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.
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 Trying to catch up — with some outdated news.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
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.
Cleanse your mind and listen to Thich Nhat Hanh:
God is Black.
But God is not only Black.
God is also White,
God is also a Flower.
So when a lesbian thinks of
her relationship with God,
if she practices deeply,
she can find out that
God is also Lesbian.
And God is Gay, too.
God is no less.
God is Lesbian,
and also Gay,
Black, White,
a Chrysanthemum.
And when you
discriminate against
Black or White
or Flower or Lesbian,
you discriminate
against God,
which is the basic
Goodness in you.
Eason Chan is a great musician, but his music videos are (trying not to be too harsh) always a disaster, comparing with his talent. That of 大開眼戒 shows a boring love story of a couple. It’s not only uninspiring, it’s a complete waste of the song. I don’t care if it’s made of clips from a movie. Uninspiring is uninspiring. I may not personally like Prudence Liew’s singing that much, but I love the music video of her cover. So much more close to the content, so much more artistic.
If you don’t speak Chinese, I tried my best to translate the lyrics according to the melody:
Keep the lights off
May I first kiss you in the dark
If you see my veil is off, would you still hug me
Not to spoil the mood
Nobody knows the dark side of my heart
I can’t match, with my low man nature, how could I match you
Love, if you are curious
be prepared to meet my scary face
Nobody is
pure as snow
Confronting such appalling truth
is like walking on a razor blade
When we are bare, hope I
won’t c-c-cut you [running out of words + Gaga influence]
Please be relaxed
You don’t have to be as close as that
If I show my far-from-flawless bod, just turn away
I was born like this
If only genes can be reoriented
Decompose, recompose me for you, if that makes you happy
Love, if you are curious
be prepared to meet my scary face
Nobody is pure as snow
Confronting such appalling truth
is like walking on a razor blade
But you know everyone has a secret
Pairs of hands, pairs of legs
make you fall in love with me. No barriers
You love me, just don’t care my extra ears
Explore free with me
Love, if you are curious
be prepared to meet my scary face
Nobody is pure as snow
For your curiosity
are you ready to love me my dear
If you like Frankenstein, I am a beauty
Believe me, gay marriage is really wrong. You’d even love to join the group:
1) Being gay is not natural. Real Americans always reject unnatural things like eyeglasses, polyester, and air conditioning.
2) Gay marriage will encourage people to be gay, in the same way that hanging around tall people will make you tall.
3) Legalizing gay marriage will open the door to all kinds of crazy behavior. People may even wish to marry their pets because a dog has legal standing and can sign a marriage contract.
4) Straight marriage has been around a long time and hasn’t changed at all; women are still property, blacks still can’t marry whites, and divorce is still illegal.
5) Straight marriage will be less meaningful if gay marriage were allowed; the sanctity of Britney Spears’ 55-hour just-for-fun marriage would be destroyed.
6) Straight marriages are valid because they produce children. Gay couples, infertile couples, and old people shouldn’t be allowed to marry because our orphanages aren’t full yet, and the world needs more children.
7) Obviously gay parents will raise gay children, since straight parents only raise straight children.
8) Gay marriage is not supported by religion. In a theocracy like ours, the values of one religion are imposed on the entire country. That’s why we have only one religion in America.
9) Children can never succeed without a male and a female role model at home. That’s why we as a society expressly forbid single parents to raise children.
10) Gay marriage will change the foundation of society; we could never adapt to new social norms, just like we haven’t adapted to cars, the service-sector economy, or longer life spans.
*A little recontextualisation: the reasons are valid not only in America.
Tilda talked about androgyny:
Q. You’ve played a number of men in your career, most notably in “Orlando.” What does the idea of androgyny bring to your performance of Gabriel?
A. The director, Francis Lawrence, did the sensible thing by just presenting the idea to me and then letting it percolate through my brain. It felt like a little bit of a dangerous idea in a big Hollywood movie, and then I ended up thinking it was a good idea, because an angel is not immutable but fluid, and so his identity is amorphous and not strictly human.
Q. How much do you think your looks have to do with this protean quality you have?
A. Quite a lot. The other day, I was going through the airport security and I was searched by a male security guard. I’m very often referred to as “Sir” in elevators and such. I think it has to do with being this tall and not wearing much lipstick. I think people just can’t imagine I’d be a woman if I look like this.
Q. Why does it interest you as a performer to play men?
A. I’m basically interested in identity, and I still find fascinating the question, “How do we identify ourselves, and how do we settle into other people’s expectations for our identity?” This is not only true in stories like “Orlando,” who spends the first half of his life as a boy and then becomes a woman, and, even though he’s the same soul, there are all these different projections on him because he’s now a woman. But even in a story about a suburban mother, like “The Deep End,” you have an idea of yourself based on living your life, and then you feel something else coming up in you. Like you’re quite used to being a soccer mom living in Lake Tahoe with a husband who is mostly absent, and then maybe you fall in love with a gambler. The moment when one realizes one might not be fixed, that one’s story might not be over. This is the transformation we all go through all the time.
