brecht-o-rama

Queercore @ subRahova

2012-01-11T17:22:00.003+01:00

Queercore

One person show

In English

After Jet Moon & Queer Beograd Collective

With Cătălin Jugravu

By Mihai Lukacs

Saturday, January 14, 2012
7:00pm until 10:00pm

subRahova, Sergent Nutu Ion, nr.2, Bucharest, Romania

+ deBate on the round table about Queer Artivism/Activism with the most special guests

Working on this performance we had the revelation that is not enough to stage and act a queer show when no one knows what queer is. The plan is not to give you another closet, but to move beyond the idea of rights and freedom of sexual expression. Our work focuses on a different politick. We politicize and localize queer to provide a space to explore and challenge militarism, capitalism, gender, homophobia and nationalism. Of course, the question is why do we want to connect all politics together through theatre conventions? Why do we want to go out of the identity box politics? How can we relate queer to our local context – not just some Western taken-for-granted idea? There are so many questions to be asked but this is also a way to create a safe social space where we can move away from the sterile discussions to the change that we want to see happening. We want to show how these issues connect by bringing on stage those lives that don’t fit into neat categories and clear boundaries. Queercore is a space to start the important conversations that we all wanted so much to have, to build a base to continue these conversations and to begin to get to know each other.

subRahova, str. Sergent Nutu Ion, nr.2/ Strada Mihail Sebastian 112, the RECOM building. For taxi, ask for Strada Mihail Sebastian 112.

*please reserve a ticket at the following address: corequeer@gmail.com

we are using the "pay-as-you-wish" system.

facebook event: http://www.facebook.com/events/162905153812828/

Revolutionary conduct: the musical

2012-01-10T01:09:00.000+01:00

bash back from Sweden: "The film encourages and gives suggestions for ways to respond to gender-and hetero-fascists and their constant repetition of for example, are you a guy or girl?
A movie for all of us who are faced with sexism, trans / homophobia and guitar guys on everyday occasions and at parties."

Moralists Instruction Musical: The Revolutionary Conduct from Consumedmind on Vimeo.

nevertheless, acab

2012-01-09T22:23:00.000+01:00

Oh, the Places You'll Go!

2012-01-08T09:34:00.001+01:00

a poem by Dr. Seuss

Congratulations!
Today is your day.
You're off to Great Places!
You're off and away!

You have brains in your head.
You have feet in your shoes.
You can steer yourself
any direction you choose.
You're on your own. And you know what you know.
And YOU are the guy who'll decide where to go.

You'll look up and down streets. Look 'em over with care.
About some you will say, "I don't choose to go there."
With your head full of brains and your shoes full of feet,
you're too smart to go down any not-so-good street.

And you may not find any
you'll want to go down.
In that case, of course,
you'll head straight out of town.

It's opener there
in the wide open air.

Out there things can happen
and frequently do
to people as brainy
and footsy as you.

And then things start to happen,
don't worry. Don't stew.
Just go right along.
You'll start happening too.

OH!
THE PLACES YOU'LL GO!

You'll be on y our way up!
You'll be seeing great sights!
You'll join the high fliers
who soar to high heights.

You won't lag behind, because you'll have the speed.
You'll pass the whole gang and you'll soon take the lead.
Wherever you fly, you'll be best of the best.
Wherever you go, you will top all the rest.

Except when you don't.
Because, sometimes, you won't.

I'm sorry to say so
but, sadly, it's true
that Bang-ups
and Hang-ups
can happen to you.

You can get all hung up
in a prickle-ly perch.
And your gang will fly on.
You'll be left in a Lurch.

You'll come down from the Lurch
with an unpleasant bump.
And the chances are, then,
that you'll be in a Slump.

And when you're in a Slump,
you're not in for much fun.
Un-slumping yourself
is not easily done.

You will come to a place where the streets are not marked.
Some windows are lighted. But mostly they're darked.
A place you could sprain both your elbow and chin!
Do you dare to stay out? Do you dare to go in?
How much can you lose? How much can you win?

And IF you go in, should you turn left or right...
or right-and-three-quarters? Or, maybe, not quite?
Or go around back and sneak in from behind?
Simple it's not, I'm afraid you will find,
for a mind-maker-upper to make up his mind.

You can get so confused
that you'll start in to race
down long wiggled roads at a break-necking pace
and grind on for miles cross weirdish wild space,
headed, I fear, toward a most useless place.
The Waiting Place...

...for people just waiting.
Waiting for a train to go
or a bus to come, or a plane to go
or the mail to come, or the rain to go
or the phone to ring, or the snow to snow
or the waiting around for a Yes or No
or waiting for their hair to grow.
Everyone is just waiting.

Waiting for the fish to bite
or waiting for the wind to fly a kite
or waiting around for Friday night
or waiting, perhaps, for their Uncle Jake
or a pot to boil, or a Better Break
or a string of pearls, or a pair of pants
or a wig with curls, or Another Chance.
Everyone is just waiting.

NO!
That's not for you!

Somehow you'll escape
all that waiting and staying
You'll find the bright places
where Boom Bands are playing.

With banner flip-flapping,
once more you'll ride high!
Ready for anything under the sky.
Ready because you're that kind of a guy!

Oh, the places you'll go! There is fun to be done!
There are points to be scored. There are games to be won.
And the magical things you can do with that ball
will make you the winning-est winner of all.
Fame! You'll be as famous as famous can be,
with the whole wide world watching you win on TV.

Except when they don't
Because, sometimes they won't.

I'm afraid that some times
you'll play lonely games too.
Games you can't win
'cause you'll play against you.

All Alone!
Whether you like it or not,
Alone will be something
you'll be quite a lot.

And when you're alone, there's a very good chance
you'll meet things that scare you right out of your pants.
There are some, down the road between hither and yon,
that can scare you so much you won't want to go on.

But on you will go
though the weather be foul.
On you will go
though your enemies prowl.
On you will go
though the Hakken-Kraks howl.
Onward up many
a frightening creek,
though your arms may get sore
and your sneakers may leak.

On and on you will hike,
And I know you'll hike far
and face up to your problems
whatever they are.

You'll get mixed up, of course,
as you already know.
You'll get mixed up
with many strange birds as you go.
So be sure when you step.
Step with care and great tact
and remember that Life's
a Great Balancing Act.
Just never foget to be dexterous and deft.
And never mix up your right foot with your left.

And will you succeed?
Yes! You will, indeed!
(98 and 3/4 percent guaranteed.)

KID, YOU'LL MOVE MOUNTAINS!

So...
be your name Buxbaum or Bixby or Bray
or Mordecai Ali Van Allen O'Shea,
You're off the Great Places!
Today is your day!
Your mountain is waiting.
So...get on your way!

never stop writing!

2012-01-04T10:58:00.000+01:00

Eddy Crosby

The Aggressives

2012-01-04T10:42:00.001+01:00

Something to be seen. It reminds me of "Venus Boyz" and "Pick up the mic". Do you know any documentaries about similar scenes in Eastern Europe? Thanks & enjoy!

The Aggressives:

Access: YouTube

Summary: The Aggressives is a documentary "look at the lesbian women who prefer to dress and act as men and who participate in NYC's predominantly African-American lesbian drag balls." Viewers may explore issues of identity, gender, and sexuality with this group of lesbians that identify as butch/stud "aggressives," and adopt a very masculine gender. Part of this excerpt shows the daily practices to portray a masculine physique, including constantly working out to build muscle tone, grinding their teeth in order to have a strong masculine jaw line, taking hormone pills to grow facial hair and other mail traits to reduce feminine features and using duct tape, ace bandage and girdles to tape/hold down their breasts so they are less visible. As the respondents discuss their identity, this excerpt also explores what it means to be a man or woman, illustrating West and Zimmerman's concept of "doing gender." The women in the documentary are constantly fighting against societal constraints of a gendered female norm. This highly provocative excerpt can be a great discussion starter on issues of gender and sexuality, but the film more generally also examines issues of race.

Ants in my coffee

2012-01-04T10:24:00.001+01:00

Ants on plate:

White porcelain + black design by Re Jin

Queercore Rocking Out of the Closet

2012-01-03T11:28:00.001+01:00

an important post! a bit too UScentric but nevertheless relevant for the scene.

Queercore Rocking Out of the Closet:
By Rev. Walter Beck

The Gay Rights Movement is in full swing in this country; New York just passed marriage equality, the support for gay marriage is exploding, Don’t Ask Don’t Tell has been repealed and Lady Gaga is one of the best-selling artists in the country. The country seems ready to embrace full equality and justice and I have to admit, as a hardcore GLBTQ activist, it’s a breath of fresh air.

But why is it always dance and pop? Where are my brothers and sisters under the Rainbow banner who wanna rock? Oh sure, rock n roll has had its sprinkling of GLBTQ musicians, there’s Rob Halford, metal god from Judas Priest, David Bowie, Lou Reed from the Velvet Underground, Freddie Mercury of Queen and Elton John. But it just seems like rock n roll is often “too macho” to bring the gay crowd to the stage. Fortunately, for the last twenty years there has been a strong underground movement welcoming us to rock out with our you-know-what’s out known as queercore.

Pansy Division: From San Francisco, these guys were one of the first queercore bands to reach a National audience as the opening act on Green Day’s Dookie tour and their definitely my favorites of the scene. They mix a three-chord sound with over-the-top, tongue-in-cheek lyrics in such songs as “Horny in the Morning”, “Fem in a Black Leather Jacket”, “Homo Christmas” and “Groovy Underwear”. Pansy Division is one of the few bands that have never disappointed me with their albums (another one is Motorhead).

Limp Wrist: This is one of the hardest punk bands I’ve heard and definitely the heaviest of the queercore scene. This is old-school hardcore punk with chainsaw guitars, chaotic drums, barking vocals and short bursts of anger with cuts like “Angry Queen”, “You Ain’t That Fierce” and “Stabbed in the Back”. This ain’t the sort of band that pretty boy ranting and raving about Glee is gonna dig.

God Is My Co-Pilot: This is the Velvet Underground sort to speak of the queercore scene, combining a strange instrumental sound with deep and often off the wall lyrics. If you’re into the stranger side of music when it comes to sounds and subject matter, you’ll definitely dig God Is My Co-Pilot; try to get a copy of their album I Am Not This Body.

Hunx & His Punx: These guys are one of the newest bands in the queercore scene with their debut full-length, Too Young to Be in Love, coming out this year. This is a different sound with the band fully rooted in an old-school rock n roll sound, a la Chuck Berry, Eddie Cochran, etc. Since I’m a big fan of that early rock n roll sound, I definitely recommend this band and their debut record.

Team Dresch: If you like your queercore on the grungy side, check out this band of angry lesbians from the mid 90’s. They sound like a jumped up version of L7, shredding through cuts of full-out rage like “I’m Illegal”, “Fagetarian and Dyke” and “Screwing Yer Courage”. Their 1995 debut Personal Best is one of the most underrated albums of the grunge movement and definitely an album to listen to and take down the system with it.

So there you have it! A brief overview of some of the more prominent bands in the queercore scene, they all have their quirks and their own unique sound, but one thing unifies them, they’re gay and they rock with the best of them.

As an activist and music junkie, I’m issuing a call to arms here; all my brothers and sisters under the Rainbow banner, cast off the mainstream pop and dance music that seems to “define” our culture and our lifestyle and pick up a guitar, a bass, a drum set, whatever, turn it up to full blast and let it all hang out. Leave the dance floor and run into the mosh pit! It’s true we will find our liberty sealed in the law of the land very soon, but we will also find our liberty sealed in the roaring sound of a distorted, dirty amp.

Think women have achieved equality? Think again.

2012-01-02T21:15:00.000+01:00

Reblog this everywhere when you hear that women already got "their equality"!
thedaysarenotfullenough:

We Can’t Be Equal While:

Gender Roles
Men are the default and women are the Other (and therefore lesser).

Being called “girly” or a “sissy” or “pussy” are some of the worst insults you can give a man.

When a woman shows confidence in herself, she is said to “have balls”, or conversely she is a “man-eater”, “ball-buster”, or a “bitch” because she was “too” assertive.

Men are beat up, ridiculed, or made fun of for being “effeminate” and women are beat up, ridiculed, or made fun of for being “masculine”.

Many people get angry when a woman questions the intentions behind a “chivalrous” act from a man.

There are men who refuse “chivalrous” acts from a woman, such as refusing to walk through a door that a woman holds open for them, while believing that it is rude for a woman to exercise the same right to refuse.

Women can’t express anger without the very real fear of being accused of “hysterics” or being “shrill”.

Women get scolded for “un-ladylike” behaviour: using coarse language, talking frankly about sex or other “impolite” topics, confidently voicing one’s dissenting opinion, etc.

People continue to believe and perpetuate gender essentialism based on bad science or using actual studies to “prove” the innateness of gender roles when the study itself supports no such thing.

Relationships, Sex, and Sexuality

For different-sex couples, women are expected to take their husband’s name, or at the very least hyphenate, but many men still balk at the idea of even considering adopting their wife’s name. If a woman decides to keep her name, both partners are interrogated and shamed by friends and family.

For same-sex couples, people think it is okay to ask “who’s the woman/man of the couple?”

Women are seen as the “gatekeepers” to morality/sexuality, charged with the duty of fending off the advances of men. If they fail then they were “asking for” it and/or are “damaged goods”. Their clothing/actions will always be questioned to see if they were “leading on” the man at all.

Men are seen as “beasts” who are unable to control their “raging hormones” – which absolves them of guilt for “improper” sex (anything from date rape to sex outside of marriage) but also paints them as uncivilized brutes.

Women are “sluts”, men are “players”.

Women’s worth goes down according to how many sexual partners people think she has had.

Men’s worth goes up according to how many sexual partners people think he has had.

We live in a rape culture where many people continue to blame the victims of rape and domestic violence.

We buy into the myth that all men (even minors) are, at all times, willing to fuck a “gorgeous” woman and any man who would pass up sex with a remotely attractive woman is deserving of ridicule.

Wives/mothers are still expected to do most of the home/childcare, even if they have a job outside the home.

Fathers/husbands are seen as bumbling dolts who are mentally incapable of cooking, cleaning, taking care of the children, or any other traditionally feminine task.

There are significantly more stay-at-home moms than there are dads.

Men are expected to pay on a date, and some men expect women to put out for this “service”.

The Public Sphere

Men continue to be a clear majority in the government, prominent positions in businesses, and other public places of power.

There have been so few female leaders in most countries. For instance, in the Group of Eight:
America has never had a female president.

Canada’s first, and only, female prime minister was Kim Campell [1993].

Britain’s first, and only, female prime minister was Margaret Thatcher [1979-1990].

France’s first, and only, female prime minister was Edith Cresson [1991-1992].

Italy has never had a female prime minister.

Japan has never had a female prime minister.

Russia has never had a female president.

Germany’s first, and only, female Chancellor is Angela Merkel [2005].

Pakistan, which is held up by many Americans as a “backward” country regarding women’s rights, elected a female prime minister, Benazir Bhutto, twice while Americans were still debating whether or not America was “ready” for a female president (here are some other female leaders who have been elected while America has been dragging its feet).

There are still areas in our so-called “equal” societies where sex discrimination, sexual harassment and the glass ceiling are alive and kicking.

It’s considered “big news” when articles tell mothers who work outside the home that they “can’t have it all”, but not so much when articles call for work reforms and male responsibility.

Women in the sex trade, even those who have chosen the life, are treated as sub-human on a regular basis.

It is not seen as sex discrimination to include harmful (and expensive!) items such as makeup and high heels in the requirements for a woman’s dress code while having no such constraints on the men’s dress code.

Women are still discouraged from entering the sciences by social stereotypes, lack of job availability, and the continuing belief that women just aren’t smart enough.

It is considered appropriate to attack a female public figure because of her appearance and fashion sense.

One of the first ways to discredit women who speak up in public forums is to threaten sexual violence.

Women are disproportionately affected by fat discrimination in the workforce and other places.

Appearance, Bodily Sovereignty, and Personhood

Men’s bodies belong to no one but themselves; women’s uteri are seen as the property of men, the government, and even strangers.

Women’s place as full-fledged legal and social adults is not assured.

Women are seen first and foremost by their physical attributes and secondly by their relevant qualities.

The double-standard of beauty is camouflaged under myths of empowerment and liberation.

Women feel the need to undergo a potentially dangerous operation on their healthy vaginas in order to please their husbands/boyfriends by striving towards an unrealistic beauty standard set by mainstream porn.

It is seen as appropriate for stranger and friend alike to give unsolicited comments on a woman’s appearance: her weight, fashion, leg/armpit hair, etc.

Eating disorders, caused primarily by our society’s unhealthy obsession with fat, are still rampant among women (significantly more than among men).

There are contests like “Pimp My Ride”.

And many, many other reasons.

Copyright laws

2012-01-02T10:59:00.001+01:00

"This song is Copyrighted in U.S., under Seal of Copyright #154085, for a period of 28 years, and anybody caught singin' it without our permission, will be mighty good friends of ourn, cause we don't give a dern. Publish it. Write it. Sing it. Swing to it. Yodel it. We wrote it, that's all we wanted to do."

Written by Woody Guthrie in the late 1930s on a songbook

Gilded Age Collection

2011-12-26T22:30:00.000+01:00

'Gilded Age Collection'

Designer: Stefan Miljanich

So this is Christmas…

2011-12-25T11:46:00.001+01:00

So this is Christmas…:
…and what have you done?

Global Call for New Year’s Eve noise demos outside of prisons, jails, and detention centers

2011-12-25T08:49:00.000+01:00

via

Global Noise Demo: New Years Eve 2011/2012
Outside & inside prisons, jails, and detention centers everywhere.

This event is inspired by the North American call out for a day of action against prisons in the New Year of 2011, which remains relevant unchanged:

Noise demos outside of prisons in some countries are a continuing tradition. A way of expressing solidarity for people imprisoned during the New Year, remembering those held captive by the state. A noise demo breaks the isolation and alienation of the cells our enemies create, but it does not have to stop at that.Prison has a long history within capital, being one of the most archaic forms of prolonged torture and punishment. It has been used to kill some slowly and torture those unwanted – delinquents to the reigning order – who have no need of fitting within the predetermined mold of society.

Prison is used not only as an institution, but a whole apparatus, constructed externally from outside of the prison walls. Which our enemies by way of defining our everyday life as a prison, manifest themselves in many places, with banks that finance prison development (like Wells Fargo, Bank of America, BNP Paribas, Bank of the West, and Barclays), companies that are contracted for the development of prisons (like Bergelectric Corporation, SASCO Electric, Engineered Control Systems, MacDonald Miller Facility SLTNS and Kane MFG Corp.), investors in prison development (like Barclays Intl. and Merrlin Lynch) to the police and guards who hide behind their badges and the power of the state.

Solidarity is not only an expression by way of our own revolutionary poetry which is defined by a developing anarchist analysis, but as an expression of actions put into practice within the social war daily. That is why we propose to others who have a certain reciprocal understanding of the prison world and the conditions it creates to remember this day, to mark it on their calendars. To locate points of attack. To not limit ourselves to just a noise demo, but proliferating actions autonomously from one another. That break the mundane positions we lock ourselves into by our own internalization.

To all our comrades known and we have yet to know. Just because we have not met, does not mean we do not act in affinity with one another. Our struggle continues not only on the outside, but on the inside as well. Prison is not an end, but a continuation. Through individual and collective moments of revolt, by the methods one finds possible. Like fire our rage must spread.

Against prison, and the world that maintains them.

For the social war.

In memory of those currently imprisoned.

Woody Guthrie’s New Year’s Resolutions 1942

2011-12-23T12:09:00.000+01:00

Woody Guthrie’s New Year’s Resolutions 1942:

Woody Guthrie’s New Year’s Resolutions 1942

27.-Help win war-Beat fascism

for the hearts

2011-12-23T12:00:00.000+01:00

Photo:

Budapest: Attila József Picnic

2011-12-22T15:55:00.000+01:00

Attila József Picnic:

In autumn 2011 the Hungarian government decided to continue its struggle against the remaining of communism or things that may remind about it. After numerous renaming of the streets in Budapest and an attempt to remove the statue of liberty build during the communist times, the government decided to continue the fight with statues. This time its choice was made for the statue of a revolutionary proletariat poet of the 20th century, Attila József , who was a member of a communist party for a short time somewhere far away from the lawn near the Parliament building where it is now.

There were a couple of symbolic mainstream events against removal of the statue where people were holding speeches and listening for concert. We decided to make our own action - a picnic to commemorate Attila Jozséf. We like him because his life and worldview is unique and revolutionary. His poetry writing manner is full of provocation and grotesqueness, and his worldview is rebellious and anarchist.

On November 20 we took the food (mostly dumpster dived at the market on Saturday) we were cooking over the weekend and the FreeShop to the lawn with Attila Jozséf statue. There were some people there already, and during our stay there more people came. We were just hanging out, eating and sharing food, and also talking to the interested people who were passing by.

"I am paying attention that your lifestyle is just sitting here in the street on the stone..!"

chapatis: before frying

friends helping to cook

slow frying

chapati connection!!!

pesto from dumpstered leaves

the FreeShop in blue bags

pesto and hummus in jars

the soup

the soup for everyone

a Spanish dog

tourist came to visit the statue

yes, there was more soup left

some people got really interested in the picnic

Brokenness is beautiful

2011-12-22T15:42:00.001+01:00

Broken Things by Livia Marin:

The Chilean artist explores brokenness and recovery in her work, displayed in London at the House of Propellors Gallery.

Why yes, Virginia, there IS a reason to be concerned when the defense contractors who pimp our so-called 'government' start developing suffocating sound-guns for dispersing protestors.

2011-12-20T12:19:00.000+01:00

A creepy article (creepiness for content) from my lovely friend, Severina Why yes, Virginia, there IS a reason to be concerned when the defense contractors who pimp our so-called 'government' start developing suffocating sound-guns for dispersing protestors.:

via google.com

Raytheon's recent patent application for a new choking sound-cannon has gotten a bit of attention since Gizmodo picked up the story from New Scientist.

http://gizmodo.com/5867984/future-riot-shields-will-suffocate-protestors-with...

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21228425.300-riot-shields-could-scatter...

My soon-to-be-patent-attorney friend has chided me not to worry, because this is "just a patent application." And here's an example of how a little bit of legal education, which strictly de-emphasizes context and the analysis of power dynamics, can be a dangerous thing. There is a substantive difference between a patent application by a random would-be inventor working out of her garage and a patent application by Raytheon.

Raytheon is one of the largest arms dealers in the world. Raytheon has billions of dollars of US government contracts. Raytheon has current contracts to develop crowd control weapons, and is testing them on American prisoners. Raytheon has already developed crowd-control weapons from battlefield technology and sold them to domestic prisons for use here in the States.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=129630188

Raytheon is girding itself for shifts in US government defense spending, partly by selling more war-weapons to other countries...

http://www.defenseprocurementnews.com/2011/12/01/saudi-patriot-deal-receives-...

...but also by increasingly marketing to 'non-military customers.' Such as the Department of Homeland Security and prisons, public and private. These 'non-military' customers buy a lot of crowd-control weapons.

http://technorati.com/business/finance/article/raytheon-illustrates-diversifi...

Another sonic weapon, developed by LRAD, has already been deployed against first amendment-exercisers here in the States.

http://gizmodo.com/5860592/what-is-the-lrad-sound-cannon

It's really not a giant leap of logic to imagine that this particular patent application might be something nasty, deployed for nasty purposes.

Oh, BTW? Raytheon has been repeatedly sanctioned for illegal and unethical practice - it's the 5th-worst government contractor, according to the Project on Open Government's misconduct database. Competing, of course, with the OTHER four major defense contractors.

http://www.contractormisconduct.org/index.cfm/1,73,221,html?ContractorID=46&r...

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Your dad knew about irony before you did

2011-12-20T12:09:00.000+01:00

The fatherly source of irony
Your dad knew about irony before you did and he had “Le...:

Your dad knew about irony before you did and he had “Le Car” to prove it. For $300 and a half roll of mint Lifesavers, he purchased rolling satire. His “chariot” cemented his place as “The Most Ironic Man in the World” because he bought a car that wasn’t a car, but called itself a car by writing car on the car. He was a visionary of irony that liked everything everyone else hated so once he made it popular he could hate on it and say he liked it before it was cool. He liked disco in the 60’s, hair metal in the 70’s, and wore Clarkston High School track shirts even though he’d never ran and didn’t go to that school. Everything he has ever done has been ironic, including loving you.

So hipsters, in 2012 when you’re claiming that you voted for Rick Perry after the elections and saying that it was cool because nobody else did it or growing a mustache and refusing to admit that it doesn’t look terrible, remember this…

Your dad is so ironic that after spending his entire youth rebelling against his father the most ironic thing he could do was become him by having you and being a dad himself (which is also the same track you’re currently on, and yet another example of something else he did before you).

Thanks to Jessica for today’s awesome submission via the Facebook fan page.

Seaman Meets Baby

2011-12-20T12:06:00.000+01:00

what about the baby? Seaman Meets Baby:

Submitted by: tarheelcoconut

The Worst Gift This Christmas

2011-12-20T12:03:00.000+01:00

The Worst Gift For Girls, This Christmas:

Submitted by:

butterflyperception

Portal Cupcakes for the season

2011-12-20T12:02:00.000+01:00

Portal Cupcakes:

The Glad bags looming in the background makes me think maybe this baker isn’t so skilled when it comes to actually eating the treats.

Tagged: blue, cupcakes, orange, portal, video game

Submitted By: Unknown

Santa is the reason for the season…

2011-12-20T12:00:00.000+01:00

Santa is the reason for the season…:

Santa is the reason for the season…

Holiday cheers!

2011-12-20T11:59:00.000+01:00

Holiday cheers!:

“Drinks After Midnight” Sasha’s Piano Ace of Clubs Records (UK)

The Accordion Swingsters Polydor Records EP (UK)

Restrepo (2010)

2011-07-25T09:47:00.002+02:00

the big promise of capitalism

The madness of certainty

2011-06-26T12:16:00.000+02:00

Darian Leader talks about the certainty of... by tvnportal

Psychoanalyst Darian Leader explains that what Western societies perceive nowadays as "normal" was seen a while ago as pure madness, while the highly valued certainty was a clear sign of insanity in the past.

Reactions to a homophobic attack in Cluj

2011-05-05T15:07:00.001+02:00

Some old news appeared in the Romanian queer blogosphere: on April 24, around 5.00 AM, a well-known drag queen from Cluj, Petruta, was severely beaten in front of a club by 4 men. The attackers used fists and chains and police is still on their tracks. The whole incident was filmed by the cameras of a close-by shopping center. The bloggers are asking for any type of information regarding the case in order to help the police which is not doing anything so far. While Cluj is perceived as a gay-friendly city where many events took place and where Petruta even won a contest for the best drag queen in 2008, homophobic attacks are on the rise and the queer community feels threatened.

Robert G., who blogs at darkq.net, the so-called gay Romania blog, mocks Petruta as “an honest and God-fearing boy” and explains the event as a reaction to her outrageous flirting with straight men on the street. While most of the people ignored her that night, two men could not take the offence and hit her twice in the face, not using chains. Shaming Petruta and victim-blaming are argued by the fact that another drag queen and a gay man were not hurt in the incident even if they were present! Robert criticizes the overreaction of the queer community, which complains again that it is discriminated when there is no apparent reason for that.

Alexalexutu comments that he was also attacked by 3 men in the same place on another occasion and even if there were many people present no one intervened (it is a very central location in Cluj).

Zoli_k accuses Petruta and her behavior for the event (she was nasty and uncivilized) by comparing her to other famous drag queens (Kaballa, Fernanda) who were never beaten on the street. For him, the whole situation is a sort of “What Lola wants, Lola gets”. To this comment, Kaballa responds that she was heavily beaten also and defends Petruta.

Petruta made a touchy statement when more voices accused her of a promiscuous behavior: "Brothers, I didn’t yell “cock” and I wasn’t extremely drunk. I am sorry if I embarrass the community but I didn’t complain and I didn’t ask for anyone’s help. I am sorry about this post and for all this fuss that is not helping me with anything. For those who are bothered by my presence, it is their own business; I do not eat or drink from their table. Anyway, I thank those who wrote well about me and I do not care about those who wrote bad things, I didn’t shame your community and I did nothing against you. I didn’t go out in the media or TV to tell what happened to me.”

The blogger who posted the first article on the issue responded: “No one is happy for what happened to you, it is just the opinion of the people. Take it as a learning experience and pay attention to how you behave in the future.”

Starting with this particular case, some questions have to be asked: are drag queens marginalized in the Romanian queer community? What type of solidarity can be constructed within and outside this community? How to react in obvious violent cases of homophobia, transphobia and misogyny?

Angela Davis : the radical academic

2011-04-10T23:23:00.000+02:00

Portrait of a Revolutionary

2011-04-10T23:02:00.000+02:00

The Guerrilla Girls’ Guide to Behaving Badly

2011-03-25T19:32:00.001+01:00

please circulate widely and apply all over the place:

The Guerrilla Girls’ Guide to Behaving Badly (Which You Have to Do Most of the Time in the World as We Know It)

Be a loser. The world of art and design doesn’t have to be an Olympics where a few win and everyone else is forgotten. Even though the art market and celebrity culture is set up to support the idea of hyper-competition and to make everyone but the stars feel like failures, there’s also a world out there of artistic cooperation and collaboration that’s not about raging egos. That’s the one we joined, and the one you can join, too. Get beyond the outdated assumption that only a handful of you will "make it." Don’t all waste your time running after the same few carrots.

Be impatient. Don't wait for a stamp of approval from the system. Don’t wait around to be asked to dance. Claim your place. Put on your own shows, create your own companies, develop your own projects. To steal a phrase from the Dali Lama, “Be the change you want to see in the world." In other words, Be the artworld you want to take part in.

Be crazy. Political art that just points to something and says “this is bad” is like preaching to the choir. Try to change people's minds about issues. Do it in an outrageous, unforgettable way. A lot of people in the art and film world didn’t believe things were as bad as we said they were and we brought them around....with facts, humor and a little fake fur. Here’s a trick we learned: If you can get someone who disagrees with you to you to laugh at an issue, you have a hook into their brain. Once inside you have a better chance of changing their minds.

Be anonymous. You’d be surprised what comes out of your mouth when you’re wearing a gorilla mask. We started wearing them to protect our careers, but soon realized it was one of the secrets of our success. Anonymous free speech is protected by the First Amendment. So join that long line of anonymous masked avengers, like Robin Hood, Batman, and of course, Wonder Woman.

Be an outsider. Maybe having a secret identity isn’t for you. But even if you end up working inside the system, act like an outsider. Look for the understory, the subtext, the overlooked, and the downright unfair, then expose it. We’ve empowered lots of people inside museums, universities and film studios to jam their culture and dis their institutions.

Lead a double life. Be a split personality. Be two, three, four, five artists in one body, like me. I’m an artist / activist / writer / graphic designer. Be a hybrid. Hybrids are so green.

Just do one thing. If it works, do another. If it doesn’t, try it another way. Over time, we promise you it will all add up to something effective and great. Don't be paralyzed because you can't do it all right away. Just keep on chipping away.

Don't make only FINE art. Make some cheap art that can be owned by everyone, like books and movies can.

Sell out. If people start paying attention to you, don’t waste time wondering if you’ve lost your edge. Take your critique right inside the galleries and institutions to a larger audience. When our work appears at venerable venues like the Venice Biennale, the Tate Modern, or The National Gallery in DC, we get hundreds of letters from people saying they were blown away by our analysis of art and culture.

Give collectors, curators, and museum directors tough love: (Bear with me, this is a long rant.) It’s a pity that public art museums have to compete with billionaire art investors to own significant artworks. And then depend on those investors to donate the works! It's outrageous that art by women and artists of color sold at auction bring 10-20% of the price of art by white males. It's unethical that wealthy art collectors who put lots of money in the art market can then become museum trustees, overseeing museums that in turn validate their investments. What a lousy way to write and preserve our history! If things continue like they’re going, a hundred years from now, many museums will be showing only the white male version of art history, with a few tokens thrown in. You need to keep that from happening. Make sure that museums cast a wider net and collect the real story of our culture. How can you deliver tough love to the art world? Demand ethical standards inside museums. No more insider trading. No more conflicts of interest! No more cookie cutter collections of Art That Costs The Most (Eli Broad, do you hear us?) While you’re at it, give some tough love to design and architecture, where women and people of color face a crushing glass ceiling. And finally, educators out there, don't teach a history constructed by corrupt institutions. Write your own!

Complain, complain, complain. But be creative about it. Sure we've done 45 feet high banners and billboards all over the world. But here's some simpler things we've done: Put anti-film industry stickers in movie theatre bathrooms, insert fliers with facts about art world discrimination into books in museum stores, send anonymous postcards to museum directors. Want more ideas? How about attaching political hangtags to items in clothing stores, putting up street art or billboards across from your office, slapping stickers on fashion magazine covers. You can probably think up a million better ideas than we can.

Use the F word. Be a feminist. For decades the majority of art school graduates have been women. Your class is no exception. But after school, when you find a too-small number of women and people of color in your field, especially at the top, then you know there's got to be discrimination, conscious or unconscious, going on. Don't just put up with it, say something. We think its ridiculous that so many people who believe in the tenets of feminism have been brainwashed by negative stereotypes in the media and society and refuse to call themselves feminists. And guys, that means you, too. Time to man up, whether you're female, male, trans, etc. and speak up for women. Women's rights, civil rights, and gay, lesbian and trans rights are the great human rights movements of our time. There's still a long way to go.

And last, but not least, be a great ape.

In 1917, Franz Kafka wrote a short story titled A Report to An Academy, in which an ape spoke about what it was like to be taken into captivity by a bunch of educated, intellectual types. The published story ends with the ape tamed and broken by the stultified academics. But in an earlier draft, Kafka tells a different story. The ape ends his report by instructing other apes NOT to allow themselves to be tamed. He says instead: "break the bars of your cages, bite a hole through them, squeeze through an opening…and ask yourself where do YOU want to go?”

Make that YOUR ending, not the tamed and broken one.

Oh...And don't forget to have some serious fun along the way!!!!

via

United States and dictators

2011-03-21T00:02:00.000+01:00

As much as I despise Chomsky, he makes a good point that fits like a glove on what is going on nowadays in Libya:

"In fact, about the only moderately reasonable comparison would be to Romania, where Ceausescu, the most vicious of the dictators of the region, was very strongly supported by the United States right up ’til the end. And then, when he—the last days, when he was overthrown and killed, the first Bush administration followed the usual rules: postured about being on the side of the people, opposed to dictatorship, tried to arrange for a continuation of close relations."

blue light yokohama

2011-03-18T18:50:00.001+01:00

The scent of your favorite cigarettes

Yokohama, Blue Light Yokohama

This will always be our world

quote of the day

2011-02-19T15:48:00.000+01:00

In the revolutionary context of today, with an amazing adequacy, one quote comes to mind:

Proletarian revolutions… criticize themselves constantly, interrupt themselves continually in their course, come back to the apparently accomplished in order to begin it afresh, deride with unmerciful thoroughness the inadequacies, weakness, and paltriness of their first attempts, seem to throw down their adversary only in order that he may draw new strength from the earth and rise again, more gigantic, before them, recoil ever and anon from the indefinite prodigiousness of their own aims, until a situation has been created which makes all turning back impossible.

(Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte)

Anti-Gypsyism and politics, 2 cases

2010-12-03T18:22:00.000+01:00

Two apparently disconnected news from Romanian media draw a convincing picture on how Roma are treated today in Europe.

1.The Romanian government agreed on changing the term Roma to Ţigan, based on a recommendation from Romanian Academy and on the assumption that most of the European Union states are already using ţigan instead of Roma. They also justified their decision to use in all institutional papers the insulting term ţigan through a possible confusion Roma-Romani-Romanian. The government completely neglected the opinion of Roma representatives or the protests that were taking place this week against such a decision. This is an important issue: the term Ţigan has a strong pejorative connotation and was used for centuries to signify slave but also dirty, untouchable, criminal. It is a strong insult in non-Roma contexts. The Romanian government was aware of this and they acknowledged it in the recommendation of not using the term in a pejorative way.

2. The second news that I couldn't find in English and was quite popular in Romania is about a municipal councilor from Padova, Italy. Vittorio Aliprandi wrote on Facebook that he is disgusted by Roma people, that they make him puke and he wants to send them to concentration camps. After some reactions against his statements he "defended" himself by making it worse. After complaining that nobody can say bad things about Roma anymore, he defined Roma as nomads, thieves and breeders, people who don't want to work and who don't want to integrate. Oh, and for the camps part, he said that he was just joking. That should settle things for good.

this is his FB page

I am still intrigued by the lack of reactions but probably after the weekend something will happen. I am writing now about the romantic construction of Gypsy nomadism in 19th century Europe and I realize that those people were more respectful and coherent in their anti-Gypsyism than nowadays politicians. Nevertheless their ideas were put into practice in the most brutal way years later.

news via and via (in Romanian)

we pledge allegiance

2010-12-02T19:51:00.002+01:00

PES sends an unambiguous message

2010-11-17T18:05:00.000+01:00

Finally the European Socialists realized that is time to do something against the rise of extremist parties. It took them some time but I hope that they will stick to their own rules and this decision will actually produce political change.

What happened? The Presidency of the Party of European Socialists adopted the document “Confronting the extreme-right in Europe: our way” which is basically a guideline on how to deal with extreme-right parties in Europe.

"The PES expresses concerns and frustration at the recent statements of so called main stream

politicians which send a dangerous and insidious signal that such extreme views are acceptable.

Recent comments by French centre right politicians on the Roma question, Italian leaders coming

to their aid and by German regional leaders on the very idea of immigration, or acceptance of

support to a ruling coalition in the Netherlands, have only exacerbated the situation."

They plan to send "an unambiguous message to European citizens that the political platforms of these parties are wrong, in their entirety". They also want to make it mandatory for all European political parties to sign up to the principles of the Charter of European Parties for a non-racist Society, adopted in Utrecht in 1998, and to adopt a strict code of conduct:

- Condemn all racist, xenophobic, discriminatory or nationalistic statements or actions.

- Not get into a ruling coalition or electoral alliance with a Party inciting or attempting to stir up racial or ethnic prejudices and racial hatred, at European or national levels.

- Refuse an implicit support from a Party inciting or attempting to stir up racial or ethnic prejudices and racial hatred to form a government.

- Fight the legitimization of the discourses of such Parties by refusing to engage into their terms of the debate, by not taking up their ideas into its political platforms nor in the policies it implements when in government.

- Isolate its members not respecting those principles.

Good luck with that...I have already some ideas of who should be isolated already, but i guess it won't be so easy to apply some strong principles.

you can find the document at the PES website here

USSR & PC

2010-11-14T09:41:00.001+01:00

Hélène Cixous gives an interesting description of the situation in France after the disappearance of the Soviet Union and surprise! the scapegoating of PC (whatever that means). I found this paragraph fascinating, especially in relation to the daily usage of PC in order to shut down any progressive left discourse.

Here is Cixous in Stigmata:

"The disappearance of the USSR. I do not plan on giving a political presentation. I’m going to report on one effect, out of a thousand, of the disappearance of the USSR, such as it can be observed in France—a characteristic item of our period, inscribed across the French scene. A kind of flash effect of events on our ideology, on our discourse, on our desire: for example, in France, an effect on something that belongs to our recent memory and which is the downfall of what they called ‘PC.’ At the outset there were newspaper articles which I would call ill-intentioned or written in bad faith—as always: thus, the usual—articles on ‘PC’—but the American phenomenon! That is—and this won’t be news to you—on the notion of ‘Political Correctness.’ Typically, in French public opinion, a vast confusion was created, a hodgepodge of PC [French Communist Party] and ‘PC’: what the PC was in any case was infamous, because it was the PC. Inscription, therefore, of a phobia in France. France manufactures and sells phobias and phobogenic products. You have to be in Paris to smell the daily odor of the hunt, this desire to kill, this desire to set up for decapitations. Odor of newspaper. But in October, it was the French PC and the American ‘Politically Correct’ that were rejected, both of them, placed on the Index!"

photo from Museum of Communism Prague

what is activism?

2010-11-10T12:58:00.002+01:00

Being part of a Gender Department, there are some questions that come up every new academic year. One constant puzzle for gender students/professors is activism and what does it mean for us. The trend at our department is to move away from any activist connotations (activism as in connection to Marxist politics, feminist or queer movement). I have to mention that even if there are some notable exceptions of public intellectuals, active feminists and queer activists at all levels of the academic strict hierarchy, this move away from activism comes from the faculty (which in my particular case stands for one of the last bastions of postfeminism, commodification of queer/feminist research with no political agenda and neoliberal backlash. This type of approach adds to the fact that being situated in Eastern Europe offers a great opportunity for our white masters/professors and colleagues to other the "uncivilized" students and construct their own neo-colonial subjectivities).

The question of activism came recently in the LGBT club at our university, where some members asked if they can take part in actions even if they are not activists. Some emails followed debating the issue.

I have to mention that I questioned myself about activism and what does it mean for me. I still don't have an answer for that but I was reading a very interesting position by Matt Kailey, a transman who blogs at Tranifesto.

He was answering a burning question in the feminist/queer blogosphere: "Is blogging activism?” but went further than that by offering a large definition for activism.

"Sometimes the word “activist” can be more than a little scary and overwhelming. Sometimes we come to a conference and we see people up at the podium speaking, or we see people giving workshops and we read their bios and see all the things they've done, and we look at all the various leaders in each of our communities, and we think, “I can't possibly do what they're doing. I wouldn't even know where or how to start. I don't have the time, the energy, the resources, the skills, or even the desire.”

Or we think, “I can't be out where I live or where I work. There's no way I can speak out or be visible like that.” Or, as an ally, we think, “I'm not a member of that community. Will they resent me or see me as an outsider? And how can I represent a community that I really don't belong to?”

And then we just give up.

But we don't have to give up. We all have a part to play, and it doesn't have to involve traveling around the globe giving speeches, or writing books, or being on TV, or holding a political office, or sitting on boards of directors, or running organizations. Those are all very worthy and much-needed activities, and the people who do those things are absolutely essential for our community. But the truth is that we are all absolutely essential for our community. And we are all activists - every single one of you here today is an activist.

If you are GLBTIQ or go by a different label but identify as a member of that community, you are an activist every morning when you get out of bed, whether you want to be or not, just by living your life. Every time you come out to someone, you are an activist.

If you're trans or have a “non-standard body,” every time you use a public restroom labeled “Male” or “Female,” you are an activist. If you're gay or lesbian or bi or queer, every time you go on a date or kiss your partner, you are an activist.

If you're an ally, every time you use the correct pronoun when referring to a trans person, you are an activist. Every time you correct someone who uses the wrong pronoun or who makes an inappropriate comment about a member of the GLBTIQ community, you are an activist.

Activism doesn't have to be big and bold and visible to everyone. Activism takes many forms and can be as simple as treating someone else with the respect that they are due. It can be as simple as welcoming a same-sex couple into your neighborhood or treating a transsexual store clerk like you would treat any other store clerk that you were dealing with - no better and no worse. When you make the decision, every day of your life, to treat everyone who you encounter in your life as a “normal” person, a deserving person, and an equal person - you are an activist.

It's that simple. Anyone can be an activist.

When asked how to create a legacy, Ethel Percy Andrus, the founder of AARP, the American Association of Retired Persons, said, “Do what you can, with what you have, where you are today.”

And that's how each one of us can create a legacy of activism that absolutely shakes the foundations of our two-dimensional, either/or, binary society.

You start where you are. And you measure your success in increments, by small victories. I've considered myself a trans activist for the last nine years, and I measure my own success by increments, by small victories, by the little inroads that I'm able to make and by the minds here and there that I'm able to change.

Start giving yourself credit for all the small things that you do - and keep doing them. Pat yourself on the back for all the “small victories” that you have - and keep having them. Acknowledge all the incremental changes that you are making in the world every day - and keep making them.

What you're doing now may be as far as you'll ever go, and that's fine. You're already making a difference.

Yes. Blogging is activism. The world is watching, reading, and listening. And if you can change people's minds, or even make them think about another possibility, or realize that another point of view exists, then as a blogger activist, you have done your job."

From this point of view, to escape activism takes quite a big effort when you are already involved in queer/feminst/gender work. I almost admire those that are trying so hard to keep their academic purity untouched by the abjection of activism.It must be an exhausting struggle that is perceived as necessary to prove yourself academically worthy and masterful based on the assumption that academic work is not political (even if being nonpolitical directly supports the status quo and the hegemonic conservative discourse).

un-learning with Cixous

2010-11-09T18:36:00.000+01:00

In Reading with Clarice Lispector, Helene Cixous follows Genet in showing the necessity of unlearning:

“Genet tells us that we have to burn knowledge, theatricality, sumptuosity, in order to learn how to know nothing.”

That is the most difficult step (but very useful) in having a critical position.

Avon and domestic violence

2010-11-08T16:10:00.000+01:00

These simple classic jewelry pieces are a great way to do your part in getting the word out and putting an end to domestic violence and empowering your fellow women! I just placed my order... did you?!

(from an Avon commercial)

Avon started an aggressive campaign against domestic violence in Romania (I am not giving any links). Considering the huge number of victims that are not supported by the mainstream discourses or state institutions (as a matter of fact, various shelters were closed this year), Avon can meet a large mass of consumers and also be perceived as a feminist Saviour (as a lot of my Facebook friends are doing already, promoting this company and its products due to its involvement in social campaigns).

As Twisty from I Blame the Patriarchy was saying:

"We can no longer deny that real empowerfulness comes from participating as consumers in a $180 billion-a-year global industry that’s scientifically formulated to promote women’s insecurities and self-esteem issues.

In fact, from now on, we’re requiring all strawfeminists to sell Avon products on the side. So, can I interest you in a jar of Anew Clinical Therafirm Face Lifting Cream? Your face will “look & feel firmer, tighter and more lifted.” Because, as the strawfeminist now knows, a face must be as lifted as possible to ensure optimum personal autonomy. Anew Clinical Therafirm Face Lifting Cream is scientifically formulated to relieve you of 32 bucks American. Just think, if you earn minimum wage, that’s a mere 6 1/2 hours’ labor, just 16% of your weekly take-home!"

I found quite disturbing the fact that Avon is using the suffering of women to sell its products, especially in a local context where these problems are silenced and neglected. Avon uses and detours exactly the need for actions and awareness in dealing with the issue of gendered violence. Because buying their products and promoting their business won't help any woman in Romania except for the women in charge who can actually enjoy the profits of this campaign. Oh yes, and maybe this campaign will bring some self-fulfillment for the bourgeois feminists who are actually buying those products, are aware of the problem and do feel better after "doing something" for the feminist cause.

hiding the lace

2010-11-04T16:13:00.000+01:00

This advise from 1940s is puzzling for so many reasons. I always had my "shirttails showing" so it comes as a bit of shock that it was such a no-no decades ago.. But anyway, what do we have here? Only mothers are to guard fashion statements, feminine lace would always compromise masculinity that all the boys want to achieve. Tucked in lace and out of sight would supposedly masculinize the lad immediately..what about hiding the lacy secret in your pants? That is what i would call kink (nothing wrong with that)

foto via

Bruce la Bruce and the theory of agit-porn

2010-10-21T14:32:00.000+02:00

Bruce la Bruce

Bruce la Bruce had an interview long time ago. I still find it relevant for some important issues that are hitting us in the face today. Some of his answers reflect the complex theoretical knowledge that he applies in his cinematic explorations:

" I'm always interested in the idea of identity politics and the arbitrariness or artificiality of sex and gender roles. Most heterosexual men have fixed themselves in a rigid role which doesn't even allow the possibility of bi- or homo-sexual impulses, even though many theorists, from Freud on, have posited the notion that everyone is born with at least some bisexual potential. Females seem to be a little more sexually fluid. Homosexual men have likewise fixed themselves in a gay identity which doesn't allow the possibility of sex with females, sequestering themselves away in an all male environment and trying very hard not to think of the vagina. It's clear that when heterosexual men are confined together under intense circumstances - the military, prison, etc. - that homosexual behaviour emerges quite easily. "

on his relation to various social movements:

"I became disillusioned with the gay movement very early on, even back in the mid eighties deciding that it had become politically stagnant, aesthetically bankrupt, and hopelessly bourgeois. (The current assimilationist trend toward sexual conformity, marriage, and respectability has certainly vindicated my point of view - the oppressed have demonstrably become the oppressors!) I turned to punk because it seemed to be challenging defiantly the status quo, the ascendance of corporate interests and control, and the attempts of the dominant ideology to police, dominate, and neuter all forms of dissent, otherness, and individuality. My first wake up call was realizing that even punk, this supposedly radical subculture, was sexually conformist. This led to an interest in other manifestations of social and political protest, including an investigation into the terrorist or para-military organizations of the late sixties and seventies such as the SLA, the Weathermen, the Black Panthers, and, of course, the Baader-Meinhof gang, the RAF. Each of these groups took very seriously the notion that Godard posited in his movie Numero Deux: le cul, c'est la politique: the sexual is political. They believed that revolution could only be achieved if it was accompanied by a radical rethinking of sexual mores and conventions. People forget nowadays that back then there actually was such a thing as a sexual revolution, when even members of the middle class were experimenting with promiscuity, group sex, bi- and homosexuality, communal living, sex and spirituality, etc. In university I had taken such courses as Protest Literature and Movements, and Psychoanalysis and Feminism, so I already had a background in the teachings of such thinkers as Reich, Marcuse, and other radical theorists who believed that sexual repression was responsible for much of the violence and apathy and spiritual malaise in technologically advanced cultures. I was also very interested in the way that emerging counter-cultural minorities of that era - particularly the black, gay, and feminist movements - adopted a kind of proto-military style and rhetoric, often borrowing from the kind of guerilla insurgencies that had emerged simultaneously in Central and South America. These movements were all initially Marxist-based, defiantly militant, and organized on a kind of decentralized, anarcho-syndicalist model. "

The Raspberry Reich functions as a radical leftist critique of the left:

" I wanted to make a movie that gave voice once more to the left wing, anti-corporate, anti-capitalist rhetoric that was once part of the public discourse but which had become completely absent. The movie also operates as a critique of the left, skewering people who either don't practice what they preach, or who become so self-righteous and intractable in their beliefs that they themselves become oppressive and dogmatic."

The commodification of the left (and any progressive social movement) is another issue raised:

"I also made The Raspberry Reich in order to comment on the modern cultural tendency to co-opt and commodify the signifiers of radicalism and militancy without adopting any of their actual political substance, or worse, in the process, completely contradicting their original intent. In my movie one of the slogans is 'Madonna is Counter-Revolutionary', and I do mean that literally. As I always argue, Madonna is the exact opposite of someone like Jean Genet, whose strategy was to go immediately to any place in the world where there emerged a truly revolutionary impulse (the Black Panthers in America in the late sixties; the Palestinians in the Middle East in the seventies), but as soon as he detected the first sign of co-option or institutionalization, he would not only abandon the movement but turn against it. Madonna also zeroes in on revolutionary moments (usually gay and/or black subcultural manifestations), but with the strategy of co-opting, neutralizing, commodifying, and ultimately exhausting and abandoning them. She is the ultimate example of someone who uses radical chic for exploitative and purely capitalistic ends. "

BlaB does not exclude political chic but raises awareness of the emptiness of pure glamor that is detached from political action:

"Groups like the RAF did have a certain glamour quotient in the seventies, with their leather jackets, berets, sunglasses, and fast cars, but their glamour then also came from their deep convictions in social and political causes and their commitment to carrying out actions against the state. Intellectualism was also considered glamorous in those days, as opposed to the current tendency to distrust and dismiss intellectual analysis. Their glamour had to do with a kind of Robin Hood mentality. With the ascendance of capitalism, crimes against property or theft are now regarded as worse than violent crimes or murder."

The neoliberal intervention managed to brake the solidarity between oppressed groups. Is there any way out?

"Huey P. Newton of the Black Panthers famously reached out to include gays and feminists as part of the kind of revolution he envisioned. It's interesting and kind of sad that the most popular black movement now, hip hop, routinely disrespects women and homosexuals. But then again, corporate hip hop is all about materialism and capitalist capitulation, as is the gay movement. Where's the Baader/Meinhof when you need them?!"

His movies are deliberately offensive as agitprop was in postRevolutionary Russia:

"Generally in my movies I like to include something to offend everyone. I'm often surprised that there is an audience for my work at all. The art world often ignores me because they think I'm too pornographic, while the porn world resents me for being too arty or intellectual and interfering with their precious, pornographically pure product. I'm an interloper, a common adventuress... I definitely want the movie to reach straight male viewers. I've already noticed that it makes a lot of guys who review movies on the internet nervous. They go on and on at great length at how awful and terrible the movie is - it really seems to get under their skin. Perhaps I'm hitting a nerve. I hope so. Especially these supposed underground hipsters who think they're so enlightened and progressive. It's hard to get them out of the missionary position."

The agit-prop influences are there:

"I was referencing movies like Fassbinder's The Third Generation, Godard's La Chinoise, and Dusav Makavejev's WR: Mysteries of the Organism - agit-prop films that playfully illustrate revolutionary principles with narrative skits, direct camera address, or even documentary elements... Also when you make a movie you inevitably adopt this conviction that you will get it done by any means necessary, whatever it takes, that the ends justify the means completely. Shooting a porno always feels like a guerilla activity, like you're contravening some law, morally if not legally... So I guess you could call us film terrorists."

foto via

Gaga pheminism with Jack Halberstam

2010-10-20T18:01:00.000+02:00

Anti-Gypsyism in Romania

2010-10-19T12:43:00.000+02:00

Thomas Hammarberg

The Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights, Thomas Hammarberg visited Romania and encouraged authorities to come up with a set of comprehensive measures to tackle pervasive discrimination against Roma: “Without resolute action to stamp out anti-Gypsyism, it will not be possible to help many Romanian Roma out of social exclusion and marginalisation.”

There was a growing international attention on Roma lately and Romanians reacted to it, from politicians to media to daily debates. Hammarberg perceives this context as an opportunity to advance Roma inclusion in Romania: “The necessary legal and institutional frameworks are in place, but anti-Roma sentiment in political discourse and the media is still a major problem”.

If you take a look at any online newspaper that has an article on Roma issues and check the comments you will find the most blatant anti-Roma opinions that are never addressed by these newspapers. These opinions that can come up in any conversation on Roma in Romania represent a long history of anti-Gypsyism and have direct effects on the lives of Romanian Roma.

As this article observes: "Rather than discussing which term should be used to designate the Roma population, emphasis should be put on educating the general public about Roma history. The slavery they were subjected to in Romania for several centuries, their mass deportation and extermination during the second World War and their forced assimilation during the Communist period have put them in an inferior position, the consequences of which they are still suffering from today."

No wonder that Roma people are forced to leave Romania and face difficult and dangerous conditions in Western Europe, as their only escape from discrimination. As long as they do not exist as citizens, they do not have any rights and they are the target of daily and institutionalized racism, no wonder that they try to use their freedom of movement, which should be respected unconditionally because they are still part of the European Union.

who am I according to this blog

2010-10-09T23:51:00.000+02:00

you have to love these online tests...they are so funny and wrong. the identity of this blog according to urlai.com :

brechto.blogspot.com is probably written by a male somewhere between 66-100 years old. The writing style is personal and happy most of the time.

Gender

Age

Mood

Tonality

Viviane Reding answers

2010-09-26T16:49:00.000+02:00

Viviane Reding is the European public enemy no 1 these days. With her courageous attitude, she became hated by all conservatives. In their critique of that woman, they are bringing all the patriarchal stereotypes into the debate of Roma exclusions.

Reding's answer to that masculinist reaction is brilliant. Her answer from Strasbourg: “You see, if a man in politics puts the fist on the table, that’s “male”, he defends himself. If a woman puts a fist on the table, she is hysterical, okay? That’s why we have the gender equality question on the table today!”

via

Roma slavery is debated in the Romanian Parliament

2010-09-26T16:28:00.001+02:00

Slave auction poster (Romanian, 1852)

This week the Romanian Parliament had an interesting debate that was left unnoticed by mainstream media. Only TVR had a short report on the topic. Nicolae Paun, the representative of the Roma community, proposed the commemoration of the abolition of slavery in Romania on the 20th of February every year and also the inclusion of the subject of Roma slavery in history books for all schools. Roma people were slaves until 1856 in Wallachia and Moldavia, a peculiar case in the region. The main owner was the Romanian Orthodox Church.

Romanian Senators reacted violently to such claims this week. Using arguments such as there were no slaves, they were not enslaved by any Romanians or Europeans, they asked to be slaves (Puiu Hasotti, Romanian Liberal Party) or they were not Roma, they were gypsies and this commemoration cannot be applied for Roma (Radu Berceanu, Democrat Liberal Party), senators managed to reject the project. A simple check of Wikipedia on slavery in Romania would have told them what racist fiction they are creating (not to mention a decent check of any studies on this historical topic). Their important decisions with material effects are supported by outrageous claims. Afterwards, their rhetoric becomes historical proof for exclusion, white privilege and slavery denial.

What they also manage to do was to bring into discussion the usage of the word Tzigan (which ironically meant also slave in Romanian) and the rejection of the word Roma. As they explained, Roma was imposed by a sort of blackmail by the European institutions for Romanian accession to EU. And the corrupted and unpatriotic politicians of the day (which are not from their party, of course) accepted such rules without a blink. The usage of the word Tzigan is highly charged these days with a nationalist/racist rhetoric (dark skinned Roma people are killing the Romanian good reputation/whiteness in the West by using a similar name) and is very present in the media, everyday discussions and politics, obviously.

This important debate in the Parliament was not presented by the media and it was not criticized in any way. I see it as a perfect example of well institutionalized racism that doesn't surprise anyone or bring any protest. Nicolae Paun should not be discouraged and he should persist in his lonely struggles in the Romanian Parliament (he is actually the only Roma representative in the Parliament for the 2 million Roma living in Romania).

Send him an email to show your support at this address:

npaun@cdep.ro

history of theatre and racism

2010-09-26T13:31:00.001+02:00

An African-American student is denied entry to a theater. He keeps his hands in his pockets to demonstrate that his protest is nonviolent, 1961.

Writing about Western theatre, I observe such a long and unacknowledged history of racism and patriarchy starting with the first Greek tragedy. This important part of history is perceived as timeless and easily acceptable by theatre makers everywhere, who in turn, are questioning the validity or the necessity of a "leftist" critique. The image above, even if shocking and shameful for American theatre, easily becomes acceptable. I am quite curious how many performance-makers and theatre critics would react to the recent closing of the only Romani theatre in France based on racial reasons. They would probably say (as I heard it before) that it was not that good anyway and the high culture won't suffer because of institutionalized racism. I will follow the reactions and I want to see that I was wrong.

via

The story of Panshin Beka

2010-09-18T16:26:00.000+02:00

no money, no gas and no maternal health in Amazonia: strong movie using basic epic theatre methods to make the viewer think about important social issues.

if you are not careful

2010-09-17T19:26:00.003+02:00

Starting with the assumption that newspapers (and in my case, academia and even theatre) are addressing oppression in a critical way, the results (in most of my experiences with these environments) are quite twisted:

IF YOU FEAR DYING - LIVE

2010-09-12T16:38:00.000+02:00

Excellent song with powerful lyrics from One Day as a Lion: it conceptualizes in a lyrical way the idea of male hysteria (even the title expresses the hysterical impossibility of thinking about death, the effeminacy of the male hysteric with a nonWhite soprano voice, his multiple identifications etc.)

the bastard son i spit non fiction

in exile for a while now with raw friction
never be a pawn the boomerang be upon you
i'm like Fela with my heart in Venezuela
its a world favela so fuck the novela
i'm out of the cellar with a blade and some cheddar
for the whole new world order you to bow down
to the now sound of slavery the era be
terrible terror filled terrified
why would we ever let a few white christian fiction's
shape our tomorrow followers them
cause tomorrow got a gun to its head

time is coming
rising like the dawn of a red sun
if you fear dying then you're already dead

i'm in with the spirit of Ali Toure
as I target more heads than a priest on ash wednesday
paid and hungry you pigs on gold ropes
have the mic or the heater but you can't hold both
you could snatch one and catch the blast of the other
i'm Chicano soprano high off my pitch ammo
i'm a put a crack in your diamond pimp cup
so vest up i'm your cross turned right side up
i'm the press leak that downed you aide
i'm the orange jump suit thats taylor made
i'm the crescent, the sickle, so sharp the blade
i'm the flick of the shank that opened your veins
i'm the dusk, i'm the frightening calm
i'm a hole in the pipeline i'm a road side bomb

time is coming
rising like the dawn of a red sun
if you fear dying then you're already dead

not dining with Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir for religious reasons

2010-09-08T12:43:00.000+02:00

Jenis av Rana

Jenis av Rana is the chairman of the Christian Centrist Party of the Faeroe Islands. He managed to make international news by stating that the visit of the Icelandic Prime Minister Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir to the Faeroe Islands with her wife was "a defiance of the Bible."

Dining with the Icelandic prime minister is out of the question because for Jenis av Rana "to do so would be to show acceptance of gay marriage, which is against the platform of the Centrist party."

This example shows how homophobia based on a theological argument excludes and dehumanizes non-heteronormative people at all social levels (even if they are prime ministers). Because homophobes like Jenis av Rana cannot conceptualize queer persons as equals, to the point of sharing food.

via

photo via

time to protest

2010-08-30T13:01:00.000+02:00

Roma Civic Alliance of Romania's call for action that I fully support:

September 6th... The Infamous French Summit against Roma!

Stop the ethnic cleansing policy of the French government!

Roma brothers and sisters, friends of all ethnic groups, all those committed to the principles of equality and discrimination in our societies, we call to join our international protest series organized simultaneously on September 6th at 11:30 a.m. (Bucharest time). The protest is initiated and supported by the Roma Civic Alliance of Romania Roma community leaders from Bihor, Botosani, Braila, Brasov, Constanta, Dolj, Hunedoara, Iasi, Ilfov, Neamt, Salaj, Timisoara counties, in response to the summit organized by the French President Nicholas Sarkozy in Paris.

This infamous summit is organized against all Roma ethnics everywhere.

This summit proposes to stigmatize the entire Roma nation!

We call to join us and protest in front of the French Embassies wherever you are.

We all will protest:
- Against the ethnic cleansing policy carried out by the French government against Romanian and Bulgarian citizens of Roma origin,
- Against collective expulsion and repressive measures and victimization of an entire ethnic group,
- Against the abolition of the presumption of innocence as regards the Roma citizens as well as against the collectively criminalization of an entire ethnic group,
- Against the illegal fingerprinting of the French authorities.

The public calls of the international human rights organizations, those of the Catholic Church, and of the NGOs remained silent in the French cabinet.

Europe-wide boycott of French products and services

We invite you all to disseminate the call for boycott of French products and services, in order to make the French rulers more aware of the fact that the fundamental rights are not subject to negotiation.

Join us!

via

a queer secret

2010-08-22T16:23:00.000+02:00

I found this image on queer secrets and it explains a lot through an anonymous experience. I cannot believe the guts someone has to tell it loud that feminism is over and gender equality happened (especially in Eastern Europe). No respect indeed for such outrageous claims.

Iggy Pop 1977

2010-08-18T17:53:00.000+02:00

International Phone Call (1997)

2010-08-03T23:08:00.000+02:00

director: Hanno Hofer

This Romanian short movie is one of the few that questions racism (even if in a subtle way, probably not even observed). In comparison to other Romanian movies of the period (like Occident, directed by Cristian Mungiu, 2002, where racism is openly used for comic relief), Hanno Hofer's short makes fun of the racist friend that verbally attacks a Roma passerby (calling him a cioara or crow, a very derogatory term in Romanian and asking rhetorically how the heck these folks come here, time 2:01). The irony is that the main character's son is also a foreigner in another country, while Roma people were enslaved for 500 years for being foreigners and are still treated as evil strangers. The question of being a foreigner reveals the double standard of Romanians that hate whom they perceive as non-Romanians (based on skin color, like in this case) and admire the condition of being a foreigner in US for example, where everything is fine. This short movie explodes two contradictory ideas: admiration for the Western acceptance of foreigners and acceptance of local forms of racial discrimination that transforms the Roma into an ultimate Other. And this contradiction can be an important source for humor and criticism.

Boys from Brazil (1978) in 5 frames

2010-07-24T13:01:00.002+02:00

director: Franklin J. Schaffner

A corporeal portrait

2010-07-01T18:59:00.000+02:00

"In stature he was rather too tall, his voice was rather toneless, and there were shortcomings in his diction. He didn't even want to shave off his mustache because of a naive vanity. But all this was forgotten when he came out on the stage."

This is the way Meyerhold remembers Stanislavsky on stage.The two canonized Russian theatre makers shared much more than the theatre historians let us be aware of. Even if they are constantly presented as highly masculine, dictatorial, oppositional, always in conflict, contradicting each other and part of a mandatory Oedipal plot (where Stanislavsky is the corrupt father, while Meyerhold plays the rebellious and ungrateful son), there is a certain love and respect that they share, a sweet homoeroticism and emasculation in their fruitful exchange. There is so much material for a campy history of Russian theatre!

photo via

a play on abortion

2010-06-30T19:41:00.001+02:00

This Soviet poster warns that illegal abortions could kill and that those who participate in these abortions would be prosecuted

Dr. E. B. Demidovich wrote a play called "Trial of Sexual Depravity" in 1925 with the purpose to educate the Soviet public on various medical issues, one of them being abortion. Some lines from the play:

Prosecutor: Do you understand that a fetus is a future human being, that in it life has already begun, that you have killed a future person, a citizen who might have been useful for society?

Accused: I was sorry that I had to have an abortion. After all it was of my own blood. I wanted a little child, but my husband was not happy, he began to despise me. I was so upset: what would have happened if my husband had stopped loving me? My life would have been finished.

Prosecutor: Did you realize that each person belongs not only to himself, but to society, that a person does not have the right to injure himself in any way that might decrease his capacity for work, that abortion often leads to disease and to a work disability?

Accused: No, I didn't know that. I thought that my body was my property, that I could do with it what I wanted and that my fetus belonged only to me.

And it sounds so contemporary!

photo via russophilia

about appearances

2010-06-30T11:28:00.001+02:00

Brian Taylor reminds the reader in one of the notes in Responding to Men in Crisis that "Foucault’s later view was that the notion of a deep meaning behind appearances is an important mythic construction in modern power/knowledge".

We should remember this every time comments go like: "these are just words"; "words can do no harm"; "working class people put no meaning in what they are saying; there is something deeper behind those words" or the classic "first appearances are deceptive". I start to think that the whole idea of modernism is attached to this concept: there is always something more to be discovered behind what one perceives.

Abby Sunderland: the icon of risky imperialism

2010-06-16T13:41:00.001+02:00

I also followed the Abby Sunderland case, the 16 year old American, lost and found in the Indian Ocean. The whole obsession with setting records and exploration of the whole world in a sort of neo-colonial quest were highly disturbing in the whole case.
Sungold from Kittywampus writes a thoughtful article called "The Perils of Abby Sunderland: The Problem Isn’t Lax Parenting, It’s the Romance of Risk".

Setting records is addressed in these terms:

"the desire to set records – to push one’s body beyond its healthy boundaries – to embrace risk just for its own sake. Sailing solo around the globe makes as much sense to me as playing chicken with a train, or drag racing on the freeway.
But drag racing and playing chicken are the desperate sports of poor kids. Setting records is the province of the privileged. The assumption is that no effort will be spared in trying to save you, if your boat runs awry.
Every time an extreme athlete runs into trouble, massive resources are deployed to rescue him or her. Clueless skiers go into the Sierra backcountry and get stranded in a blizzard. Mountain climbers underestimate the danger of avalanche. Solo pilots fly into oblivion. The “resources” deployed aren’t just financial; human beings often risk their own necks in hopes of saving a life.
Just to underscore how much this is a function of privilege: In the last several days, tens of thousands of children have died of preventable disease: malnutrition, dysentery, malaria, typhus, etc. ad nauseam. How many could be saved with the money spent on rescuing people (children and adults) who – from a place of tremendous economic privilege – challenge themselves to break records, or simply assume that they will be “safe” in the wild because their lives have always been safe?"

Setting records is closely related to another element of this dramatic case: the desire to explore. Young Westerners are on a quest of self-discovery where the world is their oyster and their discursive tool is imperialism. You can find them all over Eastern Europe in a constant search to re-confirm their white middle-class neo-colonial privilege. Do global tourism and adventure still function as a form of knowledge? Sungold doesn't think so and we are in the same boat on this one:

"Once upon a time, parts of the globe were untouched by human exploration. Perhaps the urge to explore was extraordinarily adaptive a few million years ago – even a century ago. Today? We’d be wise to ask when exploration and adventure truly serve human knowledge, and when they’re only yoked to ego."

With the minor adjustment that I don't see how human exploration was ever a necessity, besides imposing capitalism in remote parts of the Western world and fulfilling the pathological narcissism of the Western male. Now young American women continue the pattern of imperialism and get lost at the ocean. But there is always someone to save them and they continue their trip to success while journalists write heart-warming stories about courageous young ladies...

photo via

Health for the Americas: Cleanliness Brings Health (1945)

2010-06-12T18:38:00.000+02:00

This is the very last movie directed by Walt Disney. If you were wondering what is the reason for global inequalities now you have an answer: cleanliness. Because in the capitalist understanding only the individual can be responsible for personal unhappiness. All other markers of oppression (racism, classism, heteronormativity, patriarchy and their explosive combination) dissapear in a process that this cartoon engages just in order to reproduce oppression and to erase all the signs of its production. The Western viewers are reassured that their consciousness is clean and they have nothing to do with the poor people's misery: it is only their own own choice to stay unclean.

Effeminism

2010-05-03T14:12:00.002+02:00

I was re-watching the brilliant documentary "The Celluloid Closet" (1995) and one character got my attention: the sissy. How he was constructed by Hollywood as "the funny gay guy" and adopted by gay men as the only way to perform gayness, how all gay men were constructed as effeminate and how there was a constant move away from that place. What I remembered from my readings was how the effeminate man was immediately diagnosed as homosexual by the clinical discourse and practice for decades and how the sissy is the main way to play gay and get instant laughs in theatre nowadays. Performing femininity as male brings hate and mockery together with the immediate homophobic connection with a bodily mapped gayness. This is the place where the male hysteric stands nowadays through his confusion of masculinity and femininity. Is it so impossible nowadays to acknowledge the sissy as equally human and not as a hated caricature? It makes me sick to my stomach to see all these macho actors performing the sissy for sure laughs on stage (and they start early with it, I remember this high school theatre festival in Brasov, Romania where playing the sissy was the main way to produce comic effects. These guys were 15-16 and the adults in the jury/public were laughing hard and applauding their openly homophobic humor. Such a nice unity/continuity…)

At the "Creating Change 2010: 40 Years After Stonewall" conference there was an interesting panel called "40 Years After Stonewall: A Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Activist Timeline," with Jim Fouratt, Roger Goodman, Carmen Vasquez, Ellen Ensig-Brodsky, Phil Johnson. Feministing wrote about it here. The debates brought the sissy back into discussion. Jim Fouratt was saying: "We're all fags at the end of the day to the homophobes. But in our own community there's this demonizing of the sissy, the effeminate male", while Roger Goodman remembered " The effeminist movement - It was men in the 1970s who took feminism on as our politic. We called gay men on their shit. Effeminism is gay men whose fundamental politics is feminism. And that we're not afraid to feel the feminine in us and express that." These new re-discoveries of the effeminate male and the critique/action against the huge discrimination that he faces today at a transnational level are crucial. Join the effeminist movement right now! It will change your life!

Photo from here

A Girl Like Me: The Gwen Araujo Story (2006)

2010-04-13T13:07:00.003+02:00

director: Agnieszka Holland

This movie tells a story in a very simple/uncomplicated way (it is made for tv after all) with a huge impact on the viewer. It avoids the melodramatic perspective by equally focusing on the mother and her own dealing with a transdenger teen (after the tragic events narrated here, she becomes an important transgender activist in US). The ethnic/class context is well emphasized in this intersectional story where sexism and cissexism are way more complicated when other forms of inequality are dangerously at play. Not only focusing on the individual drama but on constellations of inequality and by decentering a form of detached/uninvolved narrative (that follows only the hero/antihero), "A Girl Like Me" is a rare gem that must be seen by teenagers at school and adults alike. This is how education functions.

Freud (1962)

2010-04-07T22:38:00.000+02:00

director: John Huston

This biopic focuses on some of the events between 1885 and 1890 from, as the title says, Freud’s life. The personal perspective and the expressionist focus on characters and their well-documented dreams are violently contradicted by the opening and ending parts that are narrated by the director in the most positivist/scientific manner. Freud (Montgomery Clift) becomes just another case of a great dead man, a scientific genius in the line of Copernicus and Darwin. In that sense the whole story moves towards the discovery of the Oedipus complex (revealed in the last part of the movie).

Male hysteria or in Freud’s own term, little hysteria, becomes a major theme of this movie and the dramatic engine in the search of an over-arching theory to cure his patient and his own painful neuroses.

Besides the cinematic portraits of Freud, Breuer (Larry Parks) or Viennese physicians, the exploration of Charcot’s persona is one of my personal delights in this movie. Charcot (Fernand Ledoux) and his practice with hysterics (male and female), hypnosis and celebrity are depicted in the way that I imagined the whole business by reading tons of literature on this phenomenon. Freud’s role as PhD student under Charcot’s supervision is explored in a delicate and faithful manner in relation to the written materials on the subject.

Freud's therapy with Cecily Koertner (Susannah York) represents the discovery of the talking cure with its free associations and hilarious “Freudian slips” and also “the cure” for male hysteria in the sense of abandoning it and Freud becoming a father of a major theory. The focus falls on a scientific/ not-fully-embodied discovery of the Oedipus complex and the martyrization of the individual rational scientist in the face of a retrograde society that denies progress. No indication of Viennese anti-Semitism or scholarly masculinism. Freud’s struggle with the Viennese society becomes an individualist fight for novelty and innovation. In this sense, John Huston’s movie is an ode to modernism in scientific discourse.

The cinematic language follows the film noir/expressionist aesthetics and gets mixed very well with the accurate theoretical/psychoanalytical language. What I particularly liked about it was the lack of fear in dealing with theory. There are some complicated ideas out there that you would never hear in more recent biopics, but Charles Kaufman managed to squeeze them in the script (or better say Jean-Paul Sartre, who’s name disappeared from the project after his second draft was considered too long). Surprisingly the narration works better this way. The story becomes more engaging, this is one of the few theoretical thrillers that I have seen.

At the level of acting-directing, Montgomery Clift was under a lot of pressure on the set: the director used the Freudian setting for outing his main actor, emphasizing the repression part (as a direct connection to him being gay) while filming and provoking Monty to speak about his sexuality. No wonder Monty tried to avoid this movie or any contact with its director, to the point of being sued by Universal for the delay of the production.

All in all, Freud is not easy to forget.

image: the Polish version of the poster, from here

The return of the ugly

2010-04-04T01:17:00.002+02:00

How can we think more positively about beauty? As I observe on a daily basis, beauty is used (as a highly popular term) to define multiple privilege, as a sort of intersectional subjective projection that explores personal entitlement (I am talking about the outside/ inside/ me/ other/ world/ transcendental level). Beauty is always exclusionary, it is always constructed in opposition with the despicable ugly. Instead of claiming the new beautiful (and also a re-assignment of a new ugly), why not claiming the ugly and its negativity? Instead of looking for a positive version of beautiful, why not embracing the ugly but without transforming it into the new beautiful?

Jill wrote a strong manifesto in this sense (I took it from here and even if I have some problems with the whole concept of choice detached from structural inequalities, it is a courageous step against beauty discourses):

The Ugly Manifesta

I’d rather be courageous than beautiful. I will not be demure, quiet and pretty… instead I will be loud, I will get into the face of those who try to oppress others and I will confront them. I will be that loud, “ugly” feminist.

I’d rather be unique than beautiful. I will wear the clothes that make me feel happiest in whatever manner I desire. I will wear as much or as little makeup as I feel comfortable with each day. I will shave as much or as little as I see fit. If I happen to fit some standard of beauty one day, fine; I will not care one way or another because my confidence does not depend on anyone’s approval but my own.

I’d rather be happy than beautiful. I will not waste a moment of my life worrying about how I look to others. I’d rather spend my time concerned with how I am trating others, and interacting with them!

I’D RATHER BE UGLY THAN BEAUTIFUL. Being ugly means saying fuck you to the beauty norms and embracing the person I am, not the person that the world is trying to tell me to be; being ugly means being totally happy with the person I am and never hiding that girl from the world, no matter what.

photo from Improbable Research

white supremacy and hip hop

2010-03-27T18:24:00.003+01:00

Parazitii (the most popular Romanian hip hop band) collaborated with Raekwon of Wu-Tang on their album "Slalom printre cretini" and opened the Wu Tang concert in Bucharest (2006). In 2010 Cheloo (one of the leading members) appears in a video wearing a Tshirt with "white and proud 14" with a direct connection to the neo-nazi David Lane and "The Order". Roma Civic Alliance reacted legally against this. Cheloo responded: "White and proud is correct. I like the color of my skin. Everyday I feel good because I am white. It is not right to be attacked for this. I am totally offended." No misinterpretations here.

Since Wu Tang has collaborated with this person in the past, should they have any reaction to this situation? How do white supremacists associate themselves with anti-racist popular figures in the first place? Is artistic success sufficient to erase radically-different ideological positions? So many questions...

and a link to the news (in Romanian).

subjectivities and the shared cultural context

2010-02-08T14:59:00.000+01:00

The other week, during a seminar one of the students asked why do we have to focus all the time on subjectivity in gender studies and not move into "the big picture". She was quite annoyed with it. I didn't answer it right away because I tried to avoid being dismissive with the student in case but there was a good debate in class on this issue.
Today, in a vintage article from 1988, I found a good answer. Let the Butler speak: "...the feminist claim that that the personal is political suggests, in part, that subjective experience is not only structured by existing political arrangements, but effects and structures those arrangements in turn. Feminist theory has sought to understand the way in which systemic or pervasive political and cultural structures are enacted and reproduced through individual acts and practices...my pain or my silence or my anger or my perception is finally not mine alone, and that it delimits me in a shared cultural situation which in turn enables and empowers me in certain unanticipated ways."
Subjective experience is not detached from the political matrix and politics cannot exist without the internalized ideologies at work. Leaving one side out of the picture limits any understanding of personal OR political processes. And this is why, for example, psychoanalysis is still useful in understanding sexuality and sexual difference in patriarchal cultures.

The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus (2009)

2010-01-20T15:47:00.000+01:00

Yesterday was Parnassus day at Puskin Cinema. Last Terry Gilliam flick makes you think a lot, besides the escapist joy of the theatricalities of his filmmaking. The story(ies) (autobiographical somehow..) have so many levels and they trick you somehow by actually breaking with any narative line. The jump into the unconscious of various characters is hilarious and engaging. Not to mention the pleasure of watching the evilness of the Bekettian Mr.Nick (Tom Waits). Reading some reviews by proffesional film critics I discovered the shocking easyness to tell everyone things like: "makes you wish Gilliam would get outside his own head a little more and try harder to get inside of ours" (James Kendrick), "There's a fine line that separates fantastical from nonsensical. Too often, Gilliam's film comes down on the wrong side." (Mike Scott), "Once again Gilliam has made a movie probably only he can truly understand or find very interesting." (Jeff Bayer) or "As for who other than Terry Gilliam might enjoy it, I'm at a loss." (Eric D. Snider)

What I found engaging was Johnny Depp's rather long comment on the movie: "Maestro Gilliam has made a sublime film. Wonderfully enchanting and beautiful, 'The Imaginarium Of Doctor Parnassus' is a uniquely ingenious, captivating creation; by turns wild, thrilling and hilarious in all its crazed, dilapidated majesty. Pure Gilliam magic! It was an honor to represent Heath. He was the only player out there breathing heavy down the back of every established actor's neck with a thundering and ungovernable talent that came up on you quick, hissing rather mischievously with that cheeky grin, "hey... get on out of my way boys, I'm coming through..." and does he ever!!! Heath is a marvel, Christopher Plummer beyond anything he's ever done, Waits as the Devil is a God, Lily Cole andAndrew Garfield, the very foundation, are spectacular, Verne Troyer simply kicks ass and as for my other cohorts, Colin Farrell and Jude Law, they most certainly did Master Ledger very proud, I salute them. Though the circumstances of my involvement are extremely heart-rending and unbelievably sad, I feel privileged to have been asked aboard to stand in on behalf of dear Heath."

Chautauqua!

2010-01-12T17:18:00.000+01:00

Chautauqua! from UTRFestival on Vimeo.

What is Chautauqua? According to New York Times, it was an American theatrical educational movement from the 19th century based on traveling performances where professors, scientists, preachers, musicians and artists had to share some form of knowledge. James Stanley, writer and performer explained the idea: "Brown tents would go from town to town with scholars who enlightened people with knowledge. It was all based on the idea of civic duty and creating a common culture through education." A theatrical project of rediscovering Enlightenment.

The National Theater of the United States of America designed a performance with the same name & concept that addresses contemporary issues in a 75 minutes format. It includes "speeches, monologues, puppetry, musical numbers, history lessons and a sing-along". Different guest speakers are lecturing on various topics, the format proves to be succesful nowadays in order to "explore cultural production, knowledge production, commerce and community." I would be curious to see this performance and to explore the concept myself: the Brechtian techniques can do wonders in such a well-thought format where entretainment, political, scientifc and academic discourses met.

on originality in theatre

2009-12-17T15:10:00.002+01:00

The canonical modernist theatre is still the norm in theatre studies, performance studies and institutionalized nowadays theatre all over the Western world (including Eastern Europe). Why? I try to answer this tough question by looking at one concept: originality. The modernist ideas of acting/staging/writing are still treated as strikingly original or fashionable. That happens while other contemporary forms of theatre are described as derivative, deviant, old-fashioned and second-rate (for example, feminist theatre is often described as a pale/boring copy of Brechtian political theatre).

My assumption is that in order to assure the existence of various hierarchies through the discourse of modernism in the theatre world nowadays, there is a need to reinforce the primacy of originality or novelty. The binary opposition original/copy functions in theatre as a complex mechanism with exclusionary effects, “for differentiating between and evaluating various forms of deviance and marginality”.[1] One of the effects of original/copy dichotomy marks the masculinity/femininity separation and becomes essential in masculinist reconstructions of the modernist theatre. Some authors such as Rosalind E. Krauss identified the theme of originality as the only constant in the discourse of the modernist avant-garde. I have to agree with them when it comes to theatre. Modernist theatre depends exactly on the repression of the second term of the binary. Originality, daringness or being-interesting are valorized in the modernist discourse as masculine features with no critical attention to the social implications of such reconstructions. While the unoriginal or repetitive work was feminized, modernist avant-garde was constructed in the masculine. Contemporary theatre is modernist to the bone and promotes same exclusionary practices. Especially the margins of contemporary theatre follow the modernist formula and become feminized while those actors, directors or dramaturges stay insignificant unless they accept a masculine individualist approach and produce acceptable original work.

Ezra Pound’s expression to “make it new” never left Western theatre and is here to stay because theatre people don’t give any critical attention to the political/social engagements that they reproduce through their novelty/originality. The obsession to be original as an exclusion of the copy has other not-so-innocent implications: the unqueering of theatre practitioners and reinforcement of heteronormativity. From Peter Brook to some of my friends too afraid to affect their work by coming out, the obsession of an “original” is still at work: queer sexuality and cross-dressing are regarded as pale copies of heterosexual norms when they form the basis of artistic production. And no one wants to be an unoriginal artist, right?

[1] Bridget Elliott and Jo-Ann Wallace, Women artists and writers, 1994, p. 34

and what about Jocasta?

2009-11-18T17:58:00.000+01:00

I am currently reading “Jocasta’s children” by Christiane Olivier and lately everyone around me talks (usually in bad terms) about motherhood. It makes me wonder why… But I won’t write about the book now. There are too many thoughts based on this book and the charming style of the apparently pop writing on very complicated concepts. What I want to explore a bit is Winnicot’s idea of the “good-enough mother”. Because I had too much Freud and Lacan lately, I need a break from the phallic fathers. For Winnicot the mother is not absent and she is not frustrating the child, she is the positive presence. The real question here is if Winnicot’s theoretization of the mother is positive or not. And I think not. The mother is important but she has no desire, she is not scary, she is not aggressive, she has no orgasms, she is just an objective presence, the good-enough mother. Running away from Lacan, I end up in a bigger trap: Winnicot’s mother is not a real woman, she is just another misogynist myth, a male phantasy, a beautiful ideal. The good enough mother is the source of ultimate blame for real mothers. Because no one can achieve the good-enough high standards that patriarchal cultures impose for women (where the mother is the only one responsible for child care). This social aspect is devastating for the individual mothers, for children and for society at large. The good-enough mother has to be repressed by society for her too much power, for the fear of infantile helplessness. Men deny their helplessness and construct their domination attitude towards the world and their heterosexuality, where the gender roles are kept imbalances and mothers are in control, just not to become too good and too powerful. The external ideal of the mother is the perfect patriarchal blame in the Oedipal travel. And that brings back Olivier’s book and what we still tend to forget: what about Jocasta’s desire for Oedipus?

The single story

2009-11-17T19:27:00.000+01:00

Chimamanda Adichie gives a mind blowing lecture on single stories (with a lot of personal examples and a focus on the single story of Africa). Her criticism on the single storytelling is very convincing and makes you wonder about your own construction of stereotypes, easy readings of otherness and the function of tourism (I always had in mind this type of single story when I hear touristic stories from far away lands and people, all these stories are so similar and unidimensional). After hearing Chimamanda Adichie, all my single stories came to mind and I was fascinated by her not-so-Foucauldian definition of power: Power is the ability not just to tell the story of another person, but to make it the definitive story of that person.

The single story has serious implications when power is involved: besides the othering/objectification of a person or a group of people as an unified universalized/atemporal object, the single story is "what they become" and no one can beat the white colonial man at telling single stories (I am just curios, aren't they bored by the monotony of their own storytelling? I am. completely. ). But better watch the whole 20 minutes of wisdom:

via Sociological Images

Falling in love

2009-11-06T16:02:00.000+01:00

Minsky explains it so nice and simple in her chapter on Freud: "Before we are able to fall in love with another person, we fall in love with our mother's breast, our faeces, our clitoris or penis because they give us pleasure, and importantly, our first primitive sense of identity." I always think of this when I observe children or I hear remarks related to them: experiences of self are based on pleasurable sensations. When old people apparently "become children" they return to pleasurable sensations: their pleasurable pain is an expression of love and getting in touch with a body that is feeling (beyond sexual difference, phallic phase and Oedipus). This does not necessarily apply to heavily sedated Americans.

quote of the day

2009-11-02T19:49:00.004+01:00

“An actor working for the new class needs to re-examine all the canons of the past. The very craft of the actor must be completely reorganized.” (Vsevolod Meyerhold)

Halloween at CEU

2009-10-28T17:31:00.007+01:00

Human Rights Initiative from my university is organizing a Halloween party to raise funds. Sounds great! But when you read their announcement more carefully...something weird pops up.

Costume competition categories will include:

- most original group/couple…

- best handmade…

- funniest…

- scariest…

- and least politically correct.

What?!?! Maybe they should add more explicit categories to that last category. For example, the most racist, the most homophobic, the most transphobic and so on. Because Halloween is such a great opportunity to express ourselves and be bigots, right?

The Human RightS Initiative (HRSI) is a social engagement, capacity building, and awareness raising human rights organization based at Central European University (CEU) in Budapest, Hungary.We regularly organize a wide range of events for both the CEU as well as the local community, such as workshops, awareness raising campaigns, public lectures, student country presentations, and film screenings.

UPDATE: The announcement was not removed, but one of the organizers assured everyone that: "when thinking of non-PC I was imagining people dressing up like Soros or, taking this opportunity to challenge stereotypes, but staying within the borders of non-offensiveness (otherwise, they would definitely not be let in the venue) and such, within the CEU framework.

I am sending a reminder of this party tomorrow, and I will write, in brackets, something along the lines of "no discriminatory costume will be tolerated." ... I have given you my "side" of the story and again, I take full responsibility for creating this "non-PC" category."

Here are some of the results:

nothing offensive, obviously....

Jay Smooth explains "Christopher Street boys"

2009-10-28T09:53:00.000+01:00

Another brilliant video from Jay Smooth, this time about derogatory terms for gays. Next time when you're calling someone names, you should check out the genealogy of the used concept because it might turn against your argument.

quote of the day

2009-10-21T12:45:00.003+02:00

"It wasn't a clear battle between hero and villain, good and evil. Now the hero had to have doubts about his achievements. Everyone needed a dose of neurosis and to be up to their ears in Freudian, subconscious problems."

Ed Wood, Jr., Hollywood Rat Race, 1998

Queering the Virgin

2009-10-20T14:29:00.003+02:00

Queer activists in Spain launched a calendar where transgender persons play the Virgin Mary. This personal discovery of the Spanish calendar comes after a long discussion with my PhD supervisor on religion, about how Orthodoxists claim Tarkovsky, about the easy way out of religion (the claim: “I am an atheist”), about the creepiness of the Christian right and a final agreement on the finest pose of Catholicism that we both enjoy (Father Ted).

Carla Antonelli explains the idea of this calendar:

“I posed myself the following scenario: Why is it that a transsexual woman can’t represent a religious icon given life by so many other actors and actresses throughout history? To not do it would be akin to internalizing the same discriminatory principles that people want to throw against us.”

Because telling who is allowed to act what role denies/recognizes the body of the performer. Transgender people’s bodies are constantly denied, ignored, non-recognized as “real bodies”. Because only ciswomen can play women, right? Otherwise we are looking for the comic effect.

Carla Antonelli’s comment made my day. I remembered my old time fascination with Marcela Althaus-Reid’s books indecent theology of qeering God. I discovered the queer Catholicism when I was in the Netherlands years ago and there was this image stuck in my mind: Jesus in a black latex Batman suit suffering on the cross. Besides the inherent iconoclasm of the calendar to Vatican I style Catholicism (still strong in Catholic countries and also in Greek Catholic communities as I remember from my years in Transylvania), we should not forget t

hat there are also “those who go to gay bars and salsa clubs with rosaries in their pockets, and who make camp chapels of their living rooms”. We are not talking only about the Marxist criticism on religion.

Back to the Virgin, I am impressed by the materiality of belief in these images, where the missing body of the Virgin returns. And this is a strong visual/conceptual statement. As Marcela Althaus-Reid wrote

“If theology has its own cowardice and fears, the horror of uncontrolled bodies and especially of the orgy made up of unrestricted bodies may be the stronger. There are bodies whose fluids overflow the metaphorical discourse of theology, but they have lost materiality and sensuousness. Theology can see blood in wine but not blood in blood. The Vatican can see tears in the eyes of the statues of the Virgin Mary, or sweat on her robes when considering the legitimacy of a claimed apparition, but cannot see a trace of semen on her skirts.”

The criticism of this calendar based on explicit sexuality is shallow: it is only your cissexism and transphobia speaks. You need a better argument than “trans women’s bodies are not fit to represent the Virgen”.

What I see as a valid critique on this project is Prof Susurro’s point of view that

“there is only one trans woman of color in the calendar. Modern day Spain is an international country with Middle Eastern, African, Asian, and Latin@s living within its borders as new comers or third and fourth generation Spaniards. It would have been fairly easy to include trans women of color under these circumstances. Neither the mainstream queer community nor the religious community imagines people of color as part of the Body. Even when correcting the transmisogyny of traditional Christian images, queer activists continue to make these dual exclusions, except for the month of April.”

What about the other months of the year?

Stop thinking?

2009-10-19T17:07:00.002+02:00

In this ad from Wrangler men who are looking to pump up their hegemonic masculinity are encouraged not to think because as they say it : "we are animals". I always thought that (critical) thinking was seen in late capitalism as a queer or feminine trait, a big No in face of re/production, efficiency, control or consumerism. Something that has to be stopped or discouraged. "Being a smart guy"/ "Thinking too much" / "Reading is boring" / "Too much theory" are definitely phrases that represent worries connected to a crisis of masculinity. Now the lack of thinking is taken un-subliminally as a marketing message to sell some products for male audiences in search of their lost masculinities. What do you think about it?

quote of the day

2009-10-13T14:40:00.000+02:00

Isn’t acting just getting on stage, or in front of a camera, and saying your lines, then going out and meeting your public to sign autographs? (Ed Wood, jr.)

A Case of Morals: Jay Smooth on Polanski

2009-10-08T12:37:00.001+02:00

I am against all "Free Polanski" artists, including here the ones that I really liked at some point in my life (Wim Wenders, Pedro Almodóvar, Darren Aronofsky, Terry Gilliam, Alejandro González Iñárritu, Wong Kar-Wai, Tilda Swinton, Asia Argento, Woody Allen, David Lynch, Harmony Korine). This support for raping 13 years old girls tells a lot about their aesthetics and I don't want to be involved in it, as part of their audience. Jay Smooth explains why they are so wrong.

about black theatre

2009-10-07T17:02:00.003+02:00

I was reading the Guardian debate on black theatre and even if it was too local for my case (I can’t really relate to British theatre) and lacked an intersectional perspective, it gave me some food for thought.

Roy Williams affirms the healthy state of black theatre in Britain, where there are different voices exploring what it means to be black in Britain. To the universalist claims that there is no black theatre because “Theatre is theatre. Nobody talks about "white theatre" when they go to see a David Hare play”, Williams responds in a meaningful way: “But then they don't need to. From box-office staff to administrators, from performers to directors, theatre is owned and controlled by white people. Anyone who isn't white is marginalised.”

The whole idea of promoting black theatre in Britain is based on the ideas “we need it to ensure we are heard” and also “"Theatre" sounds po-faced and white; "black theatre" sounds intriguing, daring”.

Tokenism is addressed in his article on these terms: “Black writers have to write about whatever they want. Write about race. Don't write about race. Just make sure your play challenges you as much as you hope it will challenge your audience. But if that audience seems more interested in defining you as a black person, rather than listening to your work, walk away. Those people are looking backwards and will take you backwards, if you let them.”

Michael McMillan writes another article on black theatre where he addresses also the importance of naming the black theatre: “ And eventually we would have heard about young writers such as Bola Agbaje and Michael Bhim, for example, irrespective of whether they're black or white – they're just talented and skilled new voices. Yet somehow the label of race seems to stick. Given our recent history, perhaps that's little surprise. Djanet, a character in Afrika Solo by the black Canadian playwright Djanet Sears, tells us in the very first words of the play: "You know, nothing exists until a white man find it." Thus it was claimed for many years that no theatre existed in Africa before Europeans arrived, even though black music, dance and humour have been intrinsic to the development of modern western entertainment.”

This argument makes me wonder how the Westerness/whiteness/patriarchy/heterosexism of theatre, music and entertainment become invisible on the way to the spectator and how artists are reproducing or challenging the colonial/imperial/dominant culture in various contexts. Because ignoring these genealogies certainly reproduce the conservatism of many artistic environments.

Art Does Not Excuse Rape

2009-10-01T09:40:00.001+02:00

Polanski Must Face Justice!

please sign the petition here

Easy Ways For Men (and Women!) to Become Better Feminists

2009-09-30T16:18:00.001+02:00

Paulette Moore’s call for Easy Ways For Men (and Women!) to Become Better Feminists gave me a lot of food for thought. To the often heard question what can men do to support feminism, there are some motivating ideas:

Don’t laugh at sexist jokes.
Belly laugh to the comic genius of Tina Fey and Amy Poehler.
Move to clean up dishes after a meal before anyone else does.
Read biographies about women. Start with Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein by Miranda Seymour. Move on to Do They Hear You When You Cry – a stunning political and personal journey by and about Fauziya Kassindja; a woman from Togo who sought asylum from the practice of female genital mutilation.
Read more literature, watch films created by women. Check out the mind-boggling book Orlando by Virginia Woolf. Then watch the beautiful film of the same name by director Sally Potter.
Stop to consider what it means that one in three women in the world has been beaten, coerced into sex or otherwise abused in her lifetime. At least 1 in 4 college women will survive a sexual assault during her academic career. Now, look around at your female relatives, friends and colleagues.
Seek opportunities to mentor women and girls.
Stop to wonder whether your work colleague actually was overlooked for that promotion because she was a woman.
March with a woman’s group at a political rally. Have fun.
Suggest 10 additional easy ways for all of us to become better feminists.

Besides their suggestions, I want to add my own:

1. Expose and recognize white male privilege.

2. Expose and recognize your own entitlements and privileges.

3. Get in touch with feminist theory and critical studies in order to reinforce your arguments.

4. Support and create alliances with feminists, LGBT & queer groups, anti-racist and equality activists.

5. Discover local histories of courageous women that fought patriarchy.

6. Support feminist artists and art collectives, attend their events, buy their works.

7. Read and watch the news, react to sexism, racism and inequality in media. Start or join a feminist blog.

8. React to daily sexism and make it unwelcomed in your peer group.

9. Boycott products, companies and campaigns that use sexist advertising.

Suggest 10 additional easy ways for all of us to become better feminists.

How Not to Write About Africa

2009-09-18T12:20:00.001+02:00

by Binyavanga Wainaina
narrated by Djimon Hounsou

Dress codes: anxieties and solutions

2009-09-08T20:21:00.004+02:00

France is confused about how to make the banning of the burqa legal. A parliamentary commission will soon meet to investigate how they can ban any cloak that covers most of the face of a woman.
André Gerin, a Communist Party mayor of a Lyon suburb with many Muslims from North Africa, began the debates in late June by initiating a motion calling for this parliamentary commission. The French state had to answer his request.

“The burqa is the tip of the iceberg. Islamism really threatens us” he was complaining in a letter to the government for them “to do something”.

Sarkozy responded by saying that “the burqa is not welcome on the territory of the French Republic.” He did not specify how it would be made unwelcome. Guess still working on that part.

French domestic intelligence issued a report saying that only 367 women in France wore a full veil, while recently a woman was refused entry to a bank because employees thought a head scarf was illegal.

To all these anxieties in France, there is one possible answer. It comes from Sudan and the already famous article 152 of the Sudanese Criminal Code.

This article is used by the Public Order Police in Sudan to harass women about their dress code. Article 152 exists in Sudan since 1991. Maybe French government can check also the practicalities and implementation of such an article. It stipulates that any conduct or clothes in violation of public decency (I am sure it can be defined in a more secularized way) should be punished with 40 lashes or a bail or both. France can change some parts, but the control effect can stay the same, because after all is the same concept: best way to police women's bodies.
Thirteen women were arrested on July 3, 2009 in Khartoum under article 152 of the criminal code. The 13 women in question were arrested because they wearing trousers. They have been sentenced to 10 lashes and a bail of $100. Three of the women including a well-known journalist-Lubna Hussien- refused the punishment and asked for a lawyer and a court case. Lubna and the other three women were granted a presidential pardon, which the women refused. They have instead challenged the judge to eliminate article 152 of the criminal code.
The article is vague on what constitutes indecent clothing and stands against the country's Interim National Constitution that came in place after the Comprehensive Peace Agreement signed in 2005. However, it is still being used to harass women in the streets of Khartoum and around Sudan. French authorities can have their exceptions too, no doubt.

There is a petition against article 152 here. There is no petiton against the French parliamentary commission.

Saturday at the Pride: the two sides of the fence

2009-09-07T01:20:00.007+02:00

Saturday was a special day. Together with more than 2000 people we marched for Budapest’s “Gay Dignity”. Remembering last year’s violent events and Jobbik’s political statement to do everything possible to stop the March, we expected another riot.

Friday was the first day of fall in Hungary with thunderstorms, wind and low temperatures. We waited for rain on Saturday also. But the weather and the March didn’t follow the predictable script. During the Pride, Andrassy utca looked awfully quiet, no locals to cheer on the sides. In front of the Opera there was one middle-aged woman dancing in support: she was applauded and cheered by the crowd. From some windows you could see other people watching. That was from our side of the fence. As some observed, Budapest Pride became mainly a TV event in terms of reaching audiences outside the event.

On the other side of the fence, like 100 meters away, extreme right-wing rioters were trying to get in but police did a great job in protecting the marchers. Concerning protesters, the only ones we have seen at the Pride were at the Hosok Tere entrance: two groups of skinheads surrounded by cops. They didn’t get in.

Otherwise, from our side the rioters were absent: we didn’t hear them, we didn’t see them and we could enjoy a very peaceful, cheerful, happy event.
Because they couldn’t get closer to throw stones, eggs, tomatoes and Molotov cocktails like last year, the protesters came with a plan B: a crowd of 500 neo-Nazis and skinheads went wild in Budapest's Jewish district. Riot police used tear gas and baton charges against the loud and violent xenophobic group. Police made more than 30 arrests. These people were using dangerous weapons and I heard that two guys with army knives were stopped earlier to enter the Pride. More details of this not-going-to-the-city-for-nothing adventure:

The rioters invaded the heart of the traditional Jewish Ghetto District, started a small fire, tore down signs and shouted threatening anti-Semitic vitriol. The attacks were witnessed by families of foreign Jews visiting the district for the current Budapest Jewish Cultural Festival.

One British tourist trying to argue with the rioters at the edge of the ghetto had to be rescued by police when he was verbally abused and physically assaulted by a gang of 20 attackers. A policeman who tried to break up a confrontation not far from there was knocked to the ground and kicked, as was a woman displaying a Gay Pride T-shirt while standing alone at a tram stop.

(from JTA)

Because how else can you solve a failed homophobic attack if not by an old-fashioned anti-Semitic rampage somewhere close to the Synagogue? These anti-Pride protesters come with a pretty coherent political discourse with their actions: hate all of them. I guess that last year old women hitting marchers with their big Bibles were in a different hate group than these guys...

Another interesting crowd that I actually saw on my way home from Blaha Luija Ter was made of Swedish football supporters. They were in town with their team and because they couldn't enjoy the Budapest tourist attractions, everything being closed in the center with the big fence that was protecting us, they decided to manifest their anger in a very particular way: they joined the extreme-right protesters in their homophobic attack on the March.... Another coherent activity for a day: start getting drunk in the morning, attack together with friendly locals the LGBT crowd or at least try to get in over the fence, get some tear gas from riot police, drink some more, go to the stadium and support your team in the cheerful hooligan style, yell some more and then get back home with your low-cost flight. Full extreme touristic program for a day.

I am still wondering what would have been without that huge fence in between. Will we need a bigger fence next year?

photos by Szandra Gonzales

Same-sex hand holding (Sshh!)

2009-09-04T15:15:00.003+02:00

The first international Same-sex hand holding (Sshh!) Saturday starts on September 26:

On this day, same-sex couples and friends all over the world are encouraged to hold hands in public to support the visibility of Lesbian, Gay, Bi, Trans (LGBT) people. Sshh! Saturdays will occur on the last Saturday of every month, publicised by A Day In Hand. This is a revolutionary way of encouraging and inspiring LGBT people to take responsibility for their equality and live their lives without fear or restraint.

The campaign is asking people who take part to send their Sshh! photos to yourstories@adayinhand.com. The first Sshh! Saturday is held in memorium of the shooting at an LGBT youth centre in Tel Aviv “and the ongoing atrocities being committed to LGBT people in Iraq”. Queer politics are back! This is a silent revolution because nothing needs to be said: no war of words, no impassioned speeches, no organised rallies. Simply hold hands.
This is not a campaign for couples only. It's for anybody who has ever believed that love has no exceptions.

Straight people could be at the forefront in fighting for queer rights.

Straight people can support us by holding hands with someone of their same gender and uploading the pic.

Do you have to be black, to object to racism?

Do you have to be female, to object to sexism?

You can see a whole load of photos and stories on the A Day in Hand website, including the one on this post of Alice & Em at Charing Cross Station, by Mark Weeks:

Me and Em hold hands everywhere we go, I’m aware we get stared at, might even be
dangerous sometimes which scares me but I really believe it’s a basic human right to express my love for my girlfriend so I do it anyway. It’s funny not long after this photo was taken, we were walking in Islington (holding hands) when a teenage boy threw his drink over Em stating the obvious by calling us lesbians. We confirmed his suspicions and decided to educate him further by having a good old snog in front of him. He couldn’t believe our audacity and decided to coax his friends to follow us on the bus. By this point I was pooping my pants,thinking we may have gone a bit too far, but thankfully one of his friends saw sense (or noticed that a bus full of people might not tolerate any blatant homophobia quietly) and said “Leave em alone, they’re not hurting anyone, it’s up to them what they wanna do.” At which point they promptly got off the bus at the next stop and no doubt went on to harrass someone else. I was angry and scared, cautious about holding hands in public, but amazingly it also made me realise that their behaviour was because of ignorance, and the importance of A Day In Hand campaign.
via The F-Word
if even they can do it, why can't you?

I don't care

2009-08-29T19:08:00.001+02:00

Judy Garland in the 1949 musical "In the good old summertime". Priceless. The youtube video is better than the whole plot and relations in the movie: when taking a part out of its context does justice and gives extra-meaning. Just priceless.

gender roles in TV advertising

2009-07-23T06:08:00.001+02:00

"Mitchell and Webb Look" makes fun of how gendered TV commercials are. Very effective!

Mayor Douchebag

2009-07-21T12:28:00.007+02:00

The mayor of Constanta, Radu Mazare went with his 13 years old son to see the Valkyrie Operation movie, where Tom Cruise plays the unsuccessful Hitler assassin. It is not just another Nazi exploitation movie: it hardly affected the mayor. And with a twist: father and son left feeling so inspired that both decided to wear Nazi uniforms to a fashion show and goose-step on the runway over the weekend.

Even if Romania constantly denied Holocaust till 2004, wearing Nazi uniforms is still illegal and Mazare can get a prison sentence of up to three years. In theory. Even if the Centre for Monitoring and Combating Anti-Semitism sent a letter to the country's general prosecutor urging an investigation of Mazare for breaking the law and instigating a child to follow his example, Csaba Asztalos, the director of the National Agency Against Discrimination said that he won't be prosecuted because this law never applies in Romania. And this is the shock element for me. Not that a social democrat mayor dresses up in Nazi uniform and makes a ridiculous and horrible statement:

I was inspired from the Valkyrie movie ... I wanted to dress like a Vehrmacht general because I've always liked this uniform, and admired the rigorous organisation of the German army.

that comes connected to another declaration:

By no means did I intend to harm and I do not agree with the war and I didn't want to offend the Jews or the Israeli community, with which I'm in a very good relationship and which possibly focused most of their investments in Romania in Constanta.

His lack of basic logic is kind of well known: I heard him a couple of weeks ago making plenty of sexist comments and when the reporter asked him about his misogynism he very confidently replied:

Nonsense, everyone knows that I love women.

It is really worrying that this case is treated by media as a celebrity scandal, the only concern is about international criticism and the fact that Romania will look bad. The fact that wearing Nazi uniforms is treated as something cool and humorous, that Mazare won't be prosecuted because the law never applied before, that he treats this case as something irrelevant. He even said

for how many complaints I already have, is there any problem if I have another one?

and even victimized himself with:

Nevertheless, it was only a fashion catwalk. It shouldn't have received such attention, but in Romania we're generally inquisitors.)

Let's not forget, as Csaba Asztalos said

Mazare is not a top model, but a person with a public position. It is not about
a parade of military uniforms.

And there is still no comment from prosecutors. Probably they are waiting for the whole scandal to pass so that they can get back to their daily routine. And the mayor can continue his political career and job. Because when it comes to make some privileged politicians loose some of their benefits, everything freezes and laws stop to function.

August Strindberg

2009-07-16T16:55:00.001+02:00

+ Helium !

A re-reading of one of the most canonical writers. These extremely funny and effective animations are a model for how transgressive we can possibly read the monolithic drama canon.

moonwalk

2009-07-15T16:16:00.003+02:00

eternal moonwalk project - just awesome! here it is

photo via flickr

not playing queer

2009-07-14T18:26:00.005+02:00

Pam Spaulding writes on her blog about some weird situtions in the soap opera industry. First, Chris Engel, an actor from The Young and the Restless, quitted the series after he realized that his character was about to kiss another man.

Now there is another similar case: Patricia Mauceri plays the mother of a character that turns out gay in One Live to Live. She refused the script because a Latina mother can never accept that, in her opinion. She was changed with another actress.

Patricia Mauceri in character

Here is the whole story:

"OLTL" was taping scenes in late-June concerning roommates Cristian, Layla and Fish. (They'll air in September.) Cristian and Layla suspect that sweet cop Fish is gay, but aren't sure how to approach him about it. So they buy a book about how to tell if you're gay and plan to give it to him.

Cristian's mom, Carlotta, was supposed to find the book and assume Cristian is gay. Her reaction was scripted to be very accepting and even amused, citing his love of art and fondness for going shirtless as signs she should have recognized.

But Mauceri, who has played diner purveyor Carlotta Vega for 14 years, refused to play the story as written, saying a Latina mother would not be so accepting. Rather, Mauceri rewrote the scenes to make Carlotta confused and troubled, and submitted them to "OLTL" execs.

"That's not the story we're telling," responded an exec.

Mauceri then said she could not play the scenes as written, so the show called Santiago.

"Saundra Santiago is now playing Carlotta Vega," confirms an ABC rep.

The stereotype that all Latino mothers are homophobic is used in this case to promote a very personal and direct form of homophobia. Some actors afford to refuse the part or re-write the script. That brings to my mind the situation in theatre, the one that I know better. A couple of weeks ago, Iulia Popovici was mentioning how Romanian actors are avoiding to identify with their gay characters, almost yelling "this is not who I am!". I see that quite often when a gay character comes on stage. Quite bizarre, this detachment is not happening with criminals, murderers, rapists, bigots etc. Playing evil is more convincing most of the times. Does it mean that playing queer is seen as being more threatening to most heterosexual actors? Or is it the fear of their own sexuality, the fear of becoming one of them by rehearsing? It is a good example to show how performance has implications on subjectivity just like performativity does. Actors fear that and they try to keep the character as far as possible from their subject. Then you come with some black-face type of performances, ridiculing the queer character, in the style of Bruno (Sacha Baron Cohen was most of the time close to his wife during premieres, even if in character: he needed the proof that he IS not Bruno, he is not queer, that is just a character to make fun of of). Directors are doing it in a similar way: they dis-identify with their queer characters and stories by some poor form of Brechtian alienation. The purpose is not to make the audience think about their own situation or to make them critical of what they see: theatremakers are just telling that it is not their story, it is not their alliance, it is not their concern and creativity, queerness is incidental and it's "used" mainly for its comical homophobic effect. That is the situation if the queer character is not part of a melodramatic plot and is killed at some point to reinstall the original status quo. Then it becomes a tool for a queer cleansing of the stage. Both situations are dead ends for any social change and reinforce a homophobic attitude.

Water Boy

2009-07-07T23:55:00.001+02:00

The amazing Paul Robeson! Who? A short history lesson cannot harm:

Already a famous singer, Broadway and cinema actor, Paul Robeson became a primarily political artist, speaking out against colonialism and racism. Robeson was a prime target of the Red Scare during the late 1940s through to the late 1950s. His passport was revoked from 1950 to 1958 under the McCarran Act and he was under surveillance by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation and Central Intelligence Agency and by British MI5 for well over three decades until his death in 1976. The reasoning behind his persecution centered not only on his beliefs in socialism and friendship with the peoples of the Soviet Union but also his tireless work towards the liberation of the colonial peoples of Africa, the Caribbean and Asia, his support of the International Brigades, his efforts to push for anti-lynching legislation. This mass vilification by the American establishment blacklisted and isolated Robeson for the latter part of his career. Despite the fact that Paul Robeson was one of the most internationally famous cultural figures of his era, the persecution virtually erased him from mainstream culture and subsequent interpretations of 20th century history, including civil rights and black history.

To this day, Paul Robeson's FBI file is one of the largest of any entertainer ever investigated by the United States Intelligence Community, requiring its own internal index and unique status of health file. There is also documented evidence from the files released under the Freedom of Information Act that Paul Robeson was drugged and neutralized under the CIA's clandestine MKULTRA mind control program and subsequently subjected to unnecessary and abusive levels of electroconvulsive therapy while under private care in Great Britain as a means to keep him from influencing the U.S. civil rights movement and worldwide anti-imperialist movements during the 1960s.

More on wikipedia about a forgotten person who could not just enjoy his privileges as a well-known artist but used them wisely with a radical political agenda not being concerned of possible persecutions.

Hand in Hand

2009-06-17T10:41:00.001+02:00

Performed by Ma Li and Zhai Xiaowei