Mid-March Mini Reviews…

1. Very good and it kinda made me cry:

Albert Nobbs and Friends With Kids

I don’t know what to say about Albert Nobbs, but if you are gay or thinking of being gay -- run don’t walk, because it’s all about being alone and having no sense of community and then finding it. It makes me cry now just writing about it.

And Friends with Kids well ….duh! I would see ANYTHING with ADAM SCOTT in it. He is the BEST EVER FOR SARDONIC! He gets to cry in this one (exploring his range) which made me cry too. Why did this picture get SO MANY bad reviews? I can understand why Liam Lacey didn’t like it – after all he’s an incredibly uptight old geezer. But do the other critics hate it because they hate Jennifer Westfeldt -- because she is a great writer and director AND actress, and she wrote and directed AND starred in this, AND on top of that she is also beautiful and married to the talented and hot John Hamm? Or is it because the movie promotes ‘alternative lifestyles’ (not so popular these days)? Or it could just be because she’s a woman?

I forgot about that…..

2. It didn’t make me cry but it was very very good, and all about the anti-hero:

Rampart and Puncture

Rampart is a really good picture about a hot but screwed up police guy starring the aptly cast Woody Harrelson. It‘s really good but you won’t hear about it or even see it, ever. Puncture is only available on DVD and is another great picture about a very important social issue (needle pricks in hospitals cause disease!). But you won’t ever see this movie either. The reason you won’t see either of these movies is because Hollywood has decided that only movies that feature heroes who are fine, upstanding, religious, spotless, family men like Rick Santorum and Stephen Harper are suitable for us (and of course our children) to see. The era of the complicated/conflicted anti-hero is over (unless it’s an abusive Dad as in Tree of Life -- we’re supposed to NEVER STOP LOVING abusive Dads – that will probably ALWAYS be allowed, compulsory even). But hot drug addicted sex fiends who are also heroes? No way. That’s over. These two pictures are the last gasp of one of my favorite genres, the ‘bad boy as hero’ movies. (sigh!)

3. Only if you’re 13…..

Goon and Project X

If you’re thirteen you’ll really like Project X because it’s all about kids who have a crazy party in their backyard hoping they are going to fuck hot chicks. The message of this movie is ‘your father will love you and be proud of you if you have a huge party in your backyard that is very violent and wrecks the neighborhood.’ This movie will probably inspire lots of kids to have huge crazy violent parties in their backyards. In fact it already has. See:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2113065/Teen-inspired-Project-X-movie-house-party-invite-trending-Twitter.html?ito=feeds-newsxml

And Goon -- well it’s another great movie for 13 year olds. The message is: ‘hockey violence is a lot of fun,’ and ‘men have penises and balls swinging between their legs.’ (As somewhat of a thirteen year old myself I was pleased to be reminded of the second fact.)

4. Not even if you’re 13……

Wanderlust

I don’t know what to say about this because it was SO dirty it was SO sex obsessed you’d think I would have liked it -- but I didn’t. Could it be Jennifer Aniston?

Beyond Psychology

I was listening to Stephen Sondheim’s Merrily We Roll Along the other day and it finally occurred to me why he’s so over-rated. It isn’t just the fact that the music is, let’s face it, not consistently hummable, and the dialogue is not merely witty, but self-consciously so (at a recent Toronto Sondheim love-in, the enormously talented composer/lyricist -- interviewed by Robert Cushman -- was beyond self-congratulatory about his own perilous wit. And Sondheim’s Finishing the Hat book?  Please Stephen, spare me the insight into your peerless genius!). No, what I object to is that a Sondheim musical sometimes provides me with the theatrical equivalent of a good therapy session. For example, there’s a song in Merrily We roll Along called “Now You Know," which is all about (you guessed it!) growing and changing. The lyrics are “It's called burn your bridges, start again. You should burn them every now and then. Or you'll never grow!” It’s almost as if Sondheim jumped from his therapist’s couch directly to his composing desk; he could hardly wait to graft those magnificent pearls of growing/changing wisdom into his next musical.

            Don’t get me wrong. I adore Sweeney Todd and A Little Night Music (yes I was in the front row watching Elaine Stritch sing the Hermoine Gingold role recently on Broadway. And yes, I witnessed her tragically and heroically struggling to remember the lyrics). But I could never figure out why I hated Into the Woods so much.

Well, it’s because of all of that ‘growing and changing.’

            When I was in university I roomed with a friend. As we only had one stereo, I had the player in my room, but there was a speaker in his. Once, after we had a fight, I played my favorite song from the movie musical version of Lost Horizon (featuring  Liv Ullman) “Living Together Growing Together” -- to patch things up. It sent my friend out of his room screaming. This is pretty much the way I feel about Sondheim’s gleeful psychologizing. And it pretty much sums up the way I feel about psychological art.

Again -- don’t get me wrong. I’m all for therapy, and have spent most of my life IN it. And I think I’ve improved (really, I’m better). But I work very hard to keep ‘gems of psychological insight’ out of my novels and plays. I’m not suggested that playwrights shouldn’t write fascinating or multi-faceted characters. What I’m suggesting is that the goal of a play should not be to impart ways in which we might best ‘grow and change.’ That’s boring and preachy, and it doesn’t work dramaturgically; it makes for bad art.

What do you find, for instance, in many, many modern plays, countless TV shows, and lots of movies? Well when you get to the bottom of all that drug taking and sexual promiscuity, it turns out, in most cases, all anyone ever really wants and needs is love. But I don’t think that really needs saying again – at least not by artists. Psychologists can say it all they want to. But if a play sets out to tell you the most significant truth about human relationships, inevitably that truth will be that people don't love themselves -- and each other -- enough.

What’s left? I certainly don’t mean to suggest that plays should NOT concern themselves with the difficulties of -- or the humour in -- trying to find love (that it is the subject matter of most comic narratives), only that they needn’t tell us again that we need love, or how to become the type of ‘better human’ who achieves it. Instead playwrights might focus on politics or metaphysics.

What is the meaning of life? How must and should people act together and relate in a civil society? What is good and what is evil? Is there a God? What is the importance power, submission and sex within our culture? How do we negotiate human ‘difference?’ What about nationhood and identity – do they matter?  Are we and can we be responsible for our own actions? Do we all perceive the same reality? And what about capitalism, anyway?

These are the kind of questions that -- when explored -- create drama of depth and significance. The dramas I wish to see may be poetic, allusive, and abstract, and hopefully they will NOT be didactic. In the meantime please just don’t bother to sing me -- once again -- that old Beatles song.

           

Mini-Reviews Again!

1. Really Fabulously Awful Please Run Don’t Walk……

The Vow. OMG! (ROFL) I’m telling you this box office smash is the most enjoyable piece of garbage made to please 13 year old girls that Hollywood has come up with since they broke the bed on their wedding night in the last Twilight movie! I was entranced! In the much celebrated ‘vow’ of the title, Channing Tatum says “I will promise to love you faithfully,” but because of his lack of good old-fashioned theatre school articulation training it comes out “I will promise to love you facially” which of course makes a lot of sense (if you watch porn). OMG! Channing Tatum farts in a car and Rachel McAdams closes the window so she can smell it! I’M NOT KIDDING! (That’s intimacy for you!) Okay one small quibble (it’s more of a kibble, actually…). There is no way that any self-respecting woman (or homosexual) would ever let Channing Tatum sleep naked on the couch instead of in bed where he belongs -- amnesia or not!

So there!

2.     Good  For 13 Year Old Boys And Me

Chronicle. Wow I really enjoyed this movie. What does that say about me? I liked watching all those boys flying and then I liked watching them come to the difficult  realization that they have to be more careful with their superpowers. It was kind of all about growing up. Kind of about my own life actually.

Hmmm….

`     3. Wish It Was Better

We Need To Talk About Kevin. Too arty. And why doesn’t the kid look like his Dad at all? But I guess that happens. Unfortunately I kinda started laughing even when I wasn’t supposed to. The problem for me was the little boy who turns out to be (oops, spoiler alert!) a serial killer is a lot like most of my best friends. But to its credit, this movie brings up the elephant in the room for me (and I think everyone).  How come family members are always supposed to like each other? I mean, what if they don’t? And who said they had to?

Was it God?

      4. Ummm…I dunno

W.E.  I really don’t want to trash Madonna because I love her and I honestly think if someone else had directed this movie it would have gotten way better reviews. That said.….um…I think she wanted to make a movie about spousal abuse but somehow ended up making a film about The Duchess of Windsor by mistake. What she needed was someone to say “Which movie do you want to make, Madonna? Decide or else it will be a fucking mess.” But she divorced him, so….

Oh well.

Penis N. B.

I must comment on Joanna Schneller’s recent article about penises in The Globe and Mail. She complains that penis jokes have become predominant in television shows and movies and are therefore lowering the general cultural tone. On one level, I’m quite glad that Schneller is talking about penises. I believe they are the elephant in the room that comprises western culture.

But hey, it’s not their fault.

We live in a phallocentric culture. It should come as no surprise to anyone that people are making penis jokes from time to time in a culture where the penis rules (after all penises can be bullies, and bullies are terribly tempting to make fun of!).

The penis remains largely invisible in our society. And yet our cultural values are predominantly male. People who make a success of their lives must be strong and brave -- and well, hard. And those values are associated with the active partner in sex. We pay lip service to feminine values on Mother’s Day  – to vulnerability, grace, gentleness, sweetness, love, and acquiescence. But those who exemplify the feminine virtues do not receive our highest admiration. Ultimate praise is reserved for the active, (phallic) dominant, achievers. Men hold the power. They run everything, and the only fundamental difference I can find between men and women, is that men have penises and women don’t. Courbet painted a beautiful portrait of a woman’s vagina called The Origin of the World. But in fact we all know that the world did not begin between a woman’s legs. Women were only given the power to procreate after a snake screwed everything up.God created the world, and he was a man.

So if we live in a culture where men (and male values) rule, why are penises so  invisible? Well we are certainly embarrassed about our essential phallocentricity – that is part of it. But the reason phalluses are generally not talked about is because they are so terribly sacred that they must not be treated casually, i.e. considered as normal aspect of, let’s say, nudity. In other words we don’t want those penises pulled out unless we mean business, and unless the penis is at its active best (i.e. erect) So why would penis jokes, and even the odd penis sighting in a Hollywood movie (ie Michael Fassbender’s baseball-batty member in Shame) be typical of a culture that worships the phallus and is also terrified that something may threaten its ascendency? Well a joke releases, momentarily, some of the incredible seriousness that surrounds issues raised by the heterosexual ‘act of love’ (Will he get it up? Will he impregnate his wife? Will the human race, please God, continue?). And laughter -- as per usual -- triggers a release of this fear.

So the penis can carry on.

So, I would certainly have to agree with Joanna Schneller in two respects: not only are penis jokes cropping up in mainstream media somewhat more than usual, but they certainly are “a way to seem subversive without actually being subversive.”

But Schneller’s explanations for the recent media obsession with phallic jesting are less convincing. She says: “access to Internet pornography has created a world of sexters for whom nothing is off limits” and “the current generation of twentysomethings, raised with less homophobia, is embracing Kinsey’s theory that all sexuality is on a continuum.” I don’t think we can blame sexting (there was sex before sexting and penis jokes galore, too). And though our hypocritical, politically correct culture pays lip service to a sexual continuum, you won’t find adolescent males in high schools embracing the term ‘bisexual’ (these days only a very few timid college age females are willing to do so.) No, don’t worry -- we aren’t becoming (sigh!)  – yet again -- more ‘sex obsessed’ or ‘decadent.’ 

Hollywood and TV are obsessed with dick jokes because the mainstream media is an extremely closeted place. Though cultural commentators still get giddy with optimism when a new gay character arrives in a movie, (“Is Gay the New a Trend?” etc…) Ellen still has to be squeaky clean (ever heard of a dildo Ellen?), K.D. Laing must remain largely silent, and when it comes to all those out gay movie stars…um Rupert Everett anyone? The Hollywood Gentleman’s Agreement About Homosexuality has sealed so many pairs of otherwise gossipy lips that John Travolta can get caught kissing some dude on an airplane runway but hey – it just turns out that’s the way he always greets his baby’s nanny.

Schneller mentions the uncontrolled priapism in the upcoming hockey movie Goon starring Seann William Scott and Jay Baruchel. Well when I recently caught the sodomitically obsessed trailer for the film I thought “Wow – this movie is a big inside homo joke that the producers, the writers, and all the straight boys on the set are having with Seann William Scott!” (Scott is rumoured to be gay). Can’t you see the whole cast (along with Seann) giggling away in the out-takes over Seann’s necessary closeted faggottedness? But the only glimpse we get of that from Hush Hush Homophobic Hollywood is, of course a plethora of silly onscreen ‘did you drop the soap?’ gags.

The penis jokes we see in popular culture are the result of a sexually repressed, homophobic entertainment industry. All that pent up sexual energy and all those lies … well they have to go somewhere to find a release.

The result?  What Joanna Schneller seems to think are too many penis jokes.

But as far as I’m concerned (you may have guessed my inclination in this direction) there can never quite be enough.

Is Trans Gay?

Who cares? Why talk about identity categories at all? When people ask me why I am interested in terms like gay, straight or transgendered, I speak of Brandon Teena, who was murdered in 1993 in Lincoln Nebraska, or Jamie Hubley, the Canadian gay teen who committed suicide due to depression over bullying on October 15, 2011. In such cases words like dyke, fag and trannie are hurled at people as terms of abuse. In other words I would  -- like the founders of the gay liberation movement -- be pleased when we all become ‘one.’ Unfortunately, the time has not arrived. Until it does, we must own the terms of abuse that are so often hurled against us and be proud queers, dykes and trannies.

I am specifically interested in whether or not transgendered people are gay. This is not because I don’t like them, or because I am jealously guarding my own personal identity category. (In fact, in The Globe and Mail I recently spoke out about what I think is wrong with the gay identity today). No, my concern is about what seems to be a general assimilationist tendency in minority politics. In other words many think that racism, misogyny and homophobia are pretty much over, and that people are tired of listening to what whining feminists, anti-racists and gay libbers have to say. Even many members of the Tea Party and the ‘Occupy’ protesters work hard to be considered representative of the majority.

Gay men are obsessed with reminding everyone how much like straight people they are. They’re the only ones these days that really want to join the army (Bradley Manning may be one infamous exception) and still line up for the best pews at Church. And long after most straights have come to view marriage with cynicism, gay men still get all dewy-eyed at the prospect of turning their favorite dirty ‘john’ into their respectable husband Johnny.

And while many trans people are passionately committed to being members of a radical minority, others, well -- they’re kinda not.

I should begin by stating that I consider myself a transgendered person. I do not live 24 hours a day representing myself as belonging to the gender that I was not assigned at birth. Many people consider this to be the working definition of  transgendered. But I am a proud drag queen and an effeminate gay male, one who makes others uncomfortable with his often unintended ‘flamboyance,’ and is often denied basic human respect, because of that.

In our community there are two kinds of people:

a)  those who want to assimilate

b)    those who celebrate and enjoy ‘difference’

What excites me about the transgender movement is the comittment of those who celebrate their visible outsider status. What is less exciting to me are those who -- when they are able to pass -- decide to take full advantage of the rights and privileges offered to them as heterosexuals. For some transgendered people the goal is to marry a person of the opposite sex, have children, go to church, get a good job, buy lots of cheap products from Walmart, and not ruffle any feathers. Of course one cannot blame them for wanting to affluence and acceptance. But they are not gay – at least in the old 'gay liberation' sense of the word.

To all my trans friends who are married, and have children, and who pass, I would say – more power to you. But unless you want to proclaim your queerness and your difference every day, and experience the corresponding loss of privilege -- which is what being ‘out’ means -- then I would suggest you just call yourselves straight.

            I say this because I used to be one hundred percent behind all trans people. This was partially because I am one, but also, because trans was once the only queer identity that seemed to enjoy challenging the status quo. However, I recently read an article in Toronto’s GRID magazine (by Sarah Liss) about high school Gay/Straight Alliances that stated “‘coming out’ can be a very fraught issue in the trans community, where passing can be a significant part of identity.” As I say, I have nothing against trans people who wish to pass, but if their ‘don’t rock the boat’ approach to their lives persuades young members of the already too conservative gay and lesbian community that the closet is okay -- then we are all in big trouble.

            Yay trans! Yay gay, queer, dyke, fag! (And, yes, okay, yay straight!) But if you want to be exactly the same as everyone else, you are now part of a bigger club that some of us don’t actually want to join, but instead would love to challenge fundamentally -- at the core.

More Mini - Reviews

1. Kinda Shite

Monsieur Lazhar. Okay how can you be against a movie that is all about dealing with death? Well you can if the movie is filled with endearing kids (my least favorite thing) and has no sex (my most favorite thing) at all. Well I SUPPOSE this movie is kinda well done. I think what pissed me off was that all the old people around me were loving it too much and it was sold out and they were acting like it was The English Patient or something and they all thought I was chewing my popcorn too loud. Jeesh.

2. Really Shite

A Dangerous Method – I’m sorry I fell asleep because I already know all that stuff about Freud and Jung I mean do I really want a lecture? A dumb movie for pseudo-smart people. Or is it supposed to be news that people get off on spanking each other? Uh, duh!

War Horse – And I promised a friend I will see the play. I hope the damn puppets are fucking good! The horse in this movie is not a character, as in i.e. human. I mean the horse kinda looks at the camera now and then -- but it could also be looking at a fly or the movie trainer’s shiny new apple. The boy in it is cute but hardly worth the price of admission. What a waste of Emily Fucking Watson! I understand (she needed the money). Okay. I did cry a bit. But I’m not proud of that….

3. Oh God The Best Movie You Will Ever See Except You’ll Never See It Because of Our Misogynistic World…

1. Tyrannosaur

Please run, don’t walk to see this one. It is a perfect movie. And it’s not about a cranky old guy like the advertising suggests. It’s about women and abuse, and it has a stellar actress in the role of  the abusee (Olivia Colman who is also in Iron Lady but much better in this). This is a truly feminist film made by a male auteur. I was drawn to it because there are people on Rotten Tomatoes who just HATE it and call it beyond depressing and disgusting. It is. That’s why I like it.

2. Haywire

Another Fabulous Feminist Movie By A Male Auteur! Wow. If you enjoy seeing women kick men around you’ll love this (and I don’t just mean the male hetero pervs, they will sure like it and more power to them! I mean actually women, and fags who like seeing men kicked around -- this flick will be your cup of tea!). I now worship at the alter of Gina Carano! The best line in the movie and the only one in ANY movie lately to make me laugh out loud was when Michael Fassbender said about Gina Carano “I’ve never ‘done’ a woman’ (meaning ‘I’ve never killed a woman’) and Ewan McGregor responded (and this is NOT a spoiler don’t worry) -- “You shouldn’t think of her as a woman. That would be a mistake.” 

The Lesson of the Conviction of Mohammad Shafia

This trial has been getting lots of attention lately and we all know why. When a Muslim husband (along with his second wife and son) conspires to murder his three daughters and his ex-wife, all sorts of horrific images and thoughts come to mind; but chiefly they swirl around racism and what has lately been termed ‘Islamophobia.’ Those who are angered by the murder of these women are not simply humanitarians -- sometimes they hate Arabs, dark skinned immigrants, and cultures that are different from western culture. They are sometimes people who are afraid of anything different, and who will use this murder as an excuse to demonize the ‘other.’

            That is certainly not my intention.

            But a recent article in The Toronto Star by Sikander Ziad Hashmi focused my own thoughts on the matter. Mr. Hashmi is an imam at the Islamic Society of Kingston. His article presents a number of sensible arguments for how society can and should work to stop such a horrifying tragedy from ever occurring again. All fine and good. But, in defense of Islam, Mr. Hashmi, quotes that religion’s premiere prophet on male/female relations: “The best of you is the one who is best to his women.” 

            Does anybody else see the incredible irony in this defense? Mr. Hashmi tries to defend his faith against those critics who see it as misogynistic – but  the only quotation he offers  in defense of Islam is one in which the religion’s greatest prophet describes women as male possessions.

            The lessons of the trial and conviction of Mohammad Shafia has very little to do with Islam in particular -- and everything to do with fundamentalism. Whenever queer people talk to me about how gay civil rights are gaining momentum in Canada (and how happy they are to have a gay marriage ceremony in Toronto) I don’t hesitate to remind them that they live in a little bubble called ‘A Big Western City.’ Yes big western cities encourage a modicum of tolerance for gay/lesbian, trans and bi peoples. But those who live in these tiny bubbles must not forget that they are surrounded by a world in which the ancient, feudal intolerance for feminism and homosexuality grows daily This is because many countries in the world (including the United States of America) are trapped in the iron grip of fundamentalism.

            What is fundamentalism? Fundamentalism is any religion in which the primary worship of its followers centres around the ‘word of God.’ Fundamentalists attempt to lead their lives according to the rules of whatever scriptural doctrine they deem holy. And this is where the trouble begins. Nearly all of the ancient western religious scriptures are fundamentally sexist and homophobic. Their ethical laws are based on the notion that the body is evil -- and that women are evil because they are purveyors of the temptations of the body. Thus the body -- and particularly women’s bodies -- must be covered and shamed, sex is only for procreation, and sexual pleasure (especially queer pleasure) is an abomination.

            I am not a ‘Hitchensonian’ or a ‘Dawkinsonian.’ I am as skeptical of reason and science as I am of religion. It is my opinion that science -- for some, in the west at least, --  has become a new religion. I think that ‘reason’ and science are over-rated, and just as organized religion of all kinds can be connected to unimaginably horrific mass murders and tragedies (as in the Shafia trial) unquestioning faith in the wonders of science can also be lethal (remember Hiroshima?).

            The killer Shafia may have been crazy. So, probably, was Marc Lepine. But the unfortunate truth is that a fundamentalist religious ideology that demonizes women and queers lies behind these actions which we wish to imagine are only the isolated insane ideas of singular murderers and madman. Those beliefs may not be the cause of such murders, but the connection between them is neither benign nor accidental.

            My solution is simple. Be spiritual (please!). We all must come to terms with life and death. I consider myself a spiritual person. But I am not going to tell you what my beliefs are, or how I worship. When spiritual matters become social matters, we have entered the hallowed realm of religion. This is unfortunately the origin of much of the world’s hate, prejudice, pain and violence.

            We’ve got it all wrong.  In western culture, sex is considered private and religion is considered public. Why not the other way around? I think sex is something that is, and should be, social -- celebrated by, and with, groups of people. (When was the last time, after all, you were invited to a good old-fashioned orgy?) I don’t hate any specific religion. But I detest them all. I detest the impulse to turn a private and personal matter into one which people judge, flaunt, argue, and compete over their private beliefs, causing them to be jealous, covetous and hateful to each other.

 If you believe strongly in some God or other -- well that should be enough for you. If you wish to share it consensually with your adult intimates, go ahead. But spirituality should -- nay must be -- between you and your God. I would ask you, respectfully, to keep it to yourself.