Sorry Rich Guy…?

Mark Gill, who’s rather large in indie film, spoke during the LA Film Festival about the challenges of producing independent film in a narrowing market. Amongst the thirteen reasons he sighted as proof that indie film is just the wrong business to be in these days, number ten struck me:

“10: Movies now routinely fight with really compelling leisure alternatives that nobody in the last great era of cinema–the 1970s–even imagined: from iPods to Xboxes to Tivos to You Tubes to the radically improved behemoth that is cable television.”

This sad song echoes that of everyone over forty in Hollywood. I would be bummed if I were them too. Sure, it was way funner when you put money into a movie and made it back at the box office right away. Now we have to put more money into a film that has a much smaller change of making any back if at all when it hits viral and mobile content sites who might pay you once their “advertising” dollars come in.

Yes, it is a different business model. Indie film is really the last place I’d like to hear the lament over changing platforms. As a genre that fancies itself the last bastion of explorative, imaginative and informative cultural commentary, indie storytellers could look at the changing media market from the vantage point it provides to reach wider audiences. If one is that concerned with surpassing the “moronic, homogenized piece of lowest-common-denominator drivel” that is mass media, in order to bring singular narratives and quality storytelling to audiences, then the platform your message arrives on shouldn’t matter so much. New media technologies make informative content more tangible to the greatest number of people. It’s the messages that need to reach viewers and the voices that need to be heard, not the platform they’re seen on or the money made from their consumption.

9 Types of Internalized Patriarchal Oppression

Renee was kind enough to pass along this little gem of a blog. Did you know that there are 9 types of “lesbians”? I sure didn’t. Guess that degree in sex and gender from UCLA didn’t teach me nothin…

Given the terribly base and rather damaging aspects of the content, I’ve inquired as to the author’s motivation with this comment which I’ve left:

Frisky,

I would really like to know what you had hoped to achieve in voicing these opinions regarding lesbian sexuality? I understand you have a blog to run and content is content. I wonder at what point did you think to put down your neo-second wave flag long enough to consider how damaging it is to women on all ends of a sexuality spectrum to reinforce popular negative conceptions of lesbianism as predictable, performative, and uniform. Your sighting of these nine types of lesbians complete with celebrity examples tells us only that you have seen a few episodes of The L Word and sheds absolutely no light onto the rich theoretical discourse on sex and gender identity.

There are many problematic and off statements in your piece. But as a queer woman with multiple points of intersection across lines of gender, sexuality, I am primarily interested in understanding your motivation in generating content which reinforces such oppressive normative beliefs about female sexuality. I wonder if you notice the privilege you’ve invoked by perpetuating the primacy of heterosexuality as an institution by othering women who act outside of its constructs?

Love,
Your very own Lavender Scare

LoRo are “in a relationship” surfuckingprise…

I’m still waiting for Lindsay and Sam to start power dykin it up at East West, but for now we are finally safe to say that they are actually gay. In the past week, some of the celebrity news magazines who follow Lohan so closely have begun reporting such. I know, I know, i know, it’s been obvious. But the news mags have gone terribly far up until recently to maintain they are probably just “really close friends”.

Pictures of Sam and Lindsay have been running for months now with captions full of phrases like “best friends” “gal pals” “companions” and “inseparable twosome”. It wasn’t until last week when Ronson changed her Facebook status to “in a relationship” that the weekly mags began to describe their relationship as “rumored to be more than just gal pals.” So far, Life & Style Weekly is the only source using the words “gay” or “girlfriend” in describing the relationship.

Recently an LA Times reporter asked if this lack of outing was coming from a place of respect. As if maybe US Weekly and People Magazine’s refusal to acknowledge that Lindsay and Samantha are actually in a fully committed, high functioning lesbian relationship is more about concern for the celebs themselves rather than a calculated means of maintaining their sale value.

The idea that this lack of identification on the part of the mainstream press has anything to do with respect for their closet status is rather naive. It has everything to do with the fact that having a gay relationship, a stable one at that, does not sell. The tabloids are selling image, lifestyle, stereotypes we can all subscribe to. “Gay” does not sell in the Bible belt, it barely sells in LA.

The author of the times article inquired as to why the tabloids weren’t just ignoring this obviously gay relationship as they do with other out couples. Well, this is Lindsay effin Lohan we are talking about. The celebrity news machine as we know it today has been built upon the backs of paparazzi favorites like Lindsay and Britney. . These gossip outlets have been covering Lindsay since her days on Disney. She is still massive. She is selling and the goal has always been to keep her selling. The tabloids have been happy to run the pictures of Lohan in obvious close proximity to Ronson as long as they could use euphemisms to play dumb. Tabloid readers, or the majority of Americans, very much want to gobble up images of LoRo’s fantastical hipster celebrity life but they don’t want to have to admit that they are really gay.

Speculative gayness sells much better. Once a person or couple has been outed, they instantly become the “other”. There is no longer any hope that their questionable actions haven’t been just “celebrity fun” or “lifestyles of the rich and coked up”. Actual, real life queer relationships are a big fat affront to the conservative hetero-cultural norms that permeate this country. The truth is that most Americans are really not ready to consume queerness with the same fervor with which they consume Lindsay’s very public drug problems.

This model usually serves to keep the gay celebrity themselves quiet as well. The mags don’t ask too much, the celebs don’t tell too much, they both make a mint and everyone’s happy. But then Samantha had to go and change her Facebook profile, an action that leads to quite a few problems within the lesbian community anyway, and now the tabloids have no choice in the matter anymore. If they still want to run the sought after pics of Lindsay and Sam barely brushing hands outside The Ivy, the mags have to report it for what it actually is, a lesbian relationship.