Diego Costa

Diego Costa Speaking at UCLA's Thinking Gender Conference

2012-01-31T02:12:00.011-05:00

I will be speaking at the Thinking Gender conference at UCLA's Faculty Center this Friday, Feb. 3 at 8:30 a.m. Part of the panel Mumbling, Stuttering, Yelling: Gender Inarticulation in Argentina, Chile, Brazil and... Downtown Los Angeles, my talk is titled "O Que Não Dá Chupa: The Male- to-Female 'Homosexual' as Star of Brazil’s Economic Boom." The talk investigates the recent entrance of "the homosexual" in public discourse in Brazil, made possible through the country’s new ethos of finally-arrived progress, and visible only through the “failed female body” of the male-to-female transsexual gone viral in new media platforms.

The panel will explore the notion of Woman’s inarticulateness (from limbless-ness to catatonia) as a symptomatic site for the traumatic scenes that produce her throughout Latin America. It includes the panel includes USC's Veronica Paredes ("Los Angeles of My Broken Heart: Pocha Mobility in México de mi corazón and Del otro lado del Puente"), Princeton University's Alejandra Josiowicz ("La Rabia (2008): Violence, Gender and Childhood in the Argentinean Pampas") and Carl Fischer ("Lorenza Böttner: Capitalist Success and (Queer) Failure in Chile’s Dictatorship").

QUOTE of the WEEK

2012-01-10T22:49:00.004-05:00

“Screwing is, for a man, a defense against his desire to be female.”

Valerie Solanas, in S.C.U.M. Manifesto (Society for Cutting Up Man)

EXCERPT of the WEEK: Jack Halberstam

2011-12-26T12:53:00.004-05:00

"I do believe that if you watch 'Dude, Where Is My Car?' slowly and repeatedly and while perfectly sober, the mysteries of the universe may be revealed to you. I also believe that 'Finding Nemo' contains a secret plan for world revolution and that 'Chicken Run' charts an outline of feminist utopia for those who can see beyond the feathers and the eggs. I believe in low theory in popular places, in the small, the inconsequential, the antimonumental, the micro, the irrelevant; I believe in making a difference by thinking little thoughts and sharing them widely."

Jack Halberstam, in The Queer Art of Failure.

Madonna's W.E. Film Review

2011-12-17T05:55:00.003-05:00

"The general consensus on Madonna's W.E., perhaps before anyone even watched it, has been that it looks great, but that is has no substance, no soul. This is quite ironic coming from a culture so invested in containing femininity within the boundaries of beautiful objecthood that it would be Frankensteinian for its most legendary female star to produce spectacle out of something other than her own body. The truth is W.E. is a perfectly fine piece of oneiric cinema. It puts forth, in fact, a kind of filmic écriture feminine so unabashedly consumed by "the look" and its world of artifices that we'd have to recognize, if we were to be critically fair and put our own heterosexist anxieties aside, that W.E. makes a mockery out of "man's cinema" (cinema tout court?). (...)"

Click here for my entire review of Madonna's "W.E.", rated 3 out of 4 stars, for Slant Magazine.

Kellan Lutz's 'A Warrior's Heart' Film Review

2011-12-03T16:37:00.005-05:00

"'You construct intricate rituals which allow you to touch the skin of other men' is how Barbara Kruger put it in her seminal 1981 conceptual art piece. A Warrior's Heart enacts those "intricate rituals" in the most oblivious and unbearable ways, as its oafish hero, hotheaded high schooler Conor (Kellan Lutz), tries to mimic his military father's own trajectory of belligerent hyper-masculinity on the lacrosse field.

The father (Chris Potter) is a colonel in the army who shows up unannounced from war to take the family from California to the East Coast, where Conor is to attend the same private school he once went to. Although Conor's new peers aren't happy with the arrival of new alpha-male competition, he makes a good impression on the coach and gets into the school's lacrosse team, where he can run around a field with a phallic prosthesis in hand and an uncontrollable need to smash people and things. Boys will be boys, after all, especially when taken from their usual habitat. In one of Conor's (non-)emotional outbursts, he breaks the school's glass trophy case into pieces and ends up at a Native American bootcamp of sorts where he can learn from real warriors on how to "be a real man" without showing any emotion.(...)"

Click here for the entire review for Slant Magazine.

The Queer Psychoanalysis Society

2011-11-23T02:20:00.003-05:00

The Queer Psychoanalysis Society just unveiled its new publishing platform (i.e. blog), The Qouch: check it out here. The Society was recently co-founded by PhD candidates Alejandra Josiowicz (Princeton University), Chase Dimock (University of Illinois) and, yours truly, Diego Costa (University of Southern California) The first issue presents three ways of thinking about why psychoanalysis needs Queer Theory, why Queer Theory needs psychoanalysis, and why the world needs a lot of both. You can follow the Queer Psychoanalysis Society on Twitter @theQouch.

'Tomboy' Film Review

2011-11-20T19:05:00.004-05:00

"Francophone cinema knows a thing or two about the erotic possibilities of moving. In Alain Berliner's My Life in Pink, young Ludovic inaugurates his family's new zip code with a relentless, and relentlessly playful, refusal to be a boy. In Robert Bresson's Mouchette, the miserable little girl at its center can only find solace from poverty, bullying, and lack of affection in her final jetée into a lake she hopes will take her elsewhere. And what about Laure's suggestive duct-taping of perfectly labeled U-Haul boxes in Claire Denis's Friday Night? As if so much containment, so much packing, could only mean to mask a yearning for some uncontrollable eruption." (...)

Click here for my entire "Tomboy" film review for Slant.

'Dzi Croquettes' Film Review

2011-11-12T23:26:00.000-05:00

"Dzi Croquettes reclaims the eponymous avant-garde theater group as major figures in Brazil's history of state terrorism and artistic resistance. More than just a "bunch of faggots" (as the dictatorship's guards that surveilled them would put it), the 13-member 1960s troupe of gender-fucking, glitter-covered polyglot queens was "queer" at a time when the word was still just another gay slur. Theirs was a status quo-shattering kind of camp, circumventing censorship through sarcasm, crafting intricate and combustible juxtapositions including a black queen delivering a gut-wrenching version of Jacques Brel's "Ne Me Quittes Pas" in a pink wedding gown—and combat boots. "It was like someone saying, 'Look, that's what life is all about, [what] being human is about,'" says one of the film's talking heads—mostly former members of the group and the crème de la crème of Brazil's actors and directors, but also Liza Minnelli, one of the Dzi Croquettes' most enthusiastic godmothers. At one point they try conquering Europe, performing in Paris for the likes of Omar Sharif, Catherine Deneuve, Jeanne Moreau, and Josephine Baker, who requests that the Dzi Croquettes replace her as Theatre Bobino's main act once she dies, which they do. (...)"

Click here for my entire review of "Dzi Croquettes" for Slant.

'Charlotte Rampling: The Look' Film Review

2011-11-02T16:45:00.002-04:00

"For days I could watch Charlotte Rampling just speak in an empty room, looking at photographs of herself and being bitchy in flawless French to a documentary's off-camera crew. And that's precisely what she does in Angelina Maccarone's gorgeous Charlotte Rampling: The Look. Divided into thematic chapters such as "exposure," "age," "beauty," and "demons," the film captures Rampling's cerebral soliloquies and musings, interspersing clips from her various roles, from The Night Porter to Swimming Pool (sadly, no Basic Instinct 2). Sometimes she's alone and addresses the camera directly. At other moments she bounces her contemplations off of a friend, like writer Paul Auster, photographer Peter Lindbergh, and her actor son Barnaby Southcombe. Her own look basks in the look of the other, like a droopy-eyed and wounded Medusa whose demands you can never escape, and who's too conscious of the world around her to ever offer it any kindness. (...)"

Click here for my entire review of the film for Slant Magazine.

Three Men Stab, Burn Gay Man Burke Bennett In Texas

2011-11-02T16:44:00.001-04:00

via the Huffington Post.

Two men have been arrested for a shocking attack on a Reno, Texas gay man.

26-year-old Burke Bennett received 30 stitches to close stab wounds on his back and forearms inflicted by a broken beer bottle, reports the Dallas Voice, as well as second-degree burns and severe bruises after being assaulted at a private party on Sunday.

The attackers reportedly screamed slurs like "pussy-ass faggot," "gay bitch," and "cock-sucking punk," as they punched, stabbed, and eventually threw Burke onto a fire.

Now Daniel Martin, 33, and James "Tray" Mitchell Laster III, 31, have been charged with the assault reports to the Dallas Voice.

But, though Burnett said the officer who investigated the assault told him the attack would be deemed a hate crime, it looks as though it may not be classified as such after all.

Both perpetrators are being charged with one count of aggravated assault with a a deadly weapon, and one count of aggravated assault causing serious bodily injury -- first-degree felonies punishable by five to 99 years in prison the Dallas Voice notes.

Because there is no further penalty for a crime already labeled a first-degree felony if it's also designated a hate crime, it looks doubtful that prosecutors will pursue that route.

The paper reports that Reno police spokeswoman Alicia Myrick said it will be up the Lamar County District Attorney's Office to determine whether the case is prosecuted as a hate crime.

"That’s not our decision," Myrick said.

Burke is, sadly, one of several gay men who have been attacked and set on fire in recent weeks.

In September a Pennsylvania man awoke to find that his "friends" had doused him in rum and set his leg on fire. On October 22 a Scottish man was found dead after being beaten and burned.

'Snowmen' Film Review

2011-10-21T01:10:00.003-04:00

"I'm not sure what part of Snowmen doesn't scream completely inappropriate, sentimental Manichean drivel. Under the nauseating "coming-of-age" formula in which white boys in lethal peril are shown to have enough charisma and good karma to enlist an entire town as the army for their narcissistic, and completely innocuous, dreams, the film tries to reiterate the myth of the naturally pure, white child for whom even death may just have to stand back and go bother someone else, and cancer itself can be exploited as a kind of commodity."
Click here for my entire review for Slant Magazine of "Snowmen."

QUOTE of the WEEK

2011-10-20T23:03:00.001-04:00

"I am not one of these young imbeciles who believes that conquering a girl means conquering the world."

Isidore Isou, being queer before Queer, in "Venom and Eternity" (1951).

'Le Principe du Plaisir' Italian Streaming

2011-10-12T17:41:00.003-04:00

My most recent feature-length film, Le Principe du Plaisir (2010), has been picked up by Italian distributor Atlantide, which is now streaming it on their site, click here. You can also download it there. It follows the seductive encounters between a bourgeois gay man and a straight, and incredibly butch, Tunisian immigrant in Paris. Here is the trailer:

'The Sons of Tennessee Williams' Film Review

2011-10-08T01:14:00.002-04:00

"The Sons of Tennessee Williams tells the story of New Orleans's gay Mardi Gras from its fledgling origins in the explicitly homophobic '50s to today's equally extravagant, if not as status quo-defying, form. Tim Wolff's documentary juxtaposes archival ball footage with straightforward interviews with the now elderly queens of yore, some of whom, we learn, had fathers who cheered when Kennedy was assassinated. They reminisce about the pleasures of dressing up as Scarlett O'Hara when they were little proto-gay children and finding a sense of community once a year, when it was legal to cross-dress in New Orleans (their costumes had to, by law, be back in the closet by midnight). (...)"

Click here for my entire review of the film for Slant.

QUOTE of the WEEK

2011-10-07T02:38:00.002-04:00

“Hearing what is unheard-of and extraordinary means moving towards the invisible, beyond the visible. Listening does not simply mean listening to the unheard-of/extraordinary but to the inaudible; that is, to the dull groans of the body, even as far as the voices of silence.”

André Green, on positioning oneself outside the field of vision, avoiding looking and replacing it with listening, in "One, Other, Neuter: Narcissistic Values of Sameness."

Tiffany Shlain's "Connected" Film Review

2011-10-01T20:25:00.002-04:00

"In Connected, Tiffany Shlain, of Webby Awards fame, engages in the impossible task of making sense of her father's sudden frailty (brain tumor and nine months to live) and his legacy (brain scientist and an unfinished manuscript about Da Vinci's brain) by utilizing the entire history of mankind. Through glossy graphics, quick-paced editing, and a rather verbose, autobiographical voiceover, Shlain does her best to animate her father's essentialist theories of the brain by juxtaposing them with an intimate story about the way in which the prospect of death transforms a superhero paterfamilias into a brittle little thing. (...)"

Click here for my entire review of Connected for Slant Magazine.

Geographical Status: Istanbul

2011-09-18T22:45:00.003-04:00

In Turkey for the International Symposium on Electronic Art (ISEA). Here the cakes and coffee are orgasmic, the pedestrian/automobile relationship is lawless, and Muslim prayers co-exist with infectious house music -- on the same block, at the same time.

Same-Sex What?

2011-09-10T00:48:00.003-04:00

The day I spent the afternoon unpacking to students the absurdities around the concepts of sameness and difference, we received two packages in the mail today. Guess which one was addressed to me and which was addressed to the Mr.?

Queer Theory Explained

2011-09-10T00:47:00.000-04:00

Cold Star from Kai Stänicke on Vimeo.

Now that's Queer Theory.

Emily Forst's "Sonic Boom"

2011-08-26T13:06:00.003-04:00

Emily Forst just recorded this music video for one of my favorite songs by her. I tend to prefer her gut-wrenching songs about mourning the loss of the lover we never really ever had. "Sonic Boom" retains some of that melancholy, but with a punch. Click here for Emily's website and tour info.

'Swinging with the Finkels' Film Review

2011-08-24T21:44:00.002-04:00

"There's something pleasurable about watching the privileged heterosexual couple writhing in ennui to the point of near self-destruction, only to come around stronger and discover the marvels of monogamy all over again. Swinging with the Finkels works through this narrative of hetero-normative renewal in a very literal way as Ellie (Mandy Moore) and Alvin Finkel (Martin Freeman) go through their list of "white people's problems" expecting the art of couples-swapping to bring their marriage back to life (...)"

Click here for my entire film review for Swinging with the Finkels for Slant Magazine.

EXCERPT of the WEEK: J. B. Pontalis

2011-08-13T01:40:00.004-04:00

"(...) puzzling, perhaps, but without patterns to match up, and without 'rosebud' as code word; a railway network, if you will, but under condition that new platforms open up, that there be stops, signaling mistakes and even derails; a nervous system without a center."

J. B. Pontalis, in Ce Temps Qui Ne Passe Pas, providing the perfect picture for what psychoanalysis is.

'Over Your Cities Grass Will Grow' Film Review

2011-08-12T14:41:00.004-04:00

"In 'Over Your Cities Grass Will Grow,' filmmaker Sophie Fiennes ('The Pervert's Guide to Cinema') meanders through the world-making works of landscape artist Anselm Kiefer in reverential awe and little skepticism. The idea isn't to shed light onto Kiefer's larger-than-life enigmatic structures, or to comprehend the obscure process of the artiste (as in Henri-Georges Clouzot's 'The Mystery of Picasso' or Alison Chernick's 'Matthew Barney: No Restraint'), but to simply witness the execution of the artwork and revel in the outcome. (...)"

Click here for my entire review of Sophie Fiennes' 'Over Your Cities Grass Will Grow' for Slant.

'The Mouth of the Wolf' Film Review

2011-08-03T16:24:00.003-04:00

"While he was in jail, she would send him food, new underwear, and recordings of her voice to sweeten him up. She had been released sooner and was willing to wait 10 years for his return. They had one dream together: having a house in the countryside, perhaps with a veranda, from where they could stare at the horizon, surrounded by dogs, and await old age. This fantasy of deferred bliss may recall sentimental fare like Up, but The Mouth of the Wolf is Jean Genet meets Pedro Costa. She's a recovering heroin addict transsexual rocking a non-passable female voice and a no-nonsense attitude. He's an irresistible hyper-masculine brute a la Our Lady of the Flowers. It's meant to be.(...) "

Click here for my entire Slant Magazine review for The Mouth of the Wolf, playing at MoMa in New York this week.

'All She Can' Film Review

2011-07-27T11:26:00.003-04:00

"A high school senior with college dreams and no financial means, Luz's plans depend on her winning a weightlifting championship, which would award her a scholarship. Yet everything seems to conspire against her succeeding: a rocky self-confidence, a trouble-making boyfriend, a debt-ridden mother, an absent brother (his own college dreams already crushed by the military's predatorial false promises), and the legacy of the good Chicana girl groomed to 'stay here and help my family.'"

Click here for my entire review of Amy Wendel's "All She Can" for slant Magazine.

QUOTE of the WEEK

2011-07-26T18:01:00.003-04:00

"I consider invalid the opinion of those who search, having already found."

Paul Valéry, on the arrogant ones.

Woman Leaves Kids Waiting In Car To Have Sex At Motel

2011-07-22T16:26:00.005-04:00

A Brazilian woman was arrested in Goiania, Brazil, for having left her children in the car waiting for her to have sex and use drugs at a motel room with two men. The sex motel employees noticed the kids in the car and alerted the police. It turns out this is not the first time the woman does this. She allegedly confessed to needing to do drugs and have sex with the men yet having no one to babysit her children in the meantime. The children are currently with the father, and the woman was recently released after the father of one of the kids paid for her bail. She is described as an unemployed maid who is "not a prostitute." The assumption, of course, that a woman so willing to surrender to the pleasures of the flesh would be a prostitute. It's hard to see which factor was more disturbing for Brazilian media: the fact that the kids were exposed to an explicitly sexual space, or the fact that a woman would have the "balls" to take two men to a motel room -- putting self-pleasure/destruction (through non-normative sex and non-normative drug use) before compulsory motherhood.

Father and Son Are Taken For Gay Couple and Promptly Gay-Bashed

2011-07-19T11:59:00.005-04:00

It took place in the city of Sao Joao da Boa Vista, in Brazil. A 42-year-old man and his 18-year-old son were sharing a hug at a local expo when approached by seven men who questioned their relationship. After telling them they were not gay the group left, only to later come back and physically attack both son and father, who got part of his ear bit off during the scuffle. The victims are being treated at a local hospital. The criminals are still at large.

The Lavender Scare

2011-07-14T21:06:00.003-04:00

A new documentary investigates McCarthy Era tactics of eliminating gays and lesbians from public service (from the public sphere?) amidst the Red Scare. Check out the trailer for Josh Howard's "The Lavender Scare."

Click here for more info on the film, based on historian David K. Johnson's eponymous book. There seems to be no release date yet. Let's hope it "comes out" before we go through another kind of Lavender Scare! Or what kind of color do we name Michelle Bachmann-esque rhetoric of hetero-fascist panic?

QUOTE of the WEEK

2011-07-11T11:47:00.003-04:00

"Of all politics I understand only one thing: the revolt."

Gustave Flaubert, speaking against polite indignation: one has to act now and one has to act boldly, while meaning is accruing, and without easily justified deferral.

Catherine Breillat's 'The Sleeping Beauty' film review

2011-07-05T14:17:00.003-04:00

"Catherine Breillat's cinema is about the tragedies that befall the female body as well as the small spaces for transcending the very stuff that "woman" is made out of: violence. If the female in question is forced to witness the sexual adventures of her sister in silence, as in Fat Girl, she might end up tricking a gay man into listening to the horrors that constitute her, as in Anatomy of Hell, and maybe fucking her while he's at it. Like a good provocatrice, Breillat has made the unexpected career move of adapting children's fairy tales to the screen. But judging from The Sleeping Beauty, and the previous Bluebeard, the provocations stop with the choice of the material, as the tone and style of these films are jarringly well-behaved." (...)

Click here for my entire review at Slant Magazine.

Ashton Kutcher Uses Gay Slur, Makes a Fool of Himself on Brazilian TV

2011-07-02T19:13:00.004-04:00

That figure of thespian versatility, new media expertise and non-douchery that is Ashton Kutcher was on Brazilian TV show "Caldeirao Do Huck" today, in which the host Luciano Hulk drove a taxi around Rio de Janeiro picking up passengers with the actor inside. Kutcher had a cheat sheet with some Portuguese lines to throw at the passengers. Some of these included asking a group of girls where they shave themselves and saying that Robert Pattinson was a "vampire faggot." He also offered a gay guy if he wanted to see pictures of his wife Demi Moore on his iPhone. Ashton Kutcher then proceeded to ask the gay guy if he was a fag -- and why. Classy. Now we know why we unfollowed @aplusk a long time ago!

It's Xuxa Day

2011-07-02T15:12:00.004-04:00

Xuxa was on top of the Worldwide trending topics on Twitter today as Brazilian TV Globo broadcast a homage show for the 25 years she has spent in the network. Adored to the point of hysteria, a la Michael Jackson in Tokyo, and equality despised by cynics, the Brazilian queen was visibly stunned in the special show since her mother, who suffers from Parkinson's disease, had been rushed to the hospital on the day they recorded it. It's true that her popularity has increasingly diminished in Brazil, and all over the world (a world, which, for a brief moment in the 90s she seemed to be taking over), yet her charisma remains just as astonishing.

Brazilian Congresswoman Myrian Rios Equates Homosexuality with Pedophilia

2011-06-27T23:48:00.008-04:00

Myrian Rios, a failed actress and, currently, a congresswoman in Brazil, spoke publicly against legislation that would add sexual orientation to the list of prejudices punishable by the State. "I am not a bigot, and I am not prejudiced," she prefaced, right before making the bigotted and prejudice-filled declarations, of course. Rios said such law would hinder her from firing a hypothetical lesbian nanny once she found out the employee's sexual orientation and would, obviously, want to fire her. "The nanny's right to be a lesbian is the same right that I have of not wanting to keep her as a nanny. Who knows, she could even commit pedophilia against my daughters. And I wouldn't be able to do anything!"

She also, with a rather mocking tone and citing the bible, struggled through several parts of her speech, at one point committing the hilarious Freudian slip of saying she believes in the heterosexual life of "man with man, woman with woman...I mean, man with woman, and woman with man."

The Brazilian Association of Gays, Lesbians, Bisexuals, Transvestites and Transsexuals (queerness is, apparently, yet to travel that far south) promptly criticized Rios reminding her that most pedophilia is committed by the presumably heterosexual members of the child's family or close circle. She, then, released a mea culpa saying she had family and friends who were gay and that she loved them as "human beings and children of God." She also said she is against aggressions against homosexuals, "because nothing justifies such violence" (my italics). "Such violence" isn't justifiable, a little bit of it surely yes, as keeping non-straights as unthinkable before the Law? Perhaps just enough so that her daughters don't grow up to be pedophilia loving baby-sitting lesbians?

QUOTE of the WEEK

2011-06-25T14:00:00.003-04:00

"My body becomes a leaning or a yearning, a propulsive force that negates any sense of my body as solid, or still, or indeed as mine, in that this sensation owns me more than I own it."

Gayle Salamon, reading Maurice Merleau-Ponty's concept of "transposition": sexuality as fluid, interative, substitutive, and animated by a kind of leaning toward the world. A concept New Yorkers ambiguously killed and brought to live last night.

The High Life film review

2011-06-23T21:24:00.003-04:00

"Jian Ming (Qiu Hong), the melancholy antihero of Zhao Dayong's The High Life, sets up shop in the crowded urban village of Guangzhou scamming unemployed folk into paying him for help finding work. After collecting the money, all Jian Ming does is glue the photographs of the scam victims on one of his apartment's walls, turning it into an ever-growing mosaic of hopeless faces. Sometimes he reads off the victims' profiles to his lover in bed, for laughs." (...)

Click here for my entire review of Zhao Dayong's "The High Life" for Slant Magazine.

Geographical Status: London

2011-06-12T16:35:00.001-04:00

Having afternoon tea at the Wolseley with the boyfriend.

Geographical Status: Riga, Latvia

2011-06-09T03:44:00.001-04:00

Surprisingly chic and everyone looks like a top model.

Geographical Status: Paris

2011-06-06T16:50:00.002-04:00

We will always have it, won't we...

'Beginners' Film Review

2011-06-05T15:47:00.002-04:00

"In Jorge Furtado's 1989 film Isle of Flowers, the narrator exposes, mimicking the authoritative tone of didactic documentaries, the inter-connectedness between all humans on the planet and the objects that guarantee their survival. Like a refreshingly zoomed-out Google map of commodity kinship, Furtado's film establishes these chains of attainment and loss (someone's rubbish is someone else's dessert) through a mise-en-abyme-like series of visual associations. Ewan McGregor's voice in Beginners strings together this poignant melancholia of a film in much more intimate ways, but with the same trans-narcissistic spirit: I am nothing without you." (...)

Click here for my entire review of Mike Mills' "Beginners" for Slant Magazine.

Geographical Status: Newport Beach, CA

2011-05-29T00:06:00.001-04:00

We all deserve a day at the beach right before a long Europe-bound flight.

Brazilian President Cancels Anti-Homophobia Kit

2011-05-25T16:36:00.005-04:00

Recently-elected Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff, the country's first female president (rumored to be queer herself), has just balked to religious congressmen's blackmail and canceled government-sponsored anti-homophobia videos and other materials. The "anti-homophobia kit," as it came to be called, was to be taught in schools across the country, but the religious section of congress threatened to pursue corruption charges against Antonio Palocci (Rousseff's chief of staff) if the anti-homophobia plans went through. Suspicious of money laundering have recently surrounded Palocci, who, ironically, is also known to be gay.

It is believed that a backroom deal was achieved in which Palocci wouldn't be asked to explain his allegedly illegally-obtained money if the anti-homophobia campaign stopped. The government's excuses were that the material was "inadequate" and "inappropriate for its goals." President Rousseff also said more members of society need to be part of the production of the materials (apparently religious leaders who think of homosexuality as inherently evil) if they are to be published and distributed in schools. LGBT leaders, including openly gay congressman Jean Wyllys, from the socialist party PSol, were flabbergasted with the decision."Where is the message of 'intransigent defense for human rights' that the president promised?" he asked. "You can't just be sensitive to human rights, you have to do something about it." Evangelical Christians have at least 74 members in the Brazilian congress. The Brazilian Supreme Court just legalized same-sex civil unions.

Congressman Jean Wyllys, of the Brazilian socialist party

EXCERPT of the WEEK

2011-05-23T21:40:00.004-04:00

"A couple's first task, it has always seemed to me, is to solve the problem of breakfast; if this can be worked out amicably, most other difficulties can too."

Julian Barnes, in his new book of short stories "Pulse."

Xuxa Works It on Argentine TV

2011-05-16T14:29:00.003-04:00

Xuxa, the Brazilian entertainment goddess, worked some serious couture like she hasn't in a long time in Argentina this week. Bitch still cleans up nicely. On the Susana Gimenez show, Xuxa was her usual charismatic self, butchered some Spanish (she used the word for "penis" when trying to say "plumes"), lipsynched like it was 1992, spoke with 12-year-old daughter Sasha on the phone, defended her stance against the romantic complementarity of the heterosexual couple and danced as her sickeningly gorgeous gown permitted. Check out the eye make-up.

Vacation! Film Review

2011-05-14T19:07:00.003-04:00

"In Vacation!, four girlfriends decide to get away from it all and rent a home for a week at some North Carolina beach, where they dance around in their underwear, go skinny-dipping, share secrets ("I have a girlfriend…who has a boyfriend"), bond over acid pills, and masturbate with the aid of domestic appliances, such as a washing machine and a blender. A conversation will start with a "Do you remember that party our sophomore year?" and end with a "You wanna make out with me?" Once in a while one of them will even say, "Oh my God, I brought wigs!" And then one will take a picture of herself with an iPhone, and yet another regrets her college years for having never smoked pot or had a threesome. It becomes difficult to tell these pussycat dolls apart as the film takes the shape of a torture porn's pre-bloodbath setup scenes, but all we ever get is the porn." (...)

Click here for my entire review for Slant Magazine.

Adele Sells Out on 'Dancing with the Stars'

2011-05-11T12:13:00.002-04:00

Check out Adele singing to some ri-di-cu-lous choreography on "Dancing with the Stars." We know they always try their hardest to mask Adele's figure using harsh trick lighting and all-black clothing, but this time they just tried to focus the camera away from Adele altogether, paying attention to the strippers-in-distress choreography instead. Apparently, Adele's voice was "wrecked" so she pulled out from singing a second song. Less embarrassment for someone trying to build a brand identity based on authenticity.

Passion Play film review

2011-05-05T20:49:00.003-04:00

"In her "Can't Be Tamed" music video, Miley Cyrus is presented on a stage inside a cage as the rarest creature on Earth. She leaves her nest and walks, gauchely, toward the audience, whose flashing cameras cause her to reveal her huge black wings. What follows is an absurd performance of botched sexiness with lofty aesthetics trying to offer some kind of conceptual gravitas to nonsense. The bird woman in Passion Play, Lily (Megan Fox), is no less awkward than Avis cyrus, but incites, instead of gasping terror, a mesmerizing, erotic attraction from the few who see her wings get hard." (...)

Click here for my entire review of "Passion Play" for Slant.

Brazil Approves Same-Sex Civil Unions

2011-05-05T20:40:00.003-04:00

Brazil's top court unanimously voted (10x0) to extend the same rights of heterosexual couples to "stable gay couples." The voting took several hours and several of the judges spoke eloquently about equality and the refusal to humiliate its own citizens any further. Some cited ancient philosophers and even included sophisticated literary metaphors in their speech. It's unclear if same-sex couples will be able to apply for civil unions right away. Brazil is the country with the largest Roman Catholic population in the world. It joins Uruguay, Ecuador, Colombia and Argentina in the recognition of civil unions (Argentina also allows same-sex marriage).

As soon as news broke out about the voting, Twitter was awash with both messages of support and homophobic jokes about soccer team fans claiming that their rival teams must be so happy that they can now get civil unions.

Lord Byron film review

2011-05-04T23:02:00.000-04:00

"Lord Byron's title character is a horny, unemployed guy who enjoys collecting pictures of saints and smoking weed in his bedroom while waiting for his many girlfriends to get off work. He lives with his ex-wife, her kids, and her boyfriend(s) in one of those working-class homes where every room looks like the storage room and random folk come in and out to sell drugs, do drugs, pitch their performance-art pieces, exchange stories about Genghis Khan's grave, or discuss the idiosyncrasies of human existence." (...)

Click here for my entire review for Slant.

EXCERPT of the WEEK

2011-04-30T19:20:00.002-04:00

"I have become the forlorn type who buys
almond biscotti for a long night in,
glumly recapturing a sense of sin
through stomach-aches. It hath been otherwise."

Poet Rachel Wetzsteon, on realizing even the self eventually turns 30, or 35.

OVERHEARD in BEVERLY HILLS

2011-04-29T23:46:00.003-04:00

The other day I sipped my cappuccino at a local French coffee shop in Beverly Hills, reading the Times and eavesdropping on the conversation between two well-coiffed ladies in their 60s. The least manicured one was going on about how she loved her gardening shows and was excited about the ones coming up. The more uptight one, who appeared to be her sister, wasn't having any of it, telling her she hated gardening her self. When the gardening-loving one said she was going to go to a gardening event in Fullerton the other sister simply couldn't bear it anymore, sneering at the zipcode that was clearly either east of Robertson or south of Wilshire.

Gardening sister: « Fullerton is really nice actually. There’s more to life other than Beverly Hills, Gayle. »

Gayle: « I know that! I know Brentwood, I know Malibu..."

'Lebanon, PA' Film Review

2011-04-28T21:13:00.002-04:00

"This is a plea for self-described indie filmmakers to stop utilizing hyper-polished technique to talk about human misery. Give me rugged skin, out-of-focus realness, maladroit camera moves, soundtrack cracks and pops. Give me blurs, dust, stuttering, ahs and uhs, and a sense of spontaneity. Lebanon, PA, for instance, tries to examine the existential mediocrity of Americans, real (pregnant teens from blue-collar families) and unreal (bored advertising execs with money to spare), with the stylistic insipidness and reverence for well-established narrative rules that makes it anything but cinematic. (...)"

Click here for my entire film review for Slant magazine.

Recession Brings Back Naked NY Firefighters Calendar

2011-04-22T20:24:00.005-04:00

Three years ago, the NYFD stopped printing its half-naked firefighters calendar because its cover boy, Michael Biserta, was discovered to have shown the full monty in a "Guys Gone Wild" video. At the time the organization claimed its reputation was more important than raising money. But in economical dire straits NYFD is apparently compromising its contradicting integrity and publishing the calendar again. Biserta, who, if you've seen the video, you know, is extremely well hung, has since gone on a modeling career. In the video girls convince him to film him taking a shower in his hotel room, wrapping his long penis around his wrist. He also utters some Staten Island speak often, such as "you is crazy." His Facebook status lists him as engaged, although he was recently involved in a cheating "scandal."

QUOTE of the WEEK

2011-04-22T17:47:00.003-04:00

"Lost objects are the only ones one is afraid to lose..."

Christian Metz, on the zeitgeist non-contingency of 21st century phobias.

The Matricide Sessions

2011-04-19T18:15:00.005-04:00

Today I officially began editing my new film. Oh, the espresso-taking technology-hating technology-loving sleepless nights that lie ahead...And this one is all about my mother.

Cougar Hunting film review

2011-04-18T19:15:00.002-04:00

"A road trip whose goal, as voiced by a narrator named Dick, is "to take down as many hot-ass horned-up cougars as possible" seems like the type of sexist premise that turns crass clichés about women into easy profit. Surprisingly, Cougar Hunting isn't yet another iteration of The Hangover school of misogyny-makes-the-man politics." (...)

Click here for my entire review on Slant Magazine.

WTF-Brazilian Shoes with Built-In Drawers

2011-04-18T01:37:00.001-04:00

This video is all the rage in Brazil right now. I'm not exactly sure if these shoes are for sale or if they are just a sexist-classist joke on working-class Brazilian women who do their shopping at outdoor markets. Pay special attention to the objects that the male narrator (who, of course, would know what women need to take with them when they are out and about) suggests the wearer can keep inside the shoe (as we know, the foot is one of the most "common" fetishes, whatever that means): a condom, a tampon, a ring (wedding band?), an earring and a lipstick. It's interesting to see what this fantasy of a shoe/foot imagines the woman's foot hides inside her feet. Not something perhaps more neutral and practical like keys or a driver's license, but the accoutrements of femininity, female-ness and sex. The narrator makes some references as to where it might be a good idea to wear the drawer-shoes, citing places that would be popular among poorer women (25 de Março Street in Sao Paulo, a rodeo party and a Baile Funk at the favela, shown below). He also says that the shoes are great to hide your goods in case one is mugged ("assalto" in Portuguese, the same word for "(sexual) assault").

Jamming Up The Economy of the Look: The French and the Veil

2011-04-17T16:19:00.001-04:00

The NY Times just ran this interesting piece on France's recent ban on the veil in public places. We may understand the potential for symbolic intervention that the veil may pose. And, perhaps, how feminists could appropriate it in a way that divorces it from its religious attachments. As the article notes, the veil "interrupts the circulation of coquetry" and reminds French people daily that the "civilizing mission" of its colonies has failed. Mostly, it allows women to "see out," without allowing anyone (men) to "see in." When Interior Minister Claude Guéant defends the principles behind the ban as "secularism" and "equality between man and woman," it's easy to see how threatening to the economy of the patriarchal look the veil is. We know that this claimed "equality" is actually one in which women are looked-at and man look at her (despite possible fissures). If the veil blocks the always already male-to-female look, then the very circulatory system of patriarchy, which guarantees its functioning, gets jammed. The veil announces a withdrawal from an economy that basically founds human subjectivity as we know it,and experience it, rendering the effects of the mirror into impenetrable opaqueness. It disables recognition and, therefore, mis-recognition. It, at the same time, and ironically, invites another kind of look that bounces back to the Western looker (in disapproval, or even horror), perhaps calling attention to the naturalization of an economy that should be "absurd" (similar to the possible effects of camp vis-a-vis the feminine masquerade). Of course the niqab usually means more than just this perhaps ancillary, perhaps accidental, symbolic intervention. If we think of the veil as a feminist refusal, accidental or not, we may be able to see through the self-righteous rhetoric of "equality" and join Luce Irigaray in asking: "Equal to whom?"

In Homage to J. Crew's Sissy Boy

2011-04-14T15:39:00.002-04:00

These are my feet circa 2007. I can't remember if the person painting my toes pink is my main fag hag Emily or my sister, Barbara. Either way, some kind of maternal proxy the sissy boy identifies with. See the hag and the sister, respectively, in all their female drag below:

I love how Barbara is wearing her Victoria's Secret paper bag like it's a Lanvin clutch! The "I know but all the same" of the fetish comes to mind. Any prop will do to...prop this fantasy up.

J. Crew Ad Celebrates Sissy Boyhood, Conservatives Panic

2011-04-12T14:46:00.002-04:00

J. Crew customers received an ad last week featuring creative director Jenna Lyons, who I wish were my mom, pictured with her son wearing pink nail polish. They are bonding in a moment of extreme joy and, perhaps, identification. The picture is like watching the train of misery and abjection arriving at the little boy's body, dumbfounded by the action and turning right back to wherever it came from. The caption reads "Lucky for me I ended up with a boy whose favorite color is pink. Toenail painting is way more fun in neon." Now conservative bloggers and even some psychologists are outraged at a picture which apparently announces the end of gender boundaries and, worse, the end of child rearing as life's raison d'être!

In Gawker's report on this we learn that a certain psychologist Keith Ablow, mourns the fact that girls "beat up other girls on YouTube" and "young men primp and preen until their abdomens are washboards and their hair is perfect." He continues: "And while that may seem like no big deal, it will be a very big deal if it turns out that neither gender is very comfortable anymore nurturing children above all else, and neither gender is motivated to rank creating a family above having great sex forever and neither gender is motivated to protect the nation by marching into combat against other men and risking their lives."

Not a surprise that Mr. Ablow has written a book with Glenn Beck and is Fox News' "expert" in psychiatry. The concepts of male identification with female's sartorial artifice developed by Kaja Silverman in "Fragments of a Fashionable Discourse" are turned into panicky disavowal here. Being faced with a border whose daily labor is supposed to turn into concrete and yet remains porous, and so unabashedly celebrated like this, is a hard one to take. And it's all very contradicting. The same rhetoric that claims a kind of undeniable ontological and physiological truth to gender also believes that the mere applying of a certain color on a subject's toe will suddenly reverse the course of history? Of course the problem isn't so much the child's predilection for pink, but the mother's approval. The mother, designated to precisely do patriarchy's dirty work of surveillance and hetero-pedagogy is here a traitor.

Gay Murders Up 31% in Brazil

2011-04-07T21:46:00.003-04:00

Brazilians elected their first female president last year, but hate crimes against non-straights is going strong. According to the Grupo Gay da Bahia, the go-to LGBT group in Brazil, the number of assassinations of gays, lesbians and trans people in Brazil went up 31,3% between 2009 and 2010. The study, which the Grupo publishes yearly, is based on news stories published in newspapers and online. According to the report, a gender-nonconformant (my terminology, clearly) Brazilian is 80% more likely to be murdered in the Northeast part of the country than in the Southeast.

Bernard-Henri Lévy: "God is dead, but my hair is perfect"

2011-04-02T21:03:00.000-04:00

He is known in Europe by his initials, BHL, which sounds like some French luxury conglomerate such as LVMH (Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton). There is something fascinating and infuriating about Bernard-Henri Lévy's impeccable style juxtaposed to real world misery-cum-political cause. The Parisian philosopher and public intellectual (does America have those?) was featured in the New York Times this week as tooting his own horn in convincing France, the European Union and Hilary Clinton to help Libya's civilians against Gaddafi. As the article points out, Lévy style trademarks include flowing hair, black suits, unbuttoned white shirts and supermodel blondes as accessories. BHL's photograph in the Times is both beautiful and disturbing as he stands regally in his couture and flawless coiffure in the middle of what looks like a bombed warehouse -- probably a site where corpses, or limbs, lay in pools of blood just a few days prior to the photo shoot. Is this where the dandy belongs? How can we compare BHL to someone like Sean Penn (an anti-dandy in real life), who had his own very rugged yet just as coutured photograph on the cover of New York Times style magazine T just last week? Penn's suit and shirt look like a certified copy of BHL's signature look. We can also think of Lady Di's style in her charity photographs, which seemed to always highlight her royalty against the ordinary and miserable peasantry surrounding her instead of attempting some kind of staged overcoming of difference. The ones with Diana and Mother Teresa show the princess of the people literally bending to the woman's level in what looks like a Valentino skirt suit and black-and-white Chanel heels. These outfits inside these photographs form an incongruous juxtaposition that work as guarantors of difference in times of crisis. Don't worry, folks, Europe is still European, undeterred, not even a hair out of place -- and the unfortunate lands of elsewhere still a pile of dog shit.

QUOTE of the WEEK

2011-03-31T15:35:00.000-04:00

"The civilized man, that is, the policed and polite man, has no urgency. He is never in a hurry. One must be part of the malnourished to know urgency."

Lucien Israël, in "Pulsions de Mort," on the non-sublimated libido of certain gay men, I suppose.

Spring Fashion Modeled by Rising Young Poets

2011-03-27T20:02:00.001-04:00

In a recent issue of Oprah's O Magazine, eight "rising poets express their dynamic personal styles—and show you how to cultivate your own." This feature was part of the magazine's attempt to celebrate National Poetry Month. It was edited by, gasp, Maria Shriver, and as David Orr remarks in his great column for this Sunday's NY Times Book review, it included interviews with "all-star readers like Bono, Ashton Kutcher, the gossip columnist Liz Smith" and James Franco, of course. Click here to check out Orr's piece on the chasm between the intangible pursuits of poetry and mass culture-cum-couture -- if you can bypass the Times' new paywall.

Poet Suheir Hammad doesn't always look the way people expect a poet to look, "Onstage, you'll find me in sequins." Fellow poet Rachel Eliza Griffiths says she loves "how the teal, chartreuse, and peach complement one another, and how they look against my skin," donning a $1,296 slim pencil skirt and a $2,757 Sequined cardigan by L'Wren Scott.

"Mists" Film Review

2011-03-25T19:12:00.002-04:00

"Portuguese filmmaker Ricardo Costa contemplates his hometown, Peniche, by re-encountering his former nanny (Maria José), 50 years later, in Mists. Akin to Pedro Costa's meditations on affect and geography through the delicate probing of real people doing real things, this is a lovely essay film/documentary about the ruthlessness of time and the soothing power of remembrance. "

Click here for my entire piece for Slant on the film.

Insert ____ here

2011-03-20T15:57:00.002-04:00

Charlotte Herzog’s essay, “Powder Puff Promotion: The Fashion Show-in-Film” has a couple of great moments when she defines a model's facial expression (or lack thereof) and her walk. Herzog describes "the frosty and detached snobbishness" of model-ness, the "indifferent, aloof stance," as well as the "contrapposto stance," which is the posing with the hip and shoulder tilted in an S-curve. The effacing of affect from the model's face, or anyone's, is of course an affect in and of itself. The face is inherently too complex to ever truly be blank. Yet it is very capable of conveying blankness without being blank. And the model's feigned affect-less-ness, "so as not to detract from the clothes" (p. 138), seems to get very close to its even less animated kin: the synthetic mannequin. A good fashion dummy, the sculptural piece, was recently described by Harold Koda, the head of the Metropolitan Museum's Costume Institute, as "once abstract enough to carry the imagery of a variety of signature designer styles, but specific enough to present a compelling physicality to the clothing." (See the great NY Times article on Bonaveri's factory of mannequins here.) No surprise that the human model, the mannequin and the star would all be after a similar goal: to stoke desire, which will lead to a purchase -- or many. But if the performed blankness allows for other women to easily picture themselves inside the clothing, what does it guarantee for the heterosexual male gaze (internalized by men, women, and anything that is alive) to have a frozen frame of a female on display -- to not allow for "it" to move about unexpectedly?

This performed blankness of the face relates to my ongoing work on the ways in which queer(able) men represent their bodies, or limbs, online. The logic, in the runway and on Manhunt.net, is similar: if the face doesn't commit to a particular affect or "type," it is more likely to lend itself to the whatever-fantasy-of-the-other. Compare this non-committal relationship to any particular affect in the face, in order to sell clothing or horny bodies in (cyber)space, to the very specific "prissy walk" of the pageant children in "Toddlers and Tiaras." In one of the episodes, a teenage pageant coach teaches a toddler how to do the "prissy walk," which is something like a stylized skipping with a Little Red Riding Hood of porn frozen smile and a finger on the chin. There is no blankness to this face. It very clearly suggests both defenseless innocence and a sassy come-on that reads "touch me," maybe even "manhandle me." As the teenage coach asks the little girl about what she wants to be when she grows up: "You wanna be a trophy wife? Yeah!".

While the Toddlers and Tiaras walk is faster than the model's, they are both just as controlled, rhythmic, and predictable. But the "prissy walk"'s accompanying face doesn't perform blankness, it very clearly commits to a specific expression. Still, blank or innocent-cum-sexy, the expression is just one. The toddler may have no couture to sell and, therefore, no need to guarantee "the female viewer"'s ability to imagine herself in her outfit. What is left, through the frozen face, is perhaps what the heterosexual male "viewer" wants.

What's behind the anxiety that the fluidity of movement and the lively spontaneity of the (female) face produce?

Emotional Status: Mourning

2011-03-06T23:01:00.002-05:00

Rest in peace, brother-in-law.

Diego at NYU Cinema Studies Conference: Nostalgia and Media

2011-02-24T23:01:00.001-05:00

I will be presenting my talk, “The Pervert’s Contract: the Barebacking Subject as the One Who Knows,” at the NYU Cinema Studies Conference: LOST AND FOUND: Nostalgia and Media, on Friday, Feb. 25. at 4:30 p.m. Arguing for a psychoanalytical turn in Queer Theory, my paper situates queer “male” subjects’ relationship to new media technology in a context of perversion, establishing barebacking (sex among strangers un-mediated by a condom) as an emblematic “problem” of and for queerness today. The work takes barebacking not as a subculture or a symptom, but as a potentiality — laden with new possibilities for listening to the unconscious. The conference takes place at the Tisch School of the Arts building (721 Broadway), 6th floor, New York, NY.

EXCERPT of the WEEK

2011-02-20T23:52:00.000-05:00

"As Foucault makes clear, the culturally contradictory enterprise of the mechanism of repression is prohibitive and generative at once and makes the problematic of 'liberation' especially acute. The female body that is freed from the shackles of the paternal law may well prove to be yet another incarnation of that law, posing as subversive but operating in the service of that law's self-amplification and proliferation."

Judith Butler in "Gender Trouble," being Judith Butler.

Breast Anxiety and Plastic Surgery Niches

2011-02-19T20:16:00.002-05:00

The New York Times ran an interesting article about plastic surgery cultural niches in the New York area. According to several surgeons, some of whom believe themselves to be "sort of amateur sociologists," they can tell what "job" the patient will want done by their ethnic background. The piece is full of egregious essentialisms and generalizations (made by patients and doctors alike) such as Latinas define themselves with their bodies, We always have curves," and Asians always want the double eye-lid surgery, not because of "assimilation," but simply due to the fact that "one of the traits of beauty os to have large eyes."

It's fascinating how the article reads the apparent enhancement of "racial traits" (Latinas want more butt, White women want less) not as a way of accepting the box one has been put in, but as a kind of belated, and well-deserved, pride in being who you are. Following the logic of the piece, by Sam Dolnick, it's clear that we have reach a stage in which women have finally accepted their ethnicity and, apart for Asians and some Russians I suppose, are happy to accentuate their "own" features, instead of trying to approximate a White beauty standard.

Another interesting point is a Dr. Elena Ocher, a Russian immigrant, who attributes the rise on Russian women's request for breast implants to Americanization, not Russian culture and wonders wgt America is always been so much into breasts, "What is this fixation?" The cliche goes that in America it's all about big breasts, whereas in Latin culture it's all about the ass. I'm sure there could be some great Freudian analysis about anality and orality to be developed on this. My first inkling is to align the fixation with the breast with a kind of (American) child that is, perhaps, less certain of having ever actually "had" the breast. At the risk of committing some egregious generalization myself, it would seem like the comparatively overwhelming presence, and expression, of maternal affect in Latin culture may lead to less anxiety concerning the breast.

VIDEO of the WEEK

2011-02-14T18:26:00.005-05:00

Gaga's ode to bio-essentialism? Going against her very queer aesthetics, bitch reproduced heterosexist patriarchy's notion that the subject's truth lies in some biological or un-ambiguous, non-fluid essence. Yes, we are "born this way" when it comes to being born into the "symbolic system" that precedes us all. To suggest that this kind of birth imprints an un-bending fate in the subject and that since it's not her fault (that she was born this way), but "nature"'s, she must be respected is an argument that is more in line with Dr. Phil than Dr. Butler. Either way, Bruno Mars 1, Lady Gaga 0, surprisingly, last night at the Grammys.

Michelle's Closet

2011-02-02T23:54:00.001-05:00

Last week the New York Times published the op-ed "Boosting America, in Her Own Fashion," in which Kate Betts tried to justify Michelle Obama's wearing a British-designed dress for the state dinner honoring the chinese president Hu Jintao. For Betts, a journalist who is currently writing a book about Mrs. Obama as a fashion icon, the first lady has been a sort of people's princess who has "rewritten the dress code for women who work." She argues Mrs. Obama has freed American women from the prison of high heels and heavy jackets, choosing light cardigans and flats instead. But, "most important," she has taught them to "dress for ourselves, something the first lady does so effortlessly it's hard to imagine that there had ever been any dress code for her position." And more: "she's not afraid to flaunt her femininity - so why should the rest of us be?"

Besides reading like a frivolous piece of Pollyannaism, the op-ed (re-)articulates the notion that it takes courage to express one's femininity, suggesting that an "equal rights" agenda has, shamefully, put femininity in some sort of closet (built by the dirty hands of dykey feminists) -- out of which it should come out. This idea fails to consider the role of undergirding and mirror-like re-inforcer of masculinity that "the feminine" occupies. It assumes a femininity completely independent of the patriarchal masculinity that actually founds it, fetishizes it and seizes it. The fact that Betts thinks women can now dress for themselves reveals a naive understanding of how the feminine guarantees the masculine and could never do away with its internalized gaze of the Other, which is its very existential pre-condition (and vice versa). No one, girly or butch, gender-conformant or non, could ever dress or walk or talk or dance for herself. This is one of the most basic pillars of comprehending the human psyche and its subjective division: ID, Ego, Supergo. One's fantasy is always already the fantasy of the other. Following Lacan, when we speak we are immediately in the realm of the lie -- how could the act of dressing be immune to that logic?

"As we are with all first ladies, we are subconsciously invested in her looking good -- it's almost as if there's some sort of pride at stake." One can easily spot the psychoanalytically uninitiated when they refer to the unconscious as the "subconscious." Besides, our interest in Mrs. Obama looking good is very much a conscious one, as Betts herself suggests in her article, since the better the first lady looks in an American-designed dress, the more American designers can do business with, say, China. And as for the "almost pride" at stake in the first lady's appearance, I'd like to suggest that "pride" is the least of it. There is, instead an almost ontological need to re-articulate certain notions of gender (and race) when we allow her looks to wow us and when we trash her. As well as the business opportunities that arise depending on what brands Mrs. Obama endorses through her sartorial choices.

Most problematic of all, I see the constant re-production of the feminine as body and body alone in the figure of Michelle Obama. If one watches her interviews from a few years ago, she reveals a kind of political rhetoric and intelligence in par with Barack Obama. But since 2008 or so she has really embraced the role of adornment with a cause: childhood obesity, which despite being a social preoccupation, also has everything to do with the body. How does this apologetic mix of J Crew and Prada garments serve as a veil to mask the presumption of an "angry black woman" lurking behind it? Is "the angry black woman" also trapped in some sort of closet that needs to be constantly made up and put on display for surveillance so it can pass for something other, so it can assuage the anxiety that assumes the black anger behind the taffeta? What role does race play in one's inability to ever "dress for oneself"?

"Blackmail Boys" review

2011-01-26T15:57:00.002-05:00

"Sam and Aaron are the kind of gays who decide where to live based on which states allow same-sex marriage. They have been in a long-distance relationship for three years, nurturing all sorts of homo-normative dreams while getting by on all sorts of non-normative practices. When Aaron (Taylor Reed), a pimply Lukas Haas type, finally moves to Chicago to be with Sam (Nathan Adloff), a self-described artist with prostitution tendencies and shaggy Rob Thomas hair, they have to negotiate the impossible project of being a gay couple in a Craigslist world (...) "

Click here for my entire film review for Slant Magazine.

EXCERPT of the WEEK

2011-01-18T17:55:00.002-05:00

"There is a cultural elite, in America, which tries its utmost to manipulate the habits and tastes of consumers. It consists of the corporations who sell nearly everything with the possible exception of classical music and conceptual arts, and while its methods include some of the publicity-driven hype that finds its way into newspapers, magazines and other traditional media, its main tool is not criticism but marketing."

A.O. Scott, in the New York Times (Sunday, Jan, 16, 2011, "Defy the Elite! Wait, Which Elite?"), in a response to Neal Gabler's article on American elitism trying to force "good art" down "normal folk's" throats in The Boston Globe (Jan. 6). I normally wouldn't quote the usually dull, and rather well-behaved, Scott, but any attempts at speaking up to Americans' ode to anti-intellectualism make me smile.

Geographic Status: Bahia, Brazil

2011-01-06T16:44:00.009-05:00

This week I was happy to learn there are pieces of land in the world un-tainted by WiFi, immune to cell phone reception and un-touched by even television. The restaurant beside our beach house served amazing fillet mignon to the sound of oldschool American blues. You could wait out in the hammocks or inside the natural pools of ocean water at the beach until your food was ready. Lots of espressos, sunscreen bottles and pages of Joyce were consumed.

Geographic Status: Goiania, Brazil

2011-01-05T21:07:00.002-05:00

Playing with dolls with former slave. Can one be a former slave?

James Liddy (1934-2008)

2010-12-15T23:58:00.010-05:00

I was devastated to google the name of the best teacher I have ever had, Irish poet James Liddy, and find out of his passing two years ago. I took a couple of creative writing classes and an independent study with him in my early early 20s in Milwaukee and, for the first time, I felt the kind of recognition that can be transformed into the self-worth many a gay boy are so horrifically devoid of. He savored my lines with his eyes and smiled, as if chewing my words into some kind of irresistible sincerity. When I first saw him, I remember thinking: So that's what an old gay man looks like, and being thankful to now have some sort of image -- and to have proof that, for a faggot, there was life after AIDS, that there was life, perhaps, without AIDS.

Once I asked him to be in one of my films. He was supposed to play a sick patient in bed who pays a young man to be his friend and visit him daily. He said yes. Then, a day or two before filming he left a message saying he would rather not do it, that he wouldn't be good. I heard in his voice the very child without worth that we sure once were behind that old savant exterior. I could tell he was as interested in spending time with me as I was with him (maybe a little bit less...), but not at that price. Not as a thing inside a frame without words to play.

When I moved to New York I sent him a couple of postcards (he would never touch a computer). He published one of my poems in a literary magazine and gave me one of his books, out of which I reproduce the short fragment below. We always seemed too collected, too proud, too discrete with the way we felt about each other. He was certainly a great poetic seducer but I was too scared of his grandeur, of our likeness if you discount time. I wish I had shown him my devotion, my ontological gratitude. I wish I'd sent him more postcards, that I had joined him for a drink, I wish I had listened to him more, I wish I had introduced him to Clarice Lipector, and talked to him about love, and old age, and sex. I wish I had made him proud.
I will.

"work with what happens to you
there is no other happiness
(...)
I have just eaten Serbian sweetbreads with you
and read Robert Duncan what book do your hands hold
what are you doing this week
(all love is two questions)"

(from "Opaque?")

"Everyone is half cute
in an art museum"
("Niedecker's Museum, Milwaukee")

"I blew ferocious kisses in my youth,
In a dream in 1950 I became a female swan, fondled my
non-reproductive parts, imagined the opera of our loves
on the waterway. It's more beautiful to dive your head as
a swan than to consume cocktails on a yacht.
(...)
He was by alchemy an inspiring woman."

"To Tom Elliot for Publishing and Producing Nightwood"

and here is his James' favorite poem that I wrote:

"solo"

have you ever been to america, he asked

once
when I was really young
I got lost in its streets without numbers
in the amorality of its hallways
the perfectly lit uniformity of its living rooms
and I lived life like it owed me something

your crashes only made you stronger, he said
I say no, like you, I am still looking for my youth
gluing his mouth onto my ear
so I could hear the minutia of his every syllable
he said
let’s go to america, together

there is no togetherness in america, I correct him
it is a maze of drunken souls allergic to human bonding
yet addicted to its touch

we need a visa, we need vanilla roots, we need caffeine and male presence

no, let’s go to brazil or peru or senegal, or back inside
watch the moon remain untouched
use our fingers like cutlery
see misery, get spit on, become immortal and die

Applause Film Review

2010-12-06T00:41:00.004-05:00

"In the exquisite Danish film Applause, Dogme 95 muse Paprika Steen plays Thea, a successful stage actress and recovering alcoholic trying to get custody of her children. Borrowing some of that Scandinavian movement's most appealing qualities (a dizzily intimate handheld camera, unexpected ellipses, and hesitating focus), director Martin Zandvliet follows Thea in the après-coup of the rock-bottom of addiction and maternal abandonment. Steen's performance is so mesmerizingly nuanced, her face so overwhelmed, almost twitching with complexity, it's like watching a volcanic explosion inside a small, very delicate flask. (...)"

Click here for my entire review of Applause, starring Danish actress Paprika Steen, whose performance has been attracting lots of Oscar buzz. This is probably one for the best films I saw this year. It's playing in Los Angeles now, then New York, then rest of the country in January.

Geographical Status: Palm Springs, CA

2010-12-04T20:59:00.006-05:00

It's a pseudo-posh single street in the middle of the desert peopled with white heterosexual couples in their 60s visiting and older gay-identified men visiting - and working. Ontologically uncanny to see so many of them, the illusive figure of the not-yet-dead old gay guy, take your order at the chocolate boutique, serve you coffee and bump into you at the antique shop. So this is where we all go? If "we all" means privileged white queers with a taste for good espresso and slightly gaudy adornment.

Another interesting experience was eating at the Japanese restaurant Kobe, in close-by Rancho Mirage, where you sit beside strangers around a big table and watch a cook grill the food and throw shrimps up in the air like a magician, hoping they will fall inside his shirt pocket or a willing participant's mouth. This attempt to turn labor into spectacle, bringing it out of the kitchen onto the table, is, of course, a ruse. The food comes to the performer already seasoned and prepped from some unseen corner of the restaurant, where the real cooks (too hispanic for the show) work away from the limelight. I'd rather have my steak without tricks or fanfare, thank you.

Illinois Senate Passes Civil Union Law

2010-12-01T17:22:00.005-05:00

Gee, thanks guys. The new law, which Illinois Democrat governor Pat Quinn is expected to sign, after both House and Senate passed in less than 24 hours, will provide a strange and perverse legal recognition of same-sex couples, giving them some of the same benefits available to married couples, most of which have to do with one of the gays being sick or dead: "the right to visit a sick partner in the hospital, disposition of a deceased loved one's remains and the right to make decisions about a loved one's medical care." No word on whether the bill legitimizes queer existence if both in the couple are alive and well.

Hotel Reviews Never Cease To Amuse Me

2010-11-27T23:33:00.009-05:00

As I sift through Hotels.com trying to find a good deal for a weekend in San Francisco in the near future, check out the gems of hilarity I have found! These are usually so funny not only because their humor seems completely outside their authors' intent, but also because they (self-) paint a picture of the incredibly spoiled and provincial American traveler who expects boutique hotel rooms in Tokyo to be as spacious as the Hilton in Indianapolis, complain of key cards that are "too sensitive," are horrified that the wall paint had a chip and the bathroom door creaked in a medieval Scottish castle hotel, and are stunned that housekeeping doesn't speak fluent English in Paris. Are these self-entitled suburbanite white girls, fussy old couples from Bush country, ethnocentric businessmen with flawless cufflinks, cranky old hags intent on bitching out the hotel staff before even leaving home or people just like you and I authoring these literary curiosities? Who produces these unintentional masterpieces of laugh-out-loud humor-cum-embarrassing cultural portrait? Are these mere travel impressions or recorded symptoms of a complete inability for the average American to deal with alterity?

One guest described their experience at Hotel Adagio like this: "we ran out of toilet paper and no extra in the room, we had three adults but two bath towels and we had to call twice a day to get more, blowing threw a straw would have been better than the hair dryer that was provided, we had to go down the street to a drug store to purchase one that really worked, AC only worked if one was willing to crawl on there hands and knees to discover it wasnt plugged in and then disconnect the lamp to use it. Other than that, it was an ok hotel!!"

Another guest had this to say about the Diva Hotel: (...) wonderful small hotel very close to Union Square. Being so close has the advantages of great shopping and getting around easily. But at night the neighborhood was a little disturbing due to the number of homeless people begging for coins. It was to the extent that the sidewalk was often blocked by the number of beggers. "

This one guest seems to have mixed feelings, most of which unabashedly petty, about the White Swan Inn: "Rooms are great although not decorated to my taste (very country, way too much floral going on). The elevator is old and rickety and did not work when I had to leave. I called the front dest for my car but no one answered the phone. I had to drag my 40lb suitcase and 20 lb duffle bag down five stories. It was not a pleasant way to leave. HOWEVER, that being said, the breakfast spread was excellent." (I'd like to think she meant the breakfast "spread," as in a jam or butter spread.

This other one seemed to have had quite the dramatic experience due to an ill-fitting bed sheet at the Cornell Hotel de France. The thoroughness is part of its charm: "Definitely not worth what we paid - the room was tiny and instead of a fitted bottom sheet on the bed there was a top sheet that was both too short AND STAINED! It was so short it didn't properly cover the mattress and you could see the mattress itself at the top. When I politely mentioned this problem to the man working at reception his response was first to say "you have two sheets don't you?" and then when I tried to explain that yes, we had two sheets, but neither was a proper fitted bottom sheet and in either case the top sheet they were using as a bottom sheet was too small and didn't even cover the mattress and was stained, he then said he "didn't know anything about such things" (um...if you work at a hotel you should understand the difference between a fitted bottom sheet and a top sheet and should know where extra sheets are kept) and then when he didn't say anything else and I asked if he could just please take a look at it he said in a very annoyed voice "that's what I'm doing right now" - although he gave no indication, verbal or otherwise, that he was going to do anything about my complaint. Then when we got back from dinner, we found that he had not changed the sheet at all - he had just turned around the sheet that was originally on our bed and pulled it up higher so that the stains were in the lower corner and it was shorted on the bottom instead of the top so that when we stretched our feet out they were on bare matterss (perhaps he was hoping we wouldn't notice...?) In addition, our room was cold so I turned on the radiator, then I couldn't get it to go off all night! we were sweltering - thank goodness at least the windows opened. "

And, finally, this guest managed to take the lemons of The Stanford Court Renaissance and make lemonade: "The bath towels are cheap and old so I got a good exfoliation just drying myself off. "

Condoms for All, Pills for Some

2010-11-23T20:06:00.005-05:00

I would normally rather ignore the Vatican, but girlfriends came out (excuse the pun) today saying condoms are a-okay. Thanks, girls, that's all we needed to here to stop barebacking! The paradigm-shift comes on the same week that a pill helps gay men avoid HIV infection. So, it's 40-percent okay to bareback if you take one-a-day? Does it work if you're a straight man fucking a fag? What about trannies? Oh, "the pill" (unmarked, and therefore straight) is still a no-go, says the Pope.

"Me, Too" Film Review

2010-11-19T04:14:00.002-05:00

"Pablo Pineda, the first student with Down's syndrome in Europe to obtain a university degree, plays a fictitious version of his over-achieving self, Daniel, in Me, Too. As a new employer at the Disability Services office of Seville, Spain, 34-year-old Daniel quickly becomes enamored with workplace cock-tease Laura (the excellent Lola Dueñas), a spunky, chain-smoking peroxide blonde with bad roots who goes around saying she's an orphan, even though she isn't. Pablo's Down syndrome is more quirky conduit than obstacle for their friendship, until it becomes obvious that Pablo wants more than what Laura can give." (...)

Click here for my entire review for Slant Magazine.

QUOTE of the WEEK

2010-11-15T22:24:00.003-05:00

"the fear of the vulgar is the obverse of the fear of excellence, and both are aspects of the fear of difference..."

Leslie A. Fiedler, "The Middle Against Both Ends," in Mass Culture: The Popular Arts in America, on why I watch "Toddlers and Tiaras," "Chelsea Lately," Brazilian reality show "A Fazenda," would watch "Real Housewives of Beverly Hills" if it were on YouTube and will be getting Cable TV back when "American Idol" starts back.

'Con Artist' Film Review

2010-11-10T15:51:00.003-05:00

"You can think of Mark Kostabi as a kind of poor man's Andy Warhol whose greed for fame was just as gargantuan, but whose cunning didn't survive the shifts in zeitgeist. Or so tells us Con Artist, a riveting documentary about the rise and fall of the anxious artist willing to do anything, even art, to feel loved."

Click here for my entire review for Slant Magazine.

EXCERPT of the WEEK

2010-11-07T01:30:00.005-04:00

"I will not serve that in which I no longer believe, whether it calls itself my home, my fatherland, or my church: and I will try to express myself in some mode of life or art as freely as I can and as wholly as I can, using for my defense the only arms I allow myself to use, silence, exile, and cunning."

James Joyce, in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, reminding us why one must stop postponing and finally read Joyce.

Image: Christo Javacheff, Portrait of Ray (1969)

Kinect Dance Off

2010-11-06T20:35:00.006-04:00

I got the chance to play a dance-off game on Kinect at the offices this week. To the beat of Gaga, of course (ad nauseam).

EXCERPT of the WEEK

2010-11-04T23:22:00.005-04:00

"The female body in the West is not a unitary sign. Rather, like a coin, it has an obverse and a reverse: on the one side, it is white; on the other, not-white or, prototypically, black. The two bodies cannot be separated, nor can one body be understood in isolation from the other in the West's metaphoric construction of 'woman'. White is what woman is; not-white (and the stereotype not white gathers in) is what she had better not be. Even in an allegedly postmodern era, the not-white woman as well as the not-white man are symbolically and even theoretically excluded from sexual difference. Their function continue to be to cast the difference of white men and white women into sharper relief."

Lorraine O'Grady, in "Olympia's Maid: Reclaiming Black Female Subjecvitiy," cited by Evelyn Hammonds in "Black (W)holes and the Geometry of Black Female Sexuality," as if to illustrate how psychoanalysis, among other methodologies, is plagued with white-centric epistemological assumptions. A claim, of course, coming from someone (Hammonds) who admittedly, and quite symptomatically, is "not a student of psychoanalytic theory." Mmmm.

EXCERPT of the WEEK

2010-10-31T21:33:00.005-04:00

“There’s no denying that sexual difference theorists and radical lesbian theorists will identify different points of resistance and different strategies to activate them [the different matrices which we inhabit at different points in time]. But why would that be a problem? Do we have to have only one point of exit from the kingdom of the phallus? I think, on the contrary: the more the merrier.”

• Rosi Braidotti, in "Feminism by Any Other Name," interview with Judith Butler, in Feminism Meets Queer Theory, advocating against intellectual monotheism, or theoretical monogamy.

"project ADAM" at Highways

2010-10-26T19:21:00.009-04:00

I screened my new short film project ADAM at the Highways Art Gallery in Santa Monica, Calif., on Monday, October 25, as part of their Queer Mondays project. There were several exquisite performances throughout the evening. It happens monthly, in the last Monday of the month. If you're in the Southern California area, check it out.

Geographic Status: Ann Arbor, Michigan

2010-10-24T23:13:00.002-04:00

Back in the midwest, presenting at the Doing Queer Studies Now conference at the University of Michigan. Great to finally meet theorists I had only "met" through their written ideas: Gayle Rubin, David Halperin, Esther Newton, etc. And, yes, I wore couture.

Bear City Film Review

2010-10-18T15:07:00.004-04:00

"BearCity's bears come in all shapes and sizes. Roger (Gerald McCullouch) is the handsome gay in constant cruising mode, Michael (Gregory Gunter) is the brainy gay who can't find a job because of his weight, Fred (Brian Keane) and Brent (Stephen Guarino) form the couple who thinks about "opening up" the relationship. There's even a twink, Tyler (Joe Conti), with a bear fetish, which is apparently as embarrassing a secret to keep (in Manhattan!) as a DL gay's fondness for the cock. (...)"

Click here to read my entire piece for Slant Magazine.

EXCERPT of the WEEK

2010-10-14T16:12:00.004-04:00

"The teenager's withdrawal from society, is it a lack of audacity, or a last hesitation before entering the labyrinthine codes which will annihilate her/his desire if she/he wants to actually live?"

Tony Duvert, in "Good Sex Illustrated," on the crucial moment in the subject's history of hetero-fascist indoctrination during which anti-gay bullying mostly occurs (in America). And why there must be absolutely zero tolerance for it.

Waiting for Godot, or the Object-Mediated Gangbang

2010-10-13T12:56:00.007-04:00

French poet François-Paul Alibert asked, in 1930, in “Le Suplice d’une Queue”, what kind of happiness a homosexual could really expect. Today, we can surely reply: where does that homosexual live, and what does he look like? While the New York Times devoted part of its front page to the story of a pack of nine men torturing three gay men in the Bronx, there hasn’t been any of the call to action (via Youtube) or outrage (via vigils) sparked by the suicide of Rutgers University freshman Tyler Clementi. Is it because the victims in this case didn’t actually die? Because they aren’t white? Because of their zipcode?

Mr. Clementi’s catastrophe, along with other gay teen suicides that same week triggered the “It Gets Better” campaign, in which celebrities use their webcams to tell teens that, eventually, in some illusive future, it won’t be that bad. If we go beyond the campaign’s slogan we quickly find the limits of its good intentions: how exactly does it get better? Does it get better because queer people learn to beat to the drums of exclusionary normativity (what academics have called homonormativity), therefore, demonizing those who fail to join “the family”? Does it get better because, in the future, everyone will respect difference (and will drive flying cars)? Even the location strategy of “getting better” -- moving to one of the big cities’ gay enclaves like Chelsea, West Hollywood or the Castro – seems questionable after the recent anti-gay beatings at the Stonewall Inn in the West Village.

This postponed happiness that we are selling to queer youth is not only an unrealistic promise but a stultifying one. No need for panic, no need for revolutions: your turn will come, sit tight, surf the Web some more. Does it really get better? When exactly? Or, more importantly, where and for whom? One of the gay men tortured in the Bronx, known as La Reina (the queen), was 30-years-old and was still being sold a kind promise of happiness (a party with neighborhood folk in a vacant building) when tragedy occurred. He was stripped, bound, sodomized with the wooden handle of a toilet plunger and had his genitals burned. One of the other two gay victims in the case, a 17-year-old, was sodomized with a baseball bat. The nine perpetrators have been charged with kidnapping and sodomy, but not rape per se. How can someone be sodomized with a plunger and a baseball bat and that not be considered rape? Is the concept of rape to be constituted from the point of view of the (“straight”) victim or of the (“gay”) rapist? Here the "object" mediating sexual intercourse gains literal status (a plunger, a bat), but the intercourse remains sexual. The difference between a dildo and the wooden handle of a plunger becomes merely cosmetic/sensorial when both become phallic tools. The function of the plunger, of course, that of forcing what is "stuck" somewhere inside back onto the surface, makes the allegorized queerness of the perpetrators that much more obvious -- as well as akin to human contradiction: punishing the threat that the faggot poses as well as forcing their own faggotry up to the surface (so that they can flush it back down again).

This “detail,” which hasn’t been brought up in the few articles covering the story, is a sickening case of heterocentrism that presumes the perpetrators did not take any pleasure in penetrating and fails to see the specificity of the victims’ bodies. The anal region is an erogenous zone, whether or not one utilizes it as such, and any attempt at inflicting pain in it should be considered rape. The fact that the perpetrators used a foreign object to mediate their sexual intercourse only reinforces, along with the subsequent obsessive cleaning of the rape scene, the sexual investment embricating the entire crime, from all parties.

How can a country that institutionalizes homophobia suddenly be shocked when its gay college teens take their lives and its Bronx ones are gangraped by, in Nicolas Sarkozy’s words, such “racaille” without prospects, jobs, or ways to make the constriction of compulsory heterosexuality malleable? Not even the most honest intentions behind college campus vigils and celebrity videos can bridge the gap between what “bullying “even means when one is in Indiana or Connecticut, Central California or Southern Florida, the Bronx or Tribeca. The reality of queers, and the presumably straight folk who torture them are worlds apart even when they are just a subway ride away. It would be reductionist to draw some kind of tautological causality between Clementi’s jumping off a bridge and his roommate’s broadcasting his gay hook-up to his Twitter followers, just as it would be conveniently naïve to blame the nine gangbangers who gangraped and tortured the three Bronx men as if the perpetrators were somehow detached from wonderfully tolerant America.

There is a history of naturalized heterofascim that dehumanizes anything that isn’t one-hundred-percent “properly” heterosexualized, which gets articulated every single day in this country (and abroad): on television, in classrooms, in households and through our body of laws. Republican candidate for governor of New York Carl Paladino recently said children should not be “brainwashed” (the fantasy of "washing" resurfaces here again) into thinking homosexuality is acceptable. If we don’t change the very structures that produce these lethal bullies we will keep on producing them. And, perhaps, that is exactly what we want: for someone else to do the dirty job. But we cannot claim our hands to be clean while projecting our own monstrosity onto the bodies of those who merely gave the victims the last push. From the classmate who giggles, and the dad who sneers, to the president who re-asserts emotional legitimacy as only “between a man and a woman,” our phobia before alterity is horrific and clear.

Vaginal Creme Davis at UCLA

2010-10-11T19:38:00.010-04:00

After speaking at the Queer Studies conference at UCLA on Friday, I got the chance to check out Vaginal Davis' performance on "Black Screen Images and Freakiness" on Saturday night. The performance theory darling, who currently lives in Berlin, worked the room with film clips from her own career as well as from the "offensively racialized" Hollywood archive. As her shiny red pumps sat neatly by her side, of course.

VIDEO of the WEEK: Karen F. Owen's Horizontal Thesis

2010-10-07T18:40:00.002-04:00

Talk about wounding the phallogocentric ego right in the nut...How dare a girl so creatively, and cleverly, objectify the men she sleeps with?! As the reporter points out she's slept with at least 12 different men throughout her four years at Duke University! Somewhere in Manhattan my hag is laughing hysterically.

Doll-Making with Diego

2010-10-05T14:27:00.006-04:00

Working on a 100-year-old Barbie, I suppose.

For the art and for the therapy that it must be: taking one's impossible object (the object of the Other) into one's own hands, literally - and from scratch.

Gay-Bullying: Blame Us

2010-10-04T14:12:00.004-04:00

A wave of gay teen suicides came to the attention of America this week. Bullying is to be blamed for the shocking events, we are told. In one case, that of 18-year-old Rutgers University student Tyler Clementi, we are even given two specific culprits: Dharun Ravi and Molly Wei (“Dharun Ravi and Molly Wei are sick [expletive]” is the title of the new Facebook page, which contradictorily warns us: “Please avoid racist and/or threatening commentary. It will be removed!”). What we know, or what we think we know, is that Mr. Ravi, who was Mr. Clementi’s roommate, set up a hidden webcam in the bullied teen’s room so he could broadcast, for the laughter of his Twitter followers, evidence that his roommate was, oh my God, gay. Ms. Wei apparently had some secondary role in the, well, very gay act of dorm room voyeurism. Soon after that Mr. Clementi jumped off a bridge and killed himself. But not without leaving a line of digital traces that might help us understand, or conveniently misunderstand, the tragedy. 

This case is symbolic of the kind of panicked blame game that takes over our country when young kids who could be “our” kids starts dying gratuitously. Of course gay (or gender-nonconforming) kids are bullied to death every day in the United States. It seems that it is only when “to death” becomes a literal, Tweetable reality impinged upon children outside of the ghetto that we recognize the problem. As if it weren’t there all along. As if we hadn’t been a fundamental and constitutive part of it. As if we hadn’t raised our kids to take over from where we left off after graduation.

Consciously or not, it takes the death of a fair-skinned, red haired teenager for gay bullying to, suddenly be something other than the same “boys will be boys” rhetoric that naturalizes sexist behavior and excuses rape. Matthew Shepard comes to mind, of course, the cherubim-faced blonde youth from Wyoming, who, it would be easy to believe, was the first gay boy in America to ever be tortured for having a penis and not acting “accordingly.”

It’s easy to elect Tyler Clementi’s voyeurs as culpable. It is also an equivocated and very convenient quick fix for a burden that is generations in the making and completely ours to bear. Mr. Clementi didn’t plunge to his death because one day, out of the blue, his roommate broadcast him making out with a “dude,” as Mr. Ravi tweeted. Mr. Clementi had a profile on the gay hookup site JustUsBoys.com and was comfortable with his sexuality enough to upload a picture of his naked torso and post his grievances, among other things, on that site’s discussion forums. He was not a closeted virgin whose outing would have driven him completely off the edge. There is a lot more to his suicide than what gave him the final push. His plunging off George Washington bridge was the the result of a history of violence that has encouraged people like Mr. Ravi to transform their issues with alterity into the dehumanization of queers. Ravi, who judging from photographs seems to be of an ethnicity other than hegemonic white, is sure to have been bullied himself for that. The fact that he passed it on to whatever pray he could get only reinforces the notion that he was a conduit for a homophobia that is not just his, but his parents, his teachers, his friends, his classmates, his celebrities’ and his State representatives’.

We often forget that gay people don’t suddenly become gay the day of or a couple of months before they come out. More often than not the burden of bullying is one being etched in our psyche from infancy. One that is a big part of our process of subjectivation. One which remains unspoken until kids like Mr. Clementi dies. In some ways, before we are even born the homophobia behind this kind of bullying is working itself tirelessly as society awaits us with a slew of pre-fab molds and dictums that will never fit us (do they perfectly fit anyone, really?). From the father who sneered at the first signs that the proto-gay child isn’t flawlessly embodying his ideal son to the teacher who ignored the name-calling, from the classmate who giggled to the group of strangers who punched us in the pit of our stomachs, from provincial right-wingers assuming their own children are immune to sexual diversity to the president of the United States advocating separate but equal. We have all contributed to Tyler Clementi’s, Raymong Chase’s, Asher Brown’s, Billy Lucas’ and Seth Walsh’s deaths. We have not only failed them, we have killed them.

And there is no YouTube video from Ellen DeGeneres or Good Charlotte’s Joel Madden (who can’t even bring himself to say the word “gay”) that will undo the harm we have caused our kids: some lethal, all life-long. It’s easy to speak up when it’s too late when our entire culture is set up to encourage bullying from the top down. A State that can’t even acknowledge its queer citizens’ right to love doesn’t grant us access to legitimate representability and cannot be serious about its condolences.

The monster the bullies are fighting against is really the ones inside themselves projected onto the most easily available bodies. Whether that takes the shape of a “dirty immigrant”, a “ho” or a “fag,” it’s just a matter of personal history, not to say taste. Which is precisely because this is a universal burden, collectively constructed and for all of us to stop accepting, encouraging, legitimizing, even glamourizing. Any serious attempt at eradicating bullying must concomitantly provide support to its victims, punish its perpetrators and, mostly, put a stop to their fabrication. To blame one single perverted roommate for a crime that has all of our hands stained of blood is to take the easy way out. We are the masterminds. The bullies are only the executors, as emotionally desperate as their prey.

EXCERPT of the WEEK

2010-10-01T21:31:00.003-04:00

"Some of the most important moments in my life have been spent looking into her face as she looks back into mine and watching the liquid motions of her eyes as they make their silent points. In comparison to that kind of communication, everything else is crass."

James Elkins, in "What is a Face?", on his wife, and on the pathological crassness of incessant Facebook status updating, Tweeter feeds and fancy iPhone whatevers.

Speed-Dating Film Review

2010-09-28T21:26:00.003-04:00

"The only thing perhaps scarier than being surprised by the gay monster is, apparently, mistaking a tranny for a real woman—though promptly realizing it before the deed is done. Which happens at least twice in the film."

Click here for my entire review of Speed-Dating for Slant Magazine.