Cinema Notes From All Over (Heterosexual Marriage Division)

SAN FRANCISCO, Ca.--Just Go With It, in theaters today and starring Adam Sandler and Jennifer Aniston, is the kind of light Hollywood comedy that keeps the world safe for white heterosexuals by affirming family values and subtly marginalizing all others. 

   Oh, wait, do we sound "politically correct"? Is that opening paragraph enough to put you off already?

  If so, perhaps we should review the concept of "political correctness" before we decode the movie.  

   It is a cultural truism that s/he who names the group wields the influence; in language there is power. 

   When a dominant societal group names a marginalized one, the language often is oppressive and purposefully divisive: blacks are "niggers" and "coons," Hispanics "wetbacks" and "beaners," Asians "slants" and "gooks," women "girls," homosexuals "faggots" and "fairies," etc. 

   The counter-cultural shifts in nineteen-sixties and -seventies America emboldened marginalized groups to assert themselves. Many signaled this move to power by re-naming themselves.

   Blacks became "African-Americans," Hispanics "Latinos," Asians "Asian/Pacific Islanders," women, well, "women" rather than the reductive "girls," homosexuals "lesbians and gays." (Later, the ultra-inclusive gay communities expanded the nomenclature to "lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender," occasionally adding "queer"--a reclamation of a slur--and the somewhat baffling "questioning.") 

   The dominant power structure at the time largely was composed of conservative white males. No dominant power structure passively brooks--not for long anyway--any claim to power by the theretofore powerless. So conservative think tanks did what they often do: flipped language on its head and sent the new linguistic virus into the mainstream cultural conversation. 

   Thus was born the idea of "political correctness," a notion that re-marginalized the groups trying to claim a place at the cultural and legislative table. Conservatives shifted the conversation away from a rational consideration of what it might mean for disenfranchised people to be equal to their fellows and steered it to the “reality” that these very groups were telling others how to speak and think.

   This was, of course, an absurd claim, given that those very groups had essentially been told how to think and speak for decades, sometimes centuries, by the very same power structure then averring they were doing it to others. 

   The clearest example of this kind of linguistic jujitsu arrived, in the eighties and early nineties, in the form of conservative radio entertainer Rush Limbaugh's bloviating. Women at the time were agitating for pay equal to men's, an end to gender discrimination and the right to make decisions about their own bodies.

   Limbaugh dubbed them "feminazis." He thus equated American citizens campaigning for equal rights to psychopathic killers who had decimated roughly six million marginalized people in a country halfway around the globe four decades prior.  

   George Herbert Walker Bush, an American president who served from 1988-1992, did the same thing. Members from the protest group AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT-UP) demonstrated outside the Bush summer home in Kennebunkport, Maine, in the late eighties. They hoped to bring national attention to the Food and Drug Administration's foot-dragging on testing and approving potentially life-saving AIDS medications.   

   Mr. Bush said the protesters were using "Nazi tactics," an odd assertion to make about a group of Americans exercising their Constitutional right to free speech and peaceable assembly. 

   But this marginalized group--AIDS protesters agitating for sick and dying friends--was attempting to assert power. Mr. Bush, a representative of the conservative power structure, therefore equated them with--do you see a theme here?--psychopathic killers who had decimated roughly six million marginalized people in a country halfway around the globe four decades prior. (Victims included gays and lesbians, who were forced to wear identifying pink triangles in the concentration camps.)

   Now, then. Were some of the re-naming efforts by marginalized groups silly and fruitless? Sure. (Hello, “differently abled” and “height challenged” people.) And were some liberals humorless and insufferably self-righteous in the process of asserting power? Absolutely.

   But that only made it easier for conservatives to mock them as “politically correct.” This undermined the groups' legitimate claims to equality by ridiculing the groups as scolds, thus trivializing their drive to enjoy equal rights by likening them to junior high school assistant principles. 

    The vacuum of the "political correctness" argument is meant to leave no breathing room for actual conversation about the way people and groups appear and function in society. So for the moment why don't we suspend that intellectually lazy notion and see if we can't realistically dissect Just Go With It, which bears all kinds of culturally stereotyped characters. 

   We’ll first note this: in one format or another, First of All has been tracking and commenting upon these sorts of character-based media misrepresentations for twenty-five years. We are as tired of doing it as you may be of hearing it. Once-disenfranchised groups have made too many advancements for this sort of thing to much stir us. 

   That said, there is an inexplicable level of white, heterosexual hegemony in Just Go With It. This is odd when, for example, in California, ethnic minorities, taken together, comprise the state's majority. Or maybe it’s not so odd: the ethnic makeup of America is shifting rapidly--indeed, we have an African-American president--and a film such as this one soothes frayed Caucasian nerves by creating a white-dominant fantasy world.

   The only black character is an effeminate and sassy hairstylist. (That's a two-fer.) The other “gay” character is an effeminate hotel staffer. Then there are the videogame addicted Latina nanny and an overweight Hawaiian babysitter who passes out after eating too much food. (You know those female people of color: great for menial work but terrible at anything requiring maternal focus.)

  Even the lead character’s  ethnicity seems to be treated questionably. Mr. Sandler plays a Jewish plastic surgeon. As a young man he has a huge and ugly nose and is considered a schlump by his wife-to-be. In voiceover he notes that he later "got rid of the schnozz" with plastic surgery; we see him as a successful surgeon who is a sexual hit with young women (to whom he lies about being married in order to get laid, the concept that sets up the comedic engine of the film). 

   Doesn’t this imply that the way for the ugly duckling Jewish kid to become the hot adult swan is to surgically alter ethnically endemic features that also happen to the one root of the stereotype about his group? 

   As to the movie itself: it’s marginally cute. It has the sitcom-requisite smart, snotty and scheming kids. Mr. Sandler's character is charming. Ms. Aniston, whose movies we normally avoid, is completely likable. Nicole Kidman, in a role not credited on the movie's posters, shines as a domineering one-time sorority sister to Ms. Aniston's character. 

   Incidentally, with her surgically altered/destroyed face, Ms. Kidman now looks like an ancillary "Ren and Stimpy" character. There is a subtextual joke about this in the movie, and one wonders if Ms. Kidman was in on it. 

   Ms. Kidman the actress has denied having any cosmetic surgery save Botox injections. In one of the film’s scenes, her character asks Mr. Sandler's--the plastic surgeon--what, if anything, he'd do to cosmetically enhance her. He says "nothing," adding that she's perfect. 

   In fact, her face looks like a late-period Picasso. That a plastic surgeon should state that he'd do "nothing" to enhance her looks implies that enough has been done already. But this is never said. Instead, Mr. Sandler's character, getting in a dig to win Ms. Aniston's character's approval, zings Ms. Kidman's character by suggesting that "they"--a reference to her plastic surgeon/s-- took too much fat out of her arms. Her face, however, save that it is "perfect," goes uncommented upon, even as it appears as expressive as a Noh mask.

   Just Go With It is a purposefully frivolous film in which man gets—and marries—woman in the end as the fantasy world’s marginalized people look on and cheer. (The black and presumably gay hairstylist makes Ms. Aniston’s character look fabulous so that she can perpetuate a ruse that unintentionally winds up with her marrying Mr. Sandler’s character. The hairstylist no doubt does it with the stark and dispiriting knowledge that in most American states he cannot legally marry his boyfriend.)

   The movie is a cultural warm bath for the dominant power structure and its aspirational admirers that passes itself off as a comedy. 
   Is it funny? 

   We laughed once.

The Joys of Holy Matrimony (My Husband The Pimp Division)

ROCKFORD, Minn., March 20 -- A local man named Clinton Danner was arrested at a Chicago hotel Sunday after authorities learned he was prostituting his wife via Craigslist ads, the Associated Press reported Wednesday.
   His wife, whom the AP didn't name, told authorities that Mr. Danner would arrange the encounters, after the completion of which she was expected to deposit her earnings into his bank account. She said her husband told ther that if she failed to comply with his scheme, she would never see their young son again. 
   Mr. Danner, who is thirty-two, faces a felony charge of pandering. He is being held on a $150,000 bond.
   People like Mr. Danner are examples of why heterosexual marriage should come under strict review, and sooner rather than later. Obviously, some straights can't handle their allegedly beloved institution of matrimony. And yet they deem it prudent to legislatively "protect" it from same-gender couples who love and cherish each other. 
   Gays and lesbians pressing for the opportunity to marry need pay attention. 
   

Crime of the Century (Parking is Hard to Find Division)

LOVELAND, Colo., March 12 - Richard Albers, who is eighty-five, evidently is a man of consistent habits. 
   Nearly every morning for sixteen years, Mr. Albers parked in a particular spot in the lot of the McDonald's in Loveland, Colo. (pop. roughly 55,000). Although news reports don't specify, it is fair to assume that, after parking and likely locking his vehicle, Mr. Albers would walk into the restaurant and avail himself of the many delectable delights on display. 
   Sometime in 2008, or perhaps earlier, this bucolic, not to say halcyon, existence was shattered when a man named Vernon Brandt, who is now fifty-one, parked in the spot Mr. Albers had, as do so many people, come to think of as his own. 
   This began to happen with increasing frequency, and Messrs. Brandt and Albers apparently had words, over time, about this, well, travesty. 
  It all came to a head on July 29,2008, when Mr. Brandt parked his truck and trailer in a way that, intentionally or not, blocked what can only by this point be called the Albers spot. 
   Mr. Albers, arriving for his customary, oh, maybe a Happy Meal, or a simple milkshake (with, on his more sinful days, a side of fries?), couldn't help but notice that, once again, Mr. Brandt had prevented him from parking in the place where he, Mr. Albers, felt happiest. 
   Well, life is full of sorrow and a man's pleasures are few. So it makes sense that, perhaps swearing under his breath (news reports are vague), Mr. Albers climbed down from his sport utility vehicle, walked over to Mr. Brandt's truck and tapped on the driver's side window in order, presumably, to initiate a conversation. 
   Mr. Brandt, who later claimed he was startled, opened the driver's door with terrific force. It toppled Mr. Albers, who, at the time, remember, was roughly eighty-three years old, more than thirty years older than Mr. Brandt. 
  A witness at Mr. Brandt's recent trial for third-degree assault testified that Mr. Brandt then grabbed Mr. Albers, cocked his fist, and said (growled? shouted? hissed? Details are sketchy), "You want to fight, you son of a bitch?" 
   The Ft. Collins Coloradan reported on March 7 that it took a jury less than three hours to convict Mr. Brandt, a local contractor, of a single charge of third-degree assault. 
   Whatever his transgressions, Mr. Brandt should be lauded for selecting, in defense attorney Tony Krenning, a creative lawyer not averse to engaging in a little bit of creative lawyering. 
   During the trial, Krenning told the jury that Mr. Albers' tapping scared Mr. Brandt, who merely opened his door quickly to escape. Mr. Krenning added that the testimony about the threat (you know, the "you son of a bitch" comment) was merely "salt and pepper" added by the witness.
   "It didn't happen," Mr. Krenning told the jury, referring to the contretemps between Messrs. Brandt and Albers (you know, the fist cocking, and etcetera), "but it makes a good story now." 
   And then Mr. Krenning waxed philosophic: "It's so incredible because we're talking about a parking space. At a doggone McDonald's. It's tragic." 
   Too true. Too, too true. 
   Well, wait. No. The Haiti earthquake, Hurricane Katrina, young lives cut short on the fields of battle - those are tragedies. A parking lot quarrel? That's more of a quandary. 
   On the stand, Mr. Brandt claimed he didn't know whether the window tapper was, as ace Coloradan reporter Trevor Hughes wrote, "a 9-year-old child or a man with a gun outside." 
   Upon hearing that, prosecutor Greg Biggers may have chuckled a little; Hughes's report didn't say. We do know, however, that Biggs, referring to Brandt, said to the jury, "His own words: 'Could have been a 9-year-old.' That's reckless, folks." 
   One is hardly a legal expert, but it seems reasonable to assume that, more than anything else, that folksy "folks" absolutely sealed the case for the prosecution. People who are just plain folks, and proud of it, like to have their proud plain folks-ness recognized and affirmed, and any prosecutor worth his salt knows this in the marrow of his bones. 
   Mr. Brandt will be sentenced next month. He faces up to two years in jail or prison. (The Coloradan, coyly, didn't specify which. Hughes, the reporter, only used the phrase "behind bars," which, technically, could mean Mr. Brandt might spend up to twenty-four months out back of a few saloons.)
             --30--  

Karl Rove, Douchebag, is "Proud" of Waterboarding

LONDON, England (The Home of Carnaby Street in the Swingin' Sixties), March 12 - Karl Rove, a former senior Bush administration advisor, told the BBC today that he is "proud" of the U.S. military's and intelligence agencies' use of waterboarding to obtain information from suspected terrorists, and said he did not consider the technique torture. 
   This would defy belief if it weren't for the fact that between 2000 and nearly eight years after that Mr. Rove lied and lied and lied and lied again to the American people, often through the mouth of George W. Bush, a man said to have been president at the time. 
   Like a willing circus monkey, Mr. Rove is currently swinging through the branches of the talk show jungle. He is pimping his new book, which will remain unnamed here; unless Mr. Rove is willing to share royalties, First of All sees no point a'tall in selling his snake-oil for him. 
   As to his claim that waterboarding is not torture, we do hope that Mr. Rove either has had the technique tested on him--to ensure its safety--or is willing to do so. 
   It would make a wonderful interlude on, say, Regis and Kelly:


   REGIS: YAP YAP YAP YAP YAP!
   KELLY: YIP YIP YIP YIP!
   ROVE: As I told the BBC, I am proud we used techniques that broke the will of these terrorists. 
   REGIS: YAP YAP YAP YAP WATERBOARDING! 
   KELLY: OH MY GOD! YIP YIP YIP YIP LET'S TRY IT OUT!
   ROVE: GLUG GLUG GLUG. (Whoa. This sucks.)

Queer Notes From all Over (Equal Rights for All Excepting Bisexuals, But They Don't Count Division)

RICHMOND, Virginia, March 11 - The governor of the great state of Virginia has shown that, when it comes to equal rights for gays, lesbians and transgendered people, he is, well, all for equal rights for gays, lesbians and transgendered people. 
   There was no mention made of bisexuals, who, as usual, got the short end of the stick, but who, being attracted to persons of both genders, have twice the chance of getting a date on Saturday night, according to filmmaker and former comic Woody Allen, who made that joke, like, seven hundred years ago.
   Gov. Bob McDonnell yesterday directed state agencies of all sizes, stripes and orientations not to discriminate against gays and lesbians, the Associated Press reported today. 
   State Attorney General Kenneth Cuccinelli, who, not that this matters, is a Republican, sent a letter last week to state colleges saying they lack authority to prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation, and ordered them to rescind any anti-discrimination that include protections for gays and lesbians. 
   It is admirable that Atty. Gen. Cuccinelli sent a letter. Letter-writing is, alas, a lost art, what with emails, texting, Twitter and the general decline of literacy in America, not to mention the fact that the U.S. postal service is considering stopping Saturday service as a cost-cutting measure. 
   That said, it is the content of the letter with which we must concern ourselves, and that content is, in a word, stupid. 
   Apparently, Gov. McDonnell agreed, in essence if not in word, and that is why he issued his directive. His directive trumped that of the Atty. Gen., because he - the Gov. - has much more power. 
   Before the Gov.'s directive reached far and wide into the psyches of Virginians everywhere, the Atty. Gen.'s letter had occasioned no little amount of agitation among, predictably, gay rights groups and, predictably, Democrats. 
   College students - who, by dint of their youth, vitality and idealism, are the Hope for the Future - rallied, but in a very modern, by which one means troublingly virtual, way. 
   The Washington Post, quoted in the Associated Press report, which was run on the Huffington Post news site - one apologizes, but one is simply too tired, at the moment, to track down original sources - reported that 3,000 people joined a Facebook page titled, "WE DON'T WANT DISCRIMINATION IN OUR STATE UNIVERSITIES AND COLLEGES!" 
   While that sentiment is to be applauded, the use of all capital letters and an exclamation point is not. 
   The Post further reported, according to the AP by way of the Huffington Post, that one protest was organized by a group at William and Mary College, in Williamsburg, Va., the second oldest college in America, the motto of which is: "We're different, and we like it that way."
   The group, called Queer & Allied Activism, launched a social media campaign, the Post wrote, "urging students to protest on Cuccinelli's Facebook and Twitter pages, and to sign a petition organized by the group Equality Virginia." 
   The group's acronym - QAA - has no meaning, and therefore cannot be called, even by a stretch, clever, but its use of an ampersand is alluring. 
   One certainly applauds the students' efforts, but one is alarmed to hear that students are now protesting from the safety of their laptops while, perhaps, sitting around their dorms or frat houses in their pajamas. One is all for lounging in sleepwear, but one also remembers the days when students actually ventured out of doors to protest injustices. 
   Alas, it is a new day. The thought occurs that maybe the weather was bad. Protesting in the snow, while offering the opportunities, during dull moments, to create snowmen, or even snow penises, can be trying.           
   But recent weather reports, you see, say temperatures have been in the high fifties and low sixties. 
   That's practically balmy for Virginia winters, or seems like it should be. One doesn't know; one has never been to Virginia in the winter or even in the spring, summer or fall, if memory serves, which it generally does not. 
                       --30--

Crime of the Century (Gallant "Straight" "Man" Division)

NEW YORK, New York (THE TOWN SO NICE THEY NAMED IT TWICE), March 11 - A heterosexual "man" whose come-on - no doubt clever and witty - was rebuffed by a woman allegedly followed her into a bar's bathroom stall and beat her unconscious, the Associated Press reported today. 
   The man also is thought to have raped the woman, whom the Associated Press doesn't name; it is AP policy not to reveal the identities of victims of what they call "sexual assault." 
   The woman, who is twenty-nine, was discovered in the stall by a friend who at first thought she might have fallen. She  was hospitalized with a broken eye socket and jaw, and other injuries. When she regained consciousness at the hospital, she told workers there that she had been attacked. 
   The physical and sexual molestation - "incident" is too soft a word, don't you think? - happened at roughly two a.m. at a three-story bar/lounge called Social. 
   The "man" is at large. He may have injured his hand during the time he was acting out his sexual frustration on the woman; a video camera mounted across the street from the bar captured a "man" thought to be him walking away from the bar, examining his hand. 
   It is lucky for the "man" that he is "straight," because that qualifies him to marry, inasmuch as marriage, as an institution, is thought by many solely to be a union between a man and a woman. When he finds the right woman, he will make an ideal husband. 
   Gays and lesbians keen to marry should take note. 
             --30--


NOTE (March 12, 2010): This story is updated here. 

The Joys of Holy Matrimony (End of Days Division)

PATERSON, New Jersey, March 11 - A fifty-one-year-old New Jersey man is preparing to stand trial five times, one for each of the daughters he allegedly raped repeatedly, three of whom he impregnated and who gave birth to a total of six children, the Associated Press reported today.
   According to the man's wife, he was sure the world would soon end, and therefore thought it prudent to create a "pure bloodline" by impregnating his daughters. Prosecutors in Passaic County told the AP that one of the daughters was raped as late as 2002, shortly before the wife left the man and took the children with her. The daughter was in her early teens at the time.
   In testimony, one daughter, the AP reports, "described experiencing and witnessing beatings administered with wooden boards and steel-toed boots." She added that the man would punish even the most trivial transgressions by withholding food.
   The children were home-schooled and not allowed to socialize with peers.
   The man faces twenty-seven charges, including many related to sex crimes. His first trial is scheduled for April. More sordid details - there's only so much one can write without becoming dispirited - are in the AP story.
   This situation calls into question the notion, promulgated by conservative social critics and lawmakers, that for marriage to remain "a union between a man and a woman" is better for the children. Plainly, some heterosexual men see "family" as their own personal cult. 
   This point should be noted by gays and lesbians eager to enter the sacred institution of matrimony. 
           --30--


NOTE (March 12, 2010): This story is updated here.

Queer Notes From all Over (Elton Thinks Jesus is Gay, Reagan Was a Douche)

    In a recent Parade magazine interview (the link is below), Elton John suggested that Jesus was "... a compassionate, super-intelligent gay man who understood human problems." He added, "Jesus wanted us to be loving and forgiving.... Try being a gay woman in the Middle East - you're as good as dead." 

   Hm. I am a gay man, so I have upon occasion fallen prey to the desire to claim every awesome figure in human history as One of the Tribe. Some were (Michaelangelo), some may have been (Abraham Lincoln), and some weren't (most of the rest of them). 
   But Jesus? If you took "gay" out of Elton's sentence, it would have made as much sense. So why a "gay man?" 
   If Elton knows, he isn't saying. Yet. (Wait for the backlash - and his inevitable statement addressing it.)
   Elton did say, however, that when he performs "The Ballad of the Boy in the Red Shoes," a song about Ryan White, a lad who very publicly died of AIDS in the 1980s, "I say that this is a song about a time when people in America started getting AIDS and your president, Ronald Reagan, did nothing about it. I get boos. There's a lot of hate in the world."
   Well, there's a lot of historical denial in the world, too. (Just ask Holocaust survivors and their offspring.) The hagiography around Reagan - his sanctification as an awesome figure in human history (though, one is relieved to note, not One of the Tribe) - is nauseating to anyone who lived through the '80s and lost one or (many) more to AIDS. Reagan's administration did exactly nothing for years; he was well into his second term - in his eighth year as president - before he said the words "AIDS" publicly. 
   The man had blood on his hands. Elton John is right to keep that truth front and center, no matter the revisionist magical thinking of those who boo him. 
   (The Parade article is here.)