(no subject)

[pantryslut]

Nightcharm has a great take on the film Cruising, soon to be released on DVD. (Nightcharm is NSFW.)

"I think what was really bugging the politically correct windbags was not what was fictional but what was accurate about the movie."

Comments

[jactitation.livejournal.com]

Damn, you beat me to it! Absolutely.

I was a politically active dyke in 1980, and that divide he posits between politicos and sexually active people is a real strawman, only applicable to a very small part of "the movement" (as loose then as now, if bigger).

Lots of political leatherfolk were appalled at the movie because it was clearly not going to be anything like the leatherscene they knew, because no one in the leatherscene was gonna make a penny off it (but, instead, would get the clampdown), and because, yes, this was the only representation of gay leathersex and it was obviously intended as a morality tale. (Albeit with a twist: if a cop gets down with "scum," he comes to see some of their humanity and becomes compromised.)

Yes, I protested initially because I thought it was bad press. But in doing so, I came to know lots of leatherfolk who were also protesting and came to a much more complicated analysis--one that seems to have evaporated over time (and certainly in this revisionist history).

[pantryslut.livejournal.com]

I completely understand the p.o.v. of those who protested at the time, before the movie was released. There was no reason *not* to believe it wasn't going to equate gay S/M folks with serial killers, after all. (Plus the exploitation angle, which remains valid.)

But it didn't do that. Nonetheless, that was still the discourse around the movie that I encountered, over a decade later. Nothing about exploitation, all about gays = sex-crazed serial killers. And that was weird, and disorienting, and ultimately suspicious.

I think we may be having a clash of histories here, honestly. It makes me wonder now what generation the Nightcharm author is...

[gordonzola.livejournal.com]

one could posit that it didn't do it because their were huge public protests about that movie every step of the way. That's not my view exactly, but the decision to publically oppose the exploitation of a culture has a ripple effect. The movie, in the end, certainly also ended up giving a media and public forum to the politically organized voices of the gay rights movement. These things are hard to measure.

I think my biggest criticism of the sex pos community in general is the revisionist sex vs. "politically correct"/swingers vs. activists /natural vs. political false dichotomies that sometimes get set up. This article is an example of that.

Nightcharm says they are of the '70s generation in the article.

[pantryslut.livejournal.com]

I think my biggest criticism of the sex pos community in general is the revisionist sex vs. "politically correct"/swingers vs. activists /natural vs. political false dichotomies that sometimes get set up. This article is an example of that.

Lord knows I also have my struggles with this, yes.

[abostick59.livejournal.com]

So if Nightcharm is of the '70s generation, then I would expect that Nightcharm lived through, and was affected by, that key event in the polarization between the sex-positives and the politicos, the closing of the baths. That fight ended friendships: One pair of friends never spoke to each other again, until one of them died. Another friend still calls the author of ...And the Band Played On "Randy Shits" even today. And, by and large, it was the politicals who were caught up in the moral panic to close the baths.

I haven't seen Cruising. My gay Maoist friends of the time would have sent me to a re-education camp if I had seeen it when it came out. But times have changed since then. One of the notable things about the film for today's audience is that it is a document of a millieu that is now lost forever. In 1980 it was exploitation. Today it would be a wistful memory, to go along with the wistful memories inspired by Peter Berlin movies.

So sure there is a lot of oversimplification in "politically correct windbags." There's one heck of a lot of pain and loss and grief that shapes that oversimplification.