Another Queer Jewish Buddhist

Queering the Icon: Marilyn Monroe, Dean's Scotch and Yasumasa Morimura

The image of Marilyn Monroe standing above the subway grate as a gust a air blows her dress up high is an American cultural icon of the 20th Century. Nicholas Roeg's film, Insignificance, opens with the the filming of this famous scene in The Seven Year Itch re-imagined from the POV of the film crew — and the man under the grating who turned on the fan. Roeg's film, far from camp, is among other things a meditation on the prison of sexism: my favorite scene in that film is when Monroe, with the aid of toys bought at F.A.O Schwarz, explains the theory of relativity to its author, Albert Einstein.

In the ad below, this image is appropriated once again, in the service of selling Dean's Scotch:

Created by a team at Scholz & Friends NRW in Germany, their explanation, at Adsoftheworld.com notes that:

"Dean’s Whisky is especially mild. Which is why it appeals not only to rugged guys. The advertisement’s unusually humorous, feminine look and feel are designed to arouse the interest of a new target group and raise awareness of Dean’s Whisky above and beyond its loyal customer base."

Arouse the interest? Who is this new target base? Is this ad running at gay magazines in Germany? In women's fashion magazines? Inquiring minds want to know.

Scotch is one of the few hard liquors that retains an aura of masculine privilege. This might have the effect of undermining their image with the base customer. This isn't to say that I don't like the ad. I think it's hilarious and playful. The image of a man in a regimental kilt uniform is hardly fey. There is every possibility that the core consumer for this product is secure enough so that if they saw this ad they'd laugh. Then again, because this is a "mild" Scotch, it might not have very much of a base with the traditional Scotch drinker, so that an effort like this won't hurt.

I wonder what Marilyn would make of it though. Or what she'd make of the photographs of Japanese artist Yasumasa Morimura. I first saw an exhibit of his self portraits at the Saatchi Gallery in London: images of the artist in drag as Marilyn, Audrey Hepburn, Garbo, Liza Minelli. You can see the photos on the gallery site, where the question is asked:

"Morimura is more than just art's most famous drag queen. Dealing with issues of cultural and sexual appropriation he is constantly exploring ideas of image consumption, identity and desire: Can Brigitte Bardot be as innocently flirtatious with angular Japanese features? Would Marilyn Monroe be as sexy if she was Japanese - and a man?"

Having lived in Japan where I both enjoyed and endured drag acts where these Western film icons were portrayed by Japanese men, I was less interested in the questions posed above than the questions around Japanese identity and the effect of Hollywood and American cultural dominance on the traditional Japanese sense of beauty. I am curious about what the reaction to images is in the debate/discussion about the feminization of Asian men in the West within the Asian and gay Asian communities.

Within the discussion of constructed femininity, Morimura throws a light on the minstrelsy of Marilyn; how her image was just as much a creation out of the fantasies of men as Thomas D. Rice's blackface Jumpin' Jim Crow was a creation out of the fantasies of white men in the 19th Century of black men. 

Good grief, I hope to God I am not turning into a queer theorist. Ewww.

China, Sex & Censorship: Celebrating Gay Men in Beijing, Dealing with Discrimination in Ulaanbaatar

The big China story this week is Google blowing the whistle on cyberspying and censorship. This is of personal interest to me because I chat online with a gay Chinese man in Chengdu every week, and there are subjects he doesn’t know about, and things he doesn’t have access to.

Once I found myself cutting and pasting the sentences from a censored story into the chat window so he would know what I was writing about. But of course, this was risky business and he made it clear he didn’t want me to do that in the future — our conversation is simply about gay life in the US, since in Chengdu it isn’t anywhere near as open as it seems to be in Beijing, where this week, what is billed as an officially sanctioned male beauty pageant (you can see a video of these shirtless young men here). I suspect my friend in Chengdu can't get to this video link however.

Late Breaking Development That Should Be No Surprise: Police Shut Down The Pageant — Full Story Here.

That's a sea change from just a few years back when homosexuality was a criminal offense. Bu then, in a country where a one child policy and the preference for male children has led to a male/female ratio that makes it hard for a straight guy to find a wife, taking the pressure off gay men from marrying as cover just might help a little. In fact, it also helps take some pressure off the regime, since a country with several million frustrated young men has got to feel like a powder keg no matter who is in power.

I have no idea what's behind the ruling Communist Party easing up on things in Beijing, but it's still not easy if you're in the provinces. And I’m not just talking Chengdu.

Mongolia for example. If you're in NYC this month, stop by the LGBT Center on 13th Street — in the lobby there is an amazing exhibit documenting the lives of LGBT Mongolians living in the capital city of Ulaanbaatar.

Beyond the Blue Sky, created and produced by Brandt Miller, includes amazing portrait photography by Miller and Mareike Günsche and a film by Miller and Sean Devaney.

The photographs are intense and dramatic. While some of the men in these photos are shirtless, each of the subjects’ faces covered by a khadag — a ceremonial scarf made of a sacred blue cloth representing the eternal sky and used at funerals to wrap the head of the deceased.

Each photo is accompanied with an oral history — a life story of each subject, transcribed by Miller — that captures the universal longing all lgbt people feel, that all people feel: the need for love and intimacy that is not merely recognized, but celebrated.

Miller, who was in Mongolia on a Fulbright Fellowship, was a co-founder of the first LGBT Center in Ulaanbaatar.

The exhibit will be on view at the NYC LGBT Center on 13^th Street through April. If you go there regularly as I do, take some time to stop and see it all. If you don’t go to the Center, consider stopping in. There are so many groups that meet there, and social services provided, it can be easy to overlook the fact that the Center is indeed a central arts resource for the community too.

Here is a video interview with Miller, followed by the video documentary made with Sean Devaney:

 

'Behind the Blue Sky' - Short film from Ual Da on Vimeo.

'Beyond the Blue Sky' Interview with Brandt Miller from Ual Da on Vimeo.

How hot are Bertolli Oven Baked Meals? When two sexy men kiss, it's really hot.

Yep, in this TV commercial for Bertolli (running exclusively on Logo) there's a sexy kiss planted on the cheek of the "hero" of the spot. The fantasy sequence is fun, and the reality our hero comes back to is even better. Three cheers for Bertolli and Unilever. I know whose pasta I'm purchasing.

Cute boys and condoms: you always remember your first...

This cute campaign running in France for HIV prevention and condom usage features individual men and women with the headline: "The condom protects against AIDS" followed by that person's name, and how many condoms he or she has used so far. This one has a very happy faced Kevin, who has just used his first.

Even better, there's another ad in the campaign that features an older man, Louis, who has used more than 14,100 condoms. That's 30 years of sex every day. Maybe he just looks old for 46 because he has been so busy.

Kudos to France's FullSIX agency, which can run an add like this without even the slightest hint of judgment and all the celebratory pleasure a sexual connection is capable of bringing. 

By the way, I've always had a think for guys named Kevin. Probably because I grew up in an Irish Catholic neighborhood.

Sexy men in underwear: I'm only getting my Roxford's off

In good old-fashioned balbriggan! Named for a town in Ireland, balbriggan is a knitted unbleached cotton fabric used for underwear. Men's "Long-Johns" became known as Balbriggans because they were made at the 19th-century Smith's Stocking Mill, located in that town. Hooray for the flap in the back!

This lovely little ad for Roxford underwear appeared in the December 1908 issue of Cosmopolitan Magazine. And is an early example of direct marketing — offering a "little book" on Roxford Underwear for Men and Boys. "It is well worth sending for." Everything you need to know about the vast improvement in masculine undergarments.

I love that the man in this ad just exudes a butch masculinity — carrying two dumbbells with ease in one hand. I just want to know who sent off for this promotional book/catalog. And whether I can find a copy on e-Bay.

"I hear you talking when Im on the street,
Your mouth don't move but I can hear you speak.
Whats the matter with the boy?
He don't come around no more,
Is he checking out for sure?
Is he gonna close the door on me?

And I only get my rocks off while Im dreaming,
I only get my rocks off while Im sleeping."
                                    -The Rolling Stones, Rocks Off

William "Wolf" Agress, who would have been 54 today...

Bill was my first serious relationship, when I was in college. We met at a meeting of Gay Youth — he started coming as a regular when I was president in 1971. He was aggressively snobbish about language and intelligence and used it as a defense since he was hit on by lots of guys of all ages. It made him hard to get to know. In fact, I didn't even like him when we first met. And he was never easy. But he was an original — and he was always an activist. I loved him a lot. And I miss him to this day.

When we first began our relationship, he was still smooth and free of chest hair. And he knew it was a look I preferred, this being the androgynous '70s. He asked me once, "Will you still love me when I'm hairy?" I told him yes, and I did. Even when he grew a wild beard. His wild heart took him to traveling the country — he lit out for the territories. We were each other's first — and the memories I share of him to this day with my friend Marion, who was there, leaves us both laughing and crying at the same time.

At his memorial service I was weeping uncontrollably — and then the rabbi came out to speak of him. The rabbi was cute, and I turned to Bill's brother and said, with a moment of lightness in the grief, "Bill would have said this rabbi was cute." His brother said, "He did, he me the rabbi before he died, and that's just the first thing he said to the rabbi — 'you're really cute.'" And then we laughed and cried at the same time.

Bill was one of the first to be diagnosed with HIV, and he was a founding member of the PWA coalition. He wrote for their magazine — articles like "THE CONDOM CONNOISSEUR"  — and he hosted their cable TV show. 

If you're a regular reader, you will know I've written about the Tupelo tree in the Ramble's Tupelo Meadow in Central Park. Bill and I used to climb that tree together. And when I took this photo out to scan it, underneath it I found a poem written for Wolf (he was always Bill to me even though he changed his name to Wolf, which was in fact the English translation of his Hebrew name, Z'ev) by Eric Thorndale, one of the original members of GAA who we were friends with and worked with as part of GAA's AgitProp committee. Eric, like me, was interested in medieval and renaissance English literature. The difference is that he regularly wrote poems in the style of the period. The poem below, that he wrote for Bill, mentions the Tupelo tree in the first line.

For Sweet William:

Thou comely Swain    by Trysting Tree,
I sought in Words    a looking Glass
That long undimm'd    might shine of thee
But as I laid me    on the Grass
And watch'd the lighted Morning shine,
I thought how Words    might wane and pass,
Which Thought    the while was woeful Tine.

What Words need I    when all's behight?
I'd bed in Burrs    could I but cleave
To thee    in blazing Bliss unstight —
How would that Joy     me speechless leave

How would my leaping Heart be blithe
When wordless    in thine Arms I writhe!

Pretty boys and watersports...Dasani advertising from Argentina and water politics

The headline/slogan for this campaign for Dasani is Move Your Water. Clearly something is lost in translation — this must be good in Spanish, because in English the connotation is urination. And while some might consider the thought of watersports with the handsome fellow in this ad to be appealing, I don't think this is what Coca Cola had in mind.

Dasani, by the way, has got to be one of my least favorite water products out there. It's bad enough that we've lost public drinking fountains so that we have to pay to drink what used to be free — and we mess up the environment after drinking it. Even before actually. The fuel cost of shipping this water, the use of water to clean the plastic bottles before they are used, and then the cost to the environment in landfill is appalling. And all this for water that has been completely denatured. Completely stripped of the trace minerals you want.

Oh, it's true, public water sources now are frightening when you consider how much in the way of pharmaceutical runoff is coming out of our faucets. Who needs an anti-depressant? Have a glass of water.

The New York Times has been reporting recently on the despoiling of water sources in the U.S. It's an important story: "research shows that an estimated one in 10 Americans have been exposed to drinking water that contains dangerous chemicals or fails to meet a federal health benchmark in other ways. Those exposures include carcinogens in the tap water of major American cities and unsafe chemicals in drinking-water wells."

But industry gets a double bonus with this issue — they destroy our water and use it without paying for clean-up, and then they sell us water since we can't drink what they've messed up. Yup. Of course, some of the spring waters come from sources that are just as exposed to pollutants like agricultural pesticide runoff. So if you think you're doing better when you pay for water, many times you're not. The Environmental Working Group published a study last year showing that "10 popular brands of bottled water, purchased from grocery stores and other retailers in 9 states and the District of Columbia, contained 38 chemical pollutants altogether, with an average of 8 contaminants in each brand." And most of the plastic bottles contains PCBs, a known carcinogen that is released into the water when the temperature of the plastic rises or falls below a certain level. 

Even more amazing was the information that some of the bottled water brands were simply tap water: from public water sources you have access to for free. 

Mind you, there are some bottled waters out there that come in PCB free bottles (of course most of those bottles are glass, but not all). And some bottled waters are actually a good source of important minerals, helping to restore the pH balance of the body. But there aren't many of these, and of course, caveat emptor.

Yup. Ya gotta love the free-market economy and the rape of the environment brought to us by the last 8 years of the MBA President.

Really, you didn't think I was just gonna put up an ad with a sexy Argentine guy without getting on my soap box? Now excuse me, but I think I'll head downtown to Escuelita...

Sexy men in print advertising: who says only women are exploited?

Found the ad below on a site of neat photos put together a self described "gay bloke in Haringey." The ad ran earlier this year, even though the guy looks like he's out of a porno movie from the '80s. Not saying I don't think he's handsome — he is. Maybe it's just the cheesy ad that makes the whole thing feel like it's from another era, and he just suffers from being in it. Whaddaya think?

Sunday Morning Cartoon & Music Vid: Boy Meets Boy

This little gem from Korea in two parts features a little mystery of the relationship presented in part one that is resolved in part two. But I'll bet you've never seen a film with a singing fairy (live action) in a cartoon sequence gives street cruising advise to teen aged boys. Between this and Antique Bakery, I'd have to say South Korea is starting to give Taiwan a run for its money on good gay film!

Sunday Morning Music Video: Fagette

Saw this delightful pansexual romp as part of the short musical films at NewFest this last June. The singer has a boyish charm that reminds me of Ty Greenstein from Girlyman (my boygirl crush, go figure). Enjoy: