere. But why in God’s name (to coin a phrase!) would gay men support these ideas? Because whenever the issue of HIV criminalization appears, gay guys go twitter crazy! There are ‘tweets galore’ from gay men yelling ‘Throw ‘em all in jail! Have no mercy! If those sluts didn’t fuck around this never would have happened!”  And why do gay men believe that? Because most queers are working so hard right now to prove their respectability that they would gladly send their own kind to the gas chambers to do it. “Justice be damned! I just want everyone to know I’m a ‘good’ faggot, not a ‘bad’ one!”

            The truth of the matter is that criminalizing HIV non-disclosure makes as much sense as criminalizing women who have abortions. IT MAKES NO SENSE AT ALL! Irresponsible, uncaring (perhaps evil) people will continue to make unwanted babies, and will continue to spread HIV.  We can and should use all our powers of social and moral persuasion to stop these practices, but they must not become legal issues.

Believe me, that will just make matters much, much worse.

Mini-Reviews: Five Fabulous New Gay Movies For July!!!!!!

Savages

OMG. This is the gayest movie ever made! No wonder the reviews were so horrible! It’s all about two gorgeous guys -- a butch top and a fem bottom -- who fall in love and decide to involve an unfortunate woman in their relationship as a beard. But it’s really about THE TWO OF THEM! And THEY ARE THE SAVAGES!!!!!

You’ve got to see it, man.

Ted

Let’s see. There’s Marky Mark’s naked butt, which is delicious and just, well ….he’s in love with a bear and he can’t seem to get married. Need I say more?

Dark Horse

A gay guy made this and even though it’s not about a gay couple it IS a bout a nerdy man who lives with his parents and can’t get married (yet another one) and he has fantasies about a dominatrix who is kinda like his mother.  Oh, and like, Mia Farrow is in it. (Duh!)

What could be gayer?

Magic Mike

People are falling all over themselves to say how ‘insubstantial’ this movie is. No…not like um…Men in Black! I’m sorry but there is so much fabulous male semi-nudity in this move that……well.….case closed.

Moonrise Kingdom

Okay there’s nothing gay about this movie except it’s VERY campy and it’s also PRO SEX and ANTI-AUTHORITY so I hereby define this movie as gay!

So there.

June Mini Reviews (some of these movies are actually good…)

Dictator

Okay this one’s not good. But it’s interesting to see that a Sasha Baron Cohen movie is not as funny when he’s not being cruel to innocent bystanders by tricking them into being in his film. What does that mean?

Indie Game

Sublime -- I mean I don’t know what to say. The movie was about me and other people I know. Fucked up lonely creative people yearning to be loved, and so they lock themselves in their rooms and create.

Double wow.

The Intouchables

Another perfect movie. And it’s gay! Paraplegic Man Hires Young Gay Stud to have sex with him via his ears! Of course at the end they show the Paraplegic Man having dinner with a woman but it’s only so audiences won’t feel guilty about enjoying the love between two men -- one white, the other black, one legless and and the other with three!

Edwin Boyd

Scott Speedman I love you and I want to have sex with you! Especially now that I know you are actually an amazing actor who looks unbelievably gorgeous in drag.

Will you love me back! 

(ps and when?)

Bernie

This one was okay until I figured out it was about another sad, effeminate, gay man who also happens to be a killer. Bernie is kinda like Luka Rocco Magnotta before he lost the weight. And we all know that until Luka’s disgusting trial is over we’re going to have to put up with Christie Blatchford and every other idiot wondering: “Did his tragic failure as a gay male porn actor cause him to do it?” Gee whiz -- I’m a tragic failure as a gay male porn actor but I never killed anyone.