|
Written by Anna Pulley
|
|
Sunday, 15 July 2007 |
 Queer films and censorship have a long, sordid history. We go way back, farther even than feather boas and trips to Home Depot. It started with the Puritans and religious groups like The Legion of Decency in the 1920s. Not to be outdone, the government hired its own moral barometer, Will Hays, to be its federally mandated censor, thus starting the era of the Hays Production Code. The code was finally abandoned in 1967, forty years ago, but like all unhealthy relationships, censorship has not gone away. In 1998, local government officials in Seoul, South Korea pulled the plug on the first Queer Film Fest, going so far as to threaten shutting off the electricity if organizers tried to screen the films elsewhere. And just last year in Vancouver, a conservative lobby group petitioned the Department of Canadian Heritage to cut funding to the Vancouver Queer Film Festival because the films were considered “degenerate and degrading to humanity.” But what about here in the U.S., in the supposed bastion of freedom? In addition to the usual religious zealots and right-wing naysayers, we now have a new proponent of censorship: ourselves. |
|
Read more...
|
|
|
Written by Sarah Terez Rosenblum
|
|
Wednesday, 20 June 2007 |
 I live my life like an impromptu dinner, the kind you throw together when all of a sudden you realize it’s 7pm, you haven’t gone shopping in days, and the last meal you ate was breakfast, a generous title to give what you ate: a stale heel of bread and a piece of cheese which, if you’re honest with yourself was probably not supposed to be that color. That’s when you fling open the refrigerator, rifle through the cabinets, and use what you find to nourish yourself as well as the circumstances allow. And like whatever dubious concoction you cobble together, the circumstances that shaped my current capabilities were not pre-planned. Therefore it is through providence rather than design that I’ve come to understand something. Being friends with lesbians is like running a marathon: you gotta train for it. Put away your Nikes, that is not the type of training I propose. |
|
Read more...
|
|
|
Written by Jim Marcus
|
|
Monday, 11 June 2007 |
 Martin Luther King, Jr. once said that given a long enough time line, the arrow of human history points towards justice. I would think that was true even if he didn't say it in that booming, august, alliterative voice he had. He probably could have ordered Chinese food in that voice and it would have sounded epic: “Give me the Potstick-er-er-ers. And the Frie-e-e-ed Ric- ah. And no Em Esssss Geeeeeeeeeee.”
|
|
Read more...
|
|
|
|
<< Start < Previous 1 2 3 4 Next > End >>
|
