Glitter and be Gay (Ep. 129 - Julie Andrews)

Glitter and be Gay (Ep. 129 - Julie Andrews)
Matt Baume & Historian Kevin Clarke
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This Week's Guest: Kevin Clarke

What hidden worlds are waiting to be found right under your nose? My guest this week is Kevin Clarke, who grew up in a divided Berlin, so close to the wall he could hear the police threatening to shoot people who came too close. He was eager to leave as soon as he could -- but he was drawn back to the city years later. By then, he was old enough to discover and explore a bawdy underground gay culture that had always been hiding right in his own back yard.

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This Week's Recommendation: Marlene Dietrich Live in Stockholm

Thanks again to Kevin for joining me. If you ever find yourself in Berlin, I highly recommend a trip to the Schwules Museum. And not just if you're Julie Andrews. It's an incredible glimpse into history and it's one of the great wonders of the queer world. 

For my recommendation this week, take a look at the work of another great queer icon: Marlene Dietrich. Specifically, seek out the full version of Marlene Dietrich live in Stockholm, a 1963 concert featuring some of her most iconic songs: La Vie en Rose, The Laziest Gal in Town, Lili Marlene, and of course Falling in Love Again.

But the song that moves me to tears every single time is her rendition of Where Have all the Flowers Gone -- a German translated version of Pete Sieger's great anti-war song. The song is moving even if you can't understand the words, in part because of how it's delivered: she stands resolute, staring tall in a single spotlight amidst darkness, and in her gaze into the distance and her beautiful deep voice there's a heartbreaking, mournful pain.

But of course there's pain. This was a woman whose career began in Berlin cabarets, who then watched the city she loved torn apart by war. She renounced her homeland and dedicated her career to fighting Nazis, turning over entire film salaries to funds that helped Jews escape. After the war was over, she learned that her sister had run a cinema frequented by concentration camp officers, and she disowned those family members. And many Germans never forgave her -- when she returned for a concert in the 1960s, she was met with protestors and bomb threats.

But she was absolutely a hero, at times performing for troops so close to battlefields her life was in grave danger. When asked why she would take such risks simply to boost the morale of those fighting Nazis, her reply was "aus Anstad" -- out of decency.

Standing up for what what was right meant sacrificing money, career, family, homeland -- but she did it anyway, and she remained standing even decades later, alone there in the dark at that concert wondering if a day will come when we will ever learn.

Clips of Stuff We Talked About

 

Music

The Doctor's Wife (Ep. 128 - The Witches)

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This Week's Guest: Jonathan Duffy

The Doctor's Wife (Ep. 128 - The Witches)
Matt Baume & Comedian Jonathan Duffy
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What are you willing to sacrifice for your freedom? My guest this week is Australian-Icelandic comedian Jonathan Duffy, who's found a way to laugh through good times and bad, whether serving as Creative Director for Iceland's entry into Eurovision... to an unexpected calling tending to people near death in a small town the Australian Outback. There used to be a time when he just sat back and let the world pass him by. But his real adventures began when he started giving up the things he loved to get even more back.

Hey, if you're in Seattle at the end of this month, I'd like to invite you to two live events that I'm hosting. The first is a show we're calling Dungeons and Drag Queens, a live comedy show where four drag queens play through a D&D adventure on stage. It's happening on Thursday, August 31st at 7pm at the Timbre Room, and you can get tickets at StrangerTickets.com.

The second is a panel at Penny Arcade Expo -- that's PAX -- about how to create queer gamer communities. Whether you live in a big city or a small town, we've assembled a panel of experts with advice for LGBTQ geeks looking to organize. Tickets to PAX are sold out but if you're going, the panel's on Saturday, September 2nd at 12:30pm.

A big thanks to everyone supporting the Sewers of Paris on Patreon. If you're enjoying the show, you can help keep it independent and ad-free with your pledge of support. Just go to SewersOfParis.com and click support the show on Patreon.

This Week's Recommendation: It's Time

As Jonathan mentioned, it's so important to let people know that you love them. For my recommendation this week, I want you to check out an Australian ad called "It's Time." It's short, just two minutes long, and it's shot as an unseen person's point of view -- you're seeing through their eyes as they meet a boy, go on dates, fall in love, meet the family and start a life together. 

Because the viewer is watching all this unfold, with characters making eye contact into the camera as though they're looking into your eyes, it's easy to get lost in that gaze -- to feel as though you're there, experiencing the rush of caring for someone and being cared about.

The whole thing flies by as a fast montage, a whole relationship from initial meeting to growing close to moving in to proposal. What's beautiful about it is how ordinary and familiar it all is: buying dinner together, sure, we all recognize that. Nervously meeting parents, sure, we've all been there. it just feels so normal. Throughout the entire relationship, there's not a moment of disapproval or skepticism or resistance about the couple's gender. And even though the ad was made to persuade straight people that we all deserve the freedom to marry, it's also an amazing gift to queer viewers: this is what it would feel like to fall in love in world where nobody thinks your love is wrong.

And then the ad fades to black just as we see two men embracing, about to begin life together as a married couple. And it's like a punch to the gut. Because that can't actually happen, at least not in Australia, not yet, or even in most countries. We don't live in that a world where nobody thinks our love is wrong. Not yet. There are still lots of people who would see that ad cut to black before the relationship can even begin. 

And that's one more reason to tell the people we love how we truly feel, no matter who or what stands in our way.

Clips of Stuff we Talked About

 

Music

Parisian Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

I am Militantly Vulnerable (Ep. 127 - Sailor Moon)

I am Militantly Vulnerable (Ep. 127 - Sailor Moon)
Matt Baume & Drag Queen Gilda Wabbit
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This Week's Guest: Gilda Wabbit

What's the future you want to see? My guest this week is drag queen Gilda Wabbit, who experienced a strange moment of internet fame thanks to a photo of her riding the subway in full drag next to a Muslim woman. What that photo didn't capture was Gilda's background searching for her voice -- literally, as for years she struggled as an opera singer to find roles that felt right. Turns out putting on a wig and a dress helped point her in the right direction.

This Week's Recommendation: Giant Woman

Thanks again to Gilda for joining me. You can find her on Twitter @gildawabbit, and you YouTube where you can see her singing Do it for Her from Steven Universe.

For my recommendation this week, check out another Steven Universe song: Giant Woman. You don't need to be familiar with the show to follow along -- thought it helps to know that it's a song song by a character who wants his friends to get along, rather than fight, because when they do they can combine to become a giant woman. 

I recommend this not just because Steven Universe is the most beautiful and pure television show ever made. But during a recent livestream, viewer FreeKillZero pointed out to me that becoming a giant woman is essentially what performer do when they get into drag. And although it might not have been the meaning intended by the show, there's a lovely parallel between the magic fusing of Steven's friends and the magic transformation of drag. 

Drag is something you wear on your outside but it's something you feel on your inside. It's a fullness, an achievement of inner potential that nobody could see until the wig and the makeup came along.

It's why, no matter how popular it become, drag will never become "mainstream," because it's an intensely personal, individual, political and rebellious act to declare that person everyone sees is wrong and persona that you feel is right.

Clips of Stuff we Talked About

 

Music

Parisian Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Swept Away by Dracula (Ep. 126 - horror films)

Swept Away by Dracula (Ep. 126 - horror films)
Matt Baume & Filmmaker Jeffrey Schwarz
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This Week's Guest: Jeffrey Schwarz

We're noted from time to time on this show that many gay men hold a special place for horror in their hearts. But that's only a fraction of the story with this week's guest. Jeffrey Schwarz has made a lifelong study of film, starting with an early job editing the documentary The Celluloid Closet, right up to today with a new documentary about flamboyant producer Allan Carr. As a weird young gay man, he found kindred spirits in people who, like him, reveled in intensity and excess. And now as a filmmaker, he's reaching out a hand to invite others to join him.
 

This Week's Recommendation: The Lost Boys

Thanks again to Jeffrey for joining me, and no thanks to all the creepy horror stuff I looked through after recording this week's episode. I had some particularly unpleasant nightmares thanks to that title sequence from the show Chiller. But that obviously means that something's working -- something's speaking to me, even if I don't want to hear it.

I've always been squeamish about horror, because I'm easily spooked in general and also because it sometimes makes me confront anxieties I don't know how to handle. That's why it is with some nervousness that this week my recommendation is The Lost Boys, a 1987 vampire movie based on the lost boys of Peter Pan.

The film is set in a California coastal town and focused on a teen boy and his preteen brother. The older boy falls in with a sinister crowd of vampires, but they're not JUST vampires -- they're also extremely gay. In fact the whole film oozes with queer desire, probably because it was directed by Joel Schumacher. 

One young boy has a sexy pinup photo inside his closet; another signals that he's joined the vampires by wearing a single earring. There's a oily muscular saxophone player in purple tights who seems to have wriggled off of the pages of International Male, and the camera devotes a deeply uncomfortable amount of attention to a boy in a bathtub who sings about not having a man in his life. And that's all before we get to the extremely thin veil on the metaphor of a fraternal plague spread by the sharing bodily fluids in the 1980s.

For all its gleeful sexuality, The Lost Boys makes me a bit sad since it ultimately feels self-loathing. The band of brothers are evil monsters, killing without remorse. And they're ultimately defeated by child-heroes wearing uniforms of 80s action-star heteronormativity. Worst of all, the film attempts to shock with a predatory bisexual twist.

I want to root for the Lost Boys, both the movie and the characters. I want to be a part of the sexy, carefree young men living hedonistically on the beach. But no, the movie insists, you can't. Those guys are bad. The straight world is good. It really bums me out that the movie sees vampires this way, especially a movie made by a gay man.

But then again, in 1987, that is how the world saw gays. It was a story told about us so widely, so emphatically, and so convincingly that many came to believe it about themselves.

Clips of Stuff we Talked About

 

Music

Parisian Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Everything but the Snakes (Ep. 125 - Worship songs)

Everything but the Snakes (Ep. 125 - Worship songs)
Matt Baume & Strategist Josef Krebs
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This Week's Guest: Josef Krebs

What's the project of your life? My guest this week is Josef Krebs, who's done a lot of thinking about the impact he can have on the world, whether through the evangelical church in which he grew up, or the world of theater where he eventually found a more satisfying home. Josef's work has always been about chasing the feeling of ecstasy, not just for himself but for the people around him.

This Week's Recommendation: Katamari Damacy

I'm going to get very "big idea" for a moment here and assert that one of the primary functions of myth is to connect us to the cosmos -- that is, to make sense of the insensible vastness of the universe. But sometimes, the stories we tell make the universe make even less sense, and that's the case with this week's recommendation: the game Katamari Damacy.

The premise of the game is simple enough, and it's kind of Pac Man plus a snowball rolling downhill. You play the Prince of the Cosmos, whose father the king accidentally destroyed all the heavenly bodies. He wants you to go to Earth to collect material to remake the moon and stars. And the way you do this is by rolling a sticky ball around various places -- everything you touch sticks to the ball, and while you start very tiny you eventually roll up enough to gather paperclips, then small toys, then cats and dogs, then people and cars and buildings and trees. 

A line often repeated in the game is, "I feel it. I feel the cosmos." An indeed, it's hard not to feel as though everything is connected as you roll it all up, from the tiny bugs at the start to the giant cargo ships at the end. It is deeply satisfying to squish every object in the world together to make new stars. As Carl Sagan said, we're all made of star stuff, and there's a pleasurable democracy in seeing that everything, big and small, can get rolled up into a big sticky ball of celestial light. 

Clips of Stuff We Talked About

 

Music

Parisian Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/