sin_lgbt

I must admit cross-dressed Jude Law was my reason for watching Rage, before I realised it was written and directed by Sally Potter who made Orlando. I watched and I was overwhelmed. By cracking through the plastered face of fashion we see absurdity, self-indulgence and exploitation. With excellent acting the film presents different sides of human nature in such a simple set, of which the treatment is discussed as one of its important aspects.

There are a lot of negative comments on IMDb on its flat narration and play-like pretentiousness, and the similarity with dull YouTube videos. On superficiality I personally find the stereotypes amusing. In a decontextualised setting like this, “authenticity” seems irrelevant — though, from one of the positive reviews that I agree with, the slightly over-dramatic performance actually makes the characters more real, since they come from the fashion industry (ha!). The resemblance to personal online broadcast is exactly the point of Rage and why it’s revolutionary in film that goes into cinema, while it still achieves a professional level in visual execution that differentiates it from amateur videos.

This introductory video on Potter helps understanding her influence and exploration of online media in traditional film. Check also the Dusty Wright interview and her website.

Watched All About Love 得閒炒飯 by Ann Hui tonight. Female sensitivity and humour always please you. The film’s quite direct in proposing alternative feminist ideas that carry academic weight; it manages to maintain its taste as popular culture.

Marginalising bisexuals by gays is no different from marginalising homosexuals by heterosexuals.

It is world-saving to make every husband truly please his wife (sexually).

Men do not suffer less than women in a patriarchal society.

*From my memory, not direct quotations.

奥浩哉短編集　赤

Another cracker, LOLs within the first few pages. Don’t tell people I tell you the online-reading link. [Warning: male gaze heavy]

American Apparel is perhaps as notorious as Dov Charney himself, even the seemingly politically correct Legalize Gay campaign cannot escape criticism. I’m feeling guilty now cos the T-shirts look so juicy I’d love to own them. Too bad (good?) there’s no “nearest store” in my city. Forget it.

Again I know it’s outdated but: Not to forget this news!

Photo from Audunn

Sigurðardóttir is a married homosexual female prime minister, what could be more impossible. There’s something to love about Iceland besides its music, and a 67-year-old.

LOOK AT THAT. Buschbaum’d definitely turn gay men um…gay.

OMG is there an English version of her his book?

DON’T FORGET to check his galerie.

OH YES. Congratulations to his successful transformation.

I’m sorry to have worked on too many other things and stopped updating this blog. Trying to catch up — with some outdated news.

Yep. That’s Scarlett and Sandra. Nope. They don’t seem to be gay.

If you’re a female celebrity and you haven’t gone girl-on-girl before a crowd of roaring, adoring males, you’re probably gay.

This article is really funny, but Hollywood didn’t invent lesbian erotica (for heterosexual men). In art or in porn, that shit has always been there:

Images of simulated ‘lesbian sex’ have been man-made for decades, with the intention of titillating the male gaze. This exploitation of heterosexual women to represent lesbians and their sexuality became more obvious as lesbians created the images of their own fantasies.

Example: Super Sexy CPR

So sexy that men would love to join.

Tat Ming Pair’s 禁色 is a rare and excellent piece of music on homosexuality (slash with homosexual tendency). The song explains itself, but again if you don’t speak Chinese, I’ve translated the lyrics according to the melody (only as closely as I could, the original lyrics are genius):

Rain by the door
ruthlessly interrupts us
splashing ragged hair again
Please don’t be scared
You are terrified, crying
Don’t fear, love is innocent

Please close the door
Place our hope in the box
Let me hold your hand again
Escape no more
from the folks’ ridicules
For you, I will to be condemned

Wish, wish a place
free of harm to our love
bleach not colours in our hearts
Wish, wish a day
we don’t have to endure
Set our colours free from our souls

Thousands of pains
bundled up in phantom’s heart
I won’t regret when I die
The clock has stopped
I am patiently waiting
fearing the rain at the door

Wish, wish a place
free of harm to our love
bleach not colours in our hearts
Wish, wish a day
we don’t have to endure
Set our colours free from our souls

If, if this place
has to do harm to love
bleach dull colours in our hearts
Let, let me now
vanish into this storm
reincarnate in a magic year

And of course, we can’t miss the cover by Denise Ho (yes, you know what she embodies):

Lady Gaga strapped a dildo to her vagina for a Q magazine photo shoot. This is a statement about “the most humorous rumour of her life” and her femininity, and to make fun of “the hilarity of the media”. Going too far as perceived by many, Gaga is not only a fame monster sculpted in designer clothescreations. She has a vision that is artistic and that speaks to (young) people who’re little monsters. She believes money ruined this world and she used to read tabloids with a scholarly approach. The fact that she was a prodigiously talented child, studied at a Catholic high school and led a disciplined high school life (I believe she’s still very disciplined, considering her professional and constant better-than-ever output), and enrolled early in a prestigious arts school is perhaps often missed. While her talent lies in both her music and her image, the two are in fact one and the latter shouldn’t have overshadowed the former as she always answers. She’s gained enormous attention worldwide, but she deserves yet more positive attention. Please try to listen to her more and criticise her less. Here are some of the things she told Q.

On the MTV Awards fame kills spectacle,  she explained the metaphor and the reason for denying Interscope something beautiful:

The world is looking for a story about me being fallen. So maybe if I just show them what it looks like, they’ll stop looking. Here’s what I look like while I’m dying. And I bled to death surrounded by flashing lights and was hung like a martyr in all of my blonde glory. Like many others before. Princess Diana. Marilyn Monroe. Anna Nicole Smith. …the last thing any young person needs is another photograph of a woman rubbing her glistening tits, enjoying life, because that’s not how we fucking feel.

As a teenage art student Gaga wrote about the death of God (no, she doesn’t hate God, she always thanks God and her fans) in relation to shock art and analysed Spencer Tunick:

Why are people so offended by the naked, organic person and not offended by the evil that’s surrounding them in Times Square? The commercialism, corporate America… And I talked about how the apocalypse has already happened. Racism, gay-bashing, wars, the Presidents we’ve been through. [Whispering] We’re already in it. So now we must be joyful and rebuild.

I must admit I myself am a little surprised to read Gaga commenting on money and commercialism, as she’s always so branded and Warhol-reincarnated (well, technically it wasn’t possible…Gaga’s an ’86 kid), and extravagantly glamorous. This is exactly the type of misconception around her. She truly devotes herself to art:

But you don’t have to know anything about art to love it. And if you’re reading this article and think Lady Gaga is wildly pretentious and think the cat’s miaow, that’s not the case. I just take what I do seriously. My art is liberation. Things confine us as human beings. As a society. And I want to free you. I want to free you.

Now, are we really so incapable of accepting this little girl from New York?

Sandra B thanked her mother Helga B:

…for reminding her daughters that there’s no race, no religion, no class system, no color, nothing, no sexual orientation that makes us better than anyone else. We are all deserving of love.

If we need any religion at all, this would be our religion.

If we need any science to explain love, this would be our evolution.