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LGBTQIA+ | OT7 | ~First comes love, then comes marriage~

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B

berzeli

Banned
I post way too little in this thread sometimes, but the butt thread in the gaming side is too good to not mention (so many posters saying things like "male butts can't be sexy").

Oh, and the actual reason for me posting; if you haven't (and it's playing near you) go see Carol. It's amazing. AV Club had an interesting article (which in itself references a recent, much less interesting, article on vaguely the same topic from Buzzfeed) on it: By mostly snubbing Carol, the Oscars continue to exclude queer cinema
After Haynes—one of the most eclectic and accomplished talents of his generation—was snubbed at the Director’s Guild, there were rumblings that he might be shut out, yet again, from the Oscar shortlist. (In his place, the Academy tapped The Big Short’s Adam McKay and Room’s Lenny Abrahamson for kudos.) But the film’s shutout shouldn’t have been a major shock. Exactly a decade after Brokeback Mountain was famously snubbed at the 2006 Oscars—thwarted by Paul Haggis’ Crash in a shocking upset victory—Carol’s snub is just how the Academy does business. To date, a queer-themed movie has still never won Best Picture, and those that do receive any kind of recognition prominently feature queer suffering.

To win an Oscar for playing gay, everyone knows you have to kick the bucket. In the history of the Academy Awards, only two actors have won an award for playing an LGBT character who lives to see the end of the movie: Penelope Cruz joined the grand tradition of Woody Allen ingenues by winning Best Supporting Actress in 2009 for Vicky Cristina Barcelona. She took home a trophy for playing Maria Elena, a tortured artist with a violent streak who gets involved in a dangerous (and sapphic) love-triangle with Juan Antonio (Javier Bardem) and Cristina (Scarlett Johansson).
In 2006, the late Philip Seymour Hoffman snagged a Best Actor award for playing writer and socialite Truman Capote. As Bennett Miller’s Capote focuses on the complicated relationship between Capote and the subject of the 1965 non-fiction opus In Cold Blood, Perry Smith (Clifton Collins Jr.), its protagonist’s death takes place off screen. He’s killed off by the closing credits, an intertitle card informing us that nearly two decades after the release of his most famous work—after which he would never publish another book—he died of liver cancer (likely caused by years of alcoholism). He was 59.

Most queer characters who are the subject of an Oscar-winning performance, however, don’t get the dignity to die outside the camera’s gaze. Charlize Theron won Oscar gold in 2004 for playing serial killer Aileen Wuornos in Monster, and the film ends with her death by lethal injection. In The Hours, writer Virginia Woolf—who was known to have relationships with women—kills herself. The final moments of the film are her suicide note, read by Nicole Kidman with maximum tenderness as Woolf walks into a river. In Philadelphia, Andrew Beckett (Tom Hanks) dies of HIV in extreme close-up, as he tells his partner, Miguel: “I’m ready.”

From Kiss Of The Spider Woman to Boys Don’t Cry, the Academy Awards have a fetishistic relationship with queer misery and struggle. The Oscars like seeing queer bodies broken and begging for humanity, rather than fully human and already deserving of our respect. In an essay for BuzzFeed, Allison Wilmore argues that the issue is that most “Oscar movies” aren’t made with queer audiences in mind: They use “characters as symbols rather than as people unto themselves, and mediating stories through the more ‘relatable’ perspectives of outsiders and allies.” In other words, if queer audiences are already aware that we are people, Philadelphia was made for those who have yet to be convinced.
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I mostly agree with the articles (well, the Buzzfeed one tried to defend Snorewall for whatever reason so...) and they point they raise coincide with something I find so bothersome about so many queer characters on film and TV; the suffering, the ever prevalent suffering and hardship that they have to endure simply because of their queerness. I've lost count of how many times (especially in period pieces) queer characters pop up, get tormented, and then exit (sometimes happily, or if they're lesbian get killed off), mostly existing so that the (straight) main character can show how how enlightened he/she is. There is more to being queer than suffering and it really is time that even the hackiest of hacks realised that.
 
G

Golnei

Member
berzeli said:
I mostly agree with the articles (well, the Buzzfeed one tried to defend Snorewall for whatever reason so...) and they point they raise coincide with something I find so bothersome about so many queer characters on film and TV; the suffering, the ever prevalent suffering and hardship that they have to endure simply because of their queerness. I've lost count of how many times (especially in period pieces) queer characters pop up, get tormented, and then exit (sometimes happily, or if they're lesbian get killed off), mostly existing so that the (straight) main character can show how how enlightened he/she is. There is more to being queer than suffering and it really is time that even the hackiest of hacks realised that.
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Definitely. There's plenty of room for tragedy in LGBT narratives, especially considering historical precedent; but there's something seriously wrong when it's considered their default mode, or the only way they can be taken seriously / gain mainstream acknowledgement. Especially if they're just acting as inspirational martyrs to the straight protagonists.

I mean, look at the categories of LGBT film in the Wikipedia article.
c702Pdv1aShMM4JG5R1A0Tjppb0zBV5TEYqyOBXhsaiWcnwORMXWtz9djs0PenfyCtP9pJrM911NueRdD_idIygW7U35SsJ5Z2XANs0v7-IozeRs2DR53Zo518F58op60rAAdJXg1MXAls0qxD6JKJ7b1IrNiQ=w236-h254-nc


Barrylocke said:
I just realized that whenever a person on GAF has Ike from Fire Emblem as their avatar, I automatically assume that they're gay.
Click to expand...

That seems like a particularly baseless assumption.
 
D

Deleted member 465307

Unconfirmed Member
berzeli said:
I post way too little in this thread sometimes, but the butt thread in the gaming side is too good to not mention (so many posters saying things like "male butts can't be sexy").

Oh, and the actual reason for me posting; if you haven't (and it's playing near you) go see Carol. It's amazing. AV Club had an interesting article (which in itself references a recent, much less interesting, article on vaguely the same topic from Buzzfeed) on it: By mostly snubbing Carol, the Oscars continue to exclude queer cinema

I mostly agree with the articles (well, the Buzzfeed one tried to defend Snorewall for whatever reason so...) and they point they raise coincide with something I find so bothersome about so many queer characters on film and TV; the suffering, the ever prevalent suffering and hardship that they have to endure simply because of their queerness. I've lost count of how many times (especially in period pieces) queer characters pop up, get tormented, and then exit (sometimes happily, or if they're lesbian get killed off), mostly existing so that the (straight) main character can show how how enlightened he/she is. There is more to being queer than suffering and it really is time that even the hackiest of hacks realised that.
Click to expand...

Thanks for sharing this. I haven't read it yet, but the points you summarize and raise are interesting to me, so I will plan on reading it later. If I may respond to what you wrote and quoted exclusively: Suffering is often a part of the queer experience, and I think for at least me, to express and experience suffering through film or other media has been cathartic. That said, as you wrote, this isn't the only queer story that should be told and respected. While I haven't put much thought into this, I think a similar argument could be made for other stories of minorities and disempowered populations as well.

P.S.: Is your avatar from RPJ? If so, that's a really cool photo.
 
A

Aarglefarg

Member
Everyone check out Bound please for a great movie about lesbians.

Biforce banned for insulting people in the thread about David Cameron and Muslim women and learning English.
 
U

umop_3pisdn

Member
Golnei said:
Definitely. There's plenty of room for tragedy in LGBT narratives, especially considering historical precedent; but there's something seriously wrong when it's considered their default mode, or the only way they can be taken seriously / gain mainstream acknowledgement. Especially if they're just acting as inspirational martyrs to the straight protagonists.

I mean, look at the categories of LGBT film in the Wikipedia article.
c702Pdv1aShMM4JG5R1A0Tjppb0zBV5TEYqyOBXhsaiWcnwORMXWtz9djs0PenfyCtP9pJrM911NueRdD_idIygW7U35SsJ5Z2XANs0v7-IozeRs2DR53Zo518F58op60rAAdJXg1MXAls0qxD6JKJ7b1IrNiQ=w236-h254-nc
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This is kind of hilarious. I mean I guess everyone likes a tragic hero, but it makes some attitudes about queerness pretty transparent. The crux of any tragic hero figure is basically that they are posed an irreconcilable moral problem, the resolution of which demands a sort of sacrifice which conforms to our understanding of the ethical. In this case I guess that problem must be something like "how do I be gay but not defy social norms of modesty?" and the social response to that is apparently "die :p". I guess you can wring some sympathy from people via the tragedy of the situation, but a more simple or basic empathy of 'what would be it be like to just be romantically oriented towards members of the same sex' (etc) is still a step too far I guess.
 
B

berzeli

Banned
kirbyfan407 said:
Thanks for sharing this. I haven't read it yet, but the points you summarize and raise are interesting to me, so I will plan on reading it later. If I may respond to what you wrote and quoted exclusively: Suffering is often a part of the queer experience, and I think for at least me, to express and experience suffering through film or other media has been cathartic. That said, as you wrote, this isn't the only queer story that should be told and respected. While I haven't put much thought into this, I think a similar argument could be made for other stories of minorities and disempowered populations as well.

P.S.: Is your avatar from RPJ? If so, that's a really cool photo.
Click to expand...

Suffering is indeed often a part of the queer experience, but the thing I'm mostly agitated by and actually is a slightly differing topic (which overlaps with the one discussed in the article) is that it is the sole thing which defines these characters is their suffering and that suffering arises from their queerness. They aren't allowed to become more than set dressing, how they act and feel becomes secondary to how others react to and feel about them. I've grown sick of the near obligatory "we used to treat the gays so badly didn't we?" episode of period pieces (especially period crime procedurals) where the queer characters seem to exist only for the liberal minded main character to say "what is wrong with two people loving each other?" to the sidekick who at the beginning of the episode sneered at a queer.

It basically is the same issue that the articles are talking about but a slightly different nuance of it. The interweaving of being queer and suffering and the source of that suffering being their queerness. Even though the articles also talk about how narrow the idea of what a queer film (and what it is for) is with mainstream audiences, a notion perfectly exemplified in comments below (it's AV Club, it's nearly safe to read the comments) the article:

First, I didn't think it had anything new to say. Yes, it was taboo to be gay in the 50s. Hell, it was barely accepted 10 years ago, so of course it was worse back then. I didn't feel like I walked away from the movie with a new perspective on anything. Haynes made almost the exact same point in Far From Heaven almost 15 years ago.

I'm not trying to rag on you, but I actually think that's part of the problem. It shouldn't have to have a new perspective, it shouldn't have to teach you anything. It was a story, a love story, a sapphic love story, not a PSA. I think people are so used to thinking of queer movies as teaching tools to help them become better people that it can't just be a good movie. I didn't learn gain a new perspective on totalitarian regimes from Mad Max but I still thought it was worthy of a nod.
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The article does point out the parallells to how people of colour (specifically black Americans) are treated with the same level of respect by the academy (i.e. outside of a narrowly defined window of what is "okay" to portray, black stories get overlooked.).

Heh, no. Forgot that RPJ is a thing, so maybe should have waited with switching avatars. It is a still of Thommy Berggren from Kvarteret Korpen (Raven's End), usually hailed as the best film made in Sweden. Keeping with my theme of having moderately highbrow Swedish cultural references as avatars (well, two out of three counts as a theme right?).
 
M

Mostmanlyman

Member
I was kinda thinking about coming out to my parents, I just dont really know how to, like i have only came out to two other people but neither of those where in person. I will probably end up waiting til it is just me and my mom and tell her first because im much closer to her. Then i guess i would tell my father next and then the rest of my close family. I just dont really know how i would go at it. I will probably wait a while and think about it some more. But with everything in my live im uncertain.
Any tips would also be welcome.
 
Monocle

Monocle

Member
Henchmen21 said:
Isn't porn the only reason people use tumblr at all?
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Hunks, porn, art, art reference and inspiration, fashion & lifestyle guides (like clothing and home decor), TV & film analysis, wallpapers, photography of all kinds. Tumblr is a ridiculously good resource if you know what you're looking for. Also great for discovering new things in line with your tastes. I love it.
 
R

RM8

Member
I didn't find my niche in Tumblr. I subscribed to some blogs, but scrolling through gifs and pics wasn't enough to keep me using the site. And it sucks on mobile unless you use the app.
 
A

Aarglefarg

Member
Mostmanlyman said:
I was kinda thinking about coming out to my parents, I just dont really know how to, like i have only came out to two other people but neither of those where in person. I will probably end up waiting til it is just me and my mom and tell her first because im much closer to her. Then i guess i would tell my father next and then the rest of my close family. I just dont really know how i would go at it. I will probably wait a while and think about it some more. But with everything in my live im uncertain.
Any tips would also be welcome.
Click to expand...
Be confident and matter-of-fact when you get a natural situation to talk.
 
C

Camillelang

Neo Member
TheAbsolution said:
I've never watched Lost. Mainly because it was before I really got into TV. Is it a good watch?
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I enjoy all of it equally and definitely can watch it over and over without feeling like "Oh i know this already!" The music, acting, and JJ Abrams directing are amazing and definitely worth every second in my opinion. It has a whole different vibe when there is a clear end episode and there are no commercials, which is why I stopped watching it when it was on TV. I didn't know if it was going to be 4 or 11 seasons, but I think 6 does the trick and it is an emotional ride with beautiful directing.
 
M

Mostmanlyman

Member
Aarglefarg said:
Be confident and matter-of-fact when you get a natural situation to talk.
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Ok, thanks.
I know my parents will be supportive. Where i live there sex ed is pretty bad to be honest, so when my father was talking to me about it he said" both me and your mother will love you as much if you gay or what ever" so it was nice to hear that. But that was both i really knew what my sexuality was. Im very thankful for them. I will probably just wait till i get a time to talk and do what you said.
 
C

CornBurrito

Member
You know, in the past I used to think that if there was a pill that could make me straight, I'd take it. But now I wouldn't even consider taking it.

It is amazing how much I owe to the sacrifices and courage of other people in the LGBT community.
 
DOWN

DOWN

Banned
Camillelang said:
That JB thing was done way better by our queen Nicki Minaj

Also I am an ugly crier I think...
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aw no! you're a fluctuating crier. Sometimes graceful and sometimes full emotion but all of its ok because you make A+ recovery either situation. Erin had no clue you had been listening to that Hunger Games finale by the time we got into the store
 
C

Camillelang

Neo Member
DOWN said:
aw no! you're a fluctuating crier. Sometimes graceful and sometimes full emotion but all of its ok because you make A+ recovery either situation. Erin had no clue you had been listening to that Hunger Games finale by the time we got into the store
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I listened to the full thing finally on the plane and did not cry. (omg typical camille always crying)
 
R

RM8

Member
CornBurrito said:
You know, in the past I used to think that if there was a pill that could make me straight, I'd take it. But now I wouldn't even consider taking it.

It is amazing how much I owe to the sacrifices and courage of other people in the LGBT community.
Click to expand...
I'd still take it, and it wouldn't make me appreciate any less the courage of people in the LGBT community. It'd just make some things much easier, really.
 
DOWN

DOWN

Banned
The problem with Bieber's is that he is only in the first two minutes and it's like a bunch of YouTube filmmaker amateurs. It looks cheap and by the numbers to me by YouTube standards. There's nothing wrong with a long form video, just that Bieber video is basically a bunch of fan dance routines stuck together.
 
C

Camillelang

Neo Member
DOWN said:
The problem with Bieber's is that he is only in the first two minutes and it's like a bunch of YouTube filmmaker amateurs. It looks cheap and by the numbers to me by YouTube standards. There's nothing wrong with a long form video, just that Bieber video is basically a bunch of fan dance routines stuck together.
Click to expand...

I love long music videos cause my dream job would be to still edit that form of video, but yeah beiber's looked cheap and then it looked like clips from over music videos, nothing original.
 
R

RM8

Member
TheAbsolution said:
I'm bi, so technically half straight. Doesn't make things any easier to find someone. *shrugs*
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I know it might sound like I believe it'd be super easy to find someone - but I've literally never been approached by guys, lol. I don't know how I'd manage to meet guys without internet. It's not trivial to limit your dating pool to ~5% of the population, especially when you don't have gay friends.
 
DOWN

DOWN

Banned
CornBurrito said:
You know, in the past I used to think that if there was a pill that could make me straight, I'd take it. But now I wouldn't even consider taking it.

It is amazing how much I owe to the sacrifices and courage of other people in the LGBT community.
Click to expand...

Wouldn't take it either and I doubt I would appreciate the bravery of others who made it easier and set examples for me if I hadn't had the feelings I have experienced. I think it's been an important differentiator in experience for me compared to my family based on things they say and narrow-mindedness they sometimes express.
 
A

Aarglefarg

Member
What if this magic straightening pill had a temporary effect only, would people who wouldn't have a permanent one want to try it for a day? :)

Or a sexualising pill for aces?

I'd try a temporary monosexualising pill, it might be insightful.
 
DOWN

DOWN

Banned
Aarglefarg said:
What if this magic straightening pill had a temporary effect only, would people who wouldn't have a permanent one want to try it for a day? :)
Click to expand...

hell yeah. I'd love to know what its like to have most ads and video game character designs be aimed at you.
 
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