Monday, 3 August 2015

YOU'RE A WANKER NUMBER NINE: A tale of two parts.

Part One: Facebook and Gay Cinema

Well it all started when a girl I knew posted on Facebook how much she loved Katherine Heigl and how excited she was for 'Jenny's Wedding', I too am excited for any film where Alexis Bledel plays a woman in a same-sex relationship, as I think, should everybody be:


But my friend's excitement shocked me for two reasons: one, she, a girl I knew to be straight knew about a film that the queer community have had their eye on for over a year, while we wait patiently for it to get funded; two, not only did she know about gay cinema, she wanted to see it. I wrote a comment on this status declaring my shock:


The exchange caught the eye of a gay male friend of ours, and thus begun a discussion on the tropes and clichés of gay cinema, and how that when we tell straight people about gay cinema it feels like we're revealing a big secret. I told him about how ever lesbian film ever was about a straight girl catching the eye of a bold lesbian and beginning an elicit love affair, while he assured me that 'gay films about men are the worst, it's literally always about how they cheat on their partners because someone hot comes into town. every single one'. We laughed about it and agreed that while we were annoyed at the predictability of gay cinema it at least beat the constant bombardment of straight couples, and seeing people like us on the big screen was worth it, even if they were fucking idiots. 

He and I each had our favourites, mine being Imagine Me and You, Friend Green Tomatoes and The Four Faced Liar. His being Redwoods, (now judging by the poster it looks a little macho for me but what the fuck do I know about films about boys who like boys, both boys and people who like boys are a fucking mystery to me).

Now something else that both annoys and mystifies me, is that it's very rare that when you're discussing gay cinema with straight people that they've heard of the film that you're talking about, however it's common for them to be 'what you guys have your own films', and the answer is yes, yes we do have our own films, we have 'gay cinema' and 'gay marriage' and my personal favourite, I don't have relationships, oh no, I have 'lesbian relationships'. Now I'm going slightly of topic but it links into the hetreonormative bullshit that I will be calling out in part two.

 Now where was I? That's right after our little chat a different friend drops their two penn'orth in and says he prefers anime, because all though in was 'sketchy' and 'tedious' at times, at least it 'beats western gay media'...after a collective calming deep breath from the queer community, I was ready to go into battle as a fierce and proud keyboard warrior. Queer cinema is like an annoying family member; I may call it all the names under the sun, but as soon as one of those straight people starts, oh you had better fasten your seat belts and pull up your big boy pants, I am coming for you.
 


 Okay maybe not, but I almost did, and my Mam always said it's the thought that counts. I instead turned my pout over to a different social media platform, thus bringing us to...

Part Two: Twitter and Hetreonormativity
( now I think it's worth adding here that quite often when I am typing I have pairs of words that I will mix up, most commonly 'you' with 'my' and 'never' with 'very', now it's okay in blog post and essays because I can go back and proof read, but when I'm tweeting or using messenger and the like I often get over excited at getting my information out as fast as possible and forget to check, so I'm sorry but you're going to have to use your noggins to decipher some of what's coming) 


I posted a series of tweets that went a little something like this:








This is said article: 'This Is What Happens When An Openly Gay Man Falls In Love With A Woman'. Now considering that I had tweeted it out a few days earlier, it took me longer than I am willing to admit to find that link, so long in fact that I was started to think I had made the whole thing up and that maybe this was all part of my imagination. As I mentioned I tweeted this earlier in the week, and my friend Calvin, a straight, cis ally, had read it, now all though his twitter feed is annoyingly private, I am still going to share what he had to say:

@abbyjanepearson That article was class
 — Calvin (@CDThornborrow)

@abbyjanepearson Interesting and well written
 — Calvin (@CDThornborrow)

And I took it upon myself to give him the education he never asked for, now thankfully Calvin is a close personal friend of mine and not just someone that follows me on twitter, so he was fully prepared for what came next, that is twelve sets of 140 characters before he even got a chance to get a word in edgeways:












And I think we can all agree with my next statement:


I haven't even finished my bachelors degree yet, and even if I had it's in neither Gender Studies, nor is it in Queer Theory, it's in Fine Art. In fact I'm not even sure if Gender Studies and Queer Theory are real courses.

To end I'm just going to leave these hear for you gentle reader:


Don't cry Lena, it's okay, everything's going to be fine. 
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