Themed queer movie recs!

1. Movies about activism, organizing, and/or AIDS crisis

A. BPM (Beats per minute), French, awesome, inspiring, emotional, intense

B. Pride. Based on Lesbians and Gays support the miners in England in the early 80s. Unions yay

C. How to Survive a Plague – documentary about ACT UP

D. The times of harvey milk – doc. Made in 1984. I liked this more than the biopic because it gets into his politics and why he was a successful organizer. 

2. Arty, romantic, emotional, beautiful to look at

A. Portrait of a Lady on Fire. French. 

B. Moonlight

C. God’s Own Country. Very realistic portrayal of a sheep farm. The queer love heals hurting people.

D. Weekend. 

E. Brokeback Mountain.

F. Esteros

3. Zany and weird and funny

A. I love you Phillip Morris

B. But I’m a Cheerleader

C. Hedwig and the Angry Inch

D. Victor/Victoria

E. DEBS – young women who are secret agents and wear school girl uniforms, IDK, it’s cute though, and has enemies-to-lovers trope.

4. Classic films that are arguably queer

A. Some like it Hot

B. Dog Day Afternoon

C. Midnight Cowboy

5. Romantic, cute, warm

A. Big Eden

B. Desert Hearts

C. Cloudburst – an older lesbian couple decide to get married legally. Warning, one dies from old age at the end. 

D. Love, Simon

E. Maurice

F. The Gymnast – film about a 40-something woman who re-invents herself and falls for a younger woman. Features that cool thing where people dangle from cloth suspended from the ceiling. 

G. Saving Face. Chinese-American lesbians, happy ending.

6. TV movies, TV episodes, shows

A. Sense8

B. San Junipero (black mirror)

C. The Man in the Orange shirt

D. London Spy, warning this fucked me up, but it was so good? Miniseries starring Ben Whishaw (Q from the bond films). 

7. Not really about the queerness but has queer characters

A. Can you ever forgive me? Be gay, do crime, starring Melissa McCarthy.

B. Battle of the sexes – about billie jean king

C. Rocketman – about Elton John

D. Colette – about the bisexual author and her tumultous marriage.

8. Comedians

A. Hannah Gadsby

B. Tig Notaro

C. Wanda Sykes

9. Anti-recs

A. The Kids are all right. I just hated the characters.

B. LOEV (on netflix, has an unexpected rape scene).

10. Sexy!

A. Free Fall (german film). They are cops but they are sexy cops? Idk they had a lot of chemistry.

B. Bound (Wachowskis!). Butch/femme dynamic, stealing money from mobsters.

Bucky Barnes, Disability, and ethics in episode 4 of “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier”

This post has been deleted! 🙂

“The Midnight Sky” on Netflix. This review contains spoilers.

So the thing is, I was super into this movie. It has a bunch of stuff I like: space, survival, problem solving, and a grumpy older guy finding himself having to take care of a kid. Because I was so into it, I set myself up. I was deeply disappointed by the ending, which left me feeling sad and angry.

It’s a sad but intriguing premise: a mysterious catastrophe has occurred, rendering the Earth’s atmosphere poisonous. A space ship, Aether, that has been on a mission to explore a habitable moon of Jupiter is on its way back, and must be warned away before landing on Earth.

George Clooney plays a astronomer named Augustine who remains behind at an Arctic station while others evacuate. He’s hoping to transmit a vital message to the Aether. While living alone on this station, he encounters a kid who was left behind during the chaotic evacuation. Her name is Iris, and she doesn’t speak.

Augustine discovers that the antennae isn’t powerful enough: he and Iris must travel further North through dangerous Arctic conditions in order to reach another station.

Meanwhile on the Aether, the crew of five are living their lives, looking forward to returning home. One crew member is pregnant. They have to deal with various problems, mainly debris hitting their ship. The Aether itself is beautiful, with organic-looking supports on the bulkheads, as if a web-spinning spider was among the engineers.

The story progresses somewhat slowly, but I found it absolutely gripping. All the characters are hovering on the edge of survival.

Naturally, Augustine manages to transmit the message in time, and help the crew decide on a flight path that will send them back to the habitable planet they came from. Here is where the story starts to fall apart.



On the flight back, one of the crew members of the Aether is killed. Maya is the only Black woman in the film, and her death serves no narrative purpose except to raise the stakes for the other characters. This is enraging and makes a sad story all that much sadder.

So now there are four crew members left. Two of them decide they want to return to Earth, to an almost certain death. One of them wants to go because that’s where his wife and kids are. This is sort of understandable I suppose. But then, another character is like, “I’m going with you. I want to bring Maya’s body back home. That is the best use of my time.” This is absolute horse shit!! Maya is dead and doesn’t need you anymore. Meanwhile, you’re leaving your pregnant crewmate and her husband all alone, to go back to planet K-23. No discussion of, what if they need help raising the kid? What if something happens to one of them? His decision to return to a dying planet– to likely die himself– instead of live and help his crewmates, is pretty baffling. He’s been with these people for 2 years.

The final shots are of the married couple, quietly piloting the Aether. It’s very much a centering of the hetero nuclear family, as opposed to the found-family dynamic that was going on with the 5 crew members.

There are no queer people in this film. There is no regard for the strength and value of platonic relationships.

To top it off, there’s a reveal: Iris, the child that Augustine has been looking after, turns out to be a hallucination. The real Iris is the pregnant crew member on the Aether, who is Augustine’s grown daughter that he’s never met. This re-frames the found-family dynamic between Iris and Augustive to again be about a biological, traditional family relationship. The hallucination-for-survival reveal felt like a gimmick. It’s been done better, even in other space movies starring George Clooney (“Gravity”).

Augustine’s act of bravery, traversing miles of ice and snow, is now re-framed to be about saving his grown daughter, instead of acting out of a concern for strangers. It cheapens his actions. Wouldn’t it be nobler if he were trying to save astronauts because they were, simply, people?

In my mind, space is queer. Science fiction is queer: it dreams of the possible, of breaking away from tradition and creating new ways of living and caring for each other that includes platonic relationships, crew mates, found and created families. By that definition: this space movie was deeply anti-queer.

Further content notes:
–They claim to know the baby’s gender; I guess these future people don’t know about trans people, or don’t care.
–Blood
–Quite a bit of vomiting, from illness and from zero G.

“The Boy who Harnessed the Wind” is a frustrating movie

“The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind” on Netflix. Written, directed by, and starring Chiwetel Ejiofor. Mostly in the African language Chichewa, with some English.

I’m not sure how I feel about this film. Netflix bills it as “uplifting,” which means, I’m learning, that it is a story about individuals succeeding despite horrible systemic injustices. I found the story troubling, all the more so as it is based on a true story.

In a village in Malawi in 2001, a family of farmers face poor weather and famine. William, the son, is a bright and curious kid, but he’s forced to drop out of school because his family can’t pay the fees. He sneaks back into the library anyway. During his free time he tinkers and searches the dump for parts.

From the description and title we know that William is eventually going to build a windmill to help his village grow more crops. Using irrigation, they can plant a second crop in the dry season. It takes a long time for the movie to get to this point. Late in the film, when William finally does speak up to his father about his idea (he even has a working prototype), he is yelled at and berated and his father strikes him. Eventually the father comes around and the windmill gets built. By this time, everyone is starving and the dog has died.

What strikes me about this story is that the people of this village lacked access or knowledge of mechanical pump technology. William uses an electric pump he found in the dump, along with a car battery, a Dynamo from someone’s bike light, and a bike wheel. He bypasses the idea of a mechanical pump altogether. Wikipedia tells me that windmills used to pump water mechanically have existed since the 9th century in Afghanistan, Iran, and Pakistan.

Perhaps I am missing some context here. But it seemed like systemic injustice– the lack of access to technology– was the heart of the problem. It was also a frustrating problem that people didn’t believe in William or listen to him. I am lucky and privileged to come from a family and culture where kids are listened to, ideas are encouraged, and education is free.

Content notes: state violence (against the village chief), dog death, parents striking kids, famine.

Talent is all around

I had my friend Rebecca over to watch the Oscars. She is a skilled artist and during a commercial break, I showed her some of the art and photographs I have around the aparment. In my bedroom, she spotted this wooden box.

It’s a small rectangular box with cut-out art of 3 horses and a foal running joyfully. It is signed “RAR”. Here it is pictured sitting on a window sill.

“Do you know that’s my art?” Rebecca said.

I was confused. What did she mean?

It turns out that she worked for the local company that made these boxes, and she produced 100 pieces of art for them. The company was called “Corporate Custom Products, Inc.”

Wild! I have had this box for a long time and I suspect it was a gift, but I don’t remember who gave it to me. Thinking that it was probably from my mom, I emailed and asked her. She said, “I remember the box but not where we got it.”

The box is a little dusty so I’m going to clean it up well and then have my friend sign it.

Amazing!!

Family Tea Set

This is a story about my Great Grandmother, Esther Linn. During the Great Depression, she needed to order some supplies for the winter but had no cash to hand. What she did have, was a dental bridge that no longer fit her. In this dental bridge were some gold teeth.

She ordered supplies using the catalog from National Bellis Hess, a company similar to Sears. She wrote down her requests in ranked order, starting with Long Johns, and filling in more items below. The company would fill the requisition in order until the money ran out. She sent the gold teeth in with the order to pay for it.

Well, not only did Esther get all of the items she ordered, she got change back. Cash! A rare and precious asset during the Depression.

National Bellis Hess also sent a gift to everyone who ordered a certain amount from them, as a thank you for doing business. That year, the gift was a China set, dishes in white and orange, with a floral pattern.

The Long Johns, winter supplies, and cash are all long since gone, but the dishes remain in my mother’s cabinet. She has replaced any missing pieces by looking for them at flea markets and on eBay. They are a reminder of our family history and of a harder time.

A clarification from my mom: “I didn’t have to replace broken items as we didn’t break any! This was not a set we used often, kept for very special events and I don’t remember many of those!
I bought the extras so that I could create multiple sets. ”

Wisdom from Mariame Kaba

I attended a wonderful lecture by Mariame Kaba, who is a prison abolitionist. She tweets under the handle @prisonculture. Here are some of my take-aways:

–Restorative or transformative justice is not necessarily about love, forgiveness, or compassion. It’s about examining and stepping out of the punishment mind-set. You can be mad at someone until you die, and still not want them to be harmed or locked up. This was an eye-opener for me, and refreshing. It’s not that I don’t believe in love or compassion, it’s just that it’s much harder to get to that point than to start from a place of “no punishment”. I think that respect and honoring people’s dignity, is more important than love.

–Doing this kind of work requires that you have a community, a support system of people you can rely on.

–Dialog is not always a good idea. You can’t have an open dialog when there is a big power differential. (This is especially relevant when well-meaning white people think that having tea and talking more will solve everything.)

–Know who your DA is. They have a lot of power.

–Practice hope as a discipline. Make a concious choice to act out of hope.

–Experiencing bad things does not make us wise. It is the examination and analysis of these experiences that brings wisdom.

Tips for managing pain

A few of my tips and tricks for managing chronic pain.

Specific to facial nerve pain:
–I wear the lightest possible glasses
–I do sinus care things, like nasal sprays, eating spicy foods, taking mucinex, using my inhaler.
–Frozen grapes and other frozen fruits act like an ice pack inside the mouth.
–Chewing gum and snacking and drinking cold drinks can help distract me from the pain.
–Lying down and meditating.
–Sometimes I sleep with an ice pack
–Botox was of some usefulness, but what was better:
–A nerve block every three months or so. My doc targets the infraorbital nerve.

Migraines / Light sensitivity:
–I keep the overhead lights off in the apartment, and rely on lamps.
–I wear a hat with a brim when I go out. The hat needs to be big enough on my extra-large head, so it can be a challenge to find a good one.
–Lying in bed and listening to music or podfic with an ice pack on my head or face.

General pain:
–Compression socks. A recent addition to my life and I like them.
–Good quality shoes with lots of arch support.
–I keep an electric heating pad by my bed, and another one by the recliner, so I don’t have to unplug and move it around.
–Fingerless gloves, for typing.
–In general, staying warm is helpful, so I will for example wear leggings under my jeans in the winter.
–Various pain creams like Icy Hot, Ted’s pain cream, etc.
–The freezer has 2-3 ice packs in it, always. I wrap them up in a pillowcase.
–Loose, comfortable clothes. This can involve cutting tags off of clothes, and cutting notches in the necks of shirts. My favorite kind of shirt is the henley.
–If you can afford it, getting a massage or other alternative medicine can be helpful during really bad pain episodes.
–I play video games to distract myself.
–I rest a lot. For example, do the dishes, then sit down for a few minutes. Take naps.
–I keep a stock of various medications and supplements, though most of these are of limited usefulness for my main problem which is nerve pain. Some of them do help with other kinds of pain. I do keep anti-nausea pills and anti-dirraheal pills handy, because they work.
–Audiobooks and comics are a lot easier to read than traditional books when you have impaired concentration from chronic pain.
–Lower your expectations for yourself. Try not to compare yourself to healthy / non-disabled people.
–Find disability community.
–Ask for help.

Why I can’t write a good personal essay

I feel exactly the same. This is an excellent article.

Tenure, She Wrote

I haven’t gotten a pay check since my fellowship ran out in 2017. Funding is scarce for students in the end of their PhDs and scarcer still for international students with disabilities, so it’s not too surprising that I’ve been turned down for everything I’ve applied for.

Almost 5 years ago, I wrote with regard to applications for funding and otherwise:

Use your story and the survival skills you’ve gained to succeed. I use my escape from rural poverty in personal statements to show that I have incredible drive, creativity, and independence.

But I just can’t do it any more. I can’t make my life a funny, moving, educational story for someone else to judge.

I used to follow my own advice. I turned the ways in which I don’t fit neatly into the world into pat inspiration porn. I talked about disability, adverse childhood experiences, being queer in a…

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Don’t Call Me, Maybe

In the 1980s, my family had a black rotary phone that sat on the wall in the corner of the kitchen. I remember learning about 911, and how we joked that it would be faster to dial 111, as the 9 had to go all the way around the circle and back. The dial made a neat noise, sort of a rattle.

The phone had a little counter where the phone book and various papers sat, and below that, a square metal grate through which hot air came into the kitchen. This was a great place to sit: warm air on my back, a cozy little cubby, and a good view of whatever was going on in the kitchen. My mom would talk on the phone and the long spiral cord stretched out. I’d wrap a bit of the cord around my fingers.

I remember getting caller ID and using *69, which would tell you the phone number for the previous incoming call. For a little while, we had calling cards, for long-distance phone calls. I rarely if ever used a phone booth.

I don’t think I ever really liked talking on the phone the way that some people do. It was fine, just a necessary task rather than a pleasure. In contrast, I took to the internet. In high school and college I made friends on Bulletin Boards, chatted with classmates on AIM (AOL instant messenger), and even made a rudimentary website for myself using HTML. The internet was so visual and colorful; absolutely mesmerizing.

I got my first cell phone in graduate school, when I spent a summer in Iowa doing research in 2004. It was a flip phone, which I loved because it looked like a Star Trek communicator. I learned to keep it on all the time and plug it in at night. I learned to leave it in the car if I went to a movie, because if I turned it off, I would forget to turn it back on. The one phone call that stands out in my memory is talking to my Dad, who had just watched the Democratic National Congress on TV, where Barack Obama spoke. “Talk about the next president!” he said.

I eventually lost my flip phone, and got one that had a keyboard. My girlfriend at the time was pleased, because now I could text her back right away. It no longer took me 5 minutes to compose a text using the number pad. This was 2010.

My last non-smart phone, also one with a sliding key board, started to fall apart from wear and tear in 2018. It permanently turned itself to vibrate-only, and the space bar key wore out. It’s time to get with the future, I thought. It’s time for a smart phone.

My friend got me a smart phone through a program called SafeLink. It’s a free phone. I’ve had nothing but problems with it. A few weeks ago, I came back from the dog park and noticed something going on at the neighbor’s house. My neighbor’s father was having a seizure on the front step. “Please help!” she shouted. “My phone won’t turn on!” I ran inside and grabbed my phone. I ran back outside and dialed 911. The call dropped. (Cell phones, they told us, were the way to go. They’d be great in emergencies!) I was able to call back, and my neighbor was able to get her phone working.

This was an anxiety-inducing event. This event, along with a few other problems, has meant my phone phobia has gotten worse and I’ve developed a hostile relationship to this object. I’ve been largely unable to make phone calls for months, which has been a real problem.

When I started a new job, I noticed that I was able to make phone calls from the desk phone. It simply feels different than using a cell phone. The cell phone disappears from my view when I hold it to my ear, so it feels like I’m talking to the air. It’s the opposite of a visual experience. Talking on a cell phone in particular feels unmoored, distant, adrift; I’m a person that likes to feel grounded.

I admit I do enjoy having a pocket computer (see today’s Dinosaur comics: http://www.qwantz.com/index.php?comic=3319), for things like Google maps, but I don’t enjoy having a “smart phone” because it doesn’t work as a phone. I want to go back to a house phone. Perhaps this is party because I those warm memories of the heating vent and the long spiral cord, of listening to my mom talk to her friends. Of my family gently arguing over who is going to be the one to call and order food. The sturdiness of the object itself, they way you can tilt your head and hold the phone between your ear and your shoulder, if you need both your hands free.

Objects in our lives are imbued with emotion. I want some of those warm emotions around the tools I use to communicate. I have such feelings with computers. Writing to communicate– via email or twitter or blog post– is so easy for me that I barely have to think about it. I imagine phones are like this for other people, though admittedly it’s hard to really imagine what that feels like.