The Leveret: Popular Culture

Showing posts with label Popular Culture. Show all posts

Wednesday, September 4, 2024

Raising Hare

Writes Anna Bonet of Chloe Dalton's Raising Hare: A Memoir. . . .

Not long after Chloe Dalton left London during the pandemic, moving back to the countryside of the North East where she grew up, Dalton was out on a walk when she came across a baby hare. Newly born and the size of her palm, the leveret had been abandoned with clearly little chance of survival. Dalton, a political adviser, knew nothing of animals – and yet she felt compelled to care for it, rearing the hare herself before re-releasing it into the wild. Already tipped by The Bookseller as “a future classic of nature writing,” Raising Hare is one of the most gorgeous tales of human-animal connection out there.

See also the previous posts:
• The Year of the Hare
• Capturing Images

Tuesday, February 21, 2023

Carnival

Today is Shrove Tuesday (also known as Mardi Gras), the last day of Carnival, a Western Christian festive season that occurs before the liturgical season of Lent.

Carnivalesque/Shrovetide events typically take place during February or early March. In a number of places around the world, members of the LGBTQI community have become a visible part of Carnival, imbuing these annual celebrations with a unique perspective and a deeper meaning that harkens back to Carnival’s indigenous European (i.e., pagan) roots and thus an emphasis on renewal through transgression and upendment. (Halloween, it should be noted, has similarly been reclaimed by queer folk.)

Carnival typically involves public celebrations, including parades, street parties and other entertainments, some of which combine some elements of a circus. Elaborate costumes and masks allow people to set aside their everyday individuality and experience a heightened sense of social unity. Participants often indulge in excessive consumption of alcohol, meat, and other foods that will be forgone during upcoming Lent.

The characteristics of the celebration of Carnival take their origins from ancient European festivals, such as the Greek Dionysian (the Anthesteria) or the Roman Saturnalia. During these festivities, there was a temporary release from social obligations and hierarchies to make way for the overthrow of order, joking and even debauchery. From a historical and religious point of view, the Carnival therefore represented a period of celebration, but above all of symbolic renewal, during which chaos replaced the established order, which, however, once the festive period was over, re-emerged new or renewed and guaranteed for a cycle valid until the beginning of the following Carnival.

From an anthropological point of view, Carnival is a reversal ritual, in which social roles are reversed and norms about desired behavior are suspended. During antiquity, winter was thought of as the reign of the winter spirits; these needed to be driven out in order for summer to return. Carnival can thus be regarded as a rite of passage from darkness to light, from winter to summer: a fertility celebration, the first spring festival of the new year.

The following explores the queer dimension of Carnival and is excerpted from Cassell's Encyclopedia of Queer Myth, Symbol and Spirit by Randy P. Conner, David Hatfield Sparks and Mariya Sparks.

________________________
A. Orloff writes of Carnival, “Nothing can resist this tidal wave of juggernauting chaos as it turns our ordered world on its head. . . . [T]his is a magical time outside of time in which one and all are changed, everything is reversed, inverted. . . . Through orgiastic excess and folly, through the embrace of the opposite within us, through the baptism of frenzied chaos we are reborn”

The association of homoerticism and transgenderism with the carnivalesque is an ancient one. In late antiquity, Christian authorities commenced their attempt to control or abolish carnivals, which they correctly perceived as celebrations of the exiled gods. “The remains of heathen superstitions of all kinds are forbidden,” the Quinisext (or Trullan) Synod found it necessary to declare almost seven hundred years after the triump of Christianity: “the festivals of the Kalendar, the Bota (in honor of Pan [left]), the Brumalia (in honor of Bacchus), the assemblies on the first of March, public dances of women, clothing of men like women, and inversely, putting on comic, satyric, or tragic masks, the invocation of Bucchus at the winepress, etc. . . . [A]ll these activities are forbidden.”

Despite these efforts to destroy Carnival, however, the phenomenon, including its expression of transgenderism through transvestism, persisted. Indeed, in many sectors during the Middle Ages, Carnival was quietly acknowledged as a necessary release of pagan expression in a Christianized world. In the words of Mikhail Bakhtin, “the carnival processions . . . were interpreted as the march of the [officially] rejected pagan gods.”

Monday, March 16, 2020

Kiss of the Rabbit God

Writes Taylor Sprinkle . . .

Critically-acclaimed short films have seen much greater representation across the [LGTBQIA] spectrum, including the 2019 short Kiss of The Rabbit God, which depicts a young man’s encounter with the Rabbit God, the Taoist god of homosexual sex and romance [Tu'er Shen (Chinese: 兔兒神, The Leveret Spirit)].

The film depicts a young and naive Asian American named Matt who works at a compact Chinese restaurant. Matt works tirelessly at the restaurant, taking calls and orders, bussing tables and being the last out the door after closing.

The story starts on the day that a bold and stylish character takes a booth, causing a sudden break from the chaos of Matt’s job. The character, who has already been revealed to the viewer as the Rabbit God [right], introduces himself simply as Shen. The two clearly share chemistry.

After the restaurant closes, the Rabbit God returns, only to leave in a spur of fear and disappointment.

Matt spends the next day longing for the return of the Rabbit God a third time. After the restaurant closes that night, the Rabbit God reappears one more time to give Matt the opportunity to embrace his identity.

Kiss of the Rabbit God is one of the more recent works of Andrew Thomas Huang, a Chinese American filmmaker and artist who is best known as the mind behind many of Björk’s music videos. Huang’s work is often abstract and driven heavily by the use of monochrome — dark, bold and surreal.

In Kiss of The Rabbit God, his style takes no detour from the elements you’d expect. Red and green tones are used to highlight the different personalities alive in the film’s world. Bold, traditional and love-centered red surrounds the persona of the Rabbit God, while the pure shade of green is strongly tied to [the character of] Matt.

And Huang translates ideas with more than just color. The quick, angled shots in parts of the film are used to create the feeling of stress that Matt also experiences during the workday. While he is exposed in a setting where the viewer doesn’t know much about Matt’s character or background, there is a profound sense of his meek, uncertain nature. The purposefully jarring narrative of restaurant work is also used to create a juxtaposition with the slower cuts and more steady shots used during encounters with the Rabbit God.

– Taylor Sprinkle
Excerpted from "Kiss Of The Rabbit God Is The Surreal
and Stirring LGBTQIA Short That You’ll Need To Watch Twice"
Study Breaks
July 30, 2019

NOTE: In Chinese myths and legends, the hare and rabbit are interchangeable. (See for example here and here).

See also the previous posts:
• In American Gods, An Otherworldly Depiction of Queer Attraction and Connection
• Trémulo

Friday, September 27, 2019

Queer Black Panther

NOTE: A less sexually explicit version of this article is posted at The Leveret's brother site, The Wild Reed.

Ryan Coogler's Black Panther was one of my favorite films of last year, mainly because of how groundbreaking it was on a number of levels. Most notably, Black Panther was the first film of the Marvel Cinematic Universe to place a black superhero front and center. It's also one of only a very few films to feature a black director (Coogler) and a majority black cast (including Chadwick Boseman, Michael B Jordan, Angela Bassett, Daniel Kaluuya, Lupita Nyong’o, Danai Gurira, and Forest Whitaker). In addition, Black Panther explores questions and issues about race and identity to a depth never before attempted by a film in the "superhero" genre.

Film critic Kenneth Turan succinctly sums up the significance and appeal of Black Panther when he writes: "A superhero movie whose characters have integrity and dramatic heft, laced with socially conscious commentary as well as wicked laughs, Black Panther is the model of what an involving popular entertainment ought to be but hardly ever is."

Queer appeal

Black Panther is, of course, based on Stan Lee and Jack Kirby's revolutionary comic book character of the same name.

As both a comic book and a film, Black Panther has a queer appeal. What do I mean by this? Well, I've come to understand that to be "queer" is to attempt to expand or go beyond (in thought, word or deed) the parameters of gender, race, heterosexuality, patriarchy, and other socially-constructed (or manipulated) concepts. Laurence Coleman, in discussing vocalist Dusty Springfield as a queer icon, says that embracing this understanding of queer “denotes a spectrum not only of identity and practice but also inquiry.” Accordingly, to be queer is to be a questioner and subverter of what Michael Warner has called “regimes of the normal,” and not just in matters to do with sexuality and sexual expression, but also in matters of gender, class, and race.

For many people, a definite appeal of Black Panther is that it boldly questions and subverts in entertaining ways, “regimes of the normal” as they relate to gender and race. (It almost did the same with sexuality, as Linda Lang documents here.)

I celebrate the subversion and transformation of any status quo that is oppressive and limiting, and without doubt Black Panther does this. Accordingly, I think it's fair to say that it is queer in the broadest and deepest sense of the word.

Queer male sexuality

Black Panther is also queer in the more focused sense of sexuality. Though not as obvious or resolute as its focus on race and gender, a queer take on sexuality is nonetheless observable, simply and beautifully, in the film's celebration of the impressive physiques of the main Wakandan characters (both male and female); in Black Panther's body-hugging outfit (one that emphasizes the male body's "tools of attraction"); in the sensual, cat-like way T'challa / Black Panther moves; and in the young king of Wakanda's journey and travails in becoming a hero.

This last observation is important as for many people who do not identify exclusively as heterosexual, the trials of comic book superheroes are often perceived to reflect their own struggle to be who they really are in a world that fears and misunderstands them.

“When I was a teenager,” one gay man told Gerard Jones, author of the book Men of Tomorrow: Geeks, Gangsters and the Birth of the Comic Book, “superheroes were obviously about being queer. Clark Kent shedding that hideous [business] suit and shooting into the sky in his tights? What else [could it be about]?”

I think a very similar thing can be said for T'challa, not only in his donning of his tight-fitting Black Panther suit, but in his efforts to move Wakanda out of the shadows so as to openly reveal and share the country's immense riches and unique gifts with the wider world, a move that is both liberating and risky, much like coming out as queer.

I think it's also important to note that this sexuality-focused display of male queerness as described above is present in the original and current Black Panther comic books, as the illustrations below clearly show.

– James Fry and Tom Smith (1996)

– Art by Rich Buckler and Glynis Wein; text by Don McGregor (1973)

– Art by Bob Brown; text by Steve Englehart (1973)

– Art by John Romita Jr. (2018)

– Art by Valerio Schiti and Frank Martin Jr.;
text by Jonathan Hickman (2014)

Queer fan art

Of course, as has been noted previously at The Wild Reed, in the always entertaining world of fan art, many popular superheroes are often depicted as queer, particularly in relation to sex and sexuality.

The image at right by Steven Garcia and below by Wally Rainbow are two of the more explicit examples of this. Yet regardless of how in-your-face or subtle such depictions may be, they all speak to just how many queer superhero fans there are out there, and how strongly they want to see themselves represented by and within this particular genre.

A common theme in a lot of "queer fan art" conveys the notion that the fierce tension and antagonism that exists between certain male superheroes is actually a sign of mutual (though repressed) sexual desire. The role of the fan artist, it would seem, is to give these characters an opportunity to let loose with this desire.

In the world of Wakanda, we see this depicted primarily in images showing T'Challa / Black Panther with Erik "Killmonger" Stevens (left, by NightWolf), but also with Bucky Barnes / the Winter Soldier, Steve Rogers / Captain America, and M’Baku, leader of Wakanda's Jabari tribe.

Following are a few more examples of fan art that depicts a queer Black Panther.

– Randy Meeks

– Crazy Tom 18+

Above and below: T'Challa / Black Panther and Erik "Killmonger."

– Skaky

– Artist unknown

– Source

– Artist unknown

– Source

Above and below: T'Challa / Black Panther and Bucky Barnes / the Winter Soldier.

– Artist unknown

Above: T'Challa / Black Panther and Steve Rogers / Captain America.

– Yacksa

Above: T'Challa / Black Panther (right) and M’Baku, leader of Wakanda's Jabari tribe.

– Source

Above: Erik "Killmonger," T'Challa / Black Panther, and M’Baku.

– Source

Related Off-site Links:
The Racial Politics of Black Panther – Mikhail Lyubansky (Psychology Today, February 20, 2018).
The Revolutionary Power of Black Panther – Jamil Smith (Time, February 2018).
10 Important Things You Might Have Missed While Watching Marvel's Black Panther – Lanette Mantle (Odyssey, March 20, 2018).
Why Black Panther Is Such a Big Deal for Women – Emily Rems (Salon, April 4, 2018).
Black Panther Sequel Set for 2022 Release – Erin Nyren (Variety, August 24, 2019).

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
• The Important Cultural Moment That Is Black Panther
• Celebrating Black Panther – Then and Now
• “Avengers Assemble!”
• Jason Johnson on Stan Lee's Revolutionary Legacy
• Another First for Black Panther
• “Something Special,” Indeed!
• Wolvie
• Season of the (Scarlet) Witch
• One Divine Hammer
• What the Vatican Can Learn from the X-Men
• The New Superman: Not Necessarily Gay, But Definitely Queer
• Adam Sandel on the Queer Appeal of Harry Potter
• Musings on the Possibility of “FinnPoe” in the Star Wars Saga
• Thoughts on Queer Cinema

Friday, May 4, 2018

Donald

Donald Glover (born September 25, 1983) is an American actor, comedian, writer, director, producer, singer, songwriter, rapper, and DJ. He raps and sings under the stage name Childish Gambino and performs as a DJ under the name mcDJ.

He first came to attention for his work with Derrick Comedy while a student at New York University (NYU) and, with the help of Tina Fey, was hired at the age of 23 to become a writer for the NBC sitcom 30 Rock. He later portrayed community college student Troy Barnes on the NBC sitcom Community.

He stars in the FX series Atlanta, which he created and occasionally directs. For his work on Atlanta, Glover has won various accolades, including Primetime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series and Outstanding Directing for a Comedy Series, and Golden Globe Awards for Best Television Series – Musical or Comedy and Best Actor – Television Series Musical or Comedy.

In film, Glover has appeared in Mystery Team (2009) Magic Mike XXL (2015), The Martian (2015), Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017) as Aaron Davis, and has been cast as the young Lando Calrissian in the upcoming Solo: A Star Wars Story. He will also provide the voice of Simba in a remake of the Disney film The Lion King (2019).

After several self-released albums and mixtapes, Glover signed to Glassnote Records in 2011. He released his first album, Camp, on November 15, 2011, to generally positive reviews. His second studio album, Because the Internet, was released on December 10, 2013. Glover was nominated for two Grammy Awards in 2015, Best Rap Album for Because the Internet and Best Rap Performance for his single "3005." Glover's third album, "Awaken, My Love!", was released on December 2, 2016, spawning the hit single "Redbone," which peaked at number 12 on the Billboard Hot 100. In 2018, Glover was nominated for five Grammy Awards, including Album of the Year for "Awaken, My Love!" and Record of the Year for "Redbone," eventually winning the award for Best Traditional R&B Performance. In 2017, Glover was named one of Time's 100 Most Influential People.

– Source