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President Bush wants ‘pro-homosexual’
drama banned
By Gary Taylor
Dec. 9— What should we do with US classics like Cat on
a Hot Tin Roof or The Color Purple? “Dig a hole,” Gerald Allen
recommends, “and dump them in it.” Don’t laugh. Gerald
Allen’s book-burying opinions are not a joke.
Earlier this week, Allen got a call from Washington. He will be meeting
with President Bush on Dec. 13. I asked him if this was his first invitation
to the White House. “Oh no,” he laughs. “It’s my
fifth meeting with Mr. Bush.”
Bush is interested in Allen’s opinions because Allen is an elected
Republican representative in the Alabama state legislature. He is Bush’s
base. Last week, Bush’s base introduced a bill that would ban the
use of state funds to purchase any books or other materials that “promote
homosexuality.” Allen does not want taxpayers’ money to support
“positive depictions of homosexuality as an alternative lifestyle.”
That’s why Tennessee Williams and Alice Walker have got to go.
I ask Allen what prompted this bill. Was one of his children exposed
to something in school that he considered inappropriate? Did he see
some flamingly gay book displayed prominently at the public library?
No, nothing like that. “It was election day,” he explains.
Last month, “14 states passed referendums defining marriage as
a relationship between a man and a woman.” Exit polls asked people
what they considered the most important issue, and “moral values
in this country” were “the top of the list.”
“Traditional family values are under attack,” Allen informs
me. They’ve been under attack “for the last 40 years.”
The enemy, this time, is not al-Qaida. The axis of evil is “Hollywood,
the music industry.” We have an obligation to “save society
from moral destruction.” We have to prevent liberal librarians
and trendy teachers from “re-engineering society’s fabric
in the minds of our children.” We have to “protect Alabamians.”
I ask him, again, for specific examples. Although heterosexuals are
apparently an endangered species in Alabama, and although Allen is a
local politician who lives a couple miles from my house, he can’t
produce any local examples. “Go on the Internet,” he recommends.
“Some time when you’ve got a week to spare,” he jokes,
“just go on the Internet. You’ll see.”
Actually, I go on the Internet every day. But I’m obviously searching
for different things. For Allen, the web is just the largest repository
in history of urban myths. The Internet is even better than the Bible
when it comes to spreading unverifiable, irrefutable stories. And urban
myths are political realities. Remember, it was an urban myth (an invented
court case about a sex education teacher gang-raped by her own students
who, when she protested, laughed and said: “But we’re just
doing what you taught us!”) that all but killed sex education in
America.
Since Allen couldn’t give me a single example of the homosexual
equivalent of 9/11, I gave him some. This autumn the University of Alabama
theater department put on an energetic revival of A Chorus Line, which
includes, besides “tits and ass,” a prominent gay solo number.
Would Allen’s bill prevent university students from performing
A Chorus Line? It isn’t that he’s against the theater, Allen
explains. “But why can’t you do something else?” (They
have done other things, of course. But I didn’t think it would
be a good idea to mention their sold-out productions of Angels in America
and The Rocky Horror Show.)
Cutting off funds to theater departments that put on A Chorus Line or
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof may look like censorship, and smell like censorship,
but “it’s not censorship,” Allen hastens to explain.
“For instance, there’s a reason for stop lights. You’re
driving a vehicle, you see that stop light, and I hope you stop.”
Who can argue with something as reasonable as stop lights? Of course,
if you’re gay, this particular traffic light never changes to green.
It would not be the first time Cat on a Hot Tin Roof ran into censorship.
As Nicholas de Jongh documents in his amusingly appalling history of
government regulation of the British theater, the British establishment
was no more enthusiastic, half a century ago, than Alabama’s Allen.
“Once again Williams vomits up the recurring theme of his not too
subconscious,” the Lord Chamberlain’s Chief Examiner wrote
in 1955. In the end, it was first performed in London at the New Watergate
Club, for “members only,” thereby slipping through a loophole
in the censorship laws.
But more than one gay playwright is at a stake here. Allen claims he
is acting to “encourage and protect our culture.” Does “our
culture” include Shakespeare? I ask Allen if he would insist that
copies of Shakespeare’s sonnets be removed from all public libraries.
I point out to him that Romeo and Juliet was originally performed by
an all-male cast, and that in Shakespeare’s lifetime actors and
audiences at the public theaters were all accused of being “sodomites.”
When Romeo wished he “was a glove upon that hand,” the cheek
that he fantasized about kissing was a male cheek. Next March the Alabama
Shakespeare festival will be performing a new production of As You Like
It, and its famous scene of a man wooing another man. The Alabama Shakespeare
Festival is also the State Theater of Alabama. Would Allen’s bill
cut off state funding for Shakespeare?
“Well,” he begins, after a pause, “the current draft
of the bill does not address how that is going to be handled. I expect
details like that to be worked out at the committee stage. Literature
like Shakespeare and Hammet [sic] could be left alone.” Could be.
Not “would be.” In any case, he says, “you could tone
it down.” That way, if you’re not paying real close attention,
even a college graduate like Allen himself “could easily miss”
what was going on, the “subtle” innuendoes and all.
So he regards his gay book ban as a work in progress. His legislation
is “a single spoke in the wheel, it doesn’t resolve all the
issues.” This is just the beginning. “To turn a big ship around
it takes a lot of time.”
But make no mistake, the ship is turning. You can see that on the face
of Cornelius Carter, a professor of dance at Alabama and a prize-winning
choreographer who, not long ago, was named university teacher of the
year for the entire US. Carter is black. He is also gay, and tired of
fighting these battles. “I don’t know,” he says, “if
I belong here any more.”
Forty years ago, the American defenders of “our culture” and
“traditional values” were opposing racial integration. Now,
no politician would dare attack Cornelius Carter for being black. But
it’s perfectly acceptable to discriminate against people for what
they do in bed.
“Dig a hole,” Gerald Allen recommends, “and dump them
in it.”
Of course, Allen was talking about books. He was just talking about
books. He never said anything about pink triangles.
Source: Guardian (UK)
Jakarta: art vs. globalization
By A. Junaidi
Jakarta, Indonesia, Dec. 13 — A usually neglected lot
on Jl. Sumenep, Central Jakarta, was suddenly alive and bustling during
last weekend’s Street Art Festival, a gathering of underground
artists under a single theme: Unity in Diversity Against Neo-imperialism.
The artists and activists repeatedly denounced the World Trade Organization
(WTO), the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank as
neo-imperialists in the lot bordering the city’s main thoroughfares
of Jl. Sudirman and Jl. Thamrin.
“Fuck globalization, fuck the free market,” shouted the
lead vocalist of a punk band on a makeshift stage.
Introducing his songs, another musician told the audience that his
Central Java hometown had become a wasteland, its environment damaged
from the overuse of pesticides produced by transnational companies.
The musicians and their audience were separated only by a bamboo fence
about a foot tall, and people frequently jumped onstage and joined
the musicians mid-performance.
Punching their left hands into the air, artists and audience constantly
rallied, “Keep fighting on the streets.”
Participants of the two-day festival, organized by the Institute for
Global Justice (IGJ), the Nurani Senja Foundation and the Urban Poor
Consortium, were mostly underground artists and hailed from several
cities across Indonesia.
Underground artists from Malaysia and Timor Leste (East Timor) also
participated in the festival, which opened on Dec. 4.
Drawing together from the streets of Bandung, Bekasi, Blora, Denpasar,
Jakarta, Jember, Malang, Semarang, Solo, Tangerang and Yogyakarta,
the street artists charged that neo-imperialists, with their slogans
of globalization and free trade, only made the poor suffer.
Meanwhile, the street was awash with graffiti, banners and murals
condemning globalization.
Aside from live music and visual arts, various stands selling “leftist
books” and merchandise from the Baduy people, as well as tattoo
and traditional ear piercing stands filled the lot.
Traditional ear piercing, which is common among tribal people in the
hinterlands, such as remote areas in Kalimantan, has been adopted
as a symbol of underground activism.
IGJ executive director Bonnie Setiawan said the festival was a tribute
to the 1999 mass rally against the WTO in Seattle, WA.
Thousands of people, including activists, artists, academics, gay
and transgender groups, students and housewives gathered in a spirit
of solidarity against globalization at the 1999 rally, dubbed “the
Battle of Seattle” and a benchmark for anti-globalization movements
across the world.
“In Indonesia, underground artists often take part in rallies
protesting globalization,” said Bonnie, who was at the Seattle
rally.
He said the Street Art Festival, which took two months to organize,
provided a space for marginalized people who lacked the financial
means to publicize their work.
The venue was selected for its proximity to the capital’s thoroughfares
to illustrate the plight of all marginalized people and victims of
neo-imperialism and capitalism.
“It’s a symbol of the people’s struggle to reclaim
public space,” he said.
Organizing the festival was no easy task, as the participants —
most of whom were either marginalized or underground or both —
tended to be suspicious of people from outside their known environment
or circle.
“It took days to persuade them to attend the festival. It would
have been even more difficult if we did not know how underground people
think,” said Dicky Lolupulan of the Nurani Senja Foundation.
After gaining their trust, Dicky said information about the festival
was spread by word of mouth among street artists, at underground art
meetings and via Internet mailing lists.
Dewa Nyoman of the Denpasar Art Community said he learned about the
event from a friend, Rio “Tupai,” who got the information
from the Internet.
“We paid our own way here. We appreciate the organizer for putting
on the event. It’s the first national gathering of street artists,”
Dewa said.
Underground artists, punk bands and anarchists from all over the region
met at the festival in a spirit of reunion, as they rarely have an
opportunity to see each other.
Source: The Jakarta Post
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