Another Queer Jewish Buddhist

Comrades: The Gay Chinese Film Festival in NYC this Weekend

One of the finest films on the subject of sexuality and oppression will be shown at the opening of the Chinese LGBT Film Festival, Friday at the LGBT Center in NYC. East Palace West Palace ranks up there with Genet's The Balcony as an examination of how sex, identity and power relationships are expressed not only in personal relationships but in polities. And it is an examination of how the state becomes a presence in the bedroom, and in the fantasies, of its citizens.

The story is simple: a policeman arrests and interogates a man who was cruising in one of Beijing's most notoriously busy public toilets. What happens is anything but simple and delivers an emotionally searing experience. The really amazing thing is that it got past the Chinese censors because they didn't understand how politically subversive the film is.

However, if you tend to like action films, East Palace West Palace is not for you. Like many foreign films, it moves slowly, developing a powerful emotional punch quietly. This is not the American was of film making, and for that reason, it didn't really find an audience when it had its theatrical release in NYC ten years ago.

This is a rare chance to see it again, in a room filled with Chinese gay men (be still my heart) who will no doubt be eager to talk about it afterwards with an intelligence and insight you won't have access to if you watch it at home on DVD alone.

I am only sorry to say that I am out of town this weekend, or I would be there myself to see the film again, and to enjoy the fantasy of finding a Chinese husband (you can apply here by emailing me anyway!).   

Gender-Free Condom Advertising & Safe Oral Sex

Rare to see condom advertising without the essential heterosexual couple looking at each other longingly. At lest in the U.S. This campaign (from Euro RSCG courtesy of adsoftheworld) from Germany features three print ads for a flavored condom. I can't find any info about the company that makes these other than a mention that in another campaign their slogan was "Get there later."  Well, this lovely ribbed chocolate bar suggests another old slogan to me: melts in your mouth, not in your hands.

Sunday Morning Cartoon: If You Were Gay

Avenue Q — the Broadway musical — has inspired a large number of animators and mash-up artists to create short films taking songs from the show and matching them to animation. One of the more popular songs to get this treatment is "If You Were Gay," a sweet song of sung by a straight character to his best friend and room mate, a closeted gay character. One of the more recent versions on YouTube features original animation:

But just as interesting are the mash ups taken from Japanese yayoi anime here, here and perhaps most brilliantly, here. There are versions edited to other films, like Austin Powers, and version edited to episodes of SpongeBob. Personally, I would love to see this mashed up with bits and pieces of old Laurel and Hardy films. Let me know if you find any that you think are particularly brilliant.

Homophobia & Advertising: Bob Garfield's Column

Ad Age columnist Bob Garfield sent an open letter in his column to the CEO of one of the top agency holding companies, accusing the network of homophobia in several campaigns. He wrote:

"Stop the dehumanizing stereotypes. Stop the jokey violence. There is no place in advertising for cruelty. Pull the campaign. Do it now."

Strong language. And I have to say, the Snickers campaign, which was roundly pilloried when it broke during the Super Bowl (a ritual of homo erotic masculinity that requires homophobic expression to distract us from the obvious), continues to be abhorrent. It glorifies homophobic violence, and Garfield says of the newest addition to the campaign that:

"your commercial is just a cartoonish recapitulation of {Matthew Shepard's] brutal murder"

Strong words. It is heartening to see heterosexual columnists take offense and speak up. Of course, to pin this on the CEO of the holding company seems a little too much. The CEO of the offending agencies? Sure. They are responsible. And bringing to the attention of the holding company isn't a bad thing. Pressure from the outside to an agency is one thing. Pressure from the holding company — that's serious.

Perhaps even more fascinating are the reader comments — there are lots. If you're interested in reading real opinions from people in the ad biz on the subject of homophobia in media, this is a goldmine of information.

But let's stop for a minute to analyze just what is going on in this new Snicker's spot. First we see a blond man with soft features speed walking down a suburban street. The camera cuts to a rear view and rests for a few precious TV seconds on his wiggling butt.

Next, a vehicle with Mr. T. crashes through a house and follows the walker while Mr. T harangues him for being a "disgrace to the man race." Visually we see the machine gun from the POV of the shooter (very video game, because of course this is targeted at insecure teen boys and young men who need to be reassured about their masculinity — after all, there is nothing more masculine than playing with a computer right?) pointed directly at aforesaid butt.

Uhhhh, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. But in this case? Not. Just more subconscious homosexual desire expressed in violence.

But this is where Garfield is dead on the money — the spot makes a violent response to inner desires that are unacceptable, acceptable. And that's unacceptable. One commenter points out that regardless of the agency, the clients bought off on this. So as much as I may love chocolate, Mars doesn't get any of my money. And I'm sure GLAAD will consider some action around this:

Yep, that's pretty damn bad. So while the holding company Mr. Garfield accuses does in fact treat its gay employees very well, this is seriously uncool. There are different opinions in the business classically about our influence.

One of my heroes, Bill Bernbach, one said:

"All of us who professionally use the mass media are the shapers of society. We can vulgarize that society. We can brutalize it. Or we can help lift it onto a higher level."

David Ogilvy, who believed that humor in advertising was a mistake, said:

"Advertising reflects the mores of society, but it does not influence them."

The truth lies somewhere in between. Nevertheless, I hold with Bernbach.

 

Politics, Religion and Mass Hysteria: A True Masterpiece of Cinema, Ken Russell’s The Devils.

Religion has been used to generate mass hysteria for political ends for thousands of years now. But there have been few films that show the process so clearly. Ken Russell’s film, The Devils is the movie about EVERYTHING: the spirituality and lust in love; the madness and transcendence of sexual repression; using the threat of an imagined enemy to create state sponsored terror; justifying the use of torture to extract forced confession…. Watching this movie one can imagine the twisted and tortured mind of Roy Cohn while watching Vanessa Redgrave suffer the madness of desires that she demonizes and projects onto others. Not to mention the hypocrisy of Ted Haggard, Larry Craig and so on and so on.

This is a truly important movie. And it is simply criminal that it isn’t available on DVD. The VHS tape version is poor quality, and it has been cut. However there is a petition to Warner Home Video. And if you’ve seen this film and want to make sure others can, please sign the petition. If you’ve haven’t seen the film, read what others have to say about it, and then sign the petition.

Male Pornographic Advertising in Singapore?

Ogilvy & Mather in Singapore has created a campaign for Lorgan’s — a furniture store specializing in retro styles from the last century: 1930s through 70s. The store’s website is great fun, and I love love love their Sputnik lamp (we had one over our dining room table around 1965! But it’s the ad campaign — and Singapore — that needs discussion. Visually they show all the goods Lorgan’s sells, and all the ads focus on the 60s. A time that has a reputation for free love. That was really the 70s in the U.S. but let’s not quibble. The people in the ads aren’t there — as in Japanese pornography the shapes are missing, but the empty space they leave leaves little to the imagination. You can see the others, which are all heterosexual couplings (and threesomes) at Adsoftheworld.

What interests me though is the graphic (in both senses of the word) representation of man-on-man action in the ad above. Singapore is not exactly known as a permissive society. While not as conservative as the Islamic law in Malaysia, Singapore is hardly Thailand. Homosexual acts are still illegal there (though rarely prosecuted). And there are public decency laws. I would hazard a guess that certainly the ad above violates section 377 of the penal code, which states:

Any male person who, in public or private, commits, or abets the commission of, or procures or attempts to procure the commission by any male person of, any act of gross indecency with another male person, shall be punished with imprisonment for a term which may extend to 2 years.

On top of that, Singapore has rather harsh laws around the possession of pornography. Remember, this is the city/state that enforced a sentence of caning for a teen aged boy, Michael Fay, just a few years ago for graffiti painting.

So the question is, are these ads really running or is this just spec work posted to the adsoftheworld site to garner attention for O&M Singapore? This is not an unknown strategy for an agency that wishes to up their creative reputation. However, as we saw at Cannes last month, entering work for a client that never ran (or for that matter that the client never saw) can get you in a lot of trouble. In the credits for the ad, they say it was published in April. Is there anyone in Singapore who can verify this?

To rephrase Rosser Reeves: Anybody can be creative, but can you sell it to the client. And then, of course, does it sell to consumers? That’s why I don’t like to see lots of public service spec work in portfolios. If you can’t do a compelling ad for starving children you don’t belong in the business. The real question is, can you do a compelling ad for Tide?

I hope O&M did the Lorgan’s site. It was terrific. I want a Sputnik lamp again!!! I won't say what I might want in any of the print ads however. Of course, my previous post about Chinese army ballet dancers might give you an idea.

It's raining men. Chinese men. Hallelujah.

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.

The Divine Androgyne: Sex and Gender on the Gay Brain and the BBC

In many spiritual traditions, the inner union of male and female is one of the ways of knowing the Divine. Jung wrote about this union as a way towards psychological wholeness. For men this does not mean becoming feminized (which is a major fear in the gynophobic American culture) but integrating qualities we label masculine and feminine, such as logic and intuition.

As a gay man with an interest in both spirituality and Jungian psychology this subject has always interested me. In some cultures queer people are said to embody both male and female qualities in a way that brings them closer to the world of spirit. Of course, in our monotheistic culture, born of the Israelite religion that denied the Divine Feminine (Asherah/Shekhina)even while it was worshiped in the Temple, queer people are a threat — thus the spiritual world we are said to connect with is demonic.

In the world of brain science, Time magazine reported recently that Swedish scientists have concluded from brain scans of 90 gay and straight men and women  that “the size of the two symmetrical halves of the brains of gay men more closely resembled those of straight women than they did straight men.”

While I have no idea of the size of my brain I discovered yesterday that the BBC web site that, along with a number of other tests on their site they offer one called Your Sex I.D. It takes about 35 minutes to complete on line. And based on your responses they can tell you where your brain fits on the male/female continuum. Much to my surprise, I was exactly in the middle. Except I can’t say that I am enjoying the spiritual benefits of inner union. The test itself was fascinating though, and I’d be curious to see how large numbers of gay men do on it.

It is true that I find myself attracted to one of the Buddhist saints who is depicted as both male and female (though not at the same time!). Avalokiteshvara is depicted as a young man in India and Nepal — but as Buddhism moved east, in China and Japan he became a she, and is known as Kuan Yin or Kannon.

And of course, in Kabbalistic Judaism, Adam Kadmon, the original created human was an androgyne — based on the phrase in Bereshit translated as “male and female created [he] them.” Diagrams of this first human superimpose the sephirot over the body — sephirot that include Yesod, often connected to the male genitalia, and Malchut, connected to the female genitalia. However this is merely metaphoric externalization of what is really about an inner state.

Brain scientists have investigated how meditation affects communication between the left and right hemispheres.

A research team investigating the effects of meditation on the brain with the collaboration of the Dalai Llama, showed that meditators had a significant increase in activation in the left pre-frontal regions of their brain, associated with a reduction in the amount of anxiety they reported.

So why aren’t gay men more like the Buddha? I would argue that many gay men in fact are — from those who volunteer their time at places like God’s Love We Deliver to those who become church choir directors we bring our gifts of creativity and compassion to society in many ways. However as a minority that has been demonized, in a culture where a man who exhibits qualities that are ascribed to women is denigrated, there is no question that many of us take on the negatives of both genders — an aggressive bitchiness for example, used as a defense.

I pray for a world where all people, male - female - intersexed - trans - are not merely free to develop their gifts, but a world where those gifts are welcomed and nurtured. Keyn Yehi Ratzon. So may it be.

Size Queens And Patriots

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.

Urinal Advertising & Male Insecurity

A search of advertising that either shows men at urinals checking each other out, or is site specific — and the site we're talking about is a urinal where the advertising that runs there speaks to male insecurity — is rather amazing. There's just lots of ads that use male insecurity about penis size. Comedy Central is one example of site specific work that pokes fun at size insecurity. While Funk sunglasses advertising is an one of many examples of a print ad that shows two men standing at a urinal with one clearly checking out the other's equipment — and making an editorial comment about size.

Yes, men are sensitive about dick size. And advertisers taking advantage of this doesn't merely extend (pardon me) to pumps and Smiling Bob (who lost his smile when the company that made Enzyte was ordered to pay millions to consumers for fraudulent claims). Even Sony got in the act, with their uncomfortably funny and justifiably famous PSP TV spot.

Now the 3M has entered the competition, with the site specific ads seen below that offer a truly terrific product demonstration while at the same time encouraging the target, who is standing at a urinal, to let his eyes wander to the urinal next to him. The product is a privacy guard for computer display screens that completely masks what is on screen from anyone who isn't looking at it head (ahem) on.

Yes, men are very sensitive indeed. Of course what a man is sensitive about won't be protected by this product. Nevertheless, the whiz-kids at Cozum the agency in Istanbul that's responsible for this work, has created work that demands to be looked at in a place where men studiously appear to be looking away. And that deserves attention indeed.