Oscar Wilde and the Limits of Camp
… So, how does camp hold up against force? Resistance is resistance, I grant you. But sometimes, camp is the wrong choice; it is impossible. Or it is deadly. So, camp with care.
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Glen or Glenda Bent the Gender Rules in 1953
… Director Wood delivers a final message in this quasi-documentary through the inclusion of a medical consultant, a Dr. Nathan Bailey, in the final credits. There can be no doubt that the word of the medical-industrial complex is profoundly important part of the ethos of Glen or Glenda: the rationale for this inquiry—all in the interest of science!—and the source of its credibility.
MoreArchie Bunker Got the Conversation Started
All in the Family came at a time when the LGBT community was just starting to find its public voice. As a vehicle for introducing America to this community essentially for the first time, the show traveled quite a distance during its thirteen-year run.
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Rod McKuen: Poet, Songwriter, Gay Activist
McKuen’s turning point coincided with 1967’s Summer of Love, when hippies and other nonconformists took their rebellion against conventional norms into the streets. His stance as a melancholy nonbinary romantic placed him on the more conservative end of the counterculture. It was his ability to connect with the heartaches and longings of countless “ordinary” people that put him in sync with the moment.
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Russell Cheney: An Artist in His Own Right
Cheney captured a bleak, stark side of New England, too. His darker paintings, among his best, may well have been a response to Matthiessen’s urging him to explore all of his life experiences.
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The Play That Broke the Barriers
Even before Mineo’s version, Fortune and Men’s Eyes shocked people with its homosexual and prison life content. Young Smitty is sent to prison for a minor crime. His aggressive cellmate Rocky offers an option: basically, submit sexually …
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In the Footsteps of F. O. Matthiessen
What was not publicly known during Matthiessen’s lifetime was that he was a gay man, involved in a relationship that looked a lot like a marriage—in everything but name and legal rights—with the American Impressionist painter Russell Cheney (1881–1945).
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In 1966, a Slutty Roman Emperor Did It All
WHILE sorting a box of donated books for a prison class I was teaching, I noticed that the cover art on a decades-old book was the work of…More
Darby Crash Would Just Be Turning Sixty
THIS SEPTEMBER marks what would have been the sixtieth birthday of punk musician and Germs front man Darby Crash. As a musician, Darby was active for only a short…More
On Being Changed by a John Wieners Poem
AFTER DISCOVERING the writings of Boston- and San Francisco-based poet John Wieners (1939– 2002), I was left with a sense of literary regret: Where have you been all my life?
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