IGF CultureWatch friend David Link comments on protesters claiming that Lou Reed’s classic “Walk on the Wild Side,” once hailed by nonconformists for celebrating sexual and gender transgression, is now condemned as transphobic.
Yesterday: Queer Leading Edge: Today: Transphobic
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24 Comments for “Yesterday: Queer Leading Edge: Today: Transphobic”
posted by Lori Heine on
The short answer: No, it is not transphobic. It was way ahead of its time.
This expectation, on the part of the hive-mind statist Left, that people from the past should have been clairvoyant and able to anticipate future political fads is absurd.
posted by Jim Michaud on
Agreed. Walk On the Wild Side” is a definite classic. WAY ahead of its time and a true gem in the top 40 during that period (shlock prevailed at the chart’s summit however-“Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Ole Oak Tree” was ruling the roost at Wild Side’s peak late April ’73). Too bad Lou’s no longer here with us. He’d tell these people to go f— off.
posted by Lori Heine on
When I was about ten, I asked a friend’s older sister what this song was about. I got a hasty “Never mind!”
I’m not sure she knew, either.
posted by Wilberforce on
For trans people, everything is transphobic. It’s their tactic for getting what they want from the gay movement. They might insult us daily, and stop enda from passing, and waste our time with their bathroom war. But they only need to shout ‘transphobia’, and gay men give them whatever they want.
posted by TJ on
wow. someone might be eager to stereotype trans folk…
posted by Wilberforce on
Stereotyping is a standard liberal accusation for an argument they can’t answer. It’s like racist or sexist or any of the other stock labels.
Actually, I was just reporting the behavior of a large group of trans folk of the last 30 years. I don’t know where you have been to have missed this. Or maybe you don’t want to see it.
posted by TJ on
Tom Robinson Band (UK) was also quite edgy in the 1970s. The lead was openly bisexual and two of the bands songs were explict in supporting gay rights.
posted by Jorge on
The short answer: No, it is not transphobic. It was way ahead of its time.
Someday the very idea of the closet will be viewed as unacceptably homophobic. It is not wrong to enjoy life in the face of grave striving.
This generation of the majority culture is way too obsessed with oppression. I don’t think it does society any favors to promote hysterias (as in the archaic term of mental illness) in every single not-normal situation. That is what you get when you pretend everyone has a normal life but for “oppression”. You make people too worried about external things they have no control of and belittle their ability to adapt to their own unique hardships. Out of the people outside my family who I know well, there isn’t a single one whose shoes I’d actually want to be in. It’s belittling to reduce them to their demographics.
posted by Kosh III on
“There you go again” GOP continues to bash gays while Miller and Co ignore the hate of their lords and masters
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/with-all-eyes-on-trump-texas-may-soon-pass-horrific-anti-lgbtq-laws_us_5920a3c4e4b03b485cb200cc?ncid=inblnkushpmg00000009
posted by Jorge on
“Amendments to bills would allow nurses, lawyers and pharmacists to… restrict bathroom use for trans students.”
Restricting bathroom use for trans nursing, law school, and pharmacy students would indeed be tragic and horrific.
“By Michelangelo Signorile”
……..
*Wipes his butt on the computer screen.
I’ll wait for the third repetition this time.
posted by Tom Scharbach on
Popular culture is a bit like a kaleidoscope in the sense that each generation, and different populations within each generation, see a different picture as changes in culture change the way in which popular culture is mediated.
I’ve always been struck by the way in which the younger generation interpreted Brokeback Mountain (both the movie, and for the few who read it, the short story) as a love story. For those of us who are of the Brokeback generation, the story is much more likely to be seen as a story of deep loss. Like many my age, I lived in a culturally-imposed closet during my teen years and early adulthood, and I shared the experience of having my first lover die at the age of 20, and being mute in the face of that loss because I could not talk about Bill with anyone, even my closest friends. For me, seeing Brokeback was like seeing Platoon, seeing my personal story of loss play out in front of my eyes.
Different lenses focused on popular culture are very interesting — and the different takes on Walk on the Wild Side are interesting for that reason — but I think that it is important to keep our eyes on the legal/political ball, which seems to be getting lost amongst all the obsessive attention being paid to the fringes of minority (in this case Canadian) leftist thinking.
We have an administration that is in the process of rolling back pro-LGBT policies, rules and regulations at the departmental/agency level, we have to deal with a determined state-level legislative effort to roll back our gains of the last decade, and, most recently, we see the beginnings of a legislative effort to preemptively chill campus protest and free speech**.
All of these developments are dangerous. IGF seems determined to keep its eyes wide shut on that score. I can’t say that I find that surprising given Stephen’s political alignment, but it does mean that IGF is becoming an irrelevancy.
**Example: Proposed legislation in Wisconsin that bans “violent, abusive, indecent, profane, boisterous, obscene, unreasonably loud or other disorderly conduct that interferes with the free expression of others” on University of Wisconsin campuses. The bill is almost certainly unconstitutional as a prior restraint on free speech, but it is likely to pass in some form.
posted by Jorge on
I’m sorry for your experience, Tom.
Mmm, the movie was mandatory viewing in my case, and before that I remember writing an article for a college newspaper at the time. What do/did I see it as?
I saw it as a boilerplate movie about traditional white working class coming of age and settling for (and these movies all stereotypically include marriage), with an unhappy ending. But that is because I believed the author wanted the story to be viewed as boilerplate. I didn’t like the whole “gay has meaning” fans and enemies alike attached to it. That’s why I didn’t want to see it.
posted by Tom Scharbach on
I saw it as a boilerplate movie about traditional white working class coming of age and settling for (and these movies all stereotypically include marriage), with an unhappy ending. But that is because I believed the author wanted the story to be viewed as boilerplate.
Your reaction is interesting, quite at odds with the intent of the author, yet another demonstration of the power of the personal/cultural lenses through which we mediate our experience.
Annie Proulx was appalled at reaction to the movie, something that I suspect happens to many authors whose work migrates outside the original media:
I’m not a literary critic or qualified to be a literary critic, but I suspect that Proulx’s original audience — readers of the short story, experienced in the conventions of that form of writing — had a different experience of Brokeback than did the expanded audience, and audience used to the conventions of film. I’m not surprised at the seemingly odd reaction from the latter audience. Short stories are written to be open-ended, to leave questions asked by unanswered, while film tells stories as wrapped packages. The two genres are not compatible, and I suspect that the two audiences have very different expectations/reactions.
I suspect that there is a generational divide in play, at least in part, as well. Younger gays, growing up post-Stonewall, have no experience of the soul-numbing homophobia that pervaded American culture during the 1950’s and 1960’s. What I remember emotionally about growing up and coming of age in that era, more than anything else, was the imposed silence.
Ennis, inarticulate to the point of muteness in the short story, embodied that silence, and for me, the silence that pervades Brokeback was what gave the story its power when I first read it years ago, in the last days of the Clinton presidency.
I was reluctant to see the movie because the short story because of the short story’s power for me. I’m glad I did, though, because movie captured the silence. Larry McMurty and Ang Lee did a remarkable job in building a movie that was faithful to the short story. Proulx praised them for the adaption, and it was earned praise.
I’m not surprised by your (to me) odd response, now that I think about it. My initial response was “Well, here goes Jorge, floating away from the gay yet again …”, but I’ve changed my mind as I think about it. Your reaction follows the pattern of much of what you write on IGF. All of us mediate our experience through our own filters.
posted by Jorge on
Your reaction is interesting, quite at odds with the intent of the author, yet another demonstration of the power of the personal/cultural lenses through which we mediate our experience.
I think my reaction to the movie is compatible with her “leave spaces in a story for readers to fill in from their own experience, but unfortunately the audience that “Brokeback” reached most strongly have powerful fantasy lives.” crack.
I do not mean boilerplate in a dismissive way toward the story. Another way of calling it would be a period piece. Things happen in period pieces, as they do in life. For me, in this movie, in its time, it is more the existence of the plot that is a social commentary–this happened, rather than the plot itself being the social commentary–why did this happen.
As you say, you should not be surprised by my reaction.
posted by JohnInCA on
I’m not sure which amuses me more.
That some people thought it was worth commenting on finding something transphobic from a song written in the 70s, or that a bunch of people are up in arms trying to defend that song from the 70s as “not transphobic”.
Face it, most stuff that’s of any age (including songs, movies and people from the 70s) has some baggage that wouldn’t be socially acceptable now. When it comes to people, they have a chance to change with time and become better. Songs, movies, books and so-on don’t get that chance. They’re little time capsules of where the world was when they were made.
So yeah. They capture various kinds of bigotry, *isms and so-on. Even when something was “progressive for it’s time”, it can still have some bullshit in it. Like Thomas Jefferson. Sure, freeing all his slaves on his death was kind of progressive for his time. But he was still a slave-owning rapist. And still a, by his time’s standards, good man.
So to make a long story short: the people in the “wrong” are the people getting upset over the song. Either about it’s “transphobic” content or the people getting upset over other people calling it out.
And I don’t even have to listen to the song to know that.
posted by Jorge on
When it comes to people, they have a chance to change with time and become better. Songs, movies, books and so-on don’t get that chance. They’re little time capsules of where the world was when they were made.
You know that’s a very fascinating observation.
I think if realizing that about old songs, literature, art can make us better people, that helps redeem the people who created it.
posted by TJ on
Yes, but this is another bait and switch tactic by Stephen and Company.
Narrative: Somewhere their is an undergraduate student unhappy about something? My Gosh, this proves (insert favorite conspiracy theory) and we should all just vote for the alt-right GOP party.
posted by JohnInCA on
… “Bait and switch”? Where’s the bait?
IGF is Mr. Miller’s blog for things that outrages him, which is almost exclusively stuff that he attributes to “liberals”. This article is 100% in-line with that.
No bait. No switch.
posted by Lori Heine on
John, you and others who comment here keep banging their heads against a brick wall–arguing with Stephen Miller, trying mightily to get him to see your point.
I’m going to drop a little reality on you. He is a professional blogger. He is being paid to write the stuff he writes. You don’t sign his paycheck. Therefore he doesn’t care what you have to say.
So many of these commenters just agonize over it. Why won’t Mr. Miller LISTEN to them? Because he isn’t getting paid to. That’s why.
Of course there are at least as many paid bloggers on the Left as there are on the Right. This isn’t a partisan matter. And Mr. Miller probably believes the things he says. He does have to sleep at night.
But he quite obviously gets paid for representing a particular, rather narrow point of view. He doesn’t get paid for listening to anyone here who wants to take him to task for what he says on this blog.
No matter how well-crafted your argument is, he is never going to respond to it. It isn’t a part of his job description. The only time he will ever respond to a comment is when he can spin it in some manner his employer is going to like.
Bless your hearts, you just keep trying.
posted by JohnInCA on
Um, yeah. I kind of wish this was an actual conversation, because I would have stopped you after the first paragraph.
I’m not arguing with Mr. Miller. This just ain’t that kind of blog.
So sure, I may vaguely address him in my comments sometimes, but it’s not really addressed to him so much as naming him while addressing the “room” so-to-speak.
So when you say:
“So many of these commenters just agonize over it. “
You’re not (or at least you shouldn’t be) talking about me.
That’s why I was saying that TJ was wrong, that it wasn’t a “bait and switch”, because no one should be under any illusions about what this blog is or isn’t.
posted by TJ on
Pop Culture criticism has to take history into contex. People rushing to condemn and worship a song from the 1970s is cute.
I thought that Green Day was the beez-knees as a youngster. A gay friendly band, with gay friendly music Who knows what people will say about Green Day 40 years down the road.
pop culture criticism also probably should NOT get more notice then say, mass murder of gay/transgender or a government attempting to roll back civil rights legislation.
posted by Lori Heine on
“[B]ut it’s not really addressed to him so much as naming him while addressing the “room” so-to-speak.”
Yes. And the “room” is more fun to converse with, anyway. If we understand that, we can (and do) have a good time commenting here.
The posts are written by someone who’s basically deaf to us. The Republican Party has a calculated line for LGBT voters, and it’s all we’re going to hear in these posts.
We can spare ourselves the frustration, and just enjoy the fun.
posted by JohnInCA on
So… what did I say that you’re actually disagreeing with then?
posted by Lori Heine on
I wasn’t necessarily disagreeing. I was channeling The Dude.
He was a lot happier than Walter. I was simply suggesting that we stay out of Walter mode and roll easy.