(no subject)
Jul. 10th, 2007 09:02 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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."
"I think what was really bugging the politically correct windbags was not what was fictional but what was accurate about the movie."
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Date: 2007-07-10 05:07 pm (UTC)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).
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Date: 2007-07-10 05:30 pm (UTC)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...
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Date: 2007-07-10 05:50 pm (UTC)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.
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Date: 2007-07-10 05:53 pm (UTC)Lord knows I also have my struggles with this, yes.
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Date: 2007-07-11 09:35 pm (UTC)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.