From: owner-chakram-refugees-digest@smoe.org (chakram-refugees-digest) To: chakram-refugees-digest@smoe.org Subject: chakram-refugees-digest V3 #6 Reply-To: chakram-refugees@smoe.org Sender: owner-chakram-refugees-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-chakram-refugees-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk chakram-refugees-digest Wednesday, January 8 2003 Volume 03 : Number 006 Today's Subjects: ----------------- Re: [chakram-refugees] RE: Flirty Xena [Sojourner ] Re: [chakram-refugees] RE: Flirty Xena [IfeRae@aol.com] [chakram-refugees] Re: Flirty Xena [cr ] Re: [chakram-refugees] RE: Flirty Xena [cr ] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 07 Jan 2003 08:15:05 +0000 From: Sojourner Subject: Re: [chakram-refugees] RE: Flirty Xena At 19:02 06/01/2003 -0500, Cheryl Ande wrote: >cr wrote: > >" I assume the female equivalent of male 'buddy flicks'. And you don't find >any mushy stuff in Herc & Iolaus, or Butch & Sundance." > >Well female buddy flicks are just a bit different than male buddy flicks. In >Thelma and Louise the two buddies kiss before they drive off the cliff, in >Beaches Bette Midler sings The Wing Beneath My Wings about her buddy Barbara >Hershey and in Fried Green Tomatoes certainly Iggy gets very emotion about her >best friend. > >Well the fact we don't find "mushy stuff" between men in flicks today doesn't >mean that men were never mushy. The idea that men never show any kind of >sentlementality towards one another is a convention of the latter part of >twentith century. In the early part of the century especially during WWI men >certainly got mushy about one another. See the lyrics below - this Irving >Berlin ballad was about a soldier singing about his dead comrade in arms, > >Nights are long since you went away >I think about you >All through the day >My buddy... My buddy... >Nobody quiet so true >Miss your voice, the touch of your hand >Just long to know that you understand >My buddy... My buddy... >Your buddy misses you > >Then in the silent film Wings about WWI aviators when Richard Arlen's best >friend, Buddy Rodgers, is fatally wounded, Arlen kisses him on the mouth in >farewell. This was not suppose to be interrupted in homosexual way but as a >sincere display of emotion. Even in the Bible guys get pretty mushy over one >another - see David's lamenataion over Jonathan: > > >How are the mighty fallen in the midst of the battle! O Jonathan, thou wast >slain in thine high places. I am distressed for thee, my brother Jonathan: >very pleasant hast thou been unto me: thy love to me was wonderful, passing >the love of women. > >Actually Xena and Gabrielle's mushy feelings for one another fits rather well >into the the history of mushy male friendships. Today any kind of >sentlementality between men is considered a weakness or a sign of being >effeminate but in the past straight men had deep emotional attachements to >one another that they weren't afraid to show. > >CherylA Of course one possibility is that is ARE and always HAVE BEEN homosexual characters and stories in mainstream films - it's just that we're not supposed to be there. Re-interpreting emotional scenes between men as "mushy" or "an aberration" or "not what you think it is" is a classic way of hiding such stories and characters. I cannot recommend highly enough The Celluliod Closet - a film of the book by Vito Russo. http://www.tellingpictures.com/films/1.html One of its most interesting images is that of an early - perhaps one of the very first - moving pictures. It shows two men dancing together. Now of course you could say, oh Liz don't jump to conclusions or you are always finding "subtext" everywhere. But I'm tired of always believing what straight people say about the existence of gays and lesbians in popular culture. Why weren't Jonathan and David lovers? The evidence you present in your quote seems obvious to me. And why not Irving Berlin writing about two lovers? He did write many songs for shows and films with gay themes - indeed his 1942 all-serviceman musical review This is the Army popularised the word gay meaning homosexual. And a mention of Fried Green Tomotoes - makes the blood boil!! - as in the book on which the film is based, the relationship is clearly and openly one of lovers and life partners. Only for the mass consumption Hollywood block buster are our relationships relegated to "subtext" - you can choose to see it or not. Thanks very much. That's why I have understood but never respected Lucy staunchly denying the subtext and for her to come out (so to speak) now and say - of "if only I had known about Akemi earlier I would have accepted that X and G were married" - well even I can smell the bullshit from here. Understand it - but it still stinks. Sojourner ========================================================= This has been a message to the chakram-refugees list. To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@smoe.org with "unsubscribe chakram-refugees" in the message body. Contact meth@smoe.org with any questions or problems. ========================================================= ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 7 Jan 2003 11:55:53 -0800 From: "Creation (Sharon Delaney)" Subject: [chakram-refugees] Fake Xena Tattoos Poll UPDATE Just wanted to thank everyone for their ideas. We've been having a lot of fun with this Hope you like what we come up with. Sharon ========================================================= This has been a message to the chakram-refugees list. To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@smoe.org with "unsubscribe chakram-refugees" in the message body. Contact meth@smoe.org with any questions or problems. ========================================================= ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 7 Jan 2003 18:42:55 -0500 From: "Cheryl Ande" Subject: [chakram-refugees] Re: Flirty Xena Perhaps you would just feel better about X & G's tendency to be a bit over emotional at time as just a Mediterrean trait - remember these gals are Greeks. The Greeks do have a tendency to display their emotions more than Northern Europeans. If that doesn't doesn't work just think of them as two emotional Irish gals - you the Irish do have a bit of reputation for sentalmentality. CherylA ========================================================= This has been a message to the chakram-refugees list. To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@smoe.org with "unsubscribe chakram-refugees" in the message body. Contact meth@smoe.org with any questions or problems. ========================================================= ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 7 Jan 2003 19:04:52 EST From: IfeRae@aol.com Subject: Re: [chakram-refugees] RE: Flirty Xena In a message dated 1/7/2003 2:16:13 AM Central Standard Time, sojourner@paradise.net.nz writes: > And a mention of Fried Green Tomotoes - makes the blood boil!! - as in the > book on which the film is based, the relationship is clearly and openly one > of lovers and life partners. Only for the mass consumption Hollywood block > buster are our relationships relegated to "subtext" - you can choose to see > it or not. Thanks very much. > > That's why I have understood but never respected Lucy staunchly denying the > subtext and for her to come out (so to speak) now and say - of "if only I > had known about Akemi earlier I would have accepted that X and G were > married" - well even I can smell the bullshit from here. > > Understand it - but it still stinks. > I absolutely agree with you that the "reality" of those responsible for much of the mass media we see is very limited - certainly in terms of what they think the "masses" can understand or appreciate, and possibly in terms of what the media moguls can themselves understand or appreciate. The most successfully "different" offerings I've seen are usually by more "independent" minds who do -- or are open enough to -- understand and appreciate a different "reality" from the ones that usually get portrayed. I had a long discussion awhile back with someone who basically wanted simple acknowledgement that, in her reality, X&G were a perfectly normal couple whose trials and tribulations happened to play out in an extraordinary fantasy context. The woman-centeredness, the natural intimacy (emotional and physical), the absolute devotion to each other's well being were characteristics that this person had experienced and/or aspired to. Her pain and anger were that the reality that was absolutely clear to her was not expressly confirmed on the show or by TPTB. I've personally never heard Lucy or other key Xenastaff "staunchly" deny the subtext. In fact, I've heard them consistently say they were glad that this was one of the "realities" many viewers saw. XWP may have been conceived as an action show about a complex female "hero," and there are many who, even at the end, probably watched it solely for the butt-kicking, the cheese cake, the campiness, the mythic themes or whatever -- with no concern one way or the other about what was going on between X&G. Nevertheless, TPTB seemed to embrace another "reality" that XWP had evolved into much more for a large segment of fans -- that the "love" between X&G resonated in a universal way with diverse groups of people and became the "heart" of why they watched it. I can also agree that *saying* the relationship could be interpreted however you want was not the same as *showing* it. As we've already discussed in this thread, there were plenty of times X or G was shown as having, about to have or thinking about having sexual relationships with men. Whatever was intimated between women was indeed subtext, the minority view -- sort of like the small spot on a garment that you could choose not to see much more easily than you could choose not to see the rest of the garment. Yes, one could say that "love" is much more than sex, more multi-dimensional, yet the full range was definitely shown as possible ("natural"?) in one case, while it had to be assumed or could be denied in the other. Do I think lesbians deserve more respectful, prime-time portrayals of their lives? Absolutely. Would others have been better off if XWP had been declared a lesbian show and seen as "representative" of that diverse community? Would XWP have been better off if X&G were portrayed as a "couple" in every sense of the word? I don't know. TPTB seemed to have started within the limits of their realities, yet broadened their vision to include other realities. It wasn't perfect, yet it drew many of us into a different reality than we had seen, were looking for or might have valued before. As for Lucy, I can only assess what she said and did based on what she says was her reality. I believe her when she says she was proud that, as a person and in her character, she brought light to other realities. I don't know what experiences she or ROC drew on that made X&G's relationship so "real" in so many ways, only that the result seemed genuine. The irony is, Lucy's post-series revelations about Xena's gayness do not suggest to me that she yet "gets" what many of us saw over the course of six years of viewing intact episodes, accompanied by minute dissections of every scene, word, gesture or expression. It's not the day-to-day interactions with Gabrielle that Lucy says finally struck her, but the sudden introduction of Akemi, whom some of us may believe paled in comparison to, say, Lao Ma or even M'Lila as possibly a key former lover. Lucy's hindsight views about XWP may one day be very different from what she said during production or what she seems to be basing now on impressions of AFIN. Maybe she'll sit down and watch the eps from beginning to end. If so, she might finally see a difference between the production reality of *playing* a couple of women living together vs. the on-screen reality of *being* the couple many of us saw in every sense of the word and took for granted would "naturally" extend to their off-screen private lives. - -- Ife ========================================================= This has been a message to the chakram-refugees list. To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@smoe.org with "unsubscribe chakram-refugees" in the message body. Contact meth@smoe.org with any questions or problems. ========================================================= ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 8 Jan 2003 12:58:10 +1300 From: cr Subject: [chakram-refugees] Re: Flirty Xena On Wednesday 08 January 2003 12:42, Cheryl Ande wrote: > Perhaps you would just feel better about X & G's tendency to be a bit over > emotional at time as just a Mediterrean trait - remember these gals are > Greeks. The Greeks do have a tendency to display their emotions more than > Northern Europeans. If that doesn't doesn't work just think of them as two > emotional Irish gals - you the Irish do have a bit of reputation for > sentalmentality. > > CherylA Thanks for the suggestion. I'm not upset about X&G's over-emotionalism, it's just one aspect of the show that I don't care for, but so what, nobody can like *everything*. But Xena isn't really a Greek-type character. She's a Warrior Princess, and *definitely* the strong silent type. Except for these occasional unaccountable bursts of emotionality which usually seem to be triggered by Gabrielle. ;) Incidentally, Xena is Thracian, which is only borderline Greek. I don't know Greece or Greeks at all, but I rather think their characteristics probably varied from province to province... as the 'etiquette' guy showed in Blind Faith, Thrace and (was it Macedonia?) were regarded as rather provincial and uncultured. So I'm not sure whether it's possible to generalise aboutt 'Greeks' in that way. :) cr ========================================================= This has been a message to the chakram-refugees list. To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@smoe.org with "unsubscribe chakram-refugees" in the message body. Contact meth@smoe.org with any questions or problems. ========================================================= ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 8 Jan 2003 13:25:30 +1300 From: cr Subject: Re: [chakram-refugees] RE: Flirty Xena On Tuesday 07 January 2003 21:15, Sojourner wrote: > > That's why I have understood but never respected Lucy staunchly denying the > subtext and for her to come out (so to speak) now and say - of "if only I > had known about Akemi earlier I would have accepted that X and G were > married" - well even I can smell the bullshit from here. > > Understand it - but it still stinks. > > Sojourner Sorry, that whole paragraph is bullshit itself (to put it bluntly). I don't recall that Lucy ever 'staunchly denied' the subtext. She always, so far as I can recall, said that you can read into the 'subtext' what you want. That's the line TPTB took and it's the way the episodes were written. It's not like the original story was written with an explicit lesbian relationship and TPTB censored it. Maybe to you the lesbian interpretation is obvious, but certainly not to everbody or even the majority of viewers. Lucy's view then was a perfectly reasonable view to take, not least because the episodes were _deliberately written that way_. Because of the way the eps were written, it's also perfectly reasonable to conclude that they're 'just good friends'. We're talking about fictional characters here who had a relationship that was intentionally left ambiguous, there aren't any underlying 'true facts' for Lucy or anyone else to cover up. I prefer to take the view that Lucy was saying exactly what she thought, as usual. Obviously Friend in Need struck her differently from the previous episodes. (It struck a lot of people differently in one way or another, as I recall). She said *at the time*, she thought Rob had 'outed' her in that ep. The Lesbian News article contains nothing new in that respect. Lucy's always been understanding and supportive of lesbians and this is the thanks she gets? cr ========================================================= This has been a message to the chakram-refugees list. To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@smoe.org with "unsubscribe chakram-refugees" in the message body. Contact meth@smoe.org with any questions or problems. ========================================================= ------------------------------ End of chakram-refugees-digest V3 #6 ************************************