Class:

Watching Jason tell his stories of trauma and survival while getting super wasted and giggling uncontrollably strikes a deep chord within my soul. He represents such a glorious fuck you. Often the “fuck the system” standpoint is decidedly washed in youthfull (read: false and irrelevant) rebellion that one is supposed to grow out of. It is seen as a position taken by bored and cranky youngsters rather than as a position continuously forced on the marginalized individual by the hegemonic supremeacy of the majoritarian public sphere. But what other choice does Jason have, has he ever had? He is stuck in the dream of pulling himself up by his bootstraps when he clearly doesn’t even wear boots. His life, as much as we sensible bourgois (clean, white) academics want to ignore it, screams defiance. We may be tempted to think of his life as a failure, after all his night club act never took off, but I don’t think so. Through his stories he describes in hilarious detail (of the laugh so you don’t cry variety) the attempts often made to shape him into an upstanding citizen. He may never have found success, but he clearly never let anyone tell him who to be or how to act. I can admire that. It makes the beatings ok in some fucked up way.

Project:

By Hook Or By Crook was one of the films Shannon and I watched for our project this week. The think I like about this film is that it isn’t about being queer, it isn’t draped in queer theory, it doesn’t postulate a possible existence for the queer individual. It is just a buddy film about people who are queer. But their queerness is not the point at all. Sometimes I just have to stop explaning and exploring and surviving and just live. This film does a wonderful job of showing what that looks like. As I continue to be creatively productive, I want to follow the example set forth by this film. I should mention that while the film doesn’t take up queerness as its central question, it doesn’t diminish the queerness of the characters either. There are unabashed queer sex scenes along with events that could only happen to and with queers. As I understand it, the film focuses more on the actual lives of people who happen to be queer, among other things like totally bonkers, orphaned and poor, instead of making it a defense of the queer life. It can’t be a defense, because this film doesn’t even leave room for the possibility that the queer life should be up for debate.