posted
Thanks for replying so swiftly, Ganesh. I don't like talking about films I haven't seen, but I was commenting more on your response to it than the movie itself, so I hope to get back to you in turn very soon. I am going to Vienna in an hr (!)
Actually I corrected my request to "can we play Kovacs Mountain". A telling slip? I think not. However, this was at 11pm and Modge then went away, and stayed up watching TV until 3am, so perhaps it was unwise.
posted
It's okay, Kovacs, I wasn't seriously claiming you're into sleepy bumsex.
(Although it's fiiine if you are.)
I await your response - although I don't think seeing the film is especially vital to unpacking your previous comments. As you say, you've speculated more on my motivations than on Brokeback Mountain itself.
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quote:Originally posted by Ganesh: Although much has been made of the hott sex scene, I actually found myself more affected by the urgency and hunger of the 'four years later' moment. For me, that was the film's emotional pivot, and it puzzled me slightly when some of my fellow cinema-goers laughed at Alma's reaction. While Ennis's penchant for anal sex is clearly something of an ongoing pain in the arse (ho ho) for her, witnessing the cowboy clinch is the point at which Alma truly glimpses the lie at the heart of her marriage. Or rather, the impossible compromise.
Anyone here seen it? I'm particularly interested in what the hets thought.
Yes I've seen it. I enjoyed it much to my surprise, my prefered movie genre usually comprising of americans with guns making supposedly witty asides to each other. Firstly the suppose gay hott sex scene. I must have blinked or something, I didn't see anything that came close to a sex scene, all there was were a couple of close ups of flys being opened and a position that suggested anal sex was about to take place before the camera cut away to the outside of the tent. Also I think there should have been more build up to this moment and some of the later bits of the film cut. Even tho you do see the 2 starting to open up to each other, I still don't think Jack would have taken the risk at that point, however I am thinking about this from a heterosexual female point of view.
I agree the passion wasn't really shown until the kissing scene 4 years later, who on here couldn't empathise with the "I just can't wait any longer" urgency. Watching that turned me on.
As for Alma seeing them, people in the cinema I was in laughed as well, I admit I did too and I remember thinking at the time - why the hell am I laughing? To be honest I still don't know. If you care to ask any questions to try and get to the root of it ask away but 5 days later I still dont know. Maybe for others it was the embaressment of watching 2 men kiss like that and they could let it out until that moment for fear of un-PCness? However I don't think that applies to me as I'm quite happy to watch 2 men snog without issue as I frequent places such as GAY. Or maybe that's as bad as saying I don't hate blacks I have a friend that is black in response to a racist commment. I also remember thinking why the hell are they so afraid of coming out, and kept having to remind myself this was America 40 years ago and not London 2005.
Anyway, some very rambling thoughts on the matter.
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quote:Originally posted by Gemini: Firstly the suppose gay hott sex scene. I must have blinked or something, I didn't see anything that came close to a sex scene, all there was were a couple of close ups of flys being opened and a position that suggested anal sex was about to take place before the camera cut away to the outside of the tent.
Yeah, it's like 15 seconds or thereabouts. From what I read on my cultural poaching trips, the much-discussed 'ick factor' tends to be more in the imagination of those (mostly heterosexual-identifying men) who haven't seen the film. Onscreen, it's quicker - and there's less prick - than one's BCG test.
quote:Also I think there should have been more build up to this moment and some of the later bits of the film cut. Even tho you do see the 2 starting to open up to each other, I still don't think Jack would have taken the risk at that point
I take your point, but I don't think it stretches credulity much that he did. I'm certainly aware of situations where gay men, past and present, have taken enormous risks in making advances to 'trade' which could result in a sound bludgeoning (and not in a good way). Perhaps he thought the two-in-a-tent night was his one chance to seize the moment? And the age-old presence of alcohol as a factor meant they could theoretically do the "I was sooo drunk last night" thing the following day, if they hadn't wanted to repeat the encounter.
quote:I agree the passion wasn't really shown until the kissing scene 4 years later, who on here couldn't empathise with the "I just can't wait any longer" urgency. Watching that turned me on.
Me too, but probably more in a meltyquivery way than in a crotchstiffy way. Having done the long-distance relationship thang, I could empathise.
quote:As for Alma seeing them, people in the cinema I was in laughed as well, I admit I did too and I remember thinking at the time - why the hell am I laughing? To be honest I still don't know. If you care to ask any questions to try and get to the root of it ask away but 5 days later I still dont know. Maybe for others it was the embaressment of watching 2 men kiss like that and they could let it out until that moment for fear of un-PCness? However I don't think that applies to me as I'm quite happy to watch 2 men snog without issue as I frequent places such as GAY. Or maybe that's as bad as saying I don't hate blacks I have a friend that is black in response to a racist commment.
I don't think so. In fairness, since writing my review, I've talked to a few people who laughed at that point and, generally speaking, I think it genuinely is an expression of shock rather than a Nelson Munce-ish "ha-ha, your husband's a gayer!" moment.
quote:I also remember thinking why the hell are they so afraid of coming out, and kept having to remind myself this was America 40 years ago and not London 2005.
I think it wasn't just time and place but also background. You get a little more backstory on this in Proulx's short story (from which it's very faithfully taken). Both men have had very hard lives from an early age, with fathers who (perhaps sensed and) discouraged any hint of 'softness' in their sons - Jack's by physical abuse and Ennis's by showing him the murdered cowboy.
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quote:Originally posted by Ganesh: In fairness, since writing my review, I've talked to a few people who laughed at that point and, generally speaking, I think it genuinely is an expression of shock [/QB]
Which just really goes to show how good the film is at drawing you in and making you care and feel about the characters as that type of laughter would happen in real life as well.
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H1ppychick
We all prisoners, chickee-baby. We all locked in.
posted
Just got in from seeing this and I thought it was a beautiful film. I went and saw it with a friend who is always really impatient to leave a movie as soon as the credits start to roll so I was dragged out of the auditorium into the glaring light of the foyer with tears streaming down my face, and both nose and mascara running.
I don't want to discuss the movie in detail at this point since it's all still a bit close to me, but I wanted to ask if anyone knows if it's true that the studio aren't pushing Jake Gyllenhaal for any gongs e.g. Oscars for this movie, since they don't want to dilute the best actor votes for Heath Ledger and they don't want to rank Jake's part as that of a supporting actor? That seems so unjust - whilst both actors were terrific, Heath Ledger mainly had to be a wooden block with occasional outbursts of passion of one or other form, whereas I felt Jake Gyllenhaal had to do more, you know, actual acting.
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posted
Hadn't heard that rumour, H1ppychick. I think all the lead performances were extremely strong. Heath Ledger had a lot less dialogue to work with, though, and had to communicate the big emotional stuff non-verbally. I'd like to see both male leads up for gongs, and Michelle Williams too.
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H1ppychick
We all prisoners, chickee-baby. We all locked in.
posted
Yeah, I don't know where I picked that up from, it may have been something to do with Golden Globe nominations? Not sure. Perhaps you're right about Heath Ledger, I can't make up my mind. He absolutely nails the final act, hence the mascara-streaming early doors on my part.
By the way, the friend that I went with, who is a straight man, referred to the gay sex scene as "explicit" when we discussed the movie on the way home - perhaps there's something in what you say about homonervous men imagineering more content than was actually present in the film.
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posted
I guess it's 'explicit' in that it's signally about one man sticking his cock up another's arse. The fact that cocks and arses are never shown - there's not a great deal of nudity period - may not defuse its 'explicitness' for some people.
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quote:Originally posted by vikram: there are a few semi-positive christian reviews.
Yeah, that one's fairly reasonable - although I don't agree that "it's the movie's greatest weakness that it never fully develops the wives' characters, and they're often relegated to clichés". I thought Brokeback Mountain did a pretty good job of avoiding cliches, and even those female characters with a relatively short screen time (Cassie, Alma Junior, Ma Twist) came across as people rather than ciphers.
It's interesting also that the point is made, at the start of that review, that the three-star rating "is only in reference to the quality of the filmmaking, the acting, the cinematography, etc. It is not a "recommendation" to see the film, nor is it a rating of the "moral acceptability" of the subject matter". One wonders whether they make this stipulation before reviewing every film containing 'morally-dubious' material (such as people killing people, heterosexual infidelity, deceit, etc.) or whether it's the same-sex element that merits it, in this case.
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quote:Originally posted by Gemini: As for Alma seeing them, people in the cinema I was in laughed as well, I admit I did too and I remember thinking at the time - why the hell am I laughing?
I saw Brokeback Mountain again last night, this time in the Convent Garden Odeon, with a much more visibly gay audience - and, if anything, they laughed more at that point. It's interesting, though, that as the door closes but the camera stays on Alma and it becomes clear how devastated she is, the laughter quickly dies. Perhaps the switching of camera viewpoints (outside the house with Jack and Ennis to interior shot with Alma) it was Lee's intention to manipulate audience sympathies? If so, it works incredibly well.
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quote:Originally posted by Ganesh: Why is it like really funny to invent ridiculous, mocking fantasies about the home lives of internet fascists and fundamentalist Christians?
It seems about as weak a strategy as those groups laughing about their misconceived notions of gay lifestyle.
I'm not sure that it is a) "like really funny" or b) "a strategy" for me to take the piss. It's me taking the piss.
a) Taking the piss is meant to be funny. Surely something is wrong if you're not sure about the connection between "me taking the piss" and "funny".
b) As well as being funny, taking the piss is often meant to expose and in some way attack the target.
You are not dumb or innocent enough to get away with the idea that you don't understand the connection between these concepts.
quote: I could well claim that it's not outwith the bounds of possibility that those who loudly profess a deeply excitable loathing for the cowboy-on-cowboy action (such as it is) of Brokeback Mountain might, in fact, be moderately (turgidly) 'interested' in those scenes in private - in the few plethysmograph studies of strongly homophobic individuals, it's not an uncommon finding.
You're bringing in jargon from one of your own specialist fields here ("plethysmograph", a beautiful name it sounds like a cousin of the plesiosaur) -- but the idea that vocal homophobes are secretly gay is a familiar stereotype that circulates without medico-scientific support, and I don't really think you were attempting a serious social diagnosis when you proposed that critics of this film were "getting in a (possibly trouserial) lather."
I'm sure we could scrape up evidence for all sorts of stereotypes, and try to claim case studies for (eg.) Scots being miserly (Taylor, 1966a, did find some ethnographic support for this hypothesis in a study of male subjects in Fife...) . I believe there was medical evidence for homosexuality being treated as a sickness curable by electric shocks. It is not really an honourable precedent.
Your brand of mockery is apparently so innocent that it has nothing to do with being funny, nothing to do with strategy either -- OK, but it's a bit much to whip on a scholarly hat, then whip it off when you want to repeat that your "main motivation in taking the piss is, however, to take the piss", heavens it's a torrent of the yellowstuff, like one of those "pissing contests" you mention above.
quote:
It's good that you found the film enriching, but why are you offended that certain Christian reviewers -- who you must know are going to disapprove of physical homosexuality on screen just as you seem to dislike, and certainly parody, the way they express their faith -- have reservations which they put forward on a website for like-minded Christians?
Am I "offended"? Is my face "offended"?
Whuh? Oh, you're -- ha ha! -- you're doing that comedy programme. That's very good. Have you seen where the fellow goes "I want that one!" "No but yeah but." Ha. OK now we have the impressions out of the way.
Do you seem offended. Well, alright, I allow that you were "mildly irritated", enough to write
- one post suggesting that Stormfront's annoyance at this film may mean a secret wanking frenzy
- one mocking "fundie" discussion boards and their stupid assumptions, their attempts to point-score by being more-homophobic-than-thou, their beliefs that gayness can be caught via celluloid
- one, again parodying either Stormfront or "fundie" convictions or both, about "sissifying" the cowboy archetype
- one more about Stormfront contributors wanking off over gay films they claim to despise.
To be fair, maybe you were bored. I frequently get bored and post all sorts of things in a row, on a theme. It doesn't mean I'm obsessed with it -- it might mean the forum is slow at that moment.
quote: What I am is interested. I see Brokeback Mountain as something of a cultural phenomenon, and am absolutely intrigued to see how straight/gay/bi/whatever people - of various cultural backgrounds - react to it. It seems to be splitting the Christian Right in ways that are quite difficult to predict, which I'm finding fascinating.
I AGREE this is interesting. However, most of your posts on page one are simply running the same old line about how conservative Christians are stupid, and right-wing homophobes are secretly gay. You are not really investigating the way the right wing has claimed this film through a different reading, as you mention briefly in your first post.
Of course you have no duty to do that... but the way your pisstaking posts on page 1 engage only with a few easy internet targets (and misrepresent & stereotype the people on those website forums until they become even broader, perhaps meaninglessly caricatured targets) doesn't relate to much of your more considered paragraph just above.
quote:
Is a website like PluggedInOnline actually bothering you, offending you, oppressing or affecting you through its existence as a reference point for Christian families?
Perhaps you can point out where I claimed it was?
Well, a parody is a form of attack, isn't it. If you repeatedly quote those sites and stereotype their positions, and exaggerate their attitudes until they seem daft ("yeah, well, I'm gouging my eyes and ears out so I don't accidentally witness its foul immorality"), then yes I do assume you have some problem with them.
Not necessarily to the extent I stated above, I agree. But of course you don't have to claim something explicitly for someone to get a certain impression of your views.
quote: Of course, I could start banging on about the influence of the Christian Right on the leader of the world's sole hyperpower and argue that that hyperpower exerts a global (if indirect) influence over us all. I could also, with a little memory-wracking, cite gay friends in the US whose lives have been directly, materially affected by that Christian Right influence, and with whom I share a certain non-solipsistic empathy. I'm not sure I'm that wanky, though; I'm happy enough just to take the piss.
I don't really get this distinction you keep making between taking-the-piss and any kind of personal, political, polemical point.
Here's a review from an Illinois newspaper.
quote:Ennis’ tragedy is that he cannot find the courage to admit to the world (and probably himself) that he is gay. Ledger conveys this through terse mumbling that unfortunately sounds too much like Billy Bob Thornton in “Sling Blade.”
Did you take the piss out of that review? You did not.
Here's the Charlotte Observer.
quote:That's why the film should be universal: Any of us can imagine a forbidden passion so sweeping that it carries us off at flood tide, never allowing us to question it. Whether the object of our affection would carry a purse, a lariat or both is beside the point.
Again, you're not quoting this review and wondering aloud whether Lawrence Toppman picked up his chaps after seeing the movie.
Your taking-the-piss is clearly not just a bit of mockery at random reviews you found online -- it is only directed at the more reactionary and homophobic reviews you discovered, and I don't see why you seem wary of agreeing that your pisstake has some political point.
You seem to want to have it both ways -- you could provide evidence and solid argument if you wanted to, but you don't want to, because you just love being puckish and your joking around has no other connotation, it's just HAVING A LAUGH.
I think it would be more effective if you said that your mockery was targeted at specific websites and social positions, for a reason, because their attitudes do encroach in some way upon your life, and they deserve to be undermined. But that is presumptuous of me.
Oh now here is the meat of it, the "cultural poaching" bit you're chasing me into other threads to talk about. I'm afraid it might not be that interesting after all this wait.
quote:Why do you have to poach into their cultural territory, bringing stuff back to ridicule and hold up for attack, rather than just enjoying what the film gives you as a happy gay man?
Am I 'poaching into their cultural territory' merely by quoting and ridiculing them? Are you 'poaching into' my 'cultural territory' here by commenting on my gayness? Am I 'poaching into' yours by posting on TMO? Where does 'cultural territory' begin and end? Does every quote or link or image held up for ridicule constitute 'poaching'? If so, I pity the gamekeeper...
You ask some valid questions here. I used the term swiftly and loosely.
"Poaching" in this sense is associated in cult studs with this book TEXTUAL POACHERS by Henry Jenkins, who was borrowing ideas from Michel de Certeau.
Usually it is taken to mean the tactics of the relatively powerless as part of what you will often see described yawnsomely as "semiotic guerrilla warfare" against the relatively powerful.
In Jenkins and those millions who use his model, it is more specifically about popular media fans and producers.
A classic and appropriate example might be a fan who re-edits a sequence from Star Trek: Search for Spock so it seems that Kirk and Spock are enjoying a loving (happy) gay relationship. As the official text Star Trek doesn't embrace and allow gay relationships, the fan is "poaching" from that text and "making do" with the official culture they've been given, creating something of their own based on what was handed down.
Whether that metaphor is useful or not, you must take up with the billions of profs and students repeating the notions of H Jenkins in classrooms across the world at this very moment.
Anyway... you have a good point, as I said, in that really the model is meant to apply to relatively powerless and powerful groups, and as someone posting on the internet, you are not really much less powerless than someone else posting elsewhere on the internet (with the minor distinction that they might have their own review page, read by more people than your thread on TMO.)
Are you "poaching" from me by quoting my post? Not in the sense I explained above, no, though you could be taking my material and twisting it into something that better suits your argument -- however, we're both on the same power-level (approx! a cat may talk to a king on here) so I'm not really a landowner to your peasant.
Is someone "poaching" when they take an image from McDonalds or Microsoft websites, photoshop it and post it up here with a new meaning? YES, actually they are.
So, if the metaphor depends on power, then I would feasibly be "poaching" if I took something from the NY Times website and made something of my own from it here, but not so much if I pasted in something from another bulletin board.
What I meant, more, to say, was that you are deliberately going into a territory, or neighbourhood of the internet that you know will hold different views to your own -- and bringing back their views to this context where you know your mockery will reach an appreciative audience (Vikram saying for instance).
It's perhaps more like going to another country and then doing impressions of their accents to your friends when you return -- or telling funny tales about their weird customs, or showing off their quaint artefacts. It's just easy laughs, isn't it. It doesn't get a laugh on their website, but if you bring it back here, it's ripe for humour.
Your example doesn't really serve you well --
quote: Wasn't there that incident with you and that black community forum not so long ago? Was that 'poaching'?
-- because while it's an example of what I'm talking about, it was exactly that, easy laughs and colonialist humour (and remember -- I got banned from TMO for it). That's similar to what you're doing if you go onto that silly simpleminded "fundie" website and paste in their comments, telling us these folk reckon they'll get GAY by watching a movie, and these ones beat off about how queer those cowboys are.
quote: As for whether I have to take the piss, no, not really. I choose to, though, because I like taking the piss - and because I find many of the attitudes expressed (particularly the bizarre perceptions of homosexuality) rather ridiculous. I suppose I see it as a relatively harmless way of managing my own mild exasperation with the attitudes expressed. It's arguably less of an imposition than my starting I'm Not Going To See Narnia (But Here's Why It's Wrong) threads, or lobbying our Government to stop Christians marrying.
Of course, if you don't feel TMO is an appropriate place for me to ridicule things I find annoying, then let me know. I'll actually appreciate the irony of this forum being the one to impose TEH CENSERSHIP!1!! on someone from Barbelith...
As I've said, your argument is more persuasive to me when you present it as a kind of political case. I can understand why you'd have a beef against some of the sites you mock, and why it would seem a witty work-out to pummel them a bit.
Boiling down, here are the three key... reservations? Not "issues" or "problems"... perhaps best to say reasons I am entering into dialogue with you about your mocking of the above reviews of Brokeback Mountain and the sites they derive from. To think that I, representing TMO, could censor you is of course ludicrous and anyway why would I want to, because I posted to your thread in order to get a discussion going.
1. Too obvious. Of course a right-wing website or a Christian film review page are going to have objections to a mainstream film about a homosexual relationship that includes relatively explicit sex scenes between two men. You might as well make a meal out of PluggedIn: Focus on the Family's reaction to Sin City or even Closer. We all know they're going to have reservations about and probably express a dislike for films that show explicit sexuality, whether hetero or homo, and that diverge from their own idea of moral behaviour.
2. I do feel some sense of "trespass" is involved, the idea I tried to express above of laughing at the funny foreign people. I don't muster much sympathy for a fascist website, but the people on that Christian site hold sincere beliefs that I don't, mostly, find all that abhorrent. Is it OK to make fun of people and caricature them because your faith and its associated values differ from theirs? Because they hold to Christian teachings, are they really idiots who think you can catch gayness from watching a film?
I'm sure many contemporary films would be offensive or unacceptable to many contemporary Muslims. Is it decent of me to quote reviews from websites written by and for members of that community, exaggerating their opinions for my own fun?
3. I don't feel you're really engaging in an interesting or honest way with what these websites are actually saying. By making out that anyone who finds homosexuality distasteful is probably secretly gay, or really stupid, you're just batting at stereotypes of your own creation, rather than examining the actual nature of their views and how they try to rationalise them.
I don't see that what you're doing here is so different from me visiting a website for gay men and finding, say, that the review of Closer included a paragraph about the relative hotness of the male protagonists, and quoting it here with some fancy about how the reviewer was probably sitting in a pink tutu whooping and waving a rainbow flag whenever Clive Owen came on-screen.
That's about how close it gets you to an interesting truth about a community different to your own.
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I have another point but I think I may break for air now.
posted
I will make my other point briefly. There has been a fair bit of talk in reviews about how Brokeback Mountain threatens, undermines, "sissifies" a bastion of heterosexual masculinity, and some counter-talk about how the Western was always queer from the start. I have read at least one article in the Guardian along these lines and if you can't easily find it, I'm sure I can link it for you.
It seems to me that the Western is usually an exploration of different types of heterosexual masculinity. Whether Brokeback Mountain is a Western, or a "cowboy film" either literally or generically (whether it has "cowboys" in it at all; whether it revisits any of the key themes and iconography of the conventional Western), I do not know.
But if it is a kind of Western, and one that centrally explores a sexual/romantic relationship between two men, then I think that is undermining and threatening the heterosexual basis of almost every other film we call a Western.
Whether it's bad or positive to undermine and threaten generic conventions is another matter.
But there seems no point to me, if this movie is generically a Western, in denying that it's going against what the Western has traditionally been about. The claims that the genre has always been queer seem like mildly clever manipulation to me.
As such, Brokeback Mountain would be like a "straight version" of, say, Kenneth Anger's movies, or the Derek Jardin's The Jarman, excuse me Derek Garden's The Jardin. It is (again) a kind of cultural trespass, a claiming of familiar land for new uses, and here I don't use the metaphor with any negative connotations.
However, in those terms, I don't see it as so ludicrous if some aficionados of the "original" form felt threatened, even outraged. The reasons for their feeling threatened would be interesting. We could ask what the Western has historically, traditionally said about different varieties of heterosexuality, and whether it does weaken that history and tradition at all to tell a story within that genre about varieties of homosexuality -- what the overlap is, what similarities are due to genre, what common ground exists in that they're all tales about men, whoever those men love.
quote:Originally posted by Ganesh: One wonders whether they make this stipulation before reviewing every film containing 'morally-dubious' material (such as people killing people, heterosexual infidelity, deceit, etc.) or whether it's the same-sex element that merits it, in this case.
I hope this question wasn't rhetorical, because there is an answer: yes, in my experience they do tend to express such reservations about films featuring (yet not condemning) all other forms of "immorality", and not just gay sex by any means.
quote:Originally posted by kovacs: a) Taking the piss is meant to be funny. Surely something is wrong if you're not sure about the connection between "me taking the piss" and "funny".
It was the "like really" bit I was questioning there. You seemed to be suggesting that, in order to achieve some level of validity, a particular level of funniness is required. How this precise level of funniness might be measured - other than your own subjective opinion, Kovacs - I have no idea.
quote:b) As well as being funny, taking the piss is often meant to expose and in some way attack the target.
Perhaps, but "often meant" does not = "always meant", and terms such as "expose and in some way attack" are rather stretchy. To what extent is assuaging one's own minor irritations - scratching an itch - an "attack" on the source of that irritation?
quote:You are not dumb or innocent enough to get away with the idea that you don't understand the connection between these concepts.
No - but I'm intelligent enough to understand that the connection is not one-size-fits-all. I'm self-aware enough to know how they apply to me.
quote:You're bringing in jargon from one of your own specialist fields here ("plethysmograph"
Of course I am. 'Erectionometer', then, if you prefer.
quote:but the idea that vocal homophobes are secretly gay is a familiar stereotype that circulates without medico-scientific support
Not without "medico-scientific support" - which was the point of my making reference to studies of erectile response in individuals claiming to be repulsed by certain imagery.
quote:and I don't really think you were attempting a serious social diagnosis when you proposed that critics of this film were "getting in a (possibly trouserial) lather."
No, but it's not simply for laffs either. There is sound research evidence for the "stereotype" of extreme homophobia frequently being related to elements of sexual attraction, and I am aware of this evidence base even as I make an obviously humorous comment as above.
quote:I'm sure we could scrape up evidence for all sorts of stereotypes, and try to claim case studies for (eg.) Scots being miserly (Taylor, 1966a, did find some ethnographic support for this hypothesis in a study of male subjects in Fife...) . I believe there was medical evidence for homosexuality being treated as a sickness curable by electric shocks. It is not really an honourable precedent.
I'm sure you could - in which case I'd have the option of either accepting this as a humorous aside for which there is apparently an evidence base, or I could take issue with that evidence base and we could go on to discuss methodology.
I'd probably be curious. Perhaps we could talk about this, in another thread?
quote:Your brand of mockery is apparently so innocent that it has nothing to do with being funny, nothing to do with strategy either
And your brand of criticism is apparently so omnipotent that you're able to objectively divine the global funniness of any given comment - as well as reach into my own psyche and decide that I am operating a "strategy" (somewhat loaded term, not unreminiscent of the ol' Gay Agenda, no?)
quote:OK, but it's a bit much to whip on a scholarly hat, then whip it off when you want to repeat that your "main motivation in taking the piss is, however, to take the piss"
I don't think it is "a bit much". I think it's perfectly reasonable to say my main motivation is to take the piss while getting "scholarly" when someone asks about the evidence base upon which I'm taking the piss (in this case, the possibility that strongly homophobic individuals might be turned on by that by which they profess to be disgusted).
Not seeing a fatal contradiction here.
quote:Whuh? Oh, you're -- ha ha! -- you're doing that comedy programme. That's very good. Have you seen where the fellow goes "I want that one!" "No but yeah but." Ha. OK now we have the impressions out of the way.
Yes, because surely quoting 'comedy programmes' is well out of order here on TMO.
Hopefully now we've got the snarkiness out of the way.
quote:Do you seem offended. Well, alright, I allow that you were "mildly irritated", enough to write
- one post suggesting that Stormfront's annoyance at this film may mean a secret wanking frenzy
- one mocking "fundie" discussion boards and their stupid assumptions, their attempts to point-score by being more-homophobic-than-thou, their beliefs that gayness can be caught via celluloid
- one, again parodying either Stormfront or "fundie" convictions or both, about "sissifying" the cowboy archetype
- one more about Stormfront contributors wanking off over gay films they claim to despise.
To be fair, maybe you were bored. I frequently get bored and post all sorts of things in a row, on a theme. It doesn't mean I'm obsessed with it -- it might mean the forum is slow at that moment.
Well, you're rather assuming that 'pisstaking' = 'mildly irritated' = 'offended' - in which case this entire forum is presumably a seething hotbed of offendedness. Which might be the case, I suppose. It's rather a one-note interpretation of the function of humour, though, isn't it? One can appreciate the irony of cowboy archetypes being held up as icons of masculinity without that irony being founded on being 'offended'. I also took the piss out of gay culture and its appropriation of macho stereotypes - so, by your analysis, this too presumably 'offends' me.
To be honest, I think you're the one coming across as offended here. I've had similar Brokeback Mountain discussions across a number of message boards, and you've put far more energy into this particular line. Which interests me. Following your line of reasoning, you are perhaps oppressed by me?
quote:I AGREE this is interesting. However, most of your posts on page one are simply running the same old line about how conservative Christians are stupid, and right-wing homophobes are secretly gay. You are not really investigating the way the right wing has claimed this film through a different reading, as you mention briefly in your first post.
Are we talking about paucity of serious analysis and critique on TMO? Forgive me, but I'd always been under the impression that this place was more relaxed/informal/humour-orientated than Barbelith or Cross+Flame (wherein we've taken a more analytical approach to this). I think we have begun to talk more about the different right-wing reactions, but you rather leapt in before any of that had taken place.
quote:Of course you have no duty to do that... but the way your pisstaking posts on page 1 engage only with a few easy internet targets (and misrepresent & stereotype the people on those website forums until they become even broader, perhaps meaninglessly caricatured targets) doesn't relate to much of your more considered paragraph just above.
Again, perhaps I've fundamentally misjudged the tone of TMO here; perhaps "easy targets" are verboten - in which case slappy wrists for Vikram, who first linked to the (fascinating) Stormfront forum.
I don't see taking humorous potshots at particularly irritating/powerful targets as particularly antithetical to serious analysis. I think one can make one's point and still be funny. Whether or not I've succeeded in that is surely not your opinion alone, Kovacs.
quote:Well, a parody is a form of attack, isn't it. If you repeatedly quote those sites and stereotype their positions, and exaggerate their attitudes until they seem daft ("yeah, well, I'm gouging my eyes and ears out so I don't accidentally witness its foul immorality"), then yes I do assume you have some problem with them.
I'm irritated by those viewpoints, as I've said, for a number of reasons. This is not the same as claiming victim status, as you've suggested I've done.
quote:Not necessarily to the extent I stated above, I agree. But of course you don't have to claim something explicitly for someone to get a certain impression of your views.
Certainly not for them to make misassumptions about how "oppressed" I feel...
quote:I don't really get this distinction you keep making between taking-the-piss and any kind of personal, political, polemical point.
Let me help you, then.
I'm talking about my personal motivations - partly because you have attributed motivations to me ("strategy", "attack", "offended", "oppressed") on the basis of assumption. You attach a number of assumed motivations to my pisstaking, and I think you're rather presumptious in doing this.
I am therefore attempting to unpack my motivations as I see them, exploring why I'm taking the piss here. It's partly about being irritated, it's partly amusement, it's partly appreciation of irony, but it's largely because I enjoy being silly. Which doesn't seem heeyooogely out of place here - or so I thought.
I wasn't particularly motivated by seeking victim status at all - but, when you suggest that the viewpoints expressed on right-wing sites do not impinge in any way upon me or my life, it is incumbent on me to point out that you're frankly wrong.
quote:Did you take the piss out of that review? You did not.
Lacking your omnipotence, Kovacs, I had not read that review.
quote:Here's the Charlotte Observer.
Again, you're not quoting this review and wondering aloud whether Lawrence Toppman picked up his chaps after seeing the movie.
Again, I hadn't read the Charlotte Observer. I actually pretty much agree with that paragraph, though, so it wouldn't necessarily press my Pisstake Button. I didn't see as much comic potential there either.
If you're claiming selective 'cultural poaching', though, I might reasonably point out that you're being rather selective in holding me to standards which seem rather out of keeping with TMO in general. There are numerous examples of rather frivolous pisstaking at the 'expense' of other sites - including Vikram's Stormfront link in this very thread. As far as I can recall (and I might well be wrong here), this is the first time you've challenged someone doing so in this particular way.
How come?
quote:Your taking-the-piss is clearly not just a bit of mockery at random reviews you found online -- it is only directed at the more reactionary and homophobic reviews you discovered, and I don't see why you seem wary of agreeing that your pisstake has some political point.
It's not only pisstaking - but it's mainly pisstaking because I enjoy silliness and ridicule in themselves. My selection of targets is undoubtedly linked to that which irritates/amuses me - and it stands to reason that that which irritates/amuses me most is most likely to be a target.
Whether it has a "political point" is surely something of a moveable feast. I don't think it has in the sense that I'm consciously thinking "I must combat this attack with an attack of my own" but in the sense of the personal being political, yes, I suppose it is.
quote:You seem to want to have it both ways -- you could provide evidence and solid argument if you wanted to, but you don't want to, because you just love being puckish and your joking around has no other connotation, it's just HAVING A LAUGH.
Again, Kovacs, it ain't all-or-none. I can HAVE A LAUGH and also be aware of the "evidence and solid argument" underpinning my LAUGH. It's largely dependent on context, though: if this were the Barbelith Head Shop, for example, I'd probably downplay the humorous element and buff up the analytical aspects. If it were the Laboratory, I'd probably choose to focus on the plethysmograph stuff, and have a serious discussion on the evidence base for the 'homophobia relates to homosexual attraction' theory.
I'm surprised to be having this discussion here. Pleasantly so, though. Possibly my own fault for thinking of TMO as more fluffy than it is. Next time, I'll leave out the fluff and try to raise my game from the outset.
quote:I think it would be more effective if you said that your mockery was targeted at specific websites and social positions, for a reason, because their attitudes do encroach in some way upon your life, and they deserve to be undermined. But that is presumptuous of me.
It is presumptious of you, and it'd be a misrepresentaion of how I feel. I do think those attitudes impinge upon my life, but relatively peripherally. It'd be overstatement to make this a central pillar of my claimed motivations.
quote:Oh now here is the meat of it, the "cultural poaching" bit you're chasing me into other threads to talk about. I'm afraid it might not be that interesting after all this wait.
I'm guessing it might be a bit jargony, particularly as you've recommended I do some extra reading...
quote:"Poaching" in this sense is associated in cult studs with this book TEXTUAL POACHERS by Henry Jenkins, who was borrowing ideas from Michel de Certeau.
Usually it is taken to mean the tactics of the relatively powerless as part of what you will often see described yawnsomely as "semiotic guerrilla warfare" against the relatively powerful.
In Jenkins and those millions who use his model, it is more specifically about popular media fans and producers.
A classic and appropriate example might be a fan who re-edits a sequence from Star Trek: Search for Spock so it seems that Kirk and Spock are enjoying a loving (happy) gay relationship. As the official text Star Trek doesn't embrace and allow gay relationships, the fan is "poaching" from that text and "making do" with the official culture they've been given, creating something of their own based on what was handed down.
Whether that metaphor is useful or not, you must take up with the billions of profs and students repeating the notions of H Jenkins in classrooms across the world at this very moment.
That's interesting. Whether or not I've substantially re-edited the Christian/Stormfront comments is somewhat moot. I wouldn't say I have. If I have, it would appear to be somewhat endemic on this board, and on the Internet in general.
quote:Are you "poaching" from me by quoting my post? Not in the sense I explained above, no, though you could be taking my material and twisting it into something that better suits your argument
I guess we're then into deciding when quoting becomes quoting out of context becomes "twisting". There's also the assumption of a clear, specific "argument" as well as the necessity to gauge respective 'power levels'.
quote:Is someone "poaching" when they take an image from McDonalds or Microsoft websites, photoshop it and post it up here with a new meaning? YES, actually they are.
What about when they don't photoshop it, but post it as it is with a funny caption? Or with no caption at all, but within a discursive context wherein the juxtaposition is funny?
quote:So, if the metaphor depends on power, then I would feasibly be "poaching" if I took something from the NY Times website and made something of my own from it here, but not so much if I pasted in something from another bulletin board.
Again, we need to quantify how one measures "power" on the Internet. Number of clicks? Ability to sue?
quote:What I meant, more, to say, was that you are deliberately going into a territory, or neighbourhood of the internet that you know will hold different views to your own -- and bringing back their views to this context where you know your mockery will reach an appreciative audience (Vikram saying for instance).
Okay. I'm happy to accept that's cultural poaching then, as it appears to happen freely and widely throughout the Internet.
quote:It's perhaps more like going to another country and then doing impressions of their accents to your friends when you return -- or telling funny tales about their weird customs, or showing off their quaint artefacts. It's just easy laughs, isn't it. It doesn't get a laugh on their website, but if you bring it back here, it's ripe for humour.
I don't think it's just "easy laughs". Your description of the power dynamic would seem to suggest that it's like going to a much more powerful country wherein one is comparitively powerless. I'm happy to accept this analogy, but would reject the implication that there's necessarily something 'too easy' or 'unfair' about the process.
quote:Your example doesn't really serve you well --
because while it's an example of what I'm talking about, it was exactly that, easy laughs and colonialist humour (and remember -- I got banned from TMO for it). That's similar to what you're doing if you go onto that silly simpleminded "fundie" website and paste in their comments, telling us these folk reckon they'll get GAY by watching a movie, and these ones beat off about how queer those cowboys are.
It would seem to serve me remarkably well, then - as would the example of your returning here to complain about mistreatment in the Barbelith Nathan Barley thread, secure that you'd be received more sympathetically here.
And, as I've stated above, I'm not simply going for easy laffs in suggesting a fear of 'catching' homosexuality or homosexual attraction underpinning homophobia. I'm happy to discuss either or both of these topics in more depth if you so wish. It's just a little unexpected to be asked to do so here.
(Are you banned from TMO, then? How long did that last for? You appear to be posting now.)
quote:As I've said, your argument is more persuasive to me when you present it as a kind of political case. I can understand why you'd have a beef against some of the sites you mock, and why it would seem a witty work-out to pummel them a bit.
I think we understand "political" to mean different things, and that's clouding the issue. I don't think of myself as primarily motivated by wanting to present a "political case". If that were my motivation, I'd have been rather less flippant.
quote:1. Too obvious. Of course a right-wing website or a Christian film review page are going to have objections to a mainstream film about a homosexual relationship that includes relatively explicit sex scenes between two men. You might as well make a meal out of PluggedIn: Focus on the Family's reaction to Sin City or even Closer. We all know they're going to have reservations about and probably express a dislike for films that show explicit sexuality, whether hetero or homo, and that diverge from their own idea of moral behaviour.
In the case of Brokeback Mountain, however, I'd argue that it's rather less obvious, because the film can be read in ways that support a 'wages of sin' argument. It's also a subject on which I'm directly knowledgeable - which is not necessarily the case with Sin City, etc.
Also, if we're going to take issue with targets that are insufficiently challenging, you may wish to take a look at some other threads here.
quote:2. I do feel some sense of "trespass" is involved, the idea I tried to express above of laughing at the funny foreign people. I don't muster much sympathy for a fascist website, but the people on that Christian site hold sincere beliefs that I don't, mostly, find all that abhorrent. Is it OK to make fun of people and caricature them because your faith and its associated values differ from theirs? Because they hold to Christian teachings, are they really idiots who think you can catch gayness from watching a film?
I think some of them probably are, and I honestly do think this is the unconscious fear underlying several of the 'I'm not going to watch it' arguments.
And yes, I think it is OK to make fun of these viewpoints, for a number of reasons. I don't agree that I've unduly 'trespassed' on the sites involved, for reasons outlined above. I'd point out also that this rather nebulous concept of 'trespass' could reasonably be applied to any post wherein someone says, "look at this weird stuff I found on X site" - on TMO and on the Internet generally.
quote:I'm sure many contemporary films would be offensive or unacceptable to many contemporary Muslims. Is it decent of me to quote reviews from websites written by and for members of that community, exaggerating their opinions for my own fun?
Arguably yes, if 'decency' is to be our yardstick here, and depending on how one goes about defining 'decency'.
quote:3. I don't feel you're really engaging in an interesting or honest way with what these websites are actually saying.
I'd disagree - but then, what I consider honest or interesting may not be what you consider honest or interesting. I'd argue that your assessment of my 'honesty' rests on a host of assumptions regarding what motivates me ("strategy", "offended", "oppressed", etc.) and you are not the long-distance telepath you might appear to be.
quote:By making out that anyone who finds homosexuality distasteful is probably secretly gay, or really stupid, you're just batting at stereotypes of your own creation, rather than examining the actual nature of their views and how they try to rationalise them.
Fair point - but would be fairer if I were indeed claiming that "anyone who finds homosexuality distasteful" is covered by the above. That's another extension of (what you assume to be) my viewpoint, based on my reaction to some rather specific expressions of distaste coming from specific subgroups of the population.
quote:I don't see that what you're doing here is so different from me visiting a website for gay men and finding, say, that the review of Closer included a paragraph about the relative hotness of the male protagonists, and quoting it here with some fancy about how the reviewer was probably sitting in a pink tutu whooping and waving a rainbow flag whenever Clive Owen came on-screen.
There are plenty of gay stereotypes expressed here on TMO, and I've generally reacted to them based on how funny I find them rather than how "honest" I perceive them to be, or how much "trespass" I feel has taken place. The informality of TMO is one of the things I rather like about the place.
If you said the above, I'd react according to how amusing I felt you were being, because that's how the online environment makes me feel like behaving. If we're to move into theory bitch mode, I can do that too - and would do, in your example above - but I'd be more likely to react in that way in Barbelith's Head Shop.
As I've said above, perhaps I have a responsibility to approach TMO in a more analytical, less humorous manner? Perhaps others will also modify their posting habit?
quote:That's about how close it gets you to an interesting truth about a community different to your own.
And I maintain, again, that "interesting truth" and pisstaking are not mutually exclusive.
posted
Glad I'm not the only one who can't get all that UBB right on the first edit.
Thanks for replying; I shall have to get back to you when I have another two hours solid to devote to this thread, ie. not before tomorrow evening I expect.
posted
However! Two initial, interesting and key points occur to me and I think they can be addressed more quickly.
I also hope you may reply to my post about whether and how Brokeback Mountain is indeed undermining, redefining (or similar) the conventions of a genre that is traditionally about heterosexual masculinity, or
i) whether it's not part of the Western/"cowboy" genre at all (I don't know about this but would be interested to hear)
or ii) whether the Western has never been mostly/exclusively about heterosexual masculinity in the first place (I would disagree with this).
You say I have (wrongly) imagined you as adopting a victim status of complaint.
quote:I'm irritated by those viewpoints, as I've said, for a number of reasons. This is not the same as claiming victim status, as you've suggested I've done.
Certainly not for them to make misassumptions about how "oppressed" I feel...
you have attributed motivations to me ("strategy", "attack", "offended", "oppressed") on the basis of assumption. You attach a number of assumed motivations to my pisstaking, and I think you're rather presumptious in doing this.
I wasn't particularly motivated by seeking victim status at all
But you also take... can I say "offence"? You are "mildly irritated", perhaps, at what seems to be the opposite stance on my part, ie. I assume right-wing Christian websites don't affect you negatively in any way.
quote: when you suggest that the viewpoints expressed on right-wing sites do not impinge in any way upon me or my life, it is incumbent on me to point out that you're frankly wrong.
There does seem a contradiction here, but I didn't really mean to suggest either.
I said, above: Is a website like PluggedInOnline actually bothering you, offending you, oppressing or affecting you through its existence as a reference point for Christian families?
That isn't a statement that such websites and the attitudes they espouse don't impinge in any way on your life. It's a question that expects a reluctant negative answer, I suppose ("well, n-no, now you point it out... THEY DON'T!") but it's not a denial that they could... what: bother, annoy, irritate, and in some way (to the extent to which those attitudes may be the dominant in the world's only remaining superpower) offend, alarm you.
I don't want to play victim myself here, but I'm feeling it's hard to win in my word-choice. You could reject my use of "offend" and "alarm" above, refusing the idea that I might be depicting you as a victim.
However, you brought up the possibility that the Christian Right can affect all of us in alarming ways, and may have a more directly... oppressive? influence on someone who identifies as gay.
quote:the influence of the Christian Right on the leader of the world's sole hyperpower and argue that that hyperpower exerts a global (if indirect) influence over us all. I could also, with a little memory-wracking, cite gay friends in the US whose lives have been directly, materially affected by that Christian Right influence, and with whom I share a certain non-solipsistic empathy
You brought this last point in only to dismiss it as "wanky", but you did bring it in, and I accept there's sense & reason in it. (Perhaps you felt it would only seem wanky in a jokey discussion; not that it wasn't a valid point. That's something I hope to come back to below.)
Anyway, I didn't mean to, and don't think I did portray you as someone seeking victim status. What I suggested is that your pisstaking was directed at homophobic attitudes, the conservative right (or indeed fascism), ignorance and hypocrisy.
I did assume that this position and the target of what I saw not as random pisstaking but as parodic attacks were based on you being a gay man.
I accept that's a presumption, but people meeting as you and I are meeting, in text, as relative strangers, do inevitably make assumptions and see each other (reductively) in terms of cultural positions. Surely there's some of that in your request "I'm particularly interested in what the hets thought," which sounds weirdly patronising to me. That line obviously reduces those replying to their sexual preferences -- "hi Ganesh, I'm a het and thanks for asking for my opinion! Here's what I thought, as a str8 man."
To be honest, I think your whole opening post is written as a gay man, stressing that aspect of your cultural position, so while I shouldn't make assumptions that you're mocking homophobic websites because you're gay, I can certainly see why I did it, and I can see the logic I followed there.
POINT TWO
Interesting that your own understanding of TMO keeps coming up in this post. You would have brought your A-game, if you'd known... you thought this was the place for... look at the other threads, by comparison... surely this is allowed on TMO of all places.
Your misapprehension of TMO is interesting. I think the crux is this: Barbelith has a powerful, overbearing sense of what it is, what it's worth, what it's not, who its people are, and what goes where. Things must go in their place. This thread would now be subject to debates about whether it should be moved from Conversation or Film and TV to Head Shop. You may adopt a different, lighter tone and less thoughtful approach on Barbelith, depending where you post. You may be policed for missing the tone, and posting with inappropriate levity.
TMO is far more fluid and shapeless. Sometimes, it is a flat inner-tube. For weeks! Sometimes it is pumped up to its limits, a fluorescent space hopper that feels like it's carrying the funniest, cleverest fuckers in the universe across the internet. (Admittedly... not so often anymore).
Unlike the big city of Barbelith, I would suggest that TMO is usually grateful for a thread reaching any decent length, even if it's just reduced to 2-man chat by the end. That it starts with a fine personal review, moves into a bit of group joshing, goes through some more serious head-to-head for a few pages and tails off with a weak pun would be par for the course -- in fact, I think I'm right in saying that would be regarded as a surprisingly good thread by Dec 05 standards. (Jan 06 standards are slightly higher. Why? Look at who wasn't posting then, who is now. Smart men know.)
Anyway, I think you are making a little too much about what TMO "is", and what is fitting here. TMO doesn't have a policy statement, a subtitle about 21st century subcultural engagement, a police force. It is just what people give to it at any one time. You are not bound to fit in with TMO -- you are making TMO.
quote:Originally posted by kovacs: I will make my other point briefly. There has been a fair bit of talk in reviews about how Brokeback Mountain threatens, undermines, "sissifies" a bastion of heterosexual masculinity, and some counter-talk about how the Western was always queer from the start. I have read at least one article in the Guardian along these lines and if you can't easily find it, I'm sure I can link it for you.
I've read it, yes.
quote:But if it is a kind of Western, and one that centrally explores a sexual/romantic relationship between two men, then I think that is undermining and threatening the heterosexual basis of almost every other film we call a Western.
Possibly - if, as some would claim, heterosexuality's primary way of defining itself is as 'not homosexuality'. It depends to a certain extent on the viewer's frame of reference and the extent to which one considers the possibility of homosexual contact to be 'tainting' of homosocial encounters.
quote:But there seems no point to me, if this movie is generically a Western, in denying that it's going against what the Western has traditionally been about. The claims that the genre has always been queer seem like mildly clever manipulation to me.
I'd say it was generically a love story rather than a Western.
I'm not sure that I'd argue that Westerns, as a genre, are inherently queer. For a start, any such analysis would be largely retrospective, so labels can only ever be approximations. There are certainly elements which come across as screamingly camp (singing cowboys) and there are others which are perceptibly homoerotic. Whether or not this was ever a conscious intention is difficult to say.
quote:As such, Brokeback Mountain would be like a "straight version" of, say, Kenneth Anger's movies, or the Derek Jardin's The Jarman, excuse me Derek Garden's The Jardin. It is (again) a kind of cultural trespass, a claiming of familiar land for new uses, and here I don't use the metaphor with any negative connotations.
It's good that you're using the metaphor neutrally.
Again, I see it as a fairly universal love story with a vaguely Western setting (I'm well aware of the 'they're not cowboys, they herd sheep' gripes). It seemed to me more akin to a same-sex Brief Encounter, with elements of The Go-Between, maybe a sprinkling of Far From Heaven.
quote:However, in those terms, I don't see it as so ludicrous if some aficionados of the "original" form felt threatened, even outraged.
"Ludicrous" is perhaps a little strong, but I do feel a staunch defence of the Western genre as in-no-way-queer-nuh-uh is a little... narrow in terms of perception. Perhaps wilfully so, perhaps not.
(Which is all slightly academic since, as I say, I don't consider the film to fit comfortably into the Western genre.)
quote:The reasons for their feeling threatened would be interesting. We could ask what the Western has historically, traditionally said about different varieties of heterosexuality, and whether it does weaken that history and tradition at all to tell a story within that genre about varieties of homosexuality -- what the overlap is, what similarities are due to genre, what common ground exists in that they're all tales about men, whoever those men love.
Yes, those are reasonable points - and now we've established that this is to be a properly analytical discussion in which humorous asides are - if judged to be too 'easy of target' - just not on, we could go on to discuss them.
This board doesn't seem to have the formal structure of Barbelith in terms of Conversation/Head Shop division, though. Perhaps you could indicate somewhere where humour is to be permitted within the discussion, and which forms are to be considered legitimate, honest or interesting...
quote:Originally posted by kovacs: Glad I'm not the only one who can't get all that UBB right on the first edit.
Mm. You need a Preview button. Correcting all those sodding quote doodahs does allow for extra channelling of yer old esprit of the escalier, though.
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quote:Originally posted by Ganesh: Perhaps you could indicate somewhere where humour is to be permitted within the discussion, and which forms are to be considered legitimate, honest or interesting...
If you don't think the humour's useful just ignore it, that's what everyone's been doing to me... for years.
You say I have (wrongly) imagined you as adopting a victim status of complaint.
I do. While I do not perceive myself as outwith the global influence of the religious right, they're peripheral to my life - certainly compared with the way they impact on the lives of other gay people.
quote:But you also take... can I say "offence"? You are "mildly irritated", perhaps, at what seems to be the opposite stance on my part, ie. I assume right-wing Christian websites don't affect you negatively in any way.
I'm irritated by you making this assumption, yes. I still wouldn't say "offended", though; that seems too strong a term for my itchyscratch.
quote:That isn't a statement that such websites and the attitudes they espouse don't impinge in any way on your life. It's a question that expects a reluctant negative answer, I suppose ("well, n-no, now you point it out... THEY DON'T!") but it's not a denial that they could... what: bother, annoy, irritate, and in some way (to the extent to which those attitudes may be the dominant in the world's only remaining superpower) offend, alarm you.
Okay. I think it's your choice of wording that's problematic here. You're using terms that are overly loaded - "oppress", "offend", etc. - whereas I feel greyer shades are involved.
quote:I don't want to play victim myself here, but I'm feeling it's hard to win in my word-choice. You could reject my use of "offend" and "alarm" above, refusing the idea that I might be depicting you as a victim.
I don't see it as a case of 'winning'. I see it more as using the right words to articulate a fairly subtle situation. "Offend" and "alarm" are too strong, because they entail shades of hurt and fright which I don't really feel. "Mildly irritate", "impinge" and "influence" are the terms I'd go for.
quote:However, you brought up the possibility that the Christian Right can affect all of us in alarming ways, and may have a more directly... oppressive? influence on someone who identifies as gay.
Potentially so - certainly in the US. Only indirectly here, but I suspect quite a few of us are watching the skies, as it were, in terms of the waxing/waning power of that bloc.
quote:You brought this last point in only to dismiss it as "wanky", but you did bring it in, and I accept there's sense & reason in it. (Perhaps you felt it would only seem wanky in a jokey discussion; not that it wasn't a valid point. That's something I hope to come back to below.)
It seemed wanky in the context of a discussion which, prior to your contribution, was moderately light-hearted - and it also seemed a little like victimy shroud-waving.
quote:Anyway, I didn't mean to, and don't think I did portray you as someone seeking victim status. What I suggested is that your pisstaking was directed at homophobic attitudes, the conservative right (or indeed fascism), ignorance and hypocrisy.
I did assume that this position and the target of what I saw not as random pisstaking but as parodic attacks were based on you being a gay man.
Again, you're seeing this in terms of "attack", "strategy", taking a "political" stance at something. That may be a perceived effect of my post but it's not my primary intention here. Again this comes down to how political one decides the personal to be at any given time.
quote:I accept that's a presumption, but people meeting as you and I are meeting, in text, as relative strangers, do inevitably make assumptions and see each other (reductively) in terms of cultural positions. Surely there's some of that in your request "I'm particularly interested in what the hets thought," which sounds weirdly patronising to me. That line obviously reduces those replying to their sexual preferences -- "hi Ganesh, I'm a het and thanks for asking for my opinion! Here's what I thought, as a str8 man."
That's largely in flippant response to what I perceive to be an accepted way of talking about sexuality here on TMO. There's plenty of reference to "benders", "bummers" and the like which I might choose to interpret as patronising or even offensive - but, by and large, I don't. I do, however, chuck back a "het" or "straight" or "breeder" rejoinder, though, on occasion. One has to prove that one isn't entirely PC GONE MAAAD!1!, even coming from Barbelith.
quote:To be honest, I think your whole opening post is written as a gay man, stressing that aspect of your cultural position, so while I shouldn't make assumptions that you're mocking homophobic websites because you're gay, I can certainly see why I did it, and I can see the logic I followed there.
And I could employ similar logic to suggest that your contribution here is written as a straight man interested in 'attacking' a gay viewpoint because he's straight.
quote:Interesting that your own understanding of TMO keeps coming up in this post. You would have brought your A-game, if you'd known... you thought this was the place for... look at the other threads, by comparison... surely this is allowed on TMO of all places.
It is indeed interesting.
quote:Your misapprehension of TMO is interesting.
I don't think this is entirely misapprehension on my part.
quote:I think the crux is this: Barbelith has a powerful, overbearing sense of what it is, what it's worth, what it's not, who its people are, and what goes where. Things must go in their place. This thread would now be subject to debates about whether it should be moved from Conversation or Film and TV to Head Shop. You may adopt a different, lighter tone and less thoughtful approach on Barbelith, depending where you post. You may be policed for missing the tone, and posting with inappropriate levity.
TMO is far more fluid and shapeless. Sometimes, it is a flat inner-tube. For weeks! Sometimes it is pumped up to its limits, a fluorescent space hopper that feels like it's carrying the funniest, cleverest fuckers in the universe across the internet. (Admittedly... not so often anymore).
Sure. We touched on some of this in the 'What Do You Think Is Wrong With Barbelith' thread over there. I enjoy the differences.
quote:Anyway, I think you are making a little too much about what TMO "is", and what is fitting here. TMO doesn't have a policy statement, a subtitle about 21st century subcultural engagement, a police force. It is just what people give to it at any one time. You are not bound to fit in with TMO -- you are making TMO.
Fair enough - but it's noticeable, to me at least, that several of the charges levelled at me in your first post aren't hugely consistent with the way you've approached other instances of 'cultural poaching', etc. on TMO. It seems that, within this thread, you're holding my posting to different standards of humour, fairness, 'decency', honesty and 'interestingness' from those elsewhere. Even taking into account the whole freeform, fluid blahdeblah vibe, I'm a little uncertain why this should be.
quote:Originally posted by Black Mask: If you don't think the humour's useful just ignore it, that's what everyone's been doing to me... for years.
...
...*sigh*
I actually do like and appreciate the humour here. What I don't entirely understand is why Kovacs is apparently taking me to task for my use of (what I thought to be fairly TMO-appropriate) humour when he doesn't do so elsewhere.
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Fuck It: The Wife Has Brought Me A Cup of Tea So I Might As Well Battle On
quote:Originally posted by Ganesh: And your brand of criticism is apparently so omnipotent that you're able to objectively divine the global funniness of any given comment - as well as reach into my own psyche and decide that I am operating a "strategy" (somewhat loaded term, not unreminiscent of the ol' Gay Agenda, no?)
What you're "reminiscent" of, with this sort of comment, is a PADAWAN OF HAUS -- I'm sure I've seen that titan of Barbelith frequently using this dismissive tactic, ie. "you seem to assume the ability to see long-distance into others' heads and tell us what they are thinking on any given point."
?? I can say it now when I know his (?) eyes are turned upon The Policy board of Barbelith... this is a mean and redundant swipe! To try to sum up what you see as someone else's position in a debate is not to pretend telepathic insight into their minds.
Neither is identifying a "strategy" in someone's rhetoric (Haus: I admit to being perplexed by the reference to 'rhetoric'; I personally noted no examples of Platonic ρήτωρ in the discussion to date -- don't try that on me Mister I am wise to it) equivalent to labelling them with a "Gay Agenda". Either you have some notion about gayness being tied up with strategy and agenda, or you think I have. I would say I had an "agenda" and a "strategy" when I seek to attack or undermine something, and I'm as straight as they come, not gay at all.
quote:To be honest, I think you're the one coming across as offended here. I've had similar Brokeback Mountain discussions across a number of message boards, and you've put far more energy into this particular line. Which interests me. Following your line of reasoning, you are perhaps oppressed by me?
I was initially irritated by what I saw as an easy attack on broad, false, caricatured representations, which were not true strikes because they failed to engage with the actual nature of the Stormfront or conservative Christian website communities -- which dealt in stereotypes ("if you hate gays, you secretly are one") that I found tired and pointless -- which told us nothing much about those websites' actual reasons for fear, distrust or dislike of this film and what it represented.
If you're moving towards some idea that I feel threatened by you, that's a dull avenue that I don't recommend. Why not look at it more positively. I replied to your post partly because I like to discuss things that interest me. And now we are engaging in a worthwhile conversation.
quote: I might reasonably point out that you're being rather selective in holding me to standards which seem rather out of keeping with TMO in general. There are numerous examples of rather frivolous pisstaking at the 'expense' of other sites - including Vikram's Stormfront link in this very thread. As far as I can recall (and I might well be wrong here), this is the first time you've challenged someone doing so in this particular way.
I hope others here will swiftly back up my assurance that I have challenged very many people on this forum over the years, not that it's always a good thing by any means, but you are probably #507.
quote:
How come?
I hadn't posted for some time -- TMO hadn't had a decent discussion thread in some time -- you are relatively new, yet I have an acquaintance with you from Barbelith -- I know you have potential to join a debate -- &c -- nothing bad.
quote:in the sense of the personal being political, yes, I suppose it is.
That is the sense I meant.
quote:I do think those attitudes impinge upon my life, but relatively peripherally. It'd be overstatement to make this a central pillar of my claimed motivations.
This is now relatively clear to me, and sensible.
quote: Is someone "poaching" when they take an image from McDonalds or Microsoft websites, photoshop it and post it up here with a new meaning? YES, actually they are.
What about when they don't photoshop it, but post it as it is with a funny caption? Or with no caption at all, but within a discursive context wherein the juxtaposition is funny?
Then I would say that was also "poaching", forming new and "resistant" (perhaps progressive, radical, challenging) meanings from the texts of the dominant culture.
quote:Again, we need to quantify how one measures "power" on the Internet. Number of clicks? Ability to sue?
More the latter, I think, in practical terms -- eg. numerous cases of Star Wars fans vs Lucasfilm.
quote: Your description of the power dynamic would seem to suggest that it's like going to a much more powerful country wherein one is comparitively powerless. I'm happy to accept this analogy, but would reject the implication that there's necessarily something 'too easy' or 'unfair' about the process.
I suppose concepts of power on the internet are also relative (though a usual workable measure would still be the one above). If you frequent the Comic Book forum on Barbelith you may see people going on "guerilla raid" type visits to the bulletin boards of reactionary John Byrne and his reactionary fans.
On that board, those individuals are outnumbered and liable to be shouted down, so they are relatively powerless.
When they troll up an exchange, goad someone on JB board into looking stupid or prompt an argument, and paste that into Barbelith, the power structure has then changed: the raider is back among his own community and the quoted posters now represent a laughable minority opinion.
Perhaps my idea that it was too easy or unfair was based on these ideas:
i) the people on the Stormfront and Christian websites seemed a bit stupid ii) I didn't think you were representing them accurately
These things may be linked. I cannot claim my own position here is without internal contradictions.
quote:It would seem to serve me remarkably well, then - as would the example of your returning here to complain about mistreatment in the Barbelith Nathan Barley thread, secure that you'd be received more sympathetically here.
Well, I don't remember that... it sounds unlikely given that I am not really King Rollo on this board, and half the folk here openly hate my guts.
But before you go looking for a link and quotes to back yourself up -- can I say I think it's frankly unendearing to have to rummage around old threads to make a point. You'll notice I'm not going through your Barbelith history, trying to see if you've said anything here that contradicts what you said there. We are not dirty lawyers looking through each other's rubbish. That is charmless.
quote:(Are you banned from TMO, then? How long did that last for? You appear to be posting now.)
A weekend. Though it was for the thoughtless creation of a "loop" really (a link on here to there, and vice versa) rather than anything in the content.
quote: I'd argue that your assessment of my 'honesty' rests on a host of assumptions regarding what motivates me ("strategy", "offended", "oppressed", etc.) and you are not the long-distance telepath you might appear to be.
Thank you for saying I appear to be one, rather than just imagine myself to be one -- but you must stop this "if you attempt to summarise my position you must reckon you can read minds" nonsense.
What I meant by "honesty" is not that you were being dishonest (ie. a gay man "lying to himself" in another tired stereotype) but that this approach didn't bring us to the truth of what those websites were saying, and why.
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for instance).
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