Helen Boyd Kramer's journal on gender and stuff
tv shows, magazine articles, movies
By god this is brilliant:
Amanda Palmer & The Young Punx – “Map of Tasmania” Music Video from Amanda Palmer on Vimeo.
She’s Neil Gaiman’s wife, and formerly of The Dresden Dolls. It’s kinda hard not to hate her, except that I can’t, exactly because of songs like this — and there is way too much Ants style going on (& maybe some Ari Up, too).
The actor who plays the cool goth chick on NCIS is the new spokesperson for Expedia, and in the new commercial she does for them, she is showing various hotel rooms which are empty – or supposed to be empty – until she shows one where a man who has just taken a shower is walking across his room with a towel wrapped around his waist. He realizes in a split second that he can be seen, shrieks, and then — cups his breasts. I can’t describe it any other way because that’s exactly what he does: doesn’t cover his chest, doesn’t cross his arms — he cups his breasts. And shrieks.
There is nothing otherwise interesting about the ad, but that was especially unusual, and I have no idea if the gender variance is what’s being played for laughs or if the idea that she accidentally choosing the wrong room – she says “oops” or something similar – is what’s supposed to be funny.
I’ll admit: I was worried about this one because it’s my favorite book of the series but also because I’d heard a long time ago they’d added a character that wasn’t in the book. That scared me. I’m also, of course, always nervous that they’re going to Christian up these stories the same way everyone else seems to, which, imho, is poor scholarship. They’re pagan books, not (only) Christian ones.
But the film is really beautiful, deeply satisfying to the 9 year old me who lived in these books year after year. It’s nice, at 41, to see the Narnian world come alive – it’s really well-done and looks damned near what I always imagined. There are some inventions for the sake of plot – like the three new characters and the green mist and some slicing & dicing of the islands – but still it holds up, very well in fact, and yes do bring tissues if you’re the type to cry.
For me, the really uncanny bit is that two of the three new, invented characters are named Gail and Helen. I didn’t catch the father/husband’s name, but how’s that for weird? It’s the kind of detail that makes me wonder if I’m only dreaming it all, this blog included.
Now please go see it, in the theaters, too, so that they can make The Silver Chair. If i don’t get to see a marshwiggle up on a big screen I’ll be very sad indeed.
The New York Times does a “year in review” on trans media presentations in the Fashion & Style section, and it’s not a bad article at all.
Not since the glam era of the 1970s has gender-bending so saturated the news media. The difference now is that mystery has been replaced with empowerment, even pride. Consider a few happenings that have blipped recently on our radar. The blog of a young mother whose 5-year-old son had dressed like Daphne on “Scooby-Doo” for Halloween went viral, initiating a nationwide discussion on the fluidity of gender. (The mother ended up on “Today.”) The performance artist Kalup Linzy became a downtown phenomenon in Manhattan for his gender-bending portrayals of soap-opera divas. Oprah Winfrey welcomed transsexual men to her program.
In November, a transgender student pledged a sorority at Trinity University in Texas. Original Plumbing, a zine for trans-guys, came out with a fashion issue.
This month, Simon & Schuster will publish “My Princess Boy,” a children’s book about a boy who wears pink gowns. “It’s not acceptable for us to sit back when children are taking their lives because they’re not accepted for who they are,” said the author, Cheryl Kilodavis, who based the book on her 4-year-old son.
That said, they make no attempt to distinguish crossdressing – and various types of it – from trangender or transsexual. That is, the article’s subtitle – “bold crossing of the gender line” should have been the main title — instead of “transsexual are edging into the mainstream,” but what else is new?
On 12/1, Andrew Sullivan had a “Face of the Day” photo of a Pakistani hjira (although he called her a eunuch).
Bored to Death, the HBO comedy, is adding a transgender character, but that should’nt be too surprising since one of the characters is based on Jonathan Ames.
A Canadian show called Degrassi – which first aired in the 80s but has returned in recent years –introduced an FTM spectrum character this past summer. (Warning: the clip on that website is triggery.)
If anyone wants to review these, or let me know about others I may have missed, please do!
Normal Rockwell, great American folk painter, paints Gary Cooper getting painted by a makeup artist. Who knew?
It’s one of 10 genderbent magazine covers at Flavorwire, and DO click their links – they lead you to some interesting places.
Helen Mirren is playing Prospero (Prospera, in this case) in the new film version of The Tempest:
Alan Cumming, too!
(via io9) (whose editors are, btw, Charlie Jane Anders, author of The Lazy Crossdresser, and Annalee Newitz)
(with a Sheboygan reference, to boot)
