Ugh! Do we need to talk about The Danish Girl again?

Yes. Yes, we do.

I was chatting with a friend yesterday, and she sent me a Snapchat saying that she was about to watch The Danish Girl with a group of friends. Having seen the movie last year and being an avid naysayer of Tom Hooper's film, I replied with a vulgar summation of "Good luck, friends." Shortly after, she took to texting me, asking why I disliked it as much as I did. And I jumped in.

• The film essentializes the identity of Lili Elbe, reducing her to a stereotype
• Eddie Redmayne. Listen, everybody. I like Eddie. But here... no. He whispered far too much and he created this woman who appeared weak and vulnerable the whole time. 
• Speaking of, this is not all Redmayne's fault. Where is Lili's strength? Why is she this bizarre wallflower? Why do we seem to care more about her cisgendered wife?
• That ending. Do I really need to say more? I am so relieved that Lili's struggle can be personified through a scarf. Thanks, Tom Hooper.

The list goes on and on for me. Ask me what I liked about it, and I will tell you Alicia Vikander. But if we're talkin' awards for Miss Vikander, I will say Ex Machina and promptly move on. 

Bless you, Alicia... and that dog

I digress. After being asked this, my friend said that the group she watched it with completely disagreed with me and felt the exact opposite. Now I am not in the business of telling people how to think. In fact, while I can get on my high horse when it comes to what I think about movies and TV, I try to have an open mind. Who would I be if I was just spouting my opinions about the pop culture I indulge in? [insert joke about politicians and the state of the 2016 election here] But what fascinated me most was how our conversation developed into something way more fascinating than "I liked it" "Well, I didn't" and so on. 

Instead, my friend asked me what I felt about Eddie Redmayne playing a male-to-female (or MTF) transgender woman. She thought that it seemed insensitive to the portrayal, but then again, who was she to have that opinion. 

This got me thinking. When it comes to films, television, books... well, any type of media that we consume, where do we draw the line on our opinions? My friend, for example, stated that because she did not identify as trans, nor did she know anyone closely, could she say that the film was offensive? Could she say it was an honest portrayal? At first, I said yes. After all, the film was made for public consumption, free for critics (professional and bloggers alike) to pick apart at their earliest convenience. And hey! Carol Grant summarizes precisely why I think the film is far from progressive, and she is writing with years of experience as a trans woman. 

But then I got to wondering. It is SO easy for us to sit here and critique the media we consume on a daily basis. And that's good. I think we are responsible consumers to discern what is good, bad, and ugly. But at what point do we separate ourselves from the media we take in? And more importantly, when can we take a step back and say "that's not my place to say"? I don't think we will ever come to a wholesome conclusion here. 

In the case of my text conversation about The Danish Girl, it's a pity I couldn't be there in person and talk with this group extensively about the film. I want to hear what they liked about it, what they didn't like about it, and I could tell them why I found Eddie Redmayne to be as insufferable as he was. Some of my thoughts may have got lost in translation, I can never articulate myself well through texting, but to sum up: remain cognizant of the texts you indulge in, my friends. Truly think about what you are reading, watching, etc. And then don't be afraid to turn it on its head and embrace the conversation that will ensue. Trust your judgment, and jump right in. 

Build Me an Arc as Fast as You Can!

The reading I do for my classes are like a double-edged sword: sometimes, there's so much that I become overwhelmed. Plato + gay things = WHAT? But other times, the readings I do resonate with me, simply because I was not expecting to take away much from it.

Hence is the case for the primary reading I had this week. Pulling from Queer Popular Culture, I selected Chapter 2, "Queering/Quaring Blackness in Noah's Arc" and was pleasantly surprised. It's hard, I think, to read (and subsequently) write about shows you have never seen, and I was cautious. I chose to read this particular chapter early on because I feel that the bulk of my studies do NOT take into account the racial dimension to queer studies and I felt that I owed it to myself to expand beyond what I already knew.

Way to go, Logo!

Written by Gust A. Yep and John P. Elia, the article explores Noah's Arc, a series that was "dubbed as the black Queer as Folk, and the black gay Sex and the City" (p. 28), and I already knew that I was into something good here. Although I was unfamiliar with the series, I knew that I was heading into the right territory to figure it out. They begin by using the word quare quite a bit, and I was instantly confused... so much, in fact that I wrote "quare???" at the top of the page. And you may be wondering, "does this have anything to do with queer" and the answer is a hearty YES! In fact, when pinpointing the relationship between the two, they argue that to "queer" something (a text, for example), one attempts to make the familiar unfamiliar, to subvert expectations about what we have come to expect from the media we consume. On the other hand, to quare is calling attention to the whiteness that permeates throughout queer theory. Essentially, it attempts to queer... queer. To find the quareness of a text means to examine the underlying intersections between sexuality with race, class, etc. Interesting, right?

Yep and Elia dive into the series, critiquing how it quares class, gender, and sexuality. What is especially important here is to understand that they offer the lens of quare to analyze how this text, Noah's Arc, functions differently than most texts-- primarily because the series adds on race to conversations-- conversations that would be commonplace from within the cannon of queer literature. They offer individual case studies from the series, circumstances that allow the readers to really see how/why such a discussion is important. By combining the queer identity with the black identity, we are in turn deconstructing how race can be talked about through mediated texts.

Ultimately, texts that focus on the racialized body tend to center on the heterosexual male body, thus ignoring the woman or the gay black man. On the count of three, say it with me: 1... 2... 3 PROBLEMATIC. But what's even more fascinating is that, even though Noah's Arc was picked up by Logo, it was inevitably cancelled after two seasons. Logo, you guys, the GAY CHANNEL. While they do not note this anywhere in their article, it is critical to note what this says about texts that are queering what we already think of as queer. I know, it gets kind of trips after a while, but reading this article made me think critically about the texts that I tend to ignore in the first place. I'm part of the problem, this is true, but beyond that... how do we find a place for queer texts that subvert what we already think of as queer? This is certainly a question I won't be able to answer right now, or even in the coming weeks, but perhaps I can come to some conclusion near the end of the semester.

But while we're at it, I have one more query. I want to watch Noah's Arc. This article really solidified it, what with discussions surrounding HIV, class, and sexual imbalances. But... where can I watch it without paying $60+ to buy the DVD's? If you have any suggestions, let me know.

Gay Gorillas in the Mist

I love sitcoms. I'm talking mid-late 90's situational sitcoms-- you know, those that reinforce gender stereotypes, where the laugh track is abundant, and they live in a metropolitan city because they are just like us. I'm not even trying to be facetious here; sitcoms are great. Some of the reading I did this week in regards to my independent study was focused on two sitcoms: Ellen and The Ellen Show. And no, I'm not referring to her talk-show. Nay, these shows worked side-by-side to introduce Ellen DeGeneres as a lesbian to mainstream audiences.

But why aren't we talking about Antarctica's secrets? Was it the original Gossip Girl?

In her article from Queer Popular Culture, Jennifer Reed outlines the mounmental work that Ellen did for the LGBTQ+ community in regards to queer representation on television. Today in 2016, we may be asking ourselves, "what's the big deal? I see plenty of gay people on my screen ALL the time." And while that may be true to a certain degree, Reed initially argues that, "Mass media is where public life happens at this point in Western history" (p. 10). Indeed, it is easy for us to sit around, assuming that we know that we learn from what we watch, but what we fail to address at times is how largely we are influenced by our daily programming.

Reed elaborates on this further when she discusses how Ellen manages to maneuver between queer, gay, to even postgay. These differences are spaced out through the duration of Ellen's two sitcoms of Ellen and The Ellen Show. In her first series, Ellen is living the life as an asexual woman, never being able to form a connection with another man. Reed highlights plot lines that indicate how Ellen is blossoming into a gay woman, and by portraying her as such, Ellen subverts the label of straight and gay. Thus, she is in this middle ground, a queer middle where she can subvert any and all expectations of her gender performance and/or sexual preference. Of course, due to the nature of the program, these are used for laughs, but Reed argues that this was a sweet spot for Ellen and for young gays across the country. The fact that Ellen was even hinting at her sexuality through the series, as well as her appearances on talk shows, indicated a drastic transition into our consumption of queer culture on mainstream television. Basically, this was huge!

"I'm gay." Two words that brought Ellen to the forefront of popular culture. The truth came out and the world needed to be ready to accept it. After winking at the camera for almost the entire fourth series of Ellen's run, she comes out as a gay woman. How cool is that? It is! Today, we may find it commonplace, and we still are problematizing coming out narratives as privileging heterosexuals' acceptance of one's queerness. But in 1997, wow. It makes me wish I had been there to witness it. As Reed dives into what this meant for gays everywhere, she also acknowledges that the series then took on an inadvertent responsibility. She notes, "If we think of television as a teacher, the question becomes who was being taught and what" (p. 17)? Essentially, Ellen being gay was a phenomenon. Okay, great, Where do we go from here? And what precisely can we take away from that.

Well, Ellen got cancelled. And shortly after, The Ellen Show premiered. This series was about a different woman with the same first name, and while she identified as gay, Ellen explicitly stated that she did not want the happenings in this show to be that of a gay woman. She argues that there is so much more to her personally than being a lesbian. Reed mentions here, that from moving from queer to gay, Ellen was now in a postgay phase of her cultural identity. In other words, this was a movement that hit on the idea that there are numerous facets to the queer identity. Focusing on one's sexual orientation would only delegitimize the complexities of those who identified as gay.

In just writing that, I understand what Ellen was hoping to convey. However, by merely avoiding politicizing her own queer identity, she could fit in... just like everyone else. I wholeheartedly understand that I am more than my gay self. I could give you a laundry list of the elements of my being that exceed that of my label as "gay." What troubles me, though, is the shunning of the queer label as a means of fitting in, as a method of connecting with a mainstream audience. That is not to say that Ellen should have become the spokesperson of gay rights, that she would be front and center in gay parades. What I am saying, by taking into account the write-up from Jennifer Reed is that, at some point, by carrying the burden of becoming one of the first, prominent gay figures in the media-- especially with the surge in media coverage pertaining to gays everywhere-- Ellen could have managed to saddle both sides of the spectrum, as a way to reach all audiences. Or, maybe, Reed puts it best on page 25: "Perhaps what television is teaching here is not the correct way to be a gay person, but that one can define that for oneself."

Billy on the Street, Difficult People in the Sheets

In between discussing the scholarship behind pop culture phenomenons, I want to take some time to also chat with all-- 7+ of-- you other artifacts and texts that sort of work to help blur our perceptions of queer thinking in the media. I know. This sounds daunting, because as we have sort of established, what is and is not considered queer? Good news! This is totally up to you! What's most important is that we are transparent (not to be confused with the series) about our choices and our interpretations. Sometimes it may get messy, but who ever said that what we do should be easy? Got it? Shall we press on?

You know how it is- every once and a while you choose to watch a new series on a whim. You may not know much about it, but you think, "What the hell? I've got 20 minutes to spare," so you press start and watch as the magic unfolds.

I had such an occurrence happen to me during this summer. I had been familiar with Billy Eichner's work on Parks and Recreation, and I had always been tickled by Billy on the Street. It felt like a natural progression to begin with Difficult People, the story of two cynical and narcissistic wannabe comedians trying so desperately to make it "big time" in New York City. It stars Eichner and creator Julie Klausner as... you guessed it! Two characters named Billy and Julie. They are selfish. They are obsessed with pop culture. They are damn near hilarious. And the central conceit is that they are talented and clever, but perhaps too into themselves for their own good. And as they maneuver through the tricky terrain of hitting it big in comedy, we realize these two are never destined for success, and that makes the series all the more enjoyable.

We are nearing the home stretch to season two, and I am already dreading the season finale next week. Having introduced my friends to this nutty world last night with episode 2x09 entitled "Cedar Cove" (yes, a direct reference to the Hallmark series), I feel certain that this episode alone could jettison a spot on my top 5 series of 2016. It's a classic sitcom setup: Julie somehow gets selected to be a model in a Christian Siriano (guest starring as himself) fashion show, but succumbs to a Shining level case of the flu-- complete with fellating dogs and Capotes. Meanwhile, Billy gets into the hip, cool NYC clique of gay men called the Ten Tens, a group of 10 gay men who are all a 10, all the while dressing up as a giant potty-training beaver to help pay for his health insurance. Typical plot line, am I right?... Yes, I am being facetious.

But what works so well from this series is... well, basically everything. Extend each episode to an hour and it would run the risk of overstaying its welcome. However, at a breezy 20 minutes, the episodes run like water. And let's be real here, I could watch Billy and co. demoralize and belittle a CPR expert all day. But, at the end of the day, the show is all about Billy and Julie, just as the good lord intended. Sure, they each have their own separate storylines, but once the focus is on their friendship, it is clear that this show transcends what we would expect from a humdrum Hulu series. I won't give away the ending to this particular episode, but suffice it to say, I will never look at beavers and/or diapers the same way again. Coming together, sacrificing yourself for your best friend who is choking on a cough drop on the middle of a fashion runway? Now that's something special.

Someday I am going to go back and recap every single of its (current) 17 episodes for you, telling you all the best lines and discuss how wacky and dynamic their capers are. But to do that would spoil the magic for you. My only recommendation for those reading now? WATCH THE DAMN SHOW. Even if you take your sweet time with it, you can knock it out in a week, and you will only wish for more. Let it be known that Difficult People is not for the faint of heart. If you are looking for a sunny, cheerful expose on how to become a successful blogger, recapper, tweeter, comedian, list maker, then clearly... Billy and Julie are not your people. That said, if you are looking for vain, selfish, failures... well then, you've come to the right place. And what a whirlwind it is.

Denying the Formula & Molding Identities: What I Learned in One Introduction!

Welcome back to another fast-paced edition of my blog. As you can tell, things are still in a work in progress. School recently started back up, and in between training sessions for new grad students and orientation for other on-campus positions, life has left me to the wayside to die. But surprise! I'm not dead yet.

This week began more with a whimper than with a bang. It's syllabus week, which is simultaneously relieving and groan-inducing. Gone are the hectic clamoring to finish assignments, and here are the dos that move by at a snail's pace-- where we try to muster up the energy to even go to class. I can't be alone in thinking this. Thankfully, though, this gave me some time to sit down and read. And when I say read, I really do mean Read... with a capital R. What with thesis work and this independent study, I needed to buckle down and get to work.

Without divulging my personal weekly agenda, let's stick to the content of this study, shall we? I tried to keep it simple and straightforward for the first week. If you noticed below, I ordered my own book for this course and I really challenged myself in what I read: the whole introduction. A whopping nine pages. But immediately, I knew that this independent study I chose to tackle would not be as easy as reading and then writing about what I read. Quite the contrary, actually. In those nine pages, Thomas Peele challenged the very foundation on which I thought my study was built around.

He opens by discussing a formula, one that I am sure we are all familiar with in some capacity. He points to recent works of literature that write a narrative that supports a cultural narrative, that "once people know better, they will change their views" (Peele, 2011, p. 2). He relates this to texts that ask for the acceptance of queer characters. Instantly, he regards these characters as the Other and that they must be welcomed into the dominant community. Ummm hello?! This is entirely problematic, and it aligns itself with plenty of other readings I have witnessed in the past few months. It could go without saying, but Peele then urges his readers to understand that we are constantly shaped by what we see on television, what we see in the theater, what we read. We are taught about our own identities and the identities of those around us. What is so troubling about this idea, especially in relation to queer acceptance, is that by creating this dichotomy of wanting to be accepted vs. accepting others is that, as Michael Warner points out, it "overlook(s) the desirability of queer culture" (xxi). Essentially, when we think of something that is merely something that should/could be accepted, we eliminate any examination of the queer identity beyond one that can be tolerated, rather than can empower.

Listen, y'all. I get it. On some level, it was important for gays, lesbians, everyone to be accepted into a mainstream audience in order for them to garner any exposure. But then again, this has to happen with any community. I could go on a spiel about how this seemingly simple notion of "acceptance" is damaging in so many ways to so many people, but in order to save you all from potential rants, let me clarify. As Suzanna Walters states, "The complexity and diversity of the gay and lesbian community needs to be represented, not promoted as simply heterosexuality with a twist" (p. 24). Peele incorporates these thoughts into his introduction for a reason: to expose the readers to this idea that maybe, just maybe, we still don't understand queer texts. Which is totally okay! One some level, we are never going to completely understand how queer identities function in the dominant ideologies, particularly those that are represented through the media. You guys, it's okay not to know everything.

Look around you. We are surrounded by queer texts and queer artists everywhere. Peele turns to Glee, Modern Family, The Hours, Boy Meets Boy, Richard Hatch from Survivor (which, by the way, HUH?). Some of these texts are beautiful, some are problematic, others are entertaining. But ultimately, as Peele urges us to consider, there is no "right" way to do queer. That is impossible. It is the antithesis of what queer is. The more we try to figure it out, the less is actually queer. But what we should take into account, and what I hope you take from this first article, is that it is okay for ideas, identities, and concepts to be blurred, to remain ambiguous. This works beyond the level of acceptance, but rather, it functions as one of molding. And not the gross kind. I mean shaping, developing, and understanding by our own terms.

Queering it Up

Extra, extra! Read all about it!

You heard it here first, everyone! For the independent study side of my writing this semester, I have selected a book to use as the crux of my posts here. Although the general ideas surrounding this blog are about media, I still want to queer it up a little. I want to see what is different about the series we watch and the movies we go see. Therefore, my book will be pulling generously from these texts and will analyze it through the lens of the queer identity.

Queer Popular Culture, Edited by Thomas Peele

Stay tuned later in the week for my first official post, where I look at the Intro for this book. I am super excited and I hope you are too!

Nosebleeds, Flipped Trucks, and Alternate Realities, or: How Stranger Things Set the Bar for the 'Other'

Talking about Spielberg's classic sci-fi phenomenon E.T. is especially difficult for me... mostly because I haven't seen E.T. That said, I do know that this film is a cornerstone of Amblin Entertainment, responsible for films such as The Goonies, Gremlins, and even Super 8. All involving kids, these movies combined fantasy and hints of terror to entertain it audiences. But what I can talk about with some bias is the 80's horror genre, consisting of films such as Friday the 13th, A Nightmare on Elm Street, and The Evil Dead. Decades later, I would argue these films are not particularly scary, but are representative of a time in cinema where horror was celebrated. Today, I admire these films for their campiness and dated fashion choices.

Let me set a scene for you all: it is 2016. It is the middle of the summer, and we are being subjected to reboots, sequels, and spin-offs out the wazoo. Wherever we turn, nostalgia is prevalent, pulling us back into a time period, urging us to indulge in that Independence Day sequel (spoiler: I didn't). Uniqueness is a diamond in the rough. Where can we turn to successfully feel like our nostalgia is paying off? But more importantly... how can we ensure that the time period from the 80's, with unabashed horror and fantasy mixed together, somehow stays alive?

In strolls Stranger Things, another entry into the Netflix canon. Created by the Duffer Brothers, this series tells a simple story: a young boy goes missing due to unforeseen circumstances (could it be aliens? could it be the government? Too soon to tell), and his friends and family rally around this boy's disappearance to uncover the answers. And get this! It takes place in rural Indiana in the 1980's. Heralding back to films such as E.T. and The Goonies, the show manages to encapsulate the time period, without ever choking on its use of nostalgia. Rather, it uses the wheel to further reinvent itself.  And you want to know something? It works.

I could go into an extensive review of the series, complimenting the Duffer Brothers for taking us back to the 80's. I could fawn over the cast, particularly Winona Ryder, who plays the missing boy's mom. Seriously, she plays every single scene she is in for the audience in the back and she goes for broke in all eight episodes. I have tweeted and posted endlessly about side character Barb, but she's for another day. I could especially reward the main child actors, who manage to create whole, well-rounded characters and carry this story with ease. But this is not what I want to write about. All you would have to do is go to Metacritic and read reviews to your heart's content. Because this blog will work in tandem with my school's independent study, I wanted to make this a bit more scholarly (and don't worry- once school actually starts, we will be getting into nitty gritty scholastic).

"Other." What exactly does this word mean? In school, I hear it thrown around carelessly. At first, I came to view it as: if you are different, you are the other. And while that is true in a sense, I have since come to realize that there is so much more nuance to be unpacked from this singular word. In 1959, Kenneth Burke coined the phrase Other, or the concept that there is a distinct binary between the majority and the minority. Essentially, the Other functions as that minority, as those who have been historically and consistently marginalized. Anywhere you look, and the process of "Othering" is there: racism, sexism, homophobia, and the list goes on. In other words (no pun intended), in some capacity, we have fallen victims to being the Other.

And if you take a quick look at Stranger Things, we are subjected to a world surrounded by those who have been marginalized. We see a mother who many feel is unhinged. We see a police officer, consumed with his own grief. We see three boys, viewed as outcasts at school, who are bullied and shamed for their appearances and social status. It's there, we all see it. One character, however, challenges the downtrodden writings of the Other. And she comes in the form of Eleven.

Eleven (played by Millie Bobby Brown)

Named as a science experiment gone awry, Eleven escapes from a government facility that is training her to use her mind for evil, and finds the boys who are trying to locate their missing friend. Speaking only a few words total in the first season, Eleven is a pure mystery. She knows little in the way of social cues, and she also has an affinity for Eggo waffles. Yet, she has the power to make things move with her mind. When this happens, she starts bleeding from her nose and ears and she loses stamina. Matched with being the only person who knows how to find the missing boy, we as an audience need Eleven. She takes us on this journey with her; her fears and anxiety seem practically palpable. She is an outsider, even to the characters in this show. But that is precisely where the beauty in Eleven lies. Conveying so much with so little, Brown manages to create this young girl who is struggling to feel accepted from others as well as with herself. She does not know who she is, and season one takes us on this slow quest towards self-acceptance.

Therefore, the Other is established in a sense. Clearly, Eleven is different from everyone else. But there is a strange power that lies dormant within her, and I actually did not try to make a joke here. Sure, she has powers that move things (some of which include entire trucks), but it is this inner struggle she experiences- as seen through the blood leaking from her nose and ears, that truly demonstrates this character's inner struggle for acceptance. Who is she? It's hard for us to know, because she doesn't even know. And there is unique beauty in that revelation. It is coming to terms with her uncanny abilities that we, as audience members, recognize how the Other can take many different forms. Here, in Stranger Things, Eleven is a central figure of empowerment. How refreshing it is that someone so marginalized, misunderstood, and cast aside can still enrich its viewers (in the series and outside of it) to take a look at their own distinct differences.