TXT TK
Note: Tomorrow is World AIDS Day.
Thursday, November 30, 2017
Friday, November 24, 2017
On Screen, Langston Hughes And His Boyfriend
About fifteen minutes into the biopic, Marshall, there is a remarkable scene that takes place inside Minton's Playhouse, the famous Harlem jazz venue. NAACP lawyer Thurgood Marshall (Chadwick Boseman) is seated at a table with his former Lincoln University classmate Langston Hughes and Hughes's male companion who is identified in the end credits as "Langston's boyfriend." The body language of Hughes and the boyfriend telegraphs to the audience their gayness.
Jussie Smollett of the TV series, Empire, is convincingly cast as the young Hughes. (Smollett is an openly gay man.)
The only person I can recall unequivocally outing Hughes as a gay man was Faith Berry in her book, Langston Hughes, Before and Beyond Harlem (Lawrence Hill & Co., 1983). Isaac Julien in his film, Looking for Langston, only hinted at Hughes being gay.
If there is a biopic about Langston Hughes in the works, especially about his early years, I hope Smollett gets picked to play the role.
Jussie Smollett of the TV series, Empire, is convincingly cast as the young Hughes. (Smollett is an openly gay man.)
The only person I can recall unequivocally outing Hughes as a gay man was Faith Berry in her book, Langston Hughes, Before and Beyond Harlem (Lawrence Hill & Co., 1983). Isaac Julien in his film, Looking for Langston, only hinted at Hughes being gay.
If there is a biopic about Langston Hughes in the works, especially about his early years, I hope Smollett gets picked to play the role.
Monday, November 20, 2017
Spike Lee's Film Debut Cast, Where Are They Now?
There's been a lot of hoopla in the press about Spike Lee turning his 1986 debut film, She's Gotta Have It, into an updated, half-hour, ten-episode television series. (The show premieres on Netflix on Thanksgiving Day.)
We all know what became of Spike Lee, who played Mars Blackmon, one of Nola Darling's three boyfriends. But what about Lee's three co-stars--Tracy Camilla Johns (Nola), Tommy Redmond Hicks (Jamie), and John Canada Terrell (Greer)? Where are they today and what are they doing?
Since they helped make She's Gotta Have It a cinema classic, they deserve some attention, too. Maybe not as much as the actors who have taken over their roles for the upcoming series, but at least tell us what's happened to them over the past three decades.
We all know what became of Spike Lee, who played Mars Blackmon, one of Nola Darling's three boyfriends. But what about Lee's three co-stars--Tracy Camilla Johns (Nola), Tommy Redmond Hicks (Jamie), and John Canada Terrell (Greer)? Where are they today and what are they doing?
Since they helped make She's Gotta Have It a cinema classic, they deserve some attention, too. Maybe not as much as the actors who have taken over their roles for the upcoming series, but at least tell us what's happened to them over the past three decades.
Friday, November 17, 2017
Cherokee Bill, Wild West Outlaw
The first time I learned of the outlaw Cherokee Bill was in The Adventures of the Negro Cowboys by Philip Durham and Everett L. Jones (Bantam Books). The paperback edition was published in 1969.
Years later while watching on DVD an episode from Season Five (1961-1962) of Have Gun Will Travel, Cherokee Bill's name was mentioned among the names of other outlaws by a character speaking to Paladin (played by Richard Boone). I replayed that part of the episode to confirm what I thought I heard. No further information about him was offered.
According to Durham and Jones, Cherokee Bill (1876-1896) "was part Indian, part Negro" and was "an outlaw who fascinated women, murdered countless men for fun and profit, and died on the gallows only a month after his twentieth birthday."
His criminality terrified the Indian Territory, today known as the state of Oklahoma.
Surprisingly, no one, as far as I know, has made a movie or a miniseries about him.
Years later while watching on DVD an episode from Season Five (1961-1962) of Have Gun Will Travel, Cherokee Bill's name was mentioned among the names of other outlaws by a character speaking to Paladin (played by Richard Boone). I replayed that part of the episode to confirm what I thought I heard. No further information about him was offered.
According to Durham and Jones, Cherokee Bill (1876-1896) "was part Indian, part Negro" and was "an outlaw who fascinated women, murdered countless men for fun and profit, and died on the gallows only a month after his twentieth birthday."
His criminality terrified the Indian Territory, today known as the state of Oklahoma.
Surprisingly, no one, as far as I know, has made a movie or a miniseries about him.
Tuesday, November 14, 2017
A Meditation On Black Male Sexuality
Hung: A Meditation on the Measure of Black Men in America by Scott Poulson-Bryant, Doubleday, 224 pages, illustrated.
"Hangature" is a new word that you'll learn from Scott Poulson-Bryant's second book, Hung: A Meditation on the Measure of Black Men in America. It's one of those words you know only a gay man could have coined. (Actually, Poulson-Bryant admits to having learned it from a friend, "a self-described 'dick connoisseur.'") The author defines it as "the amount of ability a dick had to hang." In other words, it's all about the size. For men, playing "[t]he penis-size game" transforms the penis into "a measuring stick of self-worth, of capabilities and fallibilities, of winning and losing."
Put in that context, the penis symbolizes masculine power in all its manifestations--social, political, economic, physical, and of course, sexual. And since men for the most part have dominated the world, they get to conquer lands and people, build empires, construct the biggest and tallest skyscrapers (the ultimate phallic symbols), and make the rules. Those men who don't measure up are considered weak and get trampled upon and marginalized.
Even in the 21st century, things haven't changed all that much when it comes to the penis's symbolic power in the minds of men. And the black penis in particular: throughout Poulson-Bryant's travels and life experiences, he's noticed that "a black man's dick is something the whole world finds interesting." Using historical and cultural examples as well as personal anecdotes (his nickname at Brown University was "Scott-Pulsing Giant" because he wrote a homoerotic tell-all article for a campus magazine about himself and others called "The Big Phallacy" that dealt with penis size), he examines the preconceptions and myths about the "big dick-ness" of black males.
He traces the roots of these myths to the colonial days of the United States when the enslaved black man was "considered a cultural savage, a religious heathen, and a social inferior." The inferiority of the black male was of course constructed as a way to justify the slave system, while the notion that the black man had a "desire to conquer pristine Southern white womanhood" was concocted to ease the guilty consciences of white slave masters who routinely forced themselves on their female slaves. In their minds, the black man, out of revenge, would do the same thing to white women if given half a chance. So the myth of "big dick-ness" was invented to control the sexuality of the black male by casting him as a "sexual terrorist" or a sexual Svengali, and by putting him in league with Satan himself. (It was the "strange fruit" that Billie Holiday would later sing about--hanging from a Southern tree.)
Poulson-Bryant, an openly gay pop-culture journalist who's written for the Village Voice, Essence, and The New York Times, and is the senior editor of America magazine, discusses the black penis from a variety of vantage points, including the film and porn industries and the hypermasculine hip-hop culture. Many of his chapters have titles that include a double entendre, such as "How's It Hanging in Hollywood?," "The Long and the Short of It," and "That's the Way the Balls Bounce."
Hung is a treatise not only on the black penis and black male sexual prowess and self-image, but also on how black men in America measure up when it comes to political, economic, and cultural power in a white-dominated society. Clearly, there are elements of both fear and envy in this comparison. The big black dick is an invention of white men, writes Poulson-Bryant. "How awful it must be to have invented the big black dick, then to have to spend so much time ensuring that it doesn't overshadow one's own sense of self-worth, that it doesn't somehow destroy your own stature." Although there are black men who proudly embrace the stereotype and unconsciously aid in their own oppression, there are others, like Poulson-Bryant's friend Simon, a successful Wall Street professional, who sees his ten-inch penis as a burden. "As hung as he is, he feels un-hung when it becomes the center of his definition as a man."
Gay men, like their straight counterparts, have been influenced by the myth of the big black dick. Unfortunately, there aren't all that many stories about gay men included here, despite the presence of the "homothug" in hip-hop culture, defined as "the gay or bisexual black dude who has no problem reconciling his homo-ness with his hip-hop-ness." Another disappointment is the chapter on the porn industry, "Pass the Remote," which includes no discussion of its gay and bisexual branches, where the myth of the big black dick also reigns supreme.
Despite these shortcomings, Hung, a small book about a very complex subject, succeeds in covering its topic as well as offering insightful commentary on the arduous journey over the "hills and valleys" of the American cultural and psychological landscape that black men have had to negotiate for the last 400 years. All of this is done in an entertaining, humorous, and forthright manner.
This article was originally published in the Gay & Lesbian Review, January/February 2006.
"Hangature" is a new word that you'll learn from Scott Poulson-Bryant's second book, Hung: A Meditation on the Measure of Black Men in America. It's one of those words you know only a gay man could have coined. (Actually, Poulson-Bryant admits to having learned it from a friend, "a self-described 'dick connoisseur.'") The author defines it as "the amount of ability a dick had to hang." In other words, it's all about the size. For men, playing "[t]he penis-size game" transforms the penis into "a measuring stick of self-worth, of capabilities and fallibilities, of winning and losing."
Put in that context, the penis symbolizes masculine power in all its manifestations--social, political, economic, physical, and of course, sexual. And since men for the most part have dominated the world, they get to conquer lands and people, build empires, construct the biggest and tallest skyscrapers (the ultimate phallic symbols), and make the rules. Those men who don't measure up are considered weak and get trampled upon and marginalized.
Even in the 21st century, things haven't changed all that much when it comes to the penis's symbolic power in the minds of men. And the black penis in particular: throughout Poulson-Bryant's travels and life experiences, he's noticed that "a black man's dick is something the whole world finds interesting." Using historical and cultural examples as well as personal anecdotes (his nickname at Brown University was "Scott-Pulsing Giant" because he wrote a homoerotic tell-all article for a campus magazine about himself and others called "The Big Phallacy" that dealt with penis size), he examines the preconceptions and myths about the "big dick-ness" of black males.
He traces the roots of these myths to the colonial days of the United States when the enslaved black man was "considered a cultural savage, a religious heathen, and a social inferior." The inferiority of the black male was of course constructed as a way to justify the slave system, while the notion that the black man had a "desire to conquer pristine Southern white womanhood" was concocted to ease the guilty consciences of white slave masters who routinely forced themselves on their female slaves. In their minds, the black man, out of revenge, would do the same thing to white women if given half a chance. So the myth of "big dick-ness" was invented to control the sexuality of the black male by casting him as a "sexual terrorist" or a sexual Svengali, and by putting him in league with Satan himself. (It was the "strange fruit" that Billie Holiday would later sing about--hanging from a Southern tree.)
Poulson-Bryant, an openly gay pop-culture journalist who's written for the Village Voice, Essence, and The New York Times, and is the senior editor of America magazine, discusses the black penis from a variety of vantage points, including the film and porn industries and the hypermasculine hip-hop culture. Many of his chapters have titles that include a double entendre, such as "How's It Hanging in Hollywood?," "The Long and the Short of It," and "That's the Way the Balls Bounce."
Hung is a treatise not only on the black penis and black male sexual prowess and self-image, but also on how black men in America measure up when it comes to political, economic, and cultural power in a white-dominated society. Clearly, there are elements of both fear and envy in this comparison. The big black dick is an invention of white men, writes Poulson-Bryant. "How awful it must be to have invented the big black dick, then to have to spend so much time ensuring that it doesn't overshadow one's own sense of self-worth, that it doesn't somehow destroy your own stature." Although there are black men who proudly embrace the stereotype and unconsciously aid in their own oppression, there are others, like Poulson-Bryant's friend Simon, a successful Wall Street professional, who sees his ten-inch penis as a burden. "As hung as he is, he feels un-hung when it becomes the center of his definition as a man."
Gay men, like their straight counterparts, have been influenced by the myth of the big black dick. Unfortunately, there aren't all that many stories about gay men included here, despite the presence of the "homothug" in hip-hop culture, defined as "the gay or bisexual black dude who has no problem reconciling his homo-ness with his hip-hop-ness." Another disappointment is the chapter on the porn industry, "Pass the Remote," which includes no discussion of its gay and bisexual branches, where the myth of the big black dick also reigns supreme.
Despite these shortcomings, Hung, a small book about a very complex subject, succeeds in covering its topic as well as offering insightful commentary on the arduous journey over the "hills and valleys" of the American cultural and psychological landscape that black men have had to negotiate for the last 400 years. All of this is done in an entertaining, humorous, and forthright manner.
This article was originally published in the Gay & Lesbian Review, January/February 2006.
Monday, November 13, 2017
Show The Trailer First, Then The Movie
Last week (November 10), I saw Alfred Hitchcock's 1954 thriller, Rear Window, at Film Forum, the repertory theatre in Lower Manhattan. I've seen the movie many times on videocassette and DVD, probably on broadcast TV, too. But never on the big screen. It is one of the movies I never get tired of watching. As I sat there, I was trying to imagine what it must have been like in 1954 seeing Rear Window for the first time with an audience.
One thing I wish the programmer at Film Forum had thought to do was have the movie's trailer precede the screening to heighten the audience's anticipation.
Incidentally, my friend Velma's former Morningside Heights apartment resembles the James Stewart character's apartment. I could look across the courtyard and see through the windows of the neighboring apartments. Whenever I visited her, Rear Window would come to mind.
One thing I wish the programmer at Film Forum had thought to do was have the movie's trailer precede the screening to heighten the audience's anticipation.
Incidentally, my friend Velma's former Morningside Heights apartment resembles the James Stewart character's apartment. I could look across the courtyard and see through the windows of the neighboring apartments. Whenever I visited her, Rear Window would come to mind.
Monday, November 6, 2017
Saturday, November 4, 2017
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