Monthly Archives: July 2011

The Queer Matrix Through the Decades

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Hoping not to prove you can have too much of a good thing, I’m continuing my queer ponderings this week, visual arts-style, with new Queer Matrices.

I spent way more time on these than I’d like to admit, but the results are quite a bit more polished than last week’s laughable mock-up.  I guess I was the last to know:  you can’t do diddly in Paint.

Some definitions first…

The X axis is Queer Content, which could include portrayals of same sex love and relationships, homoeroticism, gender bending, trans experiences, drag, or any representation of queer culture, politics and/or community.

No Queer Content is the absence of any of these.

The Y axis is Queer Sensibility.  The way I define it is looking at the world with a queer lens, through which homoeroticism and same sex love are celebrated, transexuality is transcendent, queer oppression is illuminated and indicted, and heteronormativity is challenged, subverted, and asked to please leave the building.

Non Queer Sensibility is the opposite, meaning looking at the world with a non queer lens, through which heteronormativity is centralized, traditionalized and/or assumed, a gender binary is de rigueur, and opposite sex relationships are the default setting.

Now we’ll take a look at Queer Matrices through the decades…

 

 

 

So what’s next?  The Queer Matrix:  Boy Bands?  Disney?  Punk Music Icons?  I’m open to entertaining suggestions.

The Queer Matrix

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I recently had a discussion with another writer about the concept of a queer sensibility.

Our conversation brought up profound questions that have been heavily considered and debated elsewhere–quite smartly in this article I found by poet/filmmaker Charles Jensen.

What is a queer sensibility?

Can a work of fiction, art, or film be queer, if it doesn’t portray queer sexuality?

Is there a non-queer or heteronormative sensibility?

Can a work of fiction, etc. that portrays queer sexuality be considered non-queer?

I believe a queer sensibility exists, and it goes beyond a homoerotic aesthetic or an explicit portrayal of same-sex love. For me, it’s the kind of thing I know when I see it.

I respect that many queer and non-queer folks disagree with me.  There’s an argument to be made against labeling creative work queer, or non-queer; and it’s not my purpose to elevate one over the other.  Sensibility is by definition personal and subjective. But here’s what this got me thinking about just for fun.

What creative works  have little to no queer content, but I still consider queer?

What creative works portay queerness, but still feel essentially heteronormative?

These ponderings led to—I present—the QUEER MATRIX.

Certain to piss off lots of people, the Queer Matrix is a way of understanding popular media from, well, a lens of queerness.  It’s a take on New York Magazine’s Approval Matrix, which is the first thing I check out whenever I have a copy.  But it’s a rather piteous derivative, artistically.  I made it in the only graphics program I know:  Paint.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Stories from Mykonos, Part Three

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The last installment of essays and photos from my trip…

Cycladic Torpor

We get lazier as the week progresses.   The first few days were excursions on ATVs, shopping in town, and late nights out at the clubs.   Now we arrange morning meet-up times to get the free hotel breakfast before 10:30, and we order lunch by the pool.

We are loud, unmannered Americans, and the European guests glare at us from their chaise lounges.   Until we are upstaged by the arrival of the Australians.

Delos

We take a ferry to Delos, an archeological site.   Everyone has their vouchers, courtesy of the Germans.   They made arrangements with their local travel agent, and they have timetables and tour information loaded on their smartphones.

Delos was an important religious and trading center from the ninth century BCE to the first century CE.   Apollo, the Sun God, was born here.   We visit his birthplace, which was once a lake, but it was dredged by French archaeologists because of malaria.   The area is now a boggy pine forest, but there is still a towering palm tree that the ancient Greeks planted to commemorate Apollo’s birth.

We walk through the city streets guided by Joanna, a diminutive tour guide with a voice that carries.   She shows us the House of Dionysus.   There is a mosaic in the atrium pool depicting the god returning from the Far East, saddled on a lion.

Lions are a common motif throughout the ruins.   They’re in tile patterns on walls, and there are famous marble lion statues warding Apollo’s birthplace.    There were no city walls or military defenses for Delos.   It was sacked by Greeks in 88 CE as part of a revolt against the Romans.

There is an amphitheater that seated 5,000, and a plumbing system that brought water to all parts of town.   Delos was a multicultural community, and tolerant of many religions.  Egyptians built temples here, and Delos was the site of the first synagogue on Greek soil.   Today, there’s a snack bar that serves fresh squeezed orange juice, but not much anything else.

Everyone wants to browse the gift shop, but the woman who runs it is on vacation so the shop is closed.   In the middle of tourist season?   We are surprised and a little bit ticked off.

This is the principal difference between Europeans and Americans.   To Europeans, working is something you do between vacations.   To us, vacations are what you do between working.

Mosaic from Delos’ House of Dionysus

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Another Delos mosaic depicting the myth of Apollo and Daphne

Stories from Mykonos, Part Two

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A continuation of my impressions from Mykonos, Greece…

The Waiter Dmitri

Everyone loves the hotel’s head waiter Dmitri.   Dmitri is tall and handsome and very reassuring.   He rubs our backs while he’s talking to us, and he speaks in a soft and gentle voice.   He tells us that he works six months in Mykonos, and the other six months he’s a ski instructor in Austria.

We ask Dmitri many questions about Mykonos’ nightclubs.   He takes great pains to be as thorough as possible with his answers, and if we ever appear confused, he draws us maps on little scraps of hotel stationery.   He can’t say the word lesbian without lowering his voice to a whisper.   This is Dmitri’s only fault as far as I can tell.   I think his mother must be very proud of him.

Lost

When we travel as a group, we rely on the Germans.   They have an innate sense of direction, like carrier pigeons, and it takes German efficiency to navigate the island’s unmarked streets and the labyrinth of pedestrian walks in town.   Only once did they lead us in the wrong direction, but we ended up at a beautiful amphitheater surrounded by flowering trees.

The city plan was designed to confuse pirates.   All we want is ice cream and a taxi cab.   We find a transgender gypsy wearing a medieval crown, sitting on a stoop, reading fortunes.   We see stray cats everywhere.   We want to take them home and give them a better life.   At restaurants, the cats beg at tables like street urchins.   They will eat the fish, the lamb, and the bechamel on the moussaka, but they won’t eat the squid or the octopus.

There is a famous pelican in town.   A man drives him around in the carriage of his scooter.   One morning we saw the pelican sitting on the terrace of a restaurant, and the owner came out and cursed and shooed the bird away.   We thought it was extreme and impolite until we realized that he didn’t want the pelican shitting all over the place.


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Stories from Mykonos, Part One

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My partner and I celebrated our 10th anniversary in Mykonos with seven of our friends.   I’ve been writing some short essays about the trip and decided to share them here over the next few weeks.  Names have been changed as a courtesy to the involved parties.

Here’s Round One…

Arrival

We are seven arriving at Athens airport on staggered international flights.   Four of us have a six hour layover until boarding time for the little jet to Mykonos.   Anxious for adventure, we check-in our luggage and get a cab into the city.

The heat is oppressive, and the sun is scalding.  There is no air conditioning in the cab.

Such things would be outrageous in New York City, but we are in Greece, and jetlag-drunk.   We want to See, See, See.   Athens is hosting an Olympics.   The Special Olympics.   Our friendly, patriarchal driver tells us so.   He drops us in the Plaka district with advice to take the Metro back to avoid the traffic.

We wander up a staired lane in search of a taverna with a view of the Acropolis.   There are dozens of places with outdoor seating, each with a Maitre D’ foisting a menu on us and promising free beer.   We are shielded by urban skepticism.   At the top of the lane, looking up, up, up, we see it—a corner of the Acropolis wall.   It’s a good enough view considering how far we’ve come, and there’s a shaded taverna nearby.   Foods that we could order at any New York diner taste fresher and more ethnic:  Greek salad, tzatzichi, chicken souvlaki.  We learn how to say thank you in Greek.

“Efharisto!”

We find an air conditioned cab for the trip back to the airport.   The cool air is luxurious and our young driver with thick black hair is a sight more favorable than the man who took us into town.   But he swears a lot, annoyed with the redirected traffic pattern around the Olympic events (even though he steers through roped off streets like most of the other drivers).   Our older driver would have told us anything we wanted to know about the ancient city.   This one wants to be somewhere else, with his girlfriend maybe, or watching a soccer game with his friends.   Someone overtips him anyway.

First night out

At the hotel, we are greeted by the Germans, our eighth and ninth companions, a couple.   They have reserved a table at the restaurant.

After bread and wine and shared appetizers, most of us feel renewed.   At eleven, a proposal to go into town for nightclubbing is seconded, thirded, fourthed and fifthed.   We have made shopping trips for this occasion–designer jeans, patterned shirts, graphic tee’s, and for the women, espadrilles—and we have worked out, dieted, and tried new skin products for the past six months.

The walk into town is a steep downward slope with speeding mopeds, ATVs and buses, and no sidewalk.   We wind along the waterline to find the club the hotel waiter recommended.   At midnight, we are early arrivees, but the music is exhilarating, and we dance like teenagers.   Later, the club is mobbed and we take to tables and the tops of booths.

Exiting the club is a sensuous experience.  We squeeze through walls of men with well-built, overheated bodies.   Around the corner, there is an alley behind a church which is the designated cruising spot.   A Dutch tourist asks one of our single friends if he wants to go back there because his “balls need to be drained.”  Our friend declines.

We are arm-and-arm and joyful walking to the taxi stand in the early morning.   People are out on the streets like the scattering of a big parade.   Groups of young women teeter on the cobblestones in high heels and mini-mini skirts.   From a cafe, a lesbian couple watches us with Cheshire cat smiles.

The taxi line is ten parties deep, but there is a drunken British couple to talk to.   They started drinking when they arrived yesterday afternoon.   We crowd into a cab in two human layers.   A flirtatious friend asks the driver: “Where are you from?”   Everyone laughs riotously.  Someone blurts out:   “We’re on an island.  You think he commutes in from Bulgaria?”   The point is:   we’re not in NYC anymore.