Just One of the Guys

An interesting monograph, discussed on video: Study on transgender men in the workplace by Kristen Schilt.

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Making Time

I finally bought some books I've been meaning to read.  I tend to get around to shopping all in one moment after putting it off for too long and then being indecisive. 

I did not do the smart thing and go to the lists I'd made (one list being too organized).  Instead I did some searching based on topics of interest and luckily landed back on a review of this book I'd been reading about and kept meaning to pick up.

Now that I've just leafed through it for a few minutes, I can see I'm gonna need to push other stuff aside and make some time to really focus on this book.  Julia Serano's last book, Whipping Girl, was good, but Excluded is an intervention into movement talk talk talk on a different level.  It comes from a particular angle that just strikes me as timely, personally in my own reading, thinking, and blah blah blah, as well as politically at this juncture in sociocultural time, more broadly. 

All the books and projects are clashing and demanding, but this  fits in with the stuff I've been rereading and trying to put together: some Mathilda Sycamore books, some 70s feminist biographies, some rereads on intersectionality, and this documentary from last year's MSPIFF that keeps sticking in my head about adoption and women being fired from jobs or kicked out of school and sent to homes for unwed mothers pre-Roe. 

Gender, revisionism, historical contextuality, and the bigger picture are all on my mind, not really meshing, and just thumbing through this book, it seems to be right on point.  I could surely use some help thinking through this cluster of ideas more clearly.  Here's hoping...

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Digital branding as labor

I've been busy reading theory on the web, a lot of disparate stuff, trying to see what I've been missing over the last period of burying my head in fiction and mostly either hyper-local, NPR-style, or sff-focused blogs and podcasts. 

Found a lot of interesting article I haven't had time to digest, but this from mimi thi nyugen is really thought provoking and apt in terms of the usual advice to sff authors, despite the different employment relationships involved in publishing.  The impressive to sell and brand yourself to sell your products does have dangers such as the ones she explores.  Her blog, Thread and Circuits, is chock full of posts and essays worth browsing.  I have to avoid this for the moment, though, or I will never get this other research done...

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Theater under a dictatorship

We went to see "Dangerous Acts of Unstable Elements in Belarus" on Saturday, which won Best Documentary for the MSPIFF film festival, among many other awards.  And yes, it was that good.

The film follows a free theater troupe from its vaguely hidden house in Minsk to New York and London after artists are denounced and members of the troupe are arrested and sought for arrest after the presidential elections in 2010.

As one troupe member says, "There's a joke in Belarus, where the head of the electoral committee says to Lukashenko 'There's good news and bad news. The good news is; you're president again. The bad news is; no one voted for you…'"

The actors flee the country by various means as the opposition candidate is imprisoned, and they proceed to put on a visceral and inventive show off Broadway that directly discusses the rigged election, the brutal crackdown, and the torture methods used on dissenters like themselves. 

Just as they win an Obie, most members return to Belarus to continue operating the free theater while three apply for political asylum from London.  The mix of interviews, filming while actors talk to family members in Belarus by Skype, footage of the demonstrations and TV coverage in Minsk, and portions of the plays and rehearsals is very effective and is a great study the power of theater, music, and art to convey what words like "dictatorship" alone cannot.

Showing again at 7ish Tuesday 4/22 as an encore performance at MSPIFF, St Anthony Main theater.

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We Are the Best

I was looking forward to Lukas Moodysson's new movie, We Are The Best (transl.), because a.) his teen girl movie Show Me Love was very good and b.) this one involves punk rock circa 1982 in Stockholm.  The 80s hair did not disappoint, and the girls were surprisingly energetic as well ad endearing and funny.

Here you can find a clip, for the flavor (and pink spandex): We hate the sport!  The music is great, and touches like fishsticks and the teen Swedish metal band are a real blast from the past that translates past Swedish borders. 

Here is an interview with Coco Moodysson, whose autobiographical graphic novel inspired the film: Cool.  I highly recommend it and may have to see it again.

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Gratuitous use of gears

Gears!!

The Magic Flute: Now in Steampunk!

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MSPIFF

It is in fact time for the Minneapolis Film Festival to dominate my time for three weeks, and drain my wallet.  I have seen four films so far and missed about six that I really wanted to see but conflicted with work or swim class.  I just mapped out the rest of the schedule, but seriously, how does one decide when three to four must-sees are scheduled all at the same time, and many start at 9:30 or 9:45 p.m. mid-week.  It's tough to prioritize. 

Today I got to work ridiculously early so I could trot across the bridge and see "Harmony Lessons, " from Kazakhstan.  I have a soft spot for Kazakh movies- they're often very beautifully shot and the kind of lyrical, highly allegorical type of film I like, and it doesn't hurt that I am usually practice my limited Russian.  Harmony Lessons is more in Kazakh but well-acted, by non-actors including the lead who was discovered in an orphanage, and really provocative.  Reviews on the web do it justice and compare the filmmaker to lots of famous auteurs like Bresson. 

They do not lie.  The film is brutal and not for the squeamish but many-layered and very worth seeing. Here is the trailer, with Russian subtitles, all I could find...  More later on the other films I've seen.

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The internets

The beauty of the Internets these days is that, as many drawbacks as it has, it puts an amazing amount of information at your fingertips that would never get to you in a lifetime b4 web 2.0.

Apparently I massively insulted Johanna Sinisalo, whose works I have read translated into English whenever I could find them and tried my best to describe as freaking brilliant, deeply layered, and wickedly incisive in a review I got asked to do on the fly and got paid a massive $5 for. 

My writing can be opaque and obscure.  It often gets misread.  For my lack of skill in using words to convey what I mean, "Olen pahoillani."

Thanks to FinnishPod101.com for their great language videos.

If the translation of Sinisalo's books is truly distorting, that's sad, but they still come across as freaking brilliant, deeply layered, and wickedly incisive.  I find it hard to believe that the translation is highly problematic because they're such a great read, even in the translation to English. 

In French too.  I had to see, since a diligent search revealed a preference for that translation and that I can confirm with my piece meal polyglot skills despite no solid Finnish friends that would appreciate a perceptive deconstruction of their Finnish masculinity.  Really not that different, from what I can tell, except the French title, Oiseau dr Malheur might be a huge compliment, alluding to Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du Mal.  That book that made 13 bearable for this teen queer, that magnifique ode to the Imp of Perversity.  Or not- it's what popped into my head on seeing the title, thoughts formed by the French canon gleaned through the tutelage of a African American French teacher who studied at the Sorbonne, one of the best teachers I've ever had on all schools of life- professionalism, translation, exactitude in writing, fairness, collegiality, comportment- hands down.  Madame, I hope I do you no wrong here, but yes, I've let my translation skills become shamefully rusty.

In the British to American translation, Birdbrain comes off as deeply feminist and brave as truth-telling.  And Troll: A Love Story/ Not Before Sunset comes off as incredibly queer and witty, even if that was not the intention or effect in the original, in its American English translation.  Seriously, anything I might have done to make anyone *not* read these books or the amazing short story "Dollface" despite all the awards they've won is a heinous disservice, cos this writer is one of the best feminist and SFF writers out there right now, no mistake.  Read her.  Can I be more clear?

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Fire In the Belly

Spring brings everyone out of the woodwork.  We meet our neighbors again.  Go places.  Do things.  Try to catch up, make up for lost time.

Deadlines, headlines, fresh bullsh*t, annexations, power moves, sloppy footwork, out of nowheres, sideswiped, blindsided, sluggish with a hint of snow, allergies, smudges under the eyes, nodding off on the train... It must be April on the way.

People die in April, like they do in early winter.  It becomes a rhythm you get used to, when everyone is dying.  And then it slows, and slows some more, and people are astonished at death again.  But the rhythm's still there.

That makes it a perfect time to read "Fire In the Belly: The Life and Times of David Wojnarowicz," by Cynthia Carr.  580-some pages is daunting, but the man was fascinating, brilliant, and burned fast as hell in the too-short time he had.  His autobiography is the first thing to read, but this bio's got art and stories and a sense of history and moment.  Remember Jesse Helms, the NEA, and FDA, all that ancient history?   Yeah.  Gonna take a while to plow through but I'm not stopping 'til I'm done.

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Speaking of generations

Great crowd scenes up front, as well as concerts:  Stones in the Park 7/1969 and  Some Girls tour, Texas.  The latter reminds me of Foxes, the Jodie Foster Cherie Currie movie...

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