Category: Film

Harvey Milk, Toni Morrison, James Baldwin and the Pain of Gay Life in America

James-baldwin
I was in high school when I read Giovanni's Room, James Baldwin's heartbreaking story of pain and loss.  It was the first time I'd understood anything of the harsh realities of life for gay men, and it changed me, opened my soul and my mind the way great writers are supposed to. Toni Morrison, his close friend who has often said that she misses him still, told NPR's Michele Martin how much she would have loved to see his reaction to the election of Barack Obama.  Me too. 

MILK poster
I kept thinking of Baldwin as I sat in a screening of Milk ,the story of a gay man, years later, who fought discrimination with determination – and humor – and lost his life to an assassin in the process.  Harvey Milk, played by Sean Penn, moved to San
Francisco from a dead-end job in Manhattan and ended up launching a political gay rights movement that took over first the Castro, then San Francisco, then the nation.  Battling anti-gay referenda in cities, towns and states, he made it possible, in ways probably not dreamed of when Baldwin fled US racism and homophobia by moving to Paris in the 1940's, for gays to live openly.

Here's what's hard though.  Baldwin wrote Giovanni's Room in 1956, when gay men suffered, for the most part, in secret.  Harvey Milk led his battles in the 1970's, as, at least in San Francisco, Los Angeles and New York, they emerged from the closet into the light, fighting for their rights every day as efforts were made to push them back into silence.  In California, one of Milk's greatest successes was the defeat of a bill that would force the termination of all gay teachers. 

Look at us now.  On the same landmark day that we elected Barack Obama president, California, in a statewide referendum, repealed the right for gays to marry.  Similar efforts have become a cottage industry, and have succeeded all over the country.  

Where kids are concerned, Florida, where Anita Bryant originated her cruel anti-gay campaign in the 70's, is still fighting to maintain a recently-overturned ban on gay adoption.  Arkansas and Utah ban any unmarried couples, straight or gay, from adopting or fostering children; Mississippi bans gay couples, but not single gays.   Arkansas voters last month approved a measure that, like Utah's bans any unmarried straight or gay couples from adopting or fostering children, a clever way to be "nondiscriminatory."  Gay couples who want the non-biological parent to adopt their baby have to choose carefully in which county they file their papers.  Get the wrong judge and you're toast.  Perfectly fine candidates can lose elections because of their stands supporting gay rights.   

To read the policy side of these issues in more detail, visit Leslie Bradshaw.  She's one of the most passionate writers about the past election and the current state of gay rights and discusses the issue far more completely than I can. 

But  to a pop culture vulture like me,  it's sad to sit through a docudrama, which is basically what MILK is, 52 years after Giovanni and 30+ after Harvey Milk, and feel that, in too many ways, it could be today's news.

  

ADD:  I just discovered this post from Uppercase Woman.  A great survey/meditation on gay marriage.

Twilight: Teenage Girls Love It But They’re Not the Only Ones

TwilightminicoverTwilight, Stephanie Meyer' series of novels about the love between Edward, a noble vampire, and his high school sweetheart, Bella, is everywhere.  Translated into 20 languages and now a film,  with even a Twilight Moms site for,  well, moms who love the books, it's what is usually called a "cultural phenomenon."  It's been: a New York Times Editor's Choice, an American Library Association  "Top Ten Best Book for Young Adults" and "Top Ten Books for Reluctant Readers", a Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year, an Amazon.com "Best Book of the Decade…So Far", a Teen People "Hot List" pick, and a New York Times Best Seller.  All before I even got to read it.  There would have been a time… ah well.  At least it's fun now. 

And in a way, embarrassing.  After all, a teen vampire love story isn't exactly typical reading for a well-educated, grown-up, fairly worldly woman who fancies herself reasonably intelligent.  It was curiosity that got me there, and I'm glad.  There's something about this steamy yet chaste story that slams me back into my 15-year-old self, wondering what sex was like, what love was like, what anything remotely interesting, none of which had happened to me yet, was like.  I had forgotten about her but she was still in there just waiting for a reason to emerge.  When she did, she reminded that I'd had my own Edward.

Precisely the same age, a high school junior, I fell, hard, for the school's bad boy poet, one of the "drugstore boys" who hung out outside the pharmacy or, in good weather, the Dairy Queen.  He was the first conscientious objector I knew; introduced me to Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?  and The Sound and the Fury and A Canticle for Leibowitz.  We would sit in our basement game room and talk, and smoke, for hours.  When things got too bad at his house, he often slept at ours.  Having raised two teenagers myself I'm still shocked that my parents never objected.  It was a beautiful time.  There was no way I was going to sleep with him; parent power was still too strong then.  He told me years later that even if I'd been willing, he was too scared of my mother to let it happen.  As it was for Bella though, that was almost irrelevant.  He'd opened my mind, and my soul, so completely that there was no turning back.  There's more than one way to be free.

In Twilight, as with Buffy and Angel, sex is impossible.  Edward understands that the loss of self involved in sexual consumation would remove the inhibitions that these "vegetarian" vampires have developed to meet both their values and their desire to live among the human.  There's lots of lovely making out, but that's it.  The less disciplined of the two is Bella, who more than once has to be restrained in her enthusiasm for her perfect, shining, somewhat chilly-to- the-touch lover.

I don't know if such limited innocence is possible today; don't know how the teenagers who read these books could be even partially as un-knowing as I was.  When I was a kid, there was no MTV, no Friends episodes about who would get the last condom, no Brittany, or God forbid, her pregnant little sister, no pregnant candidate progeny either.  Sex was private, and for grownups.  Not necessarily in real life, but in perceived values.  There's so much more to disturb their discipline; so little to support the kind of determination that protets Bella and Edward.

I think that's part of the wonder, the attraction, of Twilight.  Remember the Simpsons have a long-running joke about Lisa's Sexually Non-Threatening Boys Magazine? It's funny because, at a certain age, that's where girls go.  And then, as they begin to move toward true sexual ripeness, the attraction changes.  The longings emerge, along with the need to control the young men who would exploit them.  Who better than a conscience-stricken, loving, gorgeous, perfect vampire to guide the way?  Or, to remind us later, was a thrilling, scary, remarkable journey it was?

Here's a preview of the film, too:





BARACK OBAMA, SARAH SILVERMAN, FLORIDA AND A COUPLE OF QUICK MEDIA THINGIES

That_one_2
The first one is this poster, which I found on Jason Rosenberg’s Facebook page.  It’s not quite as good as "I am a community organizer" but it’s kind of cool.
The other thing is today’s New York Times story about The Great Schlep and Sarah Silverman video, which apparently has been screened more than 7 million times in the two weeks since it appeared!  Basically, it urges Jewish grandchildren to lean on their grandparents in Florida to vote for Obama or risk the end of loving visits from the grand kids.  Given her occasional forays into yukkiness, it’s actually pretty cute. 

The Jewish Council for Education and Research, and co-executive director Ari Wallach, are creative, agile and smart and they’ve done a great job both of creating and promoting a very good idea.  Even if few kids can afford to hit the beaches of Hallandale and Miami, they’ll get on the phone and make their case.  And the press has loved it.  If you missed the video, here it is.

SARAH PALIN, JOE SIXPACK AND GEORGE ORWELL

081002_palinmccain21I used to run a TV news show, and I told my staff (literally) that using the term "Joe Six Pack" in a script or interview was a firing offense.  I probably couldn’t have gotten away with firing them but it made the point.  I grew up just outside a mill town along the Monongahela River — it was the same town so brilliantly portrayed in The Deer Hunter —  and I  went to school with kids whose parents worked in steel mills and coke plants and river locks.  Some of them lived in trailers.  I was the Jewish Girl – a bit of an outsider but usually part of the gang – parties, sleepovers, crazy afternoons sneaking cigarettes in pine-paneled basement "family rooms."

I guess lots of those parents were what Sarah Palin called Joe Six Pack.  But that’s not who they were- who they are.  America is full of hard working people who drink beer.  Bruce Springsteen portrays them all the time – much better than I could.  They are dads and husbands and brothers and sons and they love their kids and their wives and, where I lived, the Steelers.  They often don’t ever move out of their "starter houses" because that’s what they can afford.  The dads that I knew sent their kids to college though – or to "the service" which paid their tuition, and the next generation did better economically – the American dream at work. 

I admired these people, and loved some of them.  When you spend lots of Saturday night sleepovers at girlfriends’ houses you get to know their parents.  And, remembering those dads,  I do NOT understand how Sarah Palin can talk about "Joe Six Pack" and still say she’s one of "the people."  It’s like talking about "Polacks" and then claiming you’re Polish.  The term is a colossal insult, the speaker setting herself above the folks she’s describing.  For some reason, it’s painful — almost heartbreaking, to hear.  I know it’s partially my rage at her for claiming some special channel to working class Americans while, it appears, cynically performing like a parody of them – much like Frances McNormand did as Marge Gunderson in FARGO.  Her "Joe Six Packs" deserve better.

I was going to write about all the Orwellian rhetoric too — McCain and Palin repeatedly claiming untruths and running against things McCain himself helped to put in place.  Here’s what I mean:  They talk about Wall Street malfeasance when they and their party repeatedly squashed efforts to bring it under control.  They talk about change when they’re fighting it and economic insecurity when their policies helped to cause it.  That’s not a working class agenda, it’s just cynical pandering.  Mr. Orwell would be proud.  "Joe Six Pack" — and the rest of us, deserve better than that, too.

PAY NO ATTENTION TO THE WOMAN BEHIND THE CURTAIN: SARAH PALIN IS THIS ELECTION’S WIZARD OF OZ

Wizard_of_oz2_3
This is an argument for a change of focus.  As I began to write it all I could think about was the Wizard of Oz, the fake behind the curtain who had everyone believing he could save them all.  When he finally presented gifts to all but Dorothy, it sounded horrifyingly like the tactics of the current "wizard,"  nominee Palin, and her boss.  I am as angry and uneasy as anyone over the nomination of Sarah
Palin but I think it’s time to stop now. 

This morning I heard Paul
Begala say on MSNBC that every day McCain isn’t talking about the
economy, he wins.  That he can’t win ON the economy so if he keeps
distracting the voters and the press he will be better off – a premise
supported by the current poll numbers.  Begala also kept comparing
Palin to the "shiny object in the water" on a fishing line that makes a
fish take the bait.  I think he’s right.

The issues of this
election are, as we all know, so enormous and scary that it may be
easier to keep focusing on the governor, but that will not win the
election.  We need to help remind people of the real issues – the
devastating effects of the sub-prime crisis and it’s sequel, investment bank failure so evident in the past few
days, the state of the economy generally, our sinking competitiveness
in education and the  tragic decline of many of our schools, the
attempts by the Right to place (with hat tip to Auntie Mame)"braces on
our brains" and of course, Iraq, Afghanistan, healthcare, energy and
infrastructure. 

We’re in a mess.  It wasn’t caused by pigs or
lipstick or tanning beds or even community organizers — it was caused
by the people currently in office who want four more years and are
Orwell-ing us into giving it to them.  This community has enormous
impact and knows how to raise a ruckus (If you don’t think so, mosey on
over to the League of Maternal Justice!)  Let’s get some message
discipline here, leave Sarah to others and push the issues.  We’re
going to kick ourselves if we don’t.

A version of this post appears on Blogher.com.

PIGS, LIPSTICK, DICK CHENEY, SARAH PALIN AND THE MOVIES: “BOB ROBERTS”, “A FACE IN THE CROWD” AND WILLIE STARK

Of course by now we’ve all seen this.

I wrote much of what appears below without knowing just how to begin it – and those wacky Republicans solved my problem.  The response to this boilerplate Obama statement was to issue a vicious attack accusing him of sexism because of Palin’s convention speech “lipstick/hockey mom/pitbull” quote.  This despite the fact that the metaphor has often been used by Republicans including Dick Cheney – to say nothing of John McCain – look here:

The McCain campaign, not only in its choice of Sarah Palin but in how they use her, is leaning on very scary  tactics that are similar to the successful exploitation of voters illustrated by some of the most memorable characters in American political films.  Watch this trailer for Tim Robbins’ Bob Roberts; see if it isn’t more familiar than you wish:

Creepy, isn’t it?  A demagogue making his way to the top by lying about his opponent and manipulating the alienation of the American people for his own ends.  That could never happen in real life, right?

Much, much earlier in film history, the beloved Andy Griffith played one of the scariest public personalities ever in A Face in the Crowd — written by Budd Schulberg and directed by On the Waterfront‘s Elia Kazan.  He’s not a politician but watch the trailer and see if it doesn’t seem familiar.  You have to watch until the end to get the full impact.

 

It’s so depressing — and enraging — to watch this campaign peddling pseudo-folksiness to win over its public.  It’s time for that to stop working in our country.  Stakes are too high to permit us (or the press) to fall for the most  approachable (and least honest) over the most excellent.

Finally, remember Robert Penn Warren’s remarkable novel, clearly based on Louisiana’s Huey Long – All the King’s Men?  It portrays a politician on his path to becoming a dangerous demagogue.  Yeah, I know it’s melodramatic but does it feel at all familiar?

Clearly we should consider these archetypal characters as cautionary tales; instructive representations of our future if we allow this kind of campaigning to prevail.  Movies are our largest export (unless video games have taken over while I wasn’t looking)  and often reflect, if not our truths, at least our ghosts, shadows and neuroses.  It gave us The Body Snatchers in the 50’s, Easy Rider in the 60’s and Working Girl and Wall Street in the 80’s.  It’s easy to be seductive, to manipulate language and truth; easy to pretend to be one of the people in order to win them. The vicious, craven strategies of this campaign – and Sarah Palin herself – are  perfect examples; John McCain, whom I used to admire, has allowed, no encouraged, this shameful campaigning in his name and surrendered all the positions of principal that he once held.  If we don’t want (another) Bob Roberts (He does remind me of GWBush) or a cynical populist pretender or a MS Wilie Stark as our government, it’s up to use to exercise vigilance and fierce commitment to fight off these transparent manipulations and to ensure that it does not happen.

DON’T MISS IT: BLOGGING BOOMERS CARNIVAL #81

Carnival
The fabulous Blogging Boomer Carnival – the 81st in fact – has
landed here at Don’t Gel Too Soon.  And a real feast it is. 

As the Baby Boomer generation approaches retirement age, over 7.7 million business
owners will exit their businesses over the next 10-15 years.  John Agno at
So Baby Boomer says this demonstrates a tremendous need for exit planning.

And while we’re talking money, two more posts this week.

This comes from Janet Wendy at Gen Plus:  If, like
much of America, you are sick of watching your dollar shrinking, Janet Wendy at
Gen Plus, points you to an eye-opening post on what banks are NOT doing with your money. Oh…and be
careful.  You might bust a seam laughing.

And this from Ann Harrison at Contemporary Retirement:  Although
we’ve always been told that money can’t buy happiness, an increasing number of
studies show that, if you know the right way to spend it, money just may be
able to buy you happiness after all…  Find
out how at Contemporary Retirement:

Meanwhile, Rhea Becker of The
Boomer Chronicles has noticed something interesting about this
year’s Olympics: "A number of athletes in the Beijing
Olympics are older than the usual crop."  She’s profiled some of
them.  In the Northwest Arkansas area where
I make my home, that was the case with every community. Unfortunately, it is
also the case that every one of them has closed.


If you’re looking for someone
else to fix things, Laurel Lee at Midlife Crisis Queen says
"Cut it out."  No one else can change your life for you, no matter how
much you pay them."
“Spiritual work is not something you can copy from someone else’s
homework…."

One of those things you have to do for yourself is keep a marriage going.  Dina at This Marriage Thing says:  "Counselors say marriages are
strengthened by honest talking.   But when was the last time you
really communicated with your spouse?   Here are a couple of
questions that might do the trick."

If that doesn’t work, and you’re facing the end of a marriage, Wesley Hein at
LifeTwo offers an important consideration: In a divorce, who gets custody of mutual
friends? This moral dilemma is discussed
in "The
Post-Divorce Custody Battle for Mutual Friends". Make no mistake about
it, in divorce every aspect of your life changes–including friendships.

On a lighter note, no matter what the status of the rest of your life, you can fix your hair.  If you color your hair, then you know how the blazing summer sun and chlorine
pools can really fade and damage your hair. Is there anything you can do about
it, short of wearing a hat? Check out what the Glam Gals have to say about it at Fabulous after 40.

 

Our friends over at Vaboomers have an interesting offering too – a
kind of online mall they call "viosks"
–sort of online kiosks offering art, music, cookies — lots.  As they put
it:   "Vaboomer is excited to announce the Grand Opening of Vaboomer Viosks on Aug 8; A Suite of
“Viosks" with the best of Boomer reFiree’s original art, books, music and
education."

 

My own entry is a
pensive one – about a Jewish holiday with a huge emotional  punch.

THE DARK KNIGHT, HARRY POTTER, LORD OF THE RINGS, DARK U.S. DAYS AND POLITICS

I used to see Christ symbols everywhere.  It drove my mother crazy; no matter what film or book, I’d find some kind of symbol in it.  And Christ symbols were fashionable then (Ingmar Bergman, Robert S. Heinlein.)  So I guess it’s no surprise that I found implanted meaning, this time political messages, in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix  (the loss of Hogwarts students’ freedom and rights to Dolores Umbridge) and the Lord of the Rings  – listen to this:

"It’s
like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of
darkness and danger they were, and sometimes you didn’t want to know the end
because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it
was when so much bad had happened? But in the end it’s only a passing thing.
The shadow even darkness must pass. A new day will come, and when the sun
shines it will shine out the clearer. Those are the stories that stayed with
you. That really meant something. Even if you were too small to understand why,
but I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now. The folk in those stories
had lots of chances of turning back only they didn’t. They kept going because
they were holding on to something." "What are we holding onto
Sam?" "That theres some good in this world, Mr. Frodo, and it’s worth
fighting for"- The
Lord of The Ring– The Two Towers

Now The Dark Knight joins my array of political films.   Think about it.  Irrational evil — the Joker (the late Heath Ledger, as good as the reviews but somehow a bit Al Franken-esque)– drives Gotham City to such anxiety that its citizens are willing to surrender freedom and privacy and even to turn on their Bat-benefactor, to return order to their streets.  Sound familiar?  Throughout the film members of the community at large, as well as Bruce Wayne/Batman (Christian Bale), his beloved Rachel Dawes (Maggie Gyllenhaal,) DA Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart) and even the sainted Lucius Fox (Morgan Freeman) face — and often fail — deep ethical temptations (including abusing prisoners — sound familiar?) — and, surprisingly, those who face the most horrendous choice are criminals and civilians whose behavior is far more laudable than that of any of us (including me) who know what’s been done in our name in Iraq and have mourned but not acted to stop it.

[SEMI-SPOILER ALERT]  This gigantic challenge, issued from the Joker himself, is a formidable and hopeful moment in the film.  Many have written that the film is dark and without humor but I don’t think so.  This scene, in particular – and I don’t want to be too much of a spoiler — seemed to me to be there to remind us that there is always the potential for good.  Even so, the film is crammed with talk, as in Sam’s speech to Frodo, and especially from the wise Albert (Michael Caine) of the pain and sacrifice required in the battle against the troubles ahead.

Maybe it’s a reach, and I can hear your saying "Hey, it’s ONLY a movie!" but there you are.

SHUT UP AND SING: CATCHING UP WITH THE DIXIE CHICKS AND WORRYING ABOUT THE ELECTION

Shut_up_and_sing_2Have you seen  this movie?  I sat in bed watching it early Sunday morning on cable and was just blown away.  It’s one of the saddest, scariest, most moving American documentaries I’ve seen in a long time.  That’s no surprise, since it was directed by  Barbara Kopple, who made Harlan County USA – the landmark documentary about coal mine union battles in Kentucky.

What happened to the Dixie Chicks is infuriating: performing in London just before the start of the Iraq war, lead singer Natalie Maines (married, by the way, to HEROES star Adrian Pasdar,) told the crowd "Just so you know, we’re ashamed the President of the United States is from Texas."  The scene is included in this preview.


As I watched the film, seeing the rage and cruelty that emerged in the response to this one sentence,  my first thought was, "Oh my God, what does this mean for Barack Obama?"  The people who went after the Dixie chicks were nowhere near a sense of respect for the First Amendment – and sounded like they would be particularly vulnerable to "elitist" or racist accusations against a candidate.  If you remember the exit polls in West Virginia, Ohio and Pennsylvania you’ll recall that many respondents just about acknowledged that they would not vote for Senator Obama simply because of his race.  Am I unfair to wonder if many of those people are the same ones booing and even threatening Maines’ life?  Still "out there" in larger numbers than we wish?  Look at these figures:

In Pennsylvania
exit polls on primary day, 14% of voters
said that race one one of several important factors. Fifty-five percent of those were Clinton
voters and 45% Obama voters. When asked
race was “important” 19% said yes – 59% of them Clinton voters; when asked if
race was a factor in their decision, 12% said yes. In this group, 76% were white Clinton voters.

In West
Virginia, when asked race was “important” to their decision, 22% said yes –82%
of them Clinton voters; when asked if race was a factor in their decision, 21%
said yes. In this group, 84% were white
Clinton voters.

Finally, Ohio. There, when asked race was “important” to
their decision, 20% said yes–  59% of them Clinton voters; when asked if race
was a factor in their decision, 14% said yes. In this group, 59% were Clinton voters. (the racial breakdown was not available here.)   

Please understand – I don’t know if I’m right.  I’m not alleging racial bias in all those who rose up to burn Dixie Chicks CDs and threaten country stations with boycotts if they "ever played one of their songs again"  – but I do suspect they could be more vulnerable to campaigns run in an uglier vein – just as they responded to this one.  It’s worrying me.

Continue reading SHUT UP AND SING: CATCHING UP WITH THE DIXIE CHICKS AND WORRYING ABOUT THE ELECTION