The Celluloid Closet

My truckbuddy Frank has posted a clip from a new documentary about the late author and activist Vito Russo over at Reluctant Rebel; which reminded me of this documentary, now posted in six segments on YouTube, of Russo's Celluloid Closet, a survey of how gays were depicted in film during the past century.  Fascinating stuff; and as Frank says, should be part of the required viewing before anyone gets their gay card.

You might be surprised at how much gaiety some filmmakers managed to slip past the censors back in the Golden Age of Hollywood. Here's segment 1, narrated by Lily Tomlin:

Cary Grant - "I've just gone gay!" - in the
screwball comedy Bringing up Baby, 1938

Today in Texastan: "Gay Jesus" Play Cancelled

In the face of outrage from the local Christianist Taliban and criticism from the Lieutenant Governor of Texas, not to mention security concerns, student director John Otte's professor has cancelled the workshop performance of Terrence McNally's Corpus Christi, which was to have been performed this morning at 8 a.m. before a small audience of classmates and family members on the Tarleton State University campus in Stephenville.

Kudos to university president Dr. Dominic Dottavio, who while asserting his belief that the play is "offensive, crude, and irreverent," nevertheless firmly upheld academic freedom and the student's First Amendment right to produce the play.

Otte:  "Never did I choose this play to attack Christians. I am one."

If you can bear to sit through the painfully amateurish TSU student news broadcast below, you will hear interviews with local mullahs preachers, Dr. Dottavio, and Otte himself.

And get a pretty good idea of the backwards, small-minded, fundamentalist-controlled world your Head Trucker lives in out here on the prairie.



Story begins at the 4:10 mark.

Update:  Houston ABC news report interviews Tarleton State students, who say "Homosexuality is the one unforgiveable sin in our society."

And that, my friends, is what you're up against if you're a gay man living in Texas in the year 2010.

Now that I've got this thing rolling . . .

. . . after fiddling around with the controls and features, the question is, What to write about, and how to write it?

No doubt somewhere, somebody has written some great guidelines on successful blogging . . . but I'd rather figure it out myself. First of all, it seems intuitively clear that the temptation to make this a confessional or a dear-diary must be avoided at all costs. That sort of thing can be theraputic in private; but it's not terribly interesting to read all about someone else's inner angst at length, unless it's done by a truly great writer. Which I know I'm not.

Much more interesting to read what someone thinks about the world he or she encounters - and glimpse the inner person between the lines of the commentary.

Second, homophobia is alive and roaring here in the Redlands of America . . . where it's still 1950 in many ways and many minds. So unlike bloggers who live out there in the Big World, I don't feel free to share all kinds of personally identifying details. Now the truth is, I absolutely loathe, despise, and hate beyond measure the need for hiding my identity as a gay man. Equivocation is not in my nature. But I realized long ago that there is just no point making yourself a victim when it serves no higher purpose.

(Some reader is wondering, If you feel smothered there, why don't you leave? Answer: Economics. Like many another middle-aged guy, I'm tied to my job and no prospect in the near future of anything else anywhere else that would pay me enough to live on.)

Anyway, as I was saying . . . I think of great essayists I admire: E. B. White and Joan Didion spring to mind. And I think of professional bloggers I enjoy like Andrew Sullivan and the others on my blog list. All these folks somehow make me return again and again to their writing; they are sharing their minds, but they aren't usually telling the-story-of-my-life or describing what-I-did-today. Sometimes they share an anecdote from their personal lives, but usually with an implicit literary point to make, a viewpoint that transcends the ordinariness of quotidian affairs. They have a talent for relating the personal and private to the global and universal.

I didn't realize I knew this until I wrote that last paragraph. Not sure I have that much talent. But guess it's worth taking a shot at. What the hell, it's a free country, right?

One more concern I'm mulling over: what level of frankness to use here? The sex and language question. Naturally, one writes in order to be read. If I'm really going to do a blog, it would be nice to have some family and friends read it; but not to be embarassed by it. Which of course springs the trap of self-censorship on the writer. When discussing sexuality--or politics--should I use the word f*ck, or better yet, f*cked over, if I feel like it? It's 2008, after all; but how far is too far for a "respectable" blog? Standards have changed dramatically in my lifetime, and blue state bloggers would probably just laugh at the question. But when I think about my kinfolks reading this . . . What would Aunt Martha say? Did William Faulkner ever worry about this sort of thing? Or Tennessee Williams? Not that I'm in their league, but . . . .

Actually, I had a creative writing professor once who said that "both Aunt Martha and Henry James [a big ol' queer, I later learned] are worthy of being pleased." So there you go. But how to please both at the same time? I forget what the prof said about that . . . .

Well, guess I will just figure it all out as I go along. Gotta get some chores done in real life, so adios for now, Gentle Reader.