Barbara Hammer Reflects on a Life of Filmmaking 
LESBIAN FILMMAKER and video artist Barbara Hammer, now in her early seventies, has been exploding long-held myths about both gender and the art of filmmaking since the 1970’s. Her…More
Browsing: September-October 2010
September-October 2010
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Barbara Hammer Reflects on a Life of Filmmaking
Buried Pleasures
TOM CARDAMONE invited 27 other gay authors to submit pieces about their “favorite out-of-print gay books or forgotten titles.” At the same time, he says in his introduction to the resulting anthology, he was looking for works of fiction that had been excluded from the “gay canon”: works that “embodied a diversity and history that was either pre-Stonewall or went far beyond the available urban story,” including “campy pulp paperbacks.” It was an admirable goal. I assume he is both exhilarated and somewhat disappointed by the outcome.
MoreWas Judith Butler Right to Refuse Berlin Award?
DECLARING that she must distance herself “from this complicity with racism,” Judith Butler publicly rejected the 2010 Civil Courage Award at Berlin’s Gay Pride Celebrations, known in Germany as Christopher Street Day or CSD. This decision by one of today’s preeminent intellectuals provoked a scandal, but two factors prevented her statement from having its full effect: a reference to commercialism that sidetracked the mainstream press reception; and an insufficient explanation for the charge of racism.
MoreDr. Fay Etrange in Peace and War
“WHAT The Well of Loneliness did for the man-woman, this most unusual tale does for the woman-man.” This is how an early gay classic was blurbed in advertisements and on the dust jacket flap by Samuel Roth, its first publisher, in 1933. A Scarlet Pansy, by Robert Scully (possibly a pseudonym), is a skillful and mature American novel about forbidden sex, complete with sensational packaging. That a book like A Scarlet Pansy could be displayed and sold openly in 1933 is itself remarkable.
MoreSince ‘Leaving Russia’: The New Land
PREVIOUSLY, I described my escape from Russia, via land and sailboat, to be with another woman in Canada (“Leaving Russia: A Personal Odyssey,” September-October 2009). My Canadian girlfriend Meg and I had been living together for two weeks in Kiev, Ukraine, when my parents, having followed me from Russia, physically attacked us for being gay.
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Out as Adam
Newcomer Adam Lambert, meanwhile, needn’t worry that the vacuum of doubt will sap his career of any strength. At 27, he raked in nearly 100 million votes as the runner-up on the eighth season of American Idol, and this was after photos of Lambert kissing an ex-boyfriend came to light. He acknowledged the pictures as authentic at the time, but waited until after the show’s finale to confirm the rumors.
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Short Reviews
Review of Insignificant Others by Stephen McCauley, and Missouri by Christine Wunnicke.
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A Poet’s Epilogue
A Martian Muse contains 25 of Shepherd’s final essays, ranging across several categories, with titles that include “Poetics and Poetry,” “Art and Society,” “Artistic Production,” “Intention, Aspiration, Inspiration,” and “Illness, Identity, and Poetry.”
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Getting Out Alive
Reading Portrait of an Addict as a Young Man can be a toe-curling experience, and you may find yourself rushing from page to page, not because it isn’t a good story (it is), but because the life that Clegg is describing is often painfully hard to endure.
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Ryan’s Hope
THIS WELL-RESEARCHED historical novel alternates between Dublin in the early 1950’s and late 1990’s, following a gay man as he recalls his youthful adventures and the tragic series of events that forced him to flee for America. Daniel Ryan enters Dublin from his country home, captivated by the excitement and opportunities available in Ireland’s capital.
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