Darkside Rainbow

The following was submitted as an “Ask Adri” question, but while I’m honestly not sure what constructive opinion I could offer on this, I wanted to share it with everyone anyway. (Warning: graphic imagery ahead.)

Dear Adrien,

I wanted your take on the anti-discrimination campaign that started here last week to make people aware of the new laws Europe instated.

There’s posters, post cards, spots on tv and banners on the internet. The slogan is ‘Discriminating is illegal. And inhuman.’
In these pictures, people’s bodies are shown, and they have labels sewed on.

Amongst others, there’s a woman in a wheelchair with the label ‘dead weight’. There’s a coloured boy labeled ’scum’. There’s a young mother who’s pregnant with her second child labeled ‘takes advantage’. And there’s two guys kissing. One is labeled ‘abnormal’, the other ‘contagious’. (I added the picture, the only one I could find was of the gay couple, it’s the French version though.)

In the TV spot The label he get’s sewed on says ‘different’, and the voices in the back are saying:
‘They just don’t want to work, those parasites…’
‘If I get to choose, I’d rather hire a man for this job…’
‘You can never be too carefull, with all that AIDS and stuff…’
‘Those people don’t care about getting a job, they’re all scum.’

You can imagine the reactions. Half the people don’t care, one quarter is shocked and appalled, and the rest of us think it’s brilliant, daring, will open many eyes.

Me, I cringe when I see the spot on tv. You actually see them sew the label on. I’m not sure what to think. It could be good, really good. But it might be too much. Harsh images and shock effects can certainly work, but… It’s a double edged blade.

What do you think?

The TV spot in question:

Give me a second to stop squirming. Oh, jeebus. The video itself isn’t that bad; I just have issues with needles going into anything other that cloth. (Adri + syringes = NO.)

Truthfully I don’t even think there’s that much shock value involved, but then I’ve seen worse in American adverts, so I may be the wrong person to ask; cultural differences have probably desensitized me to this sort of thing. Still, I can see where some would be incensed or disturbed by this sort of advertising.

The question to ask is this: is it shocking enough to get them to take notice, and then stop and consider the message - or is it so shocking that the message is lost in the horrified reaction to the imagery? I think in this case it’s the former; yes, it’s a little graphic, but no more graphic than watching House or Grey’s Anatomy, and the graphic imagery isn’t played up to grotesque extremes. There’s just enough to be effective and to make sure that you’re paying attention while the point is driven home. At the same time it gives you something to think about on a more subtle level: those labels are painful. In the advert they become physically painful rather than emotionally painful, but the implication of pain is there and registers on a subconscious level to lead people closer to understanding that discrimination hurts in many ways.

When shock advertising is used with immaturity, where the blatant goal is only to disgust while the message itself is secondary, it fails and becomes a cause for public outcry. I don’t think this is one of those situations. I think it was handled with tact and maturity and even if I’m squirming looking at those needles, I admire how cleverly it was done.

I told you I have nothing of value to offer here, but that’s my opinion. Maybe others reading this will have a different take on things. Either way, thank you for sharing this with everyone.

Needle-phobically yours,
~Adri

Have a question you’d like to see answered on Ask Adri? E-mail your question to adrien-luc.sanders@451press.net with the subject “Ask Adri Question” or use the Contact Form to send your question in.

ask adri, anti-discrimination campaigns, shock advertising, labels

Grey’s Washington in Gay Rights Ad - Time

 
(NEW YORK) — Isaiah Washington, who came under fire after using an anti-gay slur, will appear in a public service announcement on behalf of the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation and the Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network.

I’m going to have to call BS. Once a jerkhole, always a jerkhole, and I’m sure I’m not the only one thinking of Mel Gibson. I wouldn’t be surprised if this was even compulsory in order to avoid some more punitive action. ‘Seeking counseling’, my arse; counseling doesn’t really cure someone of being a jerk, and frankly I don’t see how his appearances in PSAs are going to do us or anyone else much good.

I’d say that I suppose it’s a good thing that I never watched Grey’s anyway, but I’m going to be shamefully honest: If that had been Hugh Laurie instead of Isaiah Washington, it wouldn’t stop me from watching House. Then again, Hugh Laurie has those eyes…Isaiah Washington has…has…

…well, nothin’ that appeals to me. No, I’m not being shallow and I’m not just saying that because I think he’s a homophobic twit. He’s just not my type. I’m sure someone out there finds him attractive, but I’d take Will Smith over him any day.

’scuse me if I’m being catty. I’m still a little ticked off that someone thought it was cute to sign me up for repeated bombardments of the Reverend Lou Sheldon’s newsletter; even after unsubscribing I’m constantly receiving e-mails urging me to protect my religious freedoms by contacting my Congressman and asking them to vote no on HR 1592. Because, of course, the entire bill is just a sleazy, sick part of the ‘gay agenda’ designed for the sole purpose of preventing ministers from exercising their crucial right to read out of the Bible about homosexuality and its evils. We dirty, dirty gays are sneaky like that.

Sure. Yeah. Tell me another one. Like that pile of horse pocky about ‘the liberal media’ as a conscious singular entity whose every act is a conspiracy to defame and thwart the conservative right.

…if I ever find out who put me on that mailing list…

isaiah washington, grey’s anatomy, homophobia, gay and lesbian alliance against defamation, gay lesbian & straight education network, psa, mel gibson, hugh laurie, house, reverend lou sheldon, hr 1592, hate crimes bill

I am feeling distinctly unwell this morning, kids, so I’m afraid you get a short update today before I drag my carcass out of the apartment and off to the store for whatever bitter unguent or brew might soothe the sandpaper scraping down my throat. I just thought you might want to check this out:

Mississippi Queen: An Indie Documentary

Mississippi Queen is a documentary giving voice to the tensions and harmonies unique to the Southern gay & lesbian communities and their Bible Belt environment. Currently in the pre-production stage, Mississippi Queen will follow a returning native to the South with her curious cohort from the MidWest in tow.

Another 451 blogger turned me on to this, and as someone who lives with both the ups and downs of being gay in the South, it immediately caught my attention. (Enough for me to spend more than two minutes on MySpace, which is a feat in and of itself considering that MySpace makes me twitch.) Southern culture is a truly unique and often strange thing that people often don’t understand until they’ve experienced it directly, and the gay and lesbian subculture in the South has a distinctly different flavor than anything you might find north of certain states.

I’ll be interested in seeing how this documentary explores those aspects unique to the South, especially the balancing act between sexuality and religion. I, personally, am an atheist (put that rotten fruit down and don’t you dare start throwing it my way) but I respect others’ rights to follow their faith and what they believe in, and I’ve often wondered how people reconcile the two parts of their identities when what they’re taught can often conflict with who they are. It’s a struggle that I don’t envy, but one that I admire in those who deal with it every day.

According to the Mississippi Queen MySpace profile they’re starting shooting in May, so I’ll try to keep an eye on things and watch for any interesting video clips. The profile itself has video commentaries from Bryce and Paige, key names behind the production of Mississippi Queen.

I’m going to give up on trying to be coherent now, go medicate myself, and hide under a heap of blankets. I’ll see you kids tomorrow, assuming I haven’t died from the plague. (Just kidding.)

Mississippi Queen, Bible Belt, gay in the South, gay and lesbian documentary, gay documentary, lesbian documentary, gays and the church

DR - is that anything like T&A? Gods, I hope not.

Anyway, welcome to the DR Weekend Edition, where I don’t have to blog but I’m gonna anyway because my novel needs editing, my apartment needs cleaning, and I’m looking for anything and everything else to do but that. Weekend Edition is just a quick-shot look at a variety of topics that got skipped over during the week because they didn’t merit their own full post, or because something else time-sensitive took their place.

First, in a backtrack to this post, though: Look who’s trying to cover her bum, and this time with something other than a banner that reads “wide load”. Queerty’s blog just goes through excerpts of it, but Roseanne herself starts here in her own blog and keeps going. And going. And going, for entry after entry.

Defensive much, honey? After reading through all of that, I don’t know if I should smile and shake my head at how hard she’s trying to pull her foot out of her mouth, or roll my eyes at how quickly she’s managing to stick it deeper. Considering that I’ve got a bit of a temper myself and sometimes I say some rather sharp things off the cuff, I’m going to give Roseanne the benefit of the doubt - even if this means I pass up on so much good snarking material - and just acknowledge that she has the good grace to publicly apologize for her skidding trainwreck into tactlessness.

Moving on: why is this news and why do we care? Seriously, the NY Times must be having a slow news day when they can do that much coverage on social perceptions of cars as gay. (Neel over at HealthyBPM.com has a few thoughts on this, too.) Frankly I believe something like this deserves to be nationally publicized more - not to make that poor boy’s life even harder with a media spectacle, but to draw more attention to the sort of needless violence inflicted on people just for their sexual orientation. We’re raising our children to be hateful, and I think this incident highlights something that many people need to think about before they indoctrinate their children in a stance of bigotry: every person that you persecute, every person that you point a finger at, is someone else’s child. Every time that you hurt someone for being gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered….you’re hurting someone’s son, daughter, brother, sister, friend. These aren’t just nameless objects, targets for your hatred towards a specific label. They’re people with families, friends, lives filled with loves and losses as deep and intricate as your own. How would you feel if someone targeted your family and friends that way?

Well. I wandered off on a philosophical tangent there, didn’t I? Let’s veer elsewhere for a bit. In other news, I’m not at all surprised that gay men are prone to eating disorders. Hell, I’m borderline anorexic, though in my case it’s less a disorder and more the fact that I keep myself so busy that I forget to eat. In most cases, though…eating disorders either come from psychological distress or from pressure about one’s body image. We’ve got more than enough of both in the gay community. Being gay itself in today’s culture is enough psychological stress to cause an eating disorder - whether it’s binge-eating for comfort (mmm, cheesecake) or nearly starving oneself in depressive fits where one just doesn’t think about eating. Body-consciousness just contributes to that stress; I don’t think there’s any other social niche where people are so hard on each other about their physical image save for the modeling industry. Your face could look like tire treads, but you’d better have a perfectly toned body or you ain’t gettin’ a date, honey.

Of course, that’s just a generalization; not everyone feels that way. I don’t feel that way. (Then again, I have strange tastes in what I think is cute in a man.) But there’s a vocal percentage who can be rather nasty towards anyone who doesn’t keep themselves in perfect shape, and it adds a lot of pressure and leads to starvation and overworking oneself to the point of collapse in the gym in order to keep up with the standards of being attractively gay. I won’t lie; I’m victim to it myself. I enjoy working out, but not enough to do it every day - and yet every morning I haul myself out of bed well before I really want to and drag myself off for an hour in the gym. Why? Not really for my health, and not really to attract anyone - yes, I’m recently single, but not really looking. I just feel compelled to, because there’s this voice in the back of my head that tells me that if I don’t, other gay men are going to look down their noses at me. I know I’m not the only one who gets that feeling, but I respond to it by working out rather than developing an eating disorder. It’s very similar to the sort of body-conscious and fashion-conscious competitiveness that takes place between social groups of women.

And moving on to other things: I still don’t understand how people supposedly so strongly in favor of peace and the love of their god can be so violent, and think that it’s somehow acceptable just because the victim is gay. Do they live in some kind of fantasy world where gay people aren’t real people? It’s like watching Frailty; gay people and GBLTQ supporters are actually demons in disguise, and I’m sure they think they’re doing their god’s work by attacking us. Sheesh. It makes about as much sense as any other explanation that I can think of. Seriously, would someone please explain to me how tackling a non-violent counter-protester is acceptable and reasonable? Maybe this guy can, since he’s Christian…but he’s got his own battles to fight. It’s got to take a lot of courage to walk back into that church after that.

Regarding yesterday’s post: I was surprised at the number of responses to the first Ask Adri column, both in comments (most I’ve had on any article so far without participating in the discussion myself), and in the number of people who sent in questions. If I do a new one M-W-F, I’m set for weeks on questions. I’m glad it seemed to be favorably received thus far, and we’ll see how it continues to go. If you’ve got a question, you know how to get in touch with me.

Now that I’ve wandered all over the news and other topics like an ADHD five-year-old - in other words my nephew, someone please sedate the adorable little spaz - it’s time for me to run away, strap on the rubber gloves (for cleaning, you perverts!), and tackle that weird…foamy film that builds up on the tile in the shower. ~squints at the bathroom wall~ What is that crap, anyway?

Anyone want a job as an underpaid housekeeper?

roseanne, roseanne barr, roseanne arnold, eating disorders, gay eating disorders, gay christians, anorexia, bulimia, binge eating, gay cars

Since when is this news?

Ah…right. Since homosexuality is not only a choice, but a sin and an abomination.

I’m grateful to the scientific community for working so diligently to validate homosexuality as a natural and acceptable thing, but I have about as much hope that that information will be accepted by the mainstream public as I have that a die-hard creationist will accept the theories of evolution.

Moving on: I’m in the mood to be ten different kinds of catty today, and thankfully I’ve got Roseanne Barr’s big fat mouth to take it out on. Who’s up for a little celebrity snarking?

I’m sure we’ve all heard about her little debacle on that California radio station.

Oh? We haven’t? Well, let me give you a little taste of what she said. In a rant worthy of Trashy Celebs, Roseanne spewed,

“Never once in my 54 years have I ever once heard a gay or lesbian person who’s politically active say one thing about anything that was not about them. They don’t care about minimum wage, they don’t care about any other group other than their own self because you know, some people say being gay and lesbian is a totally narcissistic thing and sometimes I wonder.”

Well isn’t that the pot calling the kettle fat - oops, I mean black. I don’t know who poured sand in her va-hoo-hoo, but maybe someone with a gay pride bumper sticker cut her off in traffic on her way to the radio station.

While I’m not surprised that Roseanne’s been mouthing off - she made a career out of it, after all - I am a little disgusted to hear that coming from her mouth after she received the Trevor Project’s Annual Life Award. I hope she’s never manning those suicide hotlines. She might just tell them, “Oh, just shut up about yourself and go on and do it, kid. Remember it’s down the road, not across the street.”

Roseanne made the domestic goddess famous - a figure that was once expected to stay behind closed doors, do the laundry, mop the floor, and not expect to be noticed for her hard work. Roseanne didn’t quite demand acknowledgment, but she gained it anyway through her hard-edged, bluntly honest and humorous portrayal of the life of the modern American housewife. Roseanne made a career out of talking about herself, basically. She brought the domestic goddess out of the closet and the laundry room.

So explain to me how the efforts of gay activists to be recognized in the same way are narcissistic, and yet her shtick isn’t?

Oh? It’s comedy? Sure, it’s comedy, but it made her famous. It put her in the limelight where everything could be about her (hello, self-titled sitcom). She has no right to talk about someone else’s narcissism. Nor is she particularly well-informed enough to do so; she may want to spend a bit of time perusing this list of gay politicians, followed by this list of lesbian politicians. Look at those rosters of both elected and appointed officials, look at their accomplishments and agendas, and tell me that they focus only on themselves and their sexuality. Tell me that they don’t have other issues on their political platforms. Women’s rights. Abortion. Public schools. Minimum wage. Taxes. Welfare. All the major issues that matter to voters, no matter the state or country. Look at those people, see them as people and not as generalities falling under the gay and lesbian label, and tell me that they don’t care about anything but themselves. I dare you.

You can’t, can you.

It’s nice that sometimes you wonder, Roseanne. Sometimes I wonder, too.

I wonder how the world looks through the eyes of someone suffering from such a severe case of rectal-cranial inversion.

Well! I feel better now. Who’s up for coffee? Anyone? Promise, I only used three cups of grounds for the pot today instead of the typical ten. The lining of your stomach is safe. Stop by, sit down, have a cup. I’d like to have a chat anyway. In fact, I’ve been thinking about instituting an “Ask Adri” feature - maybe once a week, maybe more, depending on if anyone…well…asks Adri anything. Think of it as a gay Ann Landers, only with a little more spice.

Need advice? Curious about something? Just feel like setting yourself up as a target for a little good-natured snarking? E-mail me at adrien-luc.sanders@451press.net with the subject line “Ask Adri Question” or use the contact form on this website to send me a message.

Well, that’s it from me for today. ’scuse me if I vented my spleen a little.

roseanne, roseanne barr, roseanne arnold, celebrity gossip, celebrity trash, gay-bashing, gay science, gay genetics

In case you don’t know, last night the “Happy Birthday, Elton” show, commemorating Elton John’s 60th birthday and 60th performance in the Madison Square Gardens, aired on The Network Formerly Known as UPN–also called My Network TV, the channel that people watch when they don’t have cable and can’t find anything else on. After suffering through two hours of badly-sequenced concert footage interlaced with clips of celebrities spouting the equivalent of a verbal handjob for Sir Elton John while set against backgrounds that looked like a bad acid flashback, I can see why the overly long tribute ended up on My Network TV. It’s the only place fitting for something so camp that even deliberately camp shows cringe in embarrassment.

I willingly admit, I’ve mostly missed the boat on gay pop culture. I’m geek-gay, not trendy-gay. I don’t watch much TV, and my tastes in music range over many genres and many decades rather than sticking to the pop-culture icons that make the “fabulous” list. You’ll find me reading Slashdot before I read Perez Hilton, and frankly while I like Tori Amos’s music, I don’t understand why she’s worshiped as diva and goddess to the mainstream gay man.

And so I don’t understand why Elton John is such a sensation as a gay icon, despite his outrageousness–which admittedly, in its time, was actually something novel instead of the commonplace scene that the strange and outré have become now. I don’t find his music or even his voice particularly appealing save for in one or two songs, and I don’t understand how he came to be the tubby gay Elvis of the twenty-first century. Maybe I’m just not cool enough to get it.

What I do get, however, is that he’s done remarkable things for the gay community simply as a hardworking individual, and with his HIV/AIDS foundation. With that in mind I could easily see a half-hour-long special, even an hour, discussing his life and his achievements. I’d watch, I’d smile, I’d say “Good man, he deserves it”…

…rather than wishing, more than anything, that I could have back the two hours I spent slogging through that droning, ill-produced mess.

The only reason that I didn’t flip it off 30 minutes through was because I thought, for the sake of this blog, that I should watch the entire thing in case anything noteworthy happened. This is a gay blog, Elton John is a gay icon, therefore I had a duty to suffer through light displays that could induce a seizure, Kate Thornton wearing enough makeup to easily pass as a drunken prostitute, Jim Carrey’s usual unsuccessful attempts at spontaneous humor (while sporting my haircut, which I wear well and he, unfortunately, does not), and Jake Shears of the Scissor Sisters declaring that a man who looks like a Troll Doll that got its hair chopped off by a lawnmower is a sex symbol.

There’s camp, and then there’s tacky. This crossed the line into tacky.

I mean, seriously. There were at least five montages of various celebrities, most of them former A-listers sliding quickly down the slope to B-listers, saying the same ego-stroking thing over and over in different words to the point where my eyes glazed over and I simply tuned them out. Then again, I did the same through Elton’s performances. It was either that or spend my time trying to figure out if he was drunk, had a speech impediment, or simply wasn’t singing in English–only some slurred pidgin language that happened to bear a passing resemblance to the mother tongue. And honestly, who needs to come parading out in a suit coat emblazoned with some unintelligible logo about 60 years while one’s name lights up in ten-foot-tall rainbow letters and Robin Williams, Whoopi Goldberg, and Bernie I-don’t-care-what-your-last-name-is lead the crowd in an off-key rendition of “Happy Birthday”?

I don’t think anyone could deny that Elton John is a gloriously unrepentant diva riding on decades of egomania, but my gods, I’ve seen presidential tribute specials that ran shorter than this, with less repetitious grinding in of how spectacular His One-ness is–and if I’d seen one more shot of Elton’s oh-so-clever hands, his “I’m concentrating so hard I look like I need Metamucil” expression or various people in the crowd sashaying around yet again, I think I’d have gone off my bloody rocker. If I want to see (arguably) attractive men dancing badly I can go to one of dozens of local gay bars, where I can at least join in the fun of dancing with them. By about the second celebrity montage and the third camera cycle through hands-face-crowd-face-crowd-face-hands, it was a relief when Kate Thornton appeared to once again remind us what we were suffering through watching and that we’d be right back after commercials. Great.

Honestly, after thinking back I’m wondering if the commercials weren’t the sole motivation behind this spectacle. The show went to commercial break practically every five minutes (no doubt the reason for the length)–all of which looked as if their production budgets were twice as large as what was spent to hack that tribute together. I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if the airing of the show, although not the performance itself, was mainly to use the lure of Elton John’s name to attract as many people as possible before flashing as much product as the besieged eyes could tolerate at the spellbound viewers.

In that light, despite his grandstanding–which can kindly be called showmanship–the interminable dullness of the show can’t really be dumped at the feet of Elton’s ego. I’m sure he didn’t ask for the TV audience to be subjected to Simon Cowell’s sad attempts at dour wit, Celine Dion’s unintelligible babbling, or the minute that Mariah Carey spent focusing less on what she was saying and more on posing to make sure that the camera caught her breasts at the best angle. Heck, he didn’t even have to endure them, and he was still looking rather bored and impatient by the end of his performance. I got the distinct impression that he was getting just about as tired of the whole thing as I was.

So despite that sadly off-kilter excuse for a tribute: happy (one day late) birthday, Elton John. I’m glad you made it to 60 years, and I hope that after that show you went home to a quiet evening and a bottle of bubbly. I recognize your contributions even if I don’t quite understand your appeal, and I’m glad for what you’ve done for the gay community.

Now will you please tell your fan club to sit down and shut up about it?

celebrities, gay celebrities, gay icons, gay tv, elton john, happy birthday elton, elton john’s birthday

Or so my Chinese ex-boyfriend tells me; I’ll have to take his word for it, considering that I only speak three words of Cantonese and only one of them is fit for polite company.

So what does tai hou lah have to do with anything?

Quite a bit when you check out Chinese website phoenixtv.com. (You may need to use a free website translation service like Babel Fish to navigate, or you could just load the English version of the site.) Starting tomorrow, Phoenix TV will be host to a new Chinese show called “Tongxing Xianglian” or “Connecting Homosexuals” - which, according to this CNN.com article, is “the country’s first show to focus on gay issues and the first with an openly homosexual host.”

Host Didier Zheng (left) is looking pretty fabulous himself, with his laid-back air of casual stylishness, that trendy little puff of disheveled hair, and a touch of James Dean in that “rebel with a cause” look. More than just a pretty face, though, Zheng is an educated activist and member of the Chi Heng Foundation.

Considering China’s history of tolerance (or lack thereof) towards homosexuality since the formation of the People’s Republic of China, this is a rather heartening step, and one taken in a relatively short amount of time since homosexuality was finally removed from the recognized list of mental disorders in 2001. I’m honestly not sure, considering the level of government censorship of media in China, how freely Zheng will be able to speak on his show…but I’ll be watching anyway and hoping to get my hands on an English-language translation (or a very patient ex-boyfriend) so I can follow along.

In the light of Zheng’s activist roots I’d like to hope that he’ll be able to make large steps in promoting public acceptance of homosexuality in modern Chinese culture as something more than a despicable influence of Western culture, but in truth I can’t help but wonder how long the show will last before it’s pulled from the ‘net. That’s not my rampant cynicism and pessimism speaking; that’s an unfortunate dose of realism when looking at the facts that 1. 2003 was the first time that gay rights were discussed openly when the proposition of allowing homosexual marriages was rejected, and 2. the Chinese government keeps a stranglehold on what’s considered acceptable for public internet consumption. One wrong word and the show could be culled in a heartbeat.

For now, though, I’ll swallow my cynicism and look on the bright side: people worldwide are taking steps to acknowledge homosexuals as accepted, functioning, and - most importantly - normal members of society. Even in places where free speech is often suppressed, we’ve been given a voice, and a chance to speak out on our own behalf.

I’d say that’s pretty tai hou lah, myself.

gay tv, didier zheng, china, Tongxing Xianglian, Connecting Homosexuals