Okay, perhaps that's a little dramatic, but then, this ad, from MixBrasil, the lgbt film festival in Sao Paolo features a hot gay couple poolside, staring at a woman that is clearly not human. Now this could perhaps be seen as homosexual gynophobia projected out visually. But the campaign speaks to the sense many queer folk have of being seen as alien, other. Thus, the theme line: What is weird for you? Obviously, to those of us who live very queer lives, suburban soccer moms can seem weird. It is all in who is doing the looking. And while that may be the point of the ad campaign, I am not sure how it works to get people to go to this film festival — or whether they are seeking an audience above and beyond the usual lgbt film fest crew. Perhaps some alients. Don't know. Or maybe Grace Jones, since I have to admit, the woman in this ad looks like Grace Jones to me, and I've always suspected she wasn't quite human. You can see the rest of this odd campaign at adsoftheworld.
Ruth is one of my heroes — New York lost when we didn't elect her mayor. But the world won, since she went on the lead a truly great humanitarian organization, American Jewish World Service.
I remember the first time I saw her, handing out leaflets outside Zabar's, running for City Council from a very left 3rd party. Of course, she didn't win in that race. But soon she was inside the Democratic Party and raising hell when she did get on the Council from my nabe, jewish left central, the Upper West Side of Manhattan.
Ruth is 68 today. And I am sure the results of Tuesday's election was present enough for her. But best wishes from this old supporter and left handed/left headed queer Jewish Buddhist. Image credit: Chrystie Sherman
Yes, now men don't have to feel left out of when feminine hygiene ads run on TV. Manjunk promises fight odor causing bacteria that impede your sex life. Of course, you can be the auteur and create the TV commercial — Manjunk is sponsoring a video contest for the best ad, with winners getting a
tropical vacation where no doubt, it will be hot and humid, so that product use will be essential. Unless of course, you are of the opinion that the fresh fragrance of a sweaty crotch is a turn on.
My favorite visual on the MJ website is the eye, looking through what can only be described as a gloryhole. You can't make this stuff up and if only for this reason alone I would include it in my ongoing Queer Product Watch. I imagine if you work for a client like this, you can sure have a lot of fun. Unless you use the product.
Then there is the ad campaign for Balls underwear, which can be seen at their site. It features famous men, in scenes we recognize, except for the fact they are only wearing the undies. My favorite is the one of Errol Flynn, who was one of the sexiest men ever to grace the silver screen, in his signature role of Robin Hood. It's a very silly campaign, but I still love this ad. And I don't believe for a minute that Errol Flynn would be caught dead with Manjunk under those brief. He might be caught dead with an underage girl in a hotel room, which in fact he was, since when he died his girlfriend was 17. But Manjunk? I think not.
The ongoing Chinese food scandals have now rocked the U.K. sex toy market. Seems that melamine in dangerous levels has been found in a chocolate flavoring used to make the sucking all the sweeter. A spokesman for the British Food Standards Agency, in alerting the nation to this clear and present danger, said:
"We’ve never had to
put out an alert before on 'willy spread' – chocolate-flavoured or
otherwise."
Even better, Ann Summers, the owner of the sex toy chain (and of course, chains are sex toys) gave me even more of a laugh with this quote:
"As a responsible retailer we have tested all of our
chocolates and even before the FSA alert was issued had taken all
relevant steps to remove the chocolate willy spread product that could
be affected by this issue."
Just how are they testing the willy spread? And do they need help?
Okay, this is from a blog entry about a story in New Scientist about men who have had sexual reassignment surgery to become women, and then still experience the sensation of having an erection, despite the fact that there's no penis to be erect. The phenomenon has clearly been written about by scientists before, though only recently have they been able to solve the problem, if indeed it is a problem. Then again, since it is reported that the sensation of having a phantom erection can last for hours, which would send you to the hospital if it were happening to a real live penis attached to you (as the makers of Viagra warn) I suppose this is equally problematic.
A few months back I read an amazing story about phantom limb pain in The New Yorker that was a fascinating exploration of how the brain perceives reality. The implications for Vipassana meditation, where one is taught to observe sensation and its connection to mental contents is something that deeper minds than mine should consider. The people who suffered phantom limb pain in this story were cured simply by using a mirror to fool the brain about the existence of the lost limb. This clearly wouldn't work for phantom penises though, since we don't have symmetrical penises on each side of our bodies. At least I haven't met any men who do, though I'm sure they'd prove rather popular downtown.
Me, I'm still laughing about that sentence, and the idea of observing phantom penises. And wondering about whether I will ever have the sensation of a phantom foreskin.... Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts and minds of men...the phantom penis knows...
JWT in Shanghai is running some ads to convince the Chinese to donate organs, with a campaign for the Red Cross that shows organs with bodies inside Am I on drugs or is there something really bizarre and disturbing about an organ donation campaign running in a country where prisoners have their organs removed (sometimes before execution) for sale?
The ad above, one of several, is supposed to be lungs though it looks like kidneys to me (does it remind you of the humans in pods in The Matrix?). Others show livers and hearts. And it is true that is a shortage of organs for transplant. Only 50 to 60 kidneys are replaced a year in Hong Kong while the waiting list for transplants numbers around 500. But according to Human Rights Watch/Asia, about 2 to 3 thousand organs a year are cut from the bodies of executed Chinese prisoners. This is state sponsored theft (and desecration). I guess the ad campaign is encouraging private citizens to get a piece of the action, since transplant services are readily available to high ranking Party officials and cash-paying foreigners. Of course, there are those unfortunates who have their organs stolen. I seem to recall reading a science fiction novel about this in the 60s. Anyone recall what that might have been?
Here in New York City we have not avoided this controversy. Last year, 20/20 reported that the plasticized bodies in the extremely popular Bodies exhibit at the South Street Seaport were executed Chinese prisoners. The German doctor who invented the process that used to put these human bodies being put on display around the world, says he has stopped using bodies from China because some of them shows signs of torture. The exhibit in NYC now offers refunds after a lawsuit by the state attorney general.
I don’t know how much Chinese citizens know about the Bodies exhibit, but it certainly isn’t news on the street in Shanghai that there’s an illegal traffic in stolen organs. So what they must think when they see these ads? And what was the team at JWT thinking?
Oh yes, the images are striking, and you have to look at them. True. And that’s the first job of advertising — to get you to stop and pay attention. But this doesn’t go on to persuade me of anything
other than being certain not to accept drinks from strangers in a Shanghai bar.
That's the advertising exec speaking. Now let's hear from the Jewish Buddhist. One of the many meditations taught by the Buddha was the charnel ground meditation — one was supposed to sit amidst the burned and decomposing bodies to meditate on the impermanence of one's own body. In the Buddha's time, there were places where the remains were left to decompose or be eaten by wild animals. Because there are no charnel grounds in New York City — or much anywhere anymore — Buddhist monks have been going to the Bodies exhibit to take on this meditation. Certainly seeing these bodies is a powerful experience of the fragility and impermanence of our physical nature.
However the Jew in me recoils at this practice — and at the exhibit. Just as a living person is the image of the Divine, so to the remains, which should have its integrity, at least until it naturally decomposes. This very reaction is interesting though. The Buddhist in me says this is about attachment to the body. So I'm going to have to sit with this. Perhaps I will use the JWT ads as a meditation mandala on this subject.
Judaism is a non-dual religion. However, many people believe that the deity of the Hebrew Bible is masculine rather than beyond gender — inclusive of both male and female and thus both and neither. Rabbi Mark Sameth is advancing an interesting theory about the Tetragrammaton, the Hebrew 4 letter name of God that is never spoken.
Rabbi Sameth says that the four-letter Hebrew name for God should actually be
read in reverse. When the four letters are turned around he says, the new
name makes the sounds of the Hebrew words for "he" and "she."
This makes God a dual-gendered deity. And after all, if as the myth says, we are made in God's image, and "male and female created he them," then clearly God is male and female even if Hebrew, as a gendered language, is incapable of expressing that directly.
Katherine Kurs, a religion scholar who teaches at New School University, who edited the amazing "Searching for Your Soul"
and who is an associate minister at West-Park (Presbyterian) Church in
Manhattan, was interviewed by LoHud.com, where this story first broke. And she captured it perfectly when she said: "This God is not a male or even a female but a male-female or
female-male, a God that holds tension and paradox, a full-spectrum
bandwidth God."
To look at it another traditionally mystic way, the divine Ayn Sof is boundless, boundaryless and thus includes all. This is not your grandfather's hairy thunderer in the sky.
Rabbi Irwin Kula wrote once that at a dinner party when challenged by an atheist about that rather punishing parental god, he said "I don't believe in the God you don't believe in either."
But a deity that transcends, includes and unifies? Beyond gender and personality? That's an expression of the divine worthy of prayer — and for me, prayer is simply singing love songs to the divine, filled with gratitude for creation. And while not a psalm, there are no finer words to express this for me than e.e cummings poem:
i thank You God for most this amazing day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees and a blue true dream of sky;and for everything wich is natural which is infinite which is yes
(i who have died am alive again today, and this is the sun's birthday;this is the birth day of life and love and wings:and of the gay great happening illimitably earth)
how should tasting touching hearing seeing breathing any-lifted from the no of all nothing-human merely being doubt unimaginable You?
(now the ears of my ears awake and now the eyes of my eyes are opened)
Well, actually, the photos that follow this are rather disturbing — it's a series of photos the Boston's Globe's blog called The Big Picture published showing the Chinese Army doing anti-terrorism exercises in preparation for the Olympic Games. These pictures scare me. (Though the photos on the Segway are both hilarious and terrifying at the same time.)
Mind you, it is indeed raining Chinese men. Remember, the one child policy and the preference for male children has led to a wild imbalance in the male/female ratio in China. So there are literally millions of men who will not find a wife. That's a lot of frustrated men in the armed forces — which to me seems like a recipe for worldwide military disaster.
Where is the international homosexual conspiracy to convert when you need it?
Now I have to admit it — I have in fact cavorted with a member of the Red Army. Well, the Red Army Ballet Troupe. One day walking down MacDougal Street in NYC I met the attractive eyes of Jin Xing, a choreographer, dancer and colonel in the Chinese Army's famous ballet corps (shown here at left pre-op). Later — after our own pas de deux — I learned that he had been in Japan earlier that year where he had a met a friend of mine there who it seemed no matter who I met when I lived in Tokyo, he had met the guy already. And it was still happening after I'd moved back to NYC! Well...in any case, Jin Xing went on to become rather famous as China's first MTF transexual. Personally, I think it was a pity. While many sex changes are for deep internal reasons, I believe this is not so different than what happens in Iran today, where gay men prefer to endure sex change operations (which is acceptable) rather than be identified as gay — and thus subject to death under Islamic law. I seem to have wandered far afield...
So getting back to the men on the field above, I suspect that very few of them would turn up at The Web Bar in New York should they find themselves magically transported here (or part of an invasion). But I have to say, that might well be a solution for many of China's population and social problems. And who knows, I might get a boyfriend out of it. Not.
On the 4th of July, the NY Times reported on the peculiar phenomenon of giant American flags at sporting events. On I95 there is a huge American flag that is tattered and brown that flies over a car dealership. It is so big the wind has to be pretty strong for it to wave. The Times quoted one manufacturer:
"'People go ape when they see it,' said Jim Alexander, a retired Coast
Guard commander who runs Superflag, the company that basically invented
the industry and once held the world record for the largest flag, which
temporarily hung on the Hoover Dam. It was 255 by 505 feet"
Go ape. That is a telling phrase. Lose one's humanity. Behave like an animal. It's no surprise many of these flags are displayed at football games or NASCAR events.
Don't get me wrong. I love this country. But I continue to be appalled at people who put more importance on the symbols and little to no importance on the ideals (or for that matter the Constitution or Bill of Rights).
All this seemed even weirder when I was visiting my old friend John in Providence the weekend they held their Pride Celebration. Knitting Nation, a group founded by a RISD prof, Liz Collins, brought together dozens of knitters to create the country's largest rainbow flag. John and I wandered down to Waterplace Park to watch the people at their machines go at it like a looking-glass version of a New England Mill.
Each colored segment was unrolled on a knoll and sewn to the others as the segments kept coming out of the machines. As this went on, different people read letters, web postings, articles and memoirs of what this symbol meant to them. Love it or hate it. Listening to all those voices was fascinating.
Of course, I don't think Jim Alexander and the NASCAR patriots would take too kindly to knowing that a queer flag was bigger than his. Then again, perhaps this is their misdirected and sublimated size queen thinking. I just want to know who's making all the flag poles.
