Sorry this month rant is so, so, fucking late. I’m all over the place, and, October is well and truly underway. Drinking red wine and trying to write was probably my downfall. Today I managed to finish my thoughts, with the much more writer friendly: coffee. Mmmm. Yum. Coffee… Anyway… Rants!
Ruby Rose is still a fucking moron rant:
A very quick rant to get things rolling. You might remember I discussed Ruby Rose’s, let’s go with: interesting, choice to pose naked for men in the charming publication named FHM, here: http://ridiculousrantsridiculous.blogspot.com/2011/01/hello-and-december-rant.html and here: http://ridiculousrantsridiculous.blogspot.com/2011/02/january-11-rant.html (and solemn apologies that I’m not a proper blogger who understands how to link things elegantly) Well, just as an update, she’s gracing the October issue of Maxim magazine. Another sleazy soft-porn mag that masquerades as a “men’s issues” mag. This time though, she doesn’t even look like a lesbian anymore. (NB. Please run with me on this one. I realise there isn’t one specific way a lesbian must look and there’s nothing wrong with passing/looking as straight, if that’s the way you like to dress/accessorise and you’re comfortable with possibly not being read as queer… It’s just the RR usually does look queer and on the cover of this mag you’d barely recognise it was her, let alone a dyke.) She’s sporting a Farrah-Fawcett-esque wig. Looking super straight and consumable by men. It’s pretty gross. And gone is any flimsy attempt at justifying why a lesbian is on the cover of a men’s rag. Just a really inane interview and some nonsense about the wigs and nudity having something to do with a statement about animal rights. It’s super odd. And super yuck. Ugh. There isn’t really much to say. Just that it’s lamentable, that, probably our most notable lesbian celebrity is such a fucking dag-head-moron. Ah well. You lose some you lose some.
Gig rant:
My friends invited me along to see Ernest Ellis & The Panamas at the Gaelic. I used to keep up with the music scene when I was younger and know what was cool and exciting but I really, really, don’t these days so I had no idea who these guys were or what they were like. They had me instantly. They opened their set with Angelo Badalamenti’s theme song from Twin Peaks and I couldn’t wipe the grin from my face. They could have played chopsticks for the rest of the gig and I wouldn’t have minded. As it turns out though, they played a great set and were super cute, generous, and most gorgeously: earnest, performers. Crazy fun.
Theatre rant:
This month, I saw The Threepenny Opera (Dir. Michael Kantor.) Blerg. Boring and irritatingly Aussie, and no one could sing except Polly (Lucy Maunder) who, despite having a tolerable voice, was annoying and boring. Paul Capsis and Eddie Perfect were okay but not as fun as I was expecting them to be. It was a night at the theatre I endured rather than enjoyed. I’m not sure why I persist with seeing STC shows. I also saw a Fringe show called Beast at the Greek Theatre, which I’d never been to before, nice space. It has a kind of spooky atmosphere. Beast was confronting. Absurd. Ridiculous. It was darkly funny and made me bellow with laughter. It also needs a bit more work. It examines the sordid side of the romance with performance and theatre magic, an interesting and clever take on the let’s-make-theatre-about-theatre trope. Zoe Houghton, as always, was focused and compelling and magical. She is an actor that is pure joy to watch. The rest of the ensemble did a good job but lacked the effortlessness of Houghton. The show has legs (both metaphorically and literally in that there’s some rad physical theatre components to the piece) but needs a bit more time and development and, if possible, money. It felt very fringe. Which it was. So the world makes sense. But it could definitely be developed into a more polished piece of theatre.
Alan Ball rant:
So, probably the most exciting event on my calendar in September, was Alan Ball’s talk at the Opera House: Vampires, Death and the Mundane. I almost didn’t go. (Cos I really, really, really, dislike jerk head Wil Anderson, with whom, Ball was in conversation with.) I saw that Ball was coming to Sydney, considered purchasing tickets, saw that Anderson was the interviewer, vomited in my mouth a little and thought better of going. Moments later though, I received an email from my mother who told me to mark it down in the diary. “No!” I replied. “I don’t think I can stomach Wil Anderson.” To which she informed me that it was too late, she’d already purchased us tickets. And so I had to suck it up and get excited about one of my favourite storytellers and temper my hatred for someone I consider to be a talent-less, unfunny, smug, jerk. I decided he must be the ‘mundane’ component of the event and tried my best to not let him get to me. Of course I’d prepared myself so much for the worst, that aside from inspiring a few, very audible, eye rolls and loud groans, he wasn’t nearly as intolerable as I thought he’d be. And anyone who knows me knows that’s probably the nicest thing I’ve said about Wil Anderson in my entire life. So there. Despite him not being super painful though, I did wistfully imagine how fucking great an interview it could have been had a real interviewer been given the gig. Ball spoke well and was (almost) every bit the amazing man his wondrous writing suggests he is. I considered giving him the first standing ovation of my entire life, except that, on a few counts, he disappointed me, and so I didn’t… however, mostly, he was amazing, and I’m very grateful that my mother saw to it that we attended. We were awkwardly early and had the foyer to ourselves. We eyed the ridiculously fun True Blood merchandise and drank red wine (they don’t have potato chips at the opera house wtf? So we couldn’t eat the traditional foyer dinner of redwineandchips, grump. So mum ate a cheese plate and I picked at the fruit.) Mum wonders what sort of crowd will show. I inform her matter-of-factly: “queers and hipsters.” She changes the subject, but, later, she celebrates the dressed-down-ness of the crowd. “Well,” I think to myself… “What do you expect from queers and hipsters?” Being hot of the mark, mum scored us brilliant seats… We were say five or six rows back seated right behind Jane Campion. It was a good interview. He has a fun mind. He was funny and charming. I won’t post all my notes here but I’ll try to sketch a summary of the discussion before I launch into my disappointed/hurt bit of the rant… He spoke about American Beauty and Six Feet Under and Towel Head and True Blood. He talked about his pilot script for Six Feet Under and how HBO’s response was: “We like it but the whole thing feels a little safe, could you make it a little more fucked up?” (Which, as we all know, he did, brilliantly…) He screened the final scene from Six Feet Under and I bawled. In the middle of the stalls, in the fucking Opera House. Electrifying television. Years since I’d watch the last episode, since I was in the rhythm of watching the show, since I was entangled with the characters, and the damn ending can make me cry in public. He said, when the writers room suggested the ending, he thought: “of course, how else could this show possibly end?” Indeed. It is probably the best ending to a TV show. Ever. He explained the effect of the death of his sister and how he “developed a sense of humour in unlikely places as a defence mechanism.” “How else do you confront mortality?” He asked, “You have to laugh.” His motives and narrative made me respect the show more. It became obvious what I’d always suspected: Six Feet Under came from a place of truth, which is why it was so successfully touching. He moved on to True Blood. He screened Sookie and Bill’s first meeting at Merlottes: I watched Campion, sitting in front of me, watching Anna Paquin, feeling and enjoying the time line of cinema, stretched out in the stalls before me. Sookie: “Can you believe it? I’ve been waiting for this to happen ever since they came out of the coffin two years ago!” – the queer portion of the audience laughed. I laughed. And then… he ripped my heart out in the Q&A section. A really cute earnest Malaysian gay boy got up, wore his heart on his sleeve, and (in that way people ramble before actually asking their question,) explained how DVD box sets of his works and images of Keith (Michael C Hall) and David (Matthew St. Patrick,) were useful in helping him find himself when he was growing up and didn’t have access to anything inside his culture that would explain his feelings to himslef. And, finally, the boy asked: “Is it queer? It is so sane and without any judgement, do you see yourself as an activist, do you think your work is going to change something?” (and then Alan Ball broke my heart a little (scratch that, a lot) and forwent his standing ovation from Ridiculous) His answer: “ NO. I’m gay myself so obviously so that’s obviously going to find its way into the work, is it a metaphor? No. If it were 50 years ago it would be about civil rights, if it were 100 years ago it would be about women…” There is so much wrong with this statement I don’t know where to start. At the same time, he says, It’s so not a metaphor, and it could be a metaphor for anything. That doesn’t quite work does it? It can’t be a metaphor for anything and definitively not a metaphor. Methinks he doth protest so much he sounds stupid. It can’t be ‘possibly about all these different plights’ (if it were a time-travelling text written in different parallel universes/times) and yet not a metaphor now, in our time. It doesn’t make any sense. It clearly is a metaphor. It examines prejudice generally, sure, but one of the key minorities it is written for and resonates with is the queer community. The queer community that paid to come see you talk and ask you heart-felt questions Mr. Fucking. Ball. Don’t disavow us. I honestly think Ball didn’t mean to be hurtful. I think he was playing it cool and playing it safe. I think he thinks activism is a dirty word. An uncomfortable position. Cos maybe he thinks that activism does a better job if no one knows it’s activism. Cos if he draws attention to the queer metaphor directly it might alienate straight audiences. I’m giving him the benefit of the doubt. Cos I love his writing far too much to turn my back on one of the few storytellers that is writing good queer characters in the mainstream. Seriously though, it is so fucking heavy handed, how can it not be activism? Stories teach us how to think and feel. We educate our children with fables and fairytales (and for the god-bother-ers, bible stories) Story telling cannot be unravelled from activism. It exists to educate inform and entertain. We watch and read stories that speak to us. And stories that have spoken to us shape us. Whether Ball likes it or not; he’s a big old queer activist. Just being able to see queers is an act of activism, because visibility does so much work in making life easier for gays… just as the guy who asked him the question had intimated. It broke my heart cos the guy (and me, and, I’d wager, most of the queers in the room) wanted to hear him say YES. We wanted a hero. We wanted to give him a standing ovation. We wanted to thank someone for Keith and David, and Clare’s (Lauren Ambrose) questioning of her sexuality that wasn’t gimmicky or stupid, and for kickass lesbian Edie (Mena Suvari,) who Clare questioned her sexuality for and who walked away from the situation before she got too hurt, for the examination of self loathing homophobia in American Beauty and for Lafayette (Nelsan Ellis,) and for Lafette and Jesus Velasquez (Kevin Alejandro,) and for Tara (Rutina Wesley) and Naomi (Vedette Lim,) and their super hot chemistry, for Sophie-Ann (Evan Rachael Wood,) and for Pam (Kristin Bauer,) and for Sam’s (Sam Trammel) dream sequence about him and Bill (Stephen Moyer). For allowing us to see ourselves and enjoy ourselves. We. Just. Wanted. A. hero. Anyway. He went on to be tongue in cheek and funny about his queer characters “Why don’t you thank me for our portrayal of gays and lesbians as drug dealers and prostitutes?” Then he got a bit more serious (with a dash of silly) which made his opening rant completely absurd “When we were kids we didn’t see gay characters and the gay character never took his shirt off… If I ever have a show, everyone’s going to take their shirt off… I see the importance of showing everyone, how everyone’s fucked up.” It made me so sad. Either Ball’s a jerk and not as brilliant as I give him credit for or he was too afraid to own up to the power of the stories he’s written. Either way it was fucking disappointing and fucking sad. But yes. It was an interesting talk and I’m very grateful I was able to attend.
And now, cos we are on topic, I want to talk about the complicated things I feel about True Blood: I got into True Blood, precisely because it was Ball’s work. Without having seen an episode, I shelled out 70 odd bucks for the DVD of season 1. It seemed like a no brainer. He’s brilliant. I adored Six Feet Under as I was growing up. I loved American Beauty. Vampires are fucking hot. It was bound to rock. However, I can’t say, when I watched the first few episodes, back in 2009, that I wasn’t a wee bit disappointed. It was watchable. And the title credits were fucking awesome. But it wasn’t as smart as Six Feet Under. The politics were good (and mine obviously) but I found it a bit heavy handed. All the jokes about the fucked-ness of prejudice seemed laboured to me… vampires coming out of the coffin… vampire rights movement… a newspaper sporting ‘Angelina adopts vampire baby’ draped across the table. The actors are great though, and there are lots of laughs, so I put my misgivings aside and went with it… and have been going with it ever since. It’s fun. It’s like a comic book. It is absurd and silly and it’s fucking hot. It has rad female characters and super rad queer characters. And the heavy handed politics are almost always great and it’s fun to have a TV show (in the way a TV show becomes your best friend) agree with everything you think. I sometimes waver on my feelings about the show and the big queer metaphor that it is. (And, to reiterate, it is. I’m not buying any of this rot that floats around that it’s not. Sure, in a sense it is anti prejudice generally, and is invested in the plight of all minorities everywhere, via vampires… but the language that is employed is directly borrowed from the queer experience. Coming out of the coffin in an attempt to be accepted by society is specifically queer. It’s never going to not be queer. That’s our closet metaphor that’s being played with. Don’t fucking disavow that this show, at the epicentre, is about us) Anyway, I want to discuss a couple of scenes with you. One makes me uncomfortable. One makes me cry. See what you think.
The first scene I want to discuss is from Season one, Episode 3, Mine, Written by Allan Ball, Directed by John Dahl.
Bill:
(to the scary crazy vampires)
You’re doing nothing to help our cause.
Diane: (Aun Janne Ellis)
Not everyone wants to dress up and play human Bill.
Liam: (Graham Shiels)
Yeah not everyone wants to live off that Japanese shit they call blood either. As If we could.
Bill:
We have to moderate our behaviour now that we are out in the open.
Malcom: (Andrew Rothenburg)
Not everybody thinks it was such a great idea and not everybody intends to toe the party line. Honey if we can’t kill people what’s the point of being a vampire?
…
Bill:
You all make me sick.
Diane:
You used to be fun. Is this all on account of that little blonde breather?
Bill:
If you insist on flaunting your ways in front of mortals there will be consequences.
Malcom:
Asshole.
Asshole indeed right? I hate this scene. You’d have to be a fucking numbskull to not read this as a queer metaphor, but, the tricky bit is, if you do, you get a bit stuck, don’t you? The scene says I should behave myself and act normal and I don’t like that. I very much struggle with that. I don’t mind the idea that some gays wish to pass as straight, but I do mind the idea that if I don’t want to I’m akin to the crazy mean killer vampires. The thesis of the scene seems to be we will gain more acceptance by blending in and not making anyone uncomfortable. That fucking reeks. We need room for diversity. We need room for all sorts of self expression. We don’t have to subscribe to normative rules. No-one does. Gay or straight. And we don’t have to act straight if we don’t fucking feel like it. Heterosexuality is not fucking compulsory (even though everyone insists it is, even usually awesome tv shows) Okay? But obviously we should all drink True Blood and not kill people. Killing people isn’t nice. Anyway. I could never quite shift that scene from my brain. It stayed in there annoying me, despite all the other cool queer friendly stuff that happens, and the generally cool stuff that happens. But when I watched the following scene, I forgave TB all its indiscretions, forever…
The second scene I want to discuss is from Season 2, Episode 3, Scratches, Written by Raelle Tucker, Directed by Scott Winant.
The scene is set in Merlottes, Sex and Candy by Macys Playground plays. Jess (Deborah Ann Woll) walks through the bar. Hoyt (Jim Parrack) and Jess meet eyes. Jess sits in the booth opposite him. Hoyt nervously gears himself up to talk to her, leaves his booth and sits in hers and begins to talk to her.
Hoyt;
Hi
Jess:
Hi
Hoyt:
Do you mind if I join you? I Mean, if you’re alone?
Jess:
I’m alone.
Hoyt:
I’m Hoyt.
Jess:
Jessica.
Hoyt:
So this might sound kind of funny but I was just sitting there thinking, How come you don’t ever meet a nice girl Hoyt? And then you just walked right in.
Jess:
How do you know I’m a nice girl?
Hoyt:
Cos of your smile. I guess you can tell a lot about someone by the way they smile, and you know I watch people all the time.
(Jess Smiles coyly to herself, Hoyt continues)
You see, oh, like that! That’s beautiful! I could stare at that all day long.
Jess:
Day? Yeah right.
(nervous, sad, lamenting, laughter.)
Hoyt:
Did I say something wrong?
Jess:
No. Of course not.
Hoyt:
Okay good cos I don’t wanna scare you away, would you like a drink or something, or food? Are you hungry? You should try the chicken fried steak. Cos it’s ah, like the chicken and the steak got together and made a baby, a delicious, crispy, baby, and ah,
(laughs, looks down nervously, embarrassedly)
Jess looks scared, takes a breath, musters courage and COMES OUT!
Jess:
I’ll just have a bottle of True Blood.
Hoyt looks up from the table and stares at her earnestly, openly and honestly. Jess shrugs and continues…
Jess:
B Positive.
Hoyt:
You’re a vampire?
Jess blinks. Does not smile.
Hoyt:
For real?
Jess raises her eyebrows in answer.
Hoyt;
Wow! That is awesome.
(Jess smiles)
A bottle of True Blood coming right up.
Hoyt leaves the table to order and jess beams.
Utterly gorgeous right? I can’t tell you how good this scene feels when I watch it. How joyfull I feel. How beautifully captured her decision to come out to him is. It’s prolly better on the screen. Deborah Ann Woll‘s performance is spellbinding. The moment where she weighs up whether or not she felt safe enough to come out choked me up. She nailed the fear and adrenalin and lust for acknowledgment and recognition…to be seen for who you are and loved either way/anyway. The split second decision to code yourself as queer/vampire that we often make when we meet people… at risk a terrible response. That sort of looking-over-the-cliff-of-coming-out feeling. And then the relief when the hearer acts like Hoyt and declares awesome. AWESOME.
So I got shitty about implied insistence on heteronormative shitty shit but when the show has moments like the Jess-Hoyt scene how can you not be fucking hooked? Mostly the show is “yeah! Yah queer!” and I can’t tell you how important and wonderful it is to have TV that says that to, and with you. And so what began as a show I found a bit silly and naff but watched anyway, quickly and quietly became one of my favourite TV shows of all time, and I’m completely lost and lonely now that I’ve finished season 4.
Meanwhile, back to the original point of this rant, Ball’s talk… While I love his work and will prolly do so forever, and while I am really glad I got to see him speak this September… I… well… I like my heroes a little braver…
That’ll do for now,
Love,
Ridiculous.
