Another Queer Jewish Buddhist

Those Crazy Japanese TV Commercials...

This time it's Toyota, with a TV spot for a new car featuring an alluring 18 year old Israeli model:

The car is a hatchback — and the slogan in Japanese speaks to using your butt smartly, sort off. Or maybe they used this strategy because the car is a, uh, hybrid. Well, in any case, it has gotten the young model lots of attention. And more power to him. He has the kind of androgynous looks I've always loved. But then, I am a child of the 60s after all.

The Museum as a Temple, the Artist as a Bodhisattva

Today is the final day of The Artist is Present at MOMA. Yesterday I went with my friend Frank and arrived just moments before, as it turned out, our friend Jensen was to take his seat before the Artist. It felt like a moment of grace to be able to bear witness to him as he was received and totally seen, completely taken in, by Marina Abramovic in the performance piece that seemed to me to be more an encounter with holiness.

The charged square space filled with the emptiness of presence gave it a sense of the Holy of Holies. In her white dress, Abramovic seemed like the Shekhina herself. Or Quan Yin, Kannon, Avalokiteshvara, Bodhisattva of Compassion, bearing all the pain and heart of all those who entered her space.

And all this before I went upstairs to discover her other pieces. From the Memento Mori of the model below the skeleton, to passing between the Scylla and Charybdis of the two models in the doorway, to the crucifixion without nails that is Luminosity, it was an experience of the museum as a cathedral, a meditation space to participate in, rather than simply consume.

The press and discussions that I had heard all dwelled on the titillation of the event. Or perhaps I just did not bother to read deeper into the articles I saw. Because there have been few shows more powerful. And I am only sorry today is the last day, and that I didn't take advantage of the time earlier to enter that charged space myself and sit before the artist.

My friend Jensen, in the photo above, entered the space at 2:40 on Sunday afternoon. He had joined to line to do this at 1:30am the night before. He was in that seat for less than 15 minutes, but watching him go through all the emotions that arose it was clear each second there was experienced with the complete naked intimacy.

And all I can think of are the words of the Kadosh prayer:

Holy. Holy. Holy. All of creation is filled with the glory and presence of the Divine. (And in this case, the Divine Feminine)

NewFest 2010 — Go-Go Reject (With Cute Go-Go Boys) Should Be One of Your Selections

The LGBT Film Festival in New York has a program of shorts under the theme Singing, Dancing, Waiting. Who loves short shorts? I certainly do. Especially if there’s a film about cute go-go boys.

Okay, so this fun little film is about the heavy subjects of body image, body fascism and fantasy  in the gay male community. Except that it’s sweet, funny and filled with self knowledge and compassion. Not to mention hot go go dancing boys: See the trailer below.

Another film on the program is one I wrote about last year: EZ Heeb, from Ali Coterill, star and director of Fagette, which I loved when it screened at NewFest a couple of years back. It's pure queer Jewish fun. Buddhist I don't know. But queer Jewish? Yup.

There aren’t a lot of places you can see films like this with an appreciative audience, and a chance to meet the filmmakers, who are often there. Ali Coterill will be that's for sure.

The Singing, Dancing, Waiting program plays on Sunday June 5th at 2:30pm. You can buy your tickets at the LGBT Community Center on 13th Street, at the SVA Theater on 23rd Street, or online at NewFest.org.

Queer Shamanic Transcendental Cabaret: Taylor Mac at Joe's Pub.

Seeing Taylor Mac is a spiritual experience of deep joy. He is enchanting and erudite at the same time. I'm not going to write about the experience of this concert because I was fortunate enough to be there with Frank Grimaldi, whose writes about concerts he attends on his blog, Concert Log.  As an out and proud singer/songwriter who knows his stuff, he will capture it better than I could. What I will say is that as a fan of both David Bowie and Tiny Tim, the evening was profoundly beautiful, and very seriously silly. He read a Shakespeare sonnet and an excerpt from Lady Chatterly's Lover. And it all made supreme sense.

I came late to Taylor Mac, who has been on the downtown scene for at least a decade, but I saw The Lily's Revenge last November, and it is one of the top five theatrical experiences of my life. It's no surprise he won an Obie Award this week. After tonight, well, I'll go see him do anything, anywhere.

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.

Sunday Morning Short Film: EZ Heeb

If you saw the hilarious gender-twisting, smart-alecky Fagette, you'll recognize Katz — the performer in this video, and the mind behind the mischievously named Athens Boys Choir. Here though, after playing with gender roles and identity in Fagette, Katz is playing with Jewish identity, continuity, cultural connection and of course, gender. For me, it's a not as successful than Fagette, but then, how many gender-deviant, multi-media, spoken-word/homo-hop, roller-skate fantasy date music videos do you get to see? And out of that rather miniscule list, how many make you smile? So smile, and enjoy:

By the way, that bell boy sure is a cutie...

TV/Web Video for Europride: There's a little gay in everyone

This lovely little spot for queer pride celebrations in Zurich is produced by TBWA. Not that it's stereotypical in suggesting that gay men want to dress like showgirls...or that it's problematic for straight men who feel threatened by their own inner feminine side and don't know how to relate to it (or for gay men who have the same problem actually). I have some real problems with this spot. Except that I still just happen to like it. What do you think?

Seventeen days, making two weeks and three days of the Omer: Tiferet Squared

As the Scarecrow said to Dorothy, "Of course, some people do go both ways."

So here we are on the 17th Day: Tiferet of Tiferet, the heart of compassion. And once again, what better image to call up than Avalokiteshvara / Kuan Yin.

Well, I guess most Jews would disagree, given that this is, after all, a graven image!

But I am more concerned with the principle, the meaning, not the statue itself.

Previously I mentioned the fact that in the movement of Buddhism from India further east to China and Japan, the boddhisattva transformed from male to female.

Some see this as Compassion That Transcends Duality. And that feels like the right energy for this day in the Omer count.

This is a compassion that calls us out of our old patterns, to free us from the slavery of creating enemies. Nice work if you can get it. But as Gershwin wrote, you can get it if you try.

The Divine Feminine Meets 21st Century British Music Hall Rock & Roll Comedy

Easy now fuzzy little man peach, Old Greg is in the house. This is beyond description. If you've never seen The Might Boosh, or this particular episode, The Legend of Old Greg, you're in for a very wild ride that combines British music hall tradition comedy, rock & roll chaos comedy, the divine feminine and glitter rock plus funk and hallucinogenic insanity meeting the dark comedy of folktales. There, that was suitably incoherent. But I am not about to get into a scholarly deconstruction of something I love so much, it would only be vivisection, and Old Greg wouldn't like that at all. It's all here, and very very funny. I am only including parts 2-4. You can find it all on youtube of course, where you can also see a live version of the "hit single" from this episode, Love Games. Trust me, you want to see all three videos below. It will change your life forever.


Quick, make an assessment.

Queer Jubu Hero: Pieter-Dirk Uys — See Him In Darling! At The Jewish Film Festival

You have only two opportunities to see a film about the most politically subversive and influential drag queen in living history (if not all history). Don't miss it — "Darling! The Pieter-Dirk Uys Story" will be part of the 18th Annual Jewish Film Festival, at the Walter Reade Theater on January 29th. 

Uys is best known in the guise of his alter ego, Evita Bezuidenhout, the Most Famous White Woman in South Africa.  During the later apartheid years, as Evita, Uys appeared regularly on television and in clubs satirizing the evil of the apartheid government. When people who spoke out and challenged the government directly were imprisoned or worse, Uys managed to speak truth to power without finding himself disappeared. Nelson Mandela himself has said that Uys is one if his heroes.

Allow me a tangential discussion of the Mattachine Society here, which Harry Hay named in honor of medieval buskers who appeared in masks and whose performances were often satirical jabs at the ruling classes. Jesters if you will, who have always had the ability to couch the truth humorously, for the most part without penalty. Clearly Uys is a living example of this tradition. And while the horrors of apartheid are over, as Evita Bezuidenhout, Uys continues to perform in schools throughout South Africa, teaching children about how to protect themselves from AIDS, something the ANC government, with an HIV denialist health minister, has most strenuously not done.

This documentary film follows Uys as he goes from school to school. It gives something of his life story (we learn half way through, just as Uys only learned as an adult, that his mother was a Jewish refugee from Berlin).

In some ways, the making of this documentary is also an amazing story. The director, Julian Shaw, a native New Zealander, saw Uys perform on a trip to South Africa when he was 15 years old.  He went up to Uys after the performance and said he was coming back to make a documentary film about him. Uys was nice to him, but didn’t think he’d ever see the boy again. Except that two years later, Shaw showed up, camera in hand. For the next two years he shadowed him, capturing footage in schools, performances and at home. Another couple of years of editing later, and the finished film has won honors at documentary film festivals in Australia. 

Truth be told (though I am not in drag and you wouldn't want to see it) the film is far from perfect. But the story of Uys is compelling, as is the story of Shaw deciding to film him. I wish there had been more about Uys in the apartheid days, and more about Shaw’s life and his need to make this movie.

Quibbles. This film is a must see — and a mirror to what the gender clowns (this is meant very respectfully) in New York should aspire to.  The closest we have is the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, whose true charity work is masked by the drag clowning and whose serious challenge to organized religion is made more acceptable by the fact that men have feminized themselves.

There are all kinds of questions I have: does drag take away a man’s power and thus make it safe for him to speak the truth. Or is it the taking on the the feminine power that enables them to speak the truth? What do you think?

What’s even more interesting to me as an advertising copywriter is Uys appearance in a recent commercial for Nando’s, a fast food chain in South Africa. In this clever spot, Uys as Evita delivers a sell for a special meal deal, while setting up a very pointed political barb that comes as a stinger at the end of the spot. While such a jab at the current government (Uys is an equal opportunity satirist) is no surprise coming from Evita, I am amazed that the advertiser was willing to chance government disapproval. Certainly no advertiser in the U.S. would make such an obviously negative statement about either the Democrats or Republicans in a commercial. The spot runs below: