John Cameron Mitchell Casts His Dream Hedwigs
The creator and current star of Hedwig and the Angry Inch is eyeing some major celebrities as his replacement. Justin Timberlake, please call your agent.
Brandon Voss
www.advocate.com/arts-entertainment/theater/2015/02/02/john-cameron-mitchell-casts-his-dream-hedwigs
'Spartacus' On Netflix: Your Guide To A Gladiator Binge
“Spartacus” has arrived on Netflix — hooray!
I’ve got your guide to binging on the gladiator drama right here: Read on for a roundup of links to reviews and interviews I published during the four-season run of the show.
But let’s back up for a minute. You may be asking, “Are you serious? Why would I want to watch ‘Spartacus’? Isn’t it pretty much just people boinking and cutting each other’s limbs off?”
Well, sure, amputations and sex are not exactly uncommon on the show, which ran for 39 blood-soaked episodes on Starz. But there’s much more to “Spartacus” than sex, togas and violence. It’s one of the most enjoyable dramas of the last decade, and I have been banging the drum for it since it debuted in early 2010.
Now that you can enjoy all of it in one lengthy, bloody binge, I’m here to spread the news again: This show worth taking a chance on. Here are the most important things to keep in mind as you begin your binge:
One of my favorite things to experience as a “Spartacus” evangelist is the string of texts, emails or direct messages I get when a friend begins a marathon of the first season. The progression of messages generally goes something like this: “Seriously, you want me to stick with this? Really?” “Sigh. Well, okay, I guess the gladiator battles are pretty good.” “Haha, Lucy Lawless is killing me.” “Okay, this is kind of fun.” “Wait, am I developing feelings for these people? What is happening?? I’m confused!” “I … what … no!!” “Did that just happen? What the hell!?” and then a final string curse words.
At that point, I say, “Welcome to the ‘Spartacus’ fandom.”
Will you experience this expansive range of reactions? Will you plunge directly into the next episodes once Season 1 ends, even if it’s 3 a.m.? Based on anecdotal evidence, yes — that is a realistic possibility. If you do stick with the show, here’s what you’ll find.
“Spartacus” is bawdy, lusty, over the top, bloody, adventurous and exciting, but all of that stuff is merely the icing on the cake. Underneath all of those colorful elements — which make the show a lot of fun to watch — is a meticulously constructed drama with a fantastically committed and ferocious heart. You might not guess this during the first episode or two, but “Spartacus” ends up being one of the most fervently and unabashedly political dramas I’ve ever seen. Creator Steven S. DeKnight worked on several Joss Whedon shows, and as I said more than once in my reviews, DeKnight learned well from his mentor.
We’re still talking about “Buffy” decades after it debuted not because it had cool monsters, but because those monsters were smartly deployed in an intelligent, empathic, character-driven drama. Via the Scooby gang’s heartbreaks and triumphs, we explored ideas about loyalty, maturity, friendship and moral consequences; we laughed and cried and were shocked at what the characters were capable of. Whatever you think of the heightened tone or the stylized language of “Spartacus” — and I happen to enjoy those things a lot — the gladiator saga is similarly obsessed with meaningful, difficult ideas. Underneath its well-executed surface pleasures, it has a lot to say about exploitation, oppression, altruism, greed and exclusion.
I enjoy on-screen orgies and decapitations as much as the next person (and one of the delightful things about this occasionally bonkers show is that a single scene can contain both those things), but there are serious ideas baked right into the premise of the show. “Spartacus” examines the idea that the enslavement of others, in body and mind, is a poison, and that poison is damaging not just to the enslaved but to those who treat others as objects to be owned and exploited. Like every retelling of the tale, this “Spartacus” saga has resonance for those of us living in the modern era. The 39 episodes of the show aren’t just a thrill ride; they examine the idea that those who exclude others from the political process and ignore demands for autonomy from the oppressed put themselves and their societies in danger. Scan the headlines: You might find that the moral questions and power dynamics that “Spartacus” ruthlessly examined have quite a bit of relevance today.
No spoilers, but here are some thoughts I shared in my post on the show’s series finale: “We know that this lusty drama is also tender. We know this violent drama is deeply humane and compassionate. We know that the ornate, profane language is also poetic. We know the violence and the sex are there for specific purposes, and the characters are often smart as hell. We are well aware that this saga of sex, swords and conquest actually has something important to say about freedom, oppression and equality.”
If you stick with the show, you will, as every fan does, come up with a list of flaws and things you could have done without. Yes, it doesn’t have a “Game of Thrones” budget and at times, that shows. Sure, some characters could be grating and some sub-plots were repetitive. But no show is perfect, and those minor stumbling blocks never interfered with the great pleasure I took in the show’s unique fusion of bold action-adventure, canny melodrama and profanity-laced humanism.
And by the way, I can’t think of many shows that did a more responsible job of depicting sexuality, nudity and rape. I’ve seen a lot of mockery of the sex on “Spartacus” by those who haven’t seen it or haven’t seen much of it. I haven’t seen a ton of clear-eyed assessments of how intelligently these elements were deployed during the show’s run. When it comes to those subjects, “Spartacus” regularly put far more expensive and widely praised shows to shame.
In the 15 years I’ve been a critic, there have been any number of debates about how sexuality, nudity and sexual violence have been employed on television. Many programs have lazily used those things to give their stories “edginess” or “darkness,” or to give their program an unearned aura of adult sensuality. All too often, it’s clear that many storytellers don’t give depictions of sexuality or sexual violence any real thought; the same tropes, cliches and predictable points of view are shown again and again (so much so that it’s worth celebrating when a show like “Outlander” does something radically different). It gets tiresome to have to point out depictions of sexuality and sexual violence that are exploitative, incomplete, clueless or simply offensive; they keep turning up with exhausting regularity on networks and shows that should really know better.
“Spartacus,” on the other hand, is frequently exemplary in these areas, in part because of its consistent devotion to its premise. The whole show is about the use and abuse of bodies and a system that allowed an exclusive ruling class to have absolute power over every aspect of the lives of the less powerful. We saw characters freely enjoy each other’s sexuality without shame, but DeKnight and his writers never forgot that every character existed within a power hierarchy that they rarely controlled.
The show was wonderfully respectful of female desire and agency, whether the women were in bed or in battle; it was also realistic about the fact that women (of all classes) had little power, and the less powerful the woman, the more common and accepted the abuse of her body and spirit. “Spartacus” isn’t feminist because it handled rape with rare sensitivity: This drama — which, by the way, successfully appealed to a dude-heavy audience — is feminist because it depicted the gamut of the female experience with intelligence, nuance and compassion. The women were allowed to be as lusty — and as angry and as devious and as kind — as the guys.
“Spartacus” never shied away from depicting how excruciating it could be for all of the slaves when their sexuality and their desires were ignored, exploited or used against them. It frequently depicted physically strong male gladiators being used as pawns for their owners’ amusement, and showed that it cost these men parts of their soul when they were viewed as nothing more than pieces of meat.
Everybody was objectified on “Spartacus,” and the show sustained an impressive balancing act: It both gloried in the physical specimens on display (every viewer, whatever their sexuality, got an eyeful), and it also showed how thoughtless and cruel objectification can be, in the wrong hands.
It’s also worth noting that DeKnight put gay characters at the center of the overall narrative and made sure their adventures were just as important as anyone else’s. Sex between men and sex between women was shown regularly. As DeKnight told me in one interview, in the early seasons, he was “inundated with mostly guys saying, ‘I love the show, but can you cut it out with the gay shit?'” DeKnight said. “And my reply was always ‘No. If you don’t like it, stop watching the show.'”
That’s the thing about “Spartacus”: It always had an agenda, one that prized human dignity, egalitarian ideals and bravery. It did its own thing, and it didn’t necessarily care whether it was everyone’s cup of tea. It was bonkers at times, but it owned that bonkers-ness and had fun with it. And as wild as things got, the show could also be restrained and heartbreaking when necessary. Five years after it debuted, I wish I had the time for another binge. Soon.
As you embark on your “Spartacus” journey, here are a series of reviews and interviews to read:
President Obama is “Proud” of Trailblazing Soccer Star
In a press conference today honoring the LA Galaxy, President Obama gave a special shout-out to American soccer star Robbie Rogers.
HRC.org
Gay Rabbi Wants You To Join Grindr Then Come Over To His Place For Shabbat Dinner
“There are a ton of Jews of all stripes, especially people who have nothing to do with organized religion,” Matt Green tells The Daily Beast. “Why not try getting to them on Grindr?”
24-year-old Green is in his second year as a rabbinical student at New York City’s Hebrew Union College. He’s quickly becoming known as the “Grindr Rebbe.”
Green, who is gay, says he first got the idea to encourage gay Jewish men to join Grindr when he joined the popular dating app during his first year of rabbinical school in Israel.
“People were contacting me saying are you Jewish? How was Israel?” Green says. “Then when I mentioned I was in rabbinical school, everyone kept asking about Kashrut [Jewish dietary laws], and Judaism!”
“It occurred to me that what happened on Grindr was speaking to a Jewish communal need,” Green says. “People wanted to talk about being Jewish and Jewish things.”
But it didn’t stop there. After Green returned to Brooklyn, he continued to receive messages from men on Grindr hoping to talk about Jewish things. So last fall he submitted a grant proposal for a Be Wise Fellowship in Entrepreneurship grant, a program dedicated to responding to social, cultural, and technological changes in the American Jewish landscape.
In his proposal, Green argued that Grindr is an excellent tool for curious or unaffiliated Jews to locate one another, build a social network, and share in a Jewish experience, calling it an “untapped place for outreach potential.”
We suppose that’s one way of looking at it.
Much to his surprise, Green was awarded the grant. And he wasted no time getting to work, hosting two large Shabbat dinners for guys he met on Grindr. Just last weekend he had a dozen people over for dinner.
“Shabbat has largely consisted of long, hilarious, and Jewishly rich dinners,” Green explains. “So many people don’t have Judaism in their lives, so I said ‘Look, come over, and we’ll talk about Woody Allen and eat kugel.’”
The dinner included lighting the traditional Shabbat candles, making Kiddush, and blessing the challah bread. As they dined, Green says, guests talked about “relevant issues in the sphere of queer Jewish life.”
Sounds like a very lovely and spiritual evening. Although we can’t help but wonder what happened after dinner. Green didn’t say. But he did say he’s planning on hosting more events in the future.
“Kabbalat Shabbat services are on the horizon,” he says. He also hopes to host a holiday party for Purim, a Jewish holiday in March.
Related stories:
Brother Nathanael Is Surprisingly Spry As He Reveals The Jewish Plot To Make America Gay
PHOTOS: Nice Jewish Boys Make The “Cut” In NYC
Rabbi Bans Students From Eating Soy For Fear It May Turn Them Gay
Graham Gremore
Obama Praises Robbie Rogers for 'Blazing Trail' as Out Gay Player at L.A. Galaxy White House Visit: VIDEO
President Obama hosted the 2014 Stanley Cup champion L.A. Kings and the 2014 Major League Soccer champion L.A. Galaxy at the White House today. After praising the teams and their accomplishments, Obama took a moment to offer a shout-out to Robbie Rogers:
“I want to recognize what Robbie Rogers of the Galaxy has done for a lot of people by blazing a trail as one of professional sports’ first openly gay players. My guess is that as an athlete Robbie wants to win, first and foremost. That’s what competition is all about. But Robbie, you’ve also inspired a whole lot of folks here and around the world and we’re very proud of you.”
Said Rogers following the ceremony: “I wasn’t expecting it…I’ll never forget it. I’ve already texted my mom about it.”
Watch the shout-out and interview with Rogers afterward, AFTER THE JUMP…
Pres. #Obama recognizes @robbierogers for blazing trails during a ceremony at the White House. #MLS @LAGalaxy @MLS pic.twitter.com/ZJ6EEuGjN1
— Samuel Corum (@corumphoto) February 2, 2015
Rogers posted a photo on Instagram earlier in the day, writing: “Lovely little visit to The White House w/ my boys @LAGalaxy”
Andy Towle
☪✩ LGBT History Month!☪✩
Enjoyed? Check out more!: How I deal with Hate video: www.youtube.com/watch?v=sDPhAPxY2-w Instagram- Yurz_Truly_Rocker_Caitz Tumblr- yurztrulyrockercaitz.tumblr.com/ Twitter-…
www.youtube.com/watch?v=xs0S7ba1v3o&feature=youtube_gdata
WATCH: Mike Huckabee Says Being Gay Is Like Drinking, Swearing
The potential presidential candidate says he can oppose marriage equality and have gay friends — it’s like being a teetotaler who’s friends with drinkers.
Trudy Ring
Mary Cheney, Here's Why Drag and Blackface Are Different (VIDEO)
Last week Mary Cheney asked why blackface is bad but drag isn’t. Here’s what she wrote:
Why is it socially acceptable … for men to put on dresses, make up and high heels and act out every offensive stereotype of women (bitchy, catty, dumb, slutty, etc.) — but it is not socially acceptable … for a white person to put on blackface and act out offensive stereotypes of African Americans?
Shouldn’t both be ok or neither?
And can you believe that made people upset? Usually my videos are about what’s happening with marriage equality over on my show Marriage News Watch, but I just have to weigh in here, because I love drag, I work with drag queens, and I’ve seen a lot of people who don’t know how to answer her question. Even if we think it’s a dumb question, we should have a smart, simple answer. So let’s talk about it: Why is drag different from blackface?
On the surface, yeah, there are similarities between blackface and drag. They’re both one group posing as another group. They both rely on exaggerated stereotypes of people who are disempowered. They’re both over-the-top caricatures.
But blackface is inherently racist. You can’t take the racism out of it. Drag, on the other hand, you can easily separate from misogyny. Most drag — in fact, almost all drag — is about strong, powerful, admirable female characters. With blackface black people are the butt of the joke. But with drag it’s not women who are the butt of the joke but rules about gender roles. Nobody looks at a drag queens and thinks, “Oh, yeah, that’s what women are really like” — the way that a lot of Americans did with blackface and minstrel shows.
And there’s something else going on with drag. Unlike stock minstrel characters, drag characters are a personal expression of the performer. Drag queens aren’t just imitating female stereotypes; they’re expressing how fluid their own gender can be. That’s why a performer’s drag name, and drag family, and drag costume are so important to them. Blackface performers, on the other hand, aren’t expressing anything internal. They’re not asserting their personal racial fluidity. All that blackface does is lie about what people of color are like.
Now there is, of course, bad drag. Bad drag is just a man wearing a dress, not making any effort to perform, or create a character, or express anything. With bad drag, the whole joke is that it’s supposedly embarrassing for a man to be seen acting feminine. That’s not real drag. That’s just ridiculing women and queers, and if you want to be fancy about it, it’s perpetuating the cycle of patriarchal hegemony. That’s bad.
I’m saying that drag is not demeaning to women, but maybe you shouldn’t completely take my word for it, because I’m not a woman. A lot of the people publicly weighing in right now are men. And that’s great, but since we’re talking about how drag affects women, it’s important to, you know, actually listen to what women are saying about it.
And this gets to another difference between drag and blackface. Not only are women not usually offended by drag, but women actually perform drag themselves. Even little girls do drag when they dress up as princesses. Those are exaggerated feminine characters, an expression of an attraction to or curiosity about gender roles. Drag is how you explore who you are, or who you can become. As RuPaul says, we’re born naked and the rest is drag. No one has ever said we’re born naked and the rest is a minstrel show.
So let’s sum it up. Next time someone asks why drag is OK and blackface isn’t, you can tell them that drag is an expression of yourself, whereas blackface is an attack on someone else; blackface reinforces an imbalance of power, whereas drag disassembles an imbalance of power; blackface is a relic, whereas drag is what we all do, every day, every time we put on clothes.
So hopefully that clears things up, and the next time we’re talking about Mary Cheney, we’re talking instead about how she supports the disastrous Keystone pipeline. Or how she donated money to Republican candidates who opposed the freedom to marry, like Mitt Romney, and Kelly Ayotte, and Rob Portman (before he changed his mind), and Sam Brownback, for crying out loud. In 2012 Gov. Brownback recommended that Kansas keep a law that allows the police to arrest you just for being gay. Cheney apparently liked that so much that, two years later, her consulting firm spent over half a million dollars on Brownback’s reelection campaign. She also supported the reelection of Florida Gov. Rick McCollum; he’s the guy who hired “ex-gay” abuser George Rekers to testify against marriage equality. Rekers was later spotted returning from a European vacation with a rent boy, and we really haven’t heard a lot from him since then.
So if Mary really wants to talk about LGBT issues, she could start by apologizing for any number of those mistakes. Or for completely misrepresenting what drag is when she wrote last week that performers “act out every offensive stereotype of women (bitchy, catty, dumb, slutty, etc).” In a million years, that is not even a fragment of what drag is. If she really misunderstands drag that deeply, maybe she should try spending a little less time with Sam Brownback and a little more time around other gay people.
Big thanks to all my friends who commented on Facebook about this issue and messaged me privately to share their thoughts. I couldn’t have articulated any of this without your help, so please, keep talking, and let me know what you think. I’m @mattbaume on Twitter. And if you’re in Seattle, let’s go catch a drag show sometime.
Petrow Talks Chick-fil-A: “He Can’t Eat His Chicken and Have His Principles, Too”
In this week’s advice column for The Washington Post, Steven Petrow answered a question concerning one of HRC’s least favorite restaurants: Chick-fil-A.
HRC.org
ACT UP Gathers To Protest HRC’s Annual Black Tie Gala; Here’s Why
HRC’s annual fundraising gala in New York City last weekend had some unlikely protesters. Not Westboro or any other antigay organizations, but rather ACT UP, the HIV/AIDS political advocacy group formed in the ’80s.
Specifically, ACT UP was seeking to raise awareness of what they feel is a shortcoming of HRC’s equality index used to rate Fortune 500 companies on their treatment of LGBT employees — that HIV issues aren’t properly incorporated into the scores.
Activists gathered outside the event at the Waldorf Astoria, where tickets went for a cool $475, to voice their message.
ACT UP explained their reasoning in more detail via their Facebook page:
HRC has created an LGBT equality index to score the Fortune 500 companies, but there’s no mention of HIV and the thousands of LGBT people with HIV in the workplace. We demand that HRC include several criteria to evaluate companies on their treatment of employees living with HIV, as well as their contributions to organizations and causes relate [sic] to reducing the incidence of HIV among LGBT Americans, particularly among the young. For over 30 years, too many have been fired, harassed, outed and discriminated against at work for having HIV. Also at this gala, many of the corporations that HRC will honor actively work against the interests of middle-class and poor Americans, including people with HIV. ACT UP denounces this frequent practice of ‘”pinkwashing” whereby corporations with policies and practices that undermine the people’s well-being are given positive publicity in exchange for maintaining LGBT-friendly (or just equal) workplaces. This is short-sighted and divisive. We demand that HRC develop other criteria that takes into account the impact of companies’ policies on every American, not just LGBT Americans.
Here are some photos from the protest:
h/t: Joe My God
Dan Tracer