Elizabeth Taylor is my Higher Power (Ep. 122 - Hillary Clinton)

This Week's Guest: Ryan O'Connor

We all have our sources of security -- it could be a career, a home, a relationship, a circle of friends. How would you handle the loss of all of those things? This week's guest is Ryan O'Connor, co-host of the outstanding LadyWatch podcast. A few years back, Ryan was pretty sure all of his goals were coming together like a tidy checklist. And then, one by one, they all fell apart, and he discovered that when you lose everything you have, you find out who you are.
 

This Week's Recommendation: Red Ladies

Thanks again to Ryan for joining me. Don't forget to subscribe to his show, Ladywatch, which he co-hosts with the delightful Jason Powell. It's a celebration of the amazing work of women, and I learn so much from every single episode. You can also support them on Patreon, where 10% of the proceeds go to The Geena Davis Institute On Gender In Media.

For another master class on feminine power, my recommendation this week is that you go to YouTube and search for Red Ladies Sondheim. You'll find a playlist of videos from Steven Sondheim's 2010 birthday concert, including a show-stopping series of songs from women in red dresses. There's Audra McDonald singing The Glamorous Life; Patti LuPone is a lady who lunches, Bernadette sings Not a Day Goes By, and Elaine Stritch grabs I'm Still Here by the throat and throttles it into submission.

There is a full range of emotions across these performances -- some are sad and slow, others upbeat, others wry. Though the occasion was Steven Sondheim's birthday, the performances are more a workship of the performers than the songwriter. Himself a gay man, I'm sure Sondheim appreciates the pricelessness of a diva, and to have seven arrayed on stage is the greatest birthday gift anyone could ask for. 

And while the songs were written by a man, what's remarkable about these performances is just how much authorship is contributed by the women. They're not just singing the words on the page and hitting the notes. They're inhabiting the songs, adding to the story with this faces, with their breaths, with the places they chose to pause or add a sarcastic roll of the eyes. These women all have as much to say as, if not more than, the composition. And in this performance, it's impossible not to listen.

Clips of Stuff we Talked About

Music

Parisian Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Support the show on Patreon

We've Cornered the Market on Mermaids (Ep. 121 - Joel Kim Booster)

This Week's Guest: Joel Kim Booster

When did you first escape your bubble? We all start life protected by adults, looked after and shielded from the harsh realities of the world. Some of us burst out of it as fast as we can, and others like to pretend they never have to leave. This week's guest is comedian Joel Kim Booster, whose parents tried so hard to control his life that when he finally did come out, it was with so much momentum he found himself homeless -- until a family he hardly even knew took him in.

By the way, Joel has a half hour special premiering on Comedy Central this fall. And if you're in New York, he's recording a stand up comedy album on Tuesday and Wednesday of this coming week -- July 11 and 12 at Ars Nova. Tickets are fifteen bucks and you can get them at ArsNovaNYC.com.

Also -- throughout the month of July, The Sewers of Paris needs your nomination to win a Podcast Award. Just go to PodcastAwards.com and nominate The Sewers of Paris in the LGBT category. Nominations are open until July 31, so if you're enjoying the show I'd be very grateful if you could help it win a podcast award.
 

This Week's Recommendation: If...

For my recommendation this week, check out the movie If... -- that's the word "if" followed by three periods. It stars a super young Malcom MacDowell as a teenager chafing under the stuffy rules of a quintessentially old-fashioned British boarding school run on cruelty and discipline. It's essentially Hogwarts without the magic, and if the only house was Slytherin. In those circumstances, who wouldn't want to rebel? And that's just what happens, when a close-knit group of outcast boys decides to fight back against hundreds of years of tradition.

The film swims through a sort of middle-ground between reality and imagination, and it's never quite clear what's really happening and what's a fantasy. The whole experience feels like a daydreamy speculation, as suggested by the title -- a teenager's mind wandering into fantasies of sex and violence and frustration at a system determined to keep him down. 

Pushing back against the powerful isn't easy, and the boys of If... are essentially tiny specks in a giant machine of tradition. Of course, those in power insist that their rules exist for the benefit of all -- for the students, for the monarchy, for those tempted by homosexual flirtation. It's a brutal environment in which to learn a bitter lesson: that no matter what motives the powerful may claim, they're really only interested in protecting their own power.

Clips of Stuff we Talked About

Music

Parisian Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Anita Bryant, God Bless Her (Ep. 120: Gore Vidal)

This Week's Guest: Albert Williams

What's the difference between an end and a beginning, and are they sometimes the same thing? My guest this week is Albert Williams, a longtime queer artist and activist who's seen the queer world transform over the course of his life. Throughout that time, there were periods when change just wasn't coming fast enough, and that's when he and his friends found ways to force one era to end and a new one to begin.

Also -- throughout the month of July, The Sewers of Paris needs your nominations to win a Podcast Award. Just go to PodcastAwards.com and nominate The Sewers of Paris in the LGBT category. It's open July 1 through July 31, so if you're enjoying the show I'd be very grateful if you could help it win this award.

This Week's Recommendation: The Fox and the Hound

Thanks again to Albert for joining me. As he pointed out, stories about young queer people and young straight people discovering their differences have been a part of our community for decades. And for my recommendation this week, take a look at a film that have an unexpected perspective on that experience: Disney's the Fox and the Hound. And make sure you have a lot of tissues around because it's one of those "you will cry" Disney films.

The story follows a young orphaned fox, and his best friend, a puppy being trained to be a hunting dog. As kids, they're inseparable -- until the expectations of their separate worlds intrude on their relationship. The fox wants to remain close forever, but the hound is being pressured to not just turn his back, but to attack his former friend. And the older dog who trained the hound is particularly determined that they should maintain their traditional roles as adversaries.

Who knows if anyone who worked on this movie intended for it to have queer subtext, but the core of the conflict -- two boys from different worlds -- is painfully familiar, particularly when coupled with the hostility of the older generation. And although the ending is pretty melancholy, there's a glimmer of optimism as well: in a climactic moment, a bridge is built between the world of the fox and the world of the hound. They're not quite able to cross it, but at least it's there -- and maybe future generations can go further than they did.

Clips of Stuff We Talked About

Music

Parisian Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

He Found Out my Secret - (Ep. 119: Matchgame & Press Your Luck)

This Week's Guest: Mandel Ilagen

This week's guest is Mandel Ilagen, but it's not the first time his name's come up on the show. He's a ringleader of a group of gays who are obsessed with game shows -- you might remember past guests Louis Virtel and Randy West describing Mandel's house parties that are like TV show tapings mixed with cocktails and queens. Game shows might seem like frivolous entertainment, but for Mandel and many of his friends, they provided a way to prove themselves amongst their peers -- and, for the first time in their lives, have fun doing it.

This Week's Recommendation: Ferdinand the Bull

For my recommendation this week, take a look at the children's book The Story of Ferdinand. This was a pivotal text for me as a child, and after reviewing it for this week's episode, I found that it still is. It's the story of a gentle bull who prefers smelling flowers over fighting, and what happens he must confront the world's expectations about who he's supposed to be.

Looking back on this book, I wonder just how much it shaped my sense of right and wrong to this day. I know that I read it a lot as a child. It is a truly beautiful work that has filled me with joy since before I could read -- in part because the telling of the tale is as gentle as the main character. There's no judgement, no mockery, and no tragic end for the bull who just wants to live life on his own terms.

Ultimately, the story leaves Ferdinand in a place of incredible bliss: not having proven himself, and yet still completely satisfied -- because his failure to measure of up other people's expectations is their problem, not his.

Clips of Stuff We Talked About

Music

Parisian Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Roll Yourself in Glitter - (Ep. 118: Justin Sayre)

This Week's Guest: Justin Sayre

My guest this week is Justin Sayre, whom you may know from the excellent Sparkle and Circulate podcast, or his delightful live show The Meeting of the International Order of the Sodomites. He always knew there was a big queer community out there, but he never quite felt a connection with it, so he decided to do something about that: by appointing himself its chairman.

This Week's Recommendation: Mae West in Myra Breckinridge

For my recommendation this week, I want you to take a look at a film that does everything it can to defy description -- Myra Breckinridge. And specifically, look up the YouTube video that's just excerpts of scenes with Mae West.

The movie was made in 1968, and it's a weird sloppy mess of a story that's pulled in all different directions by all different ideas. Sometimes it's funny, sometimes it's torturous, every now and then it's a little bit sexy. And never is it any better than when Mae West is on the screen.

By this point in her career, Mae is an undisputed master of feminine sexual glamour. The fact that she was 75 years old at the time doesn't matter at all, and it is with unbridled gusto that she delivers lines like "ah, the end of another busy day. I can't wait to get back to bed. And if that don't work I'll try sleep."

The rest of the film is a mixed bag at best -- it's a fumbling adaptation of a Gore Vidal novel by a creative team that lacks the sophistication to understand the queer source material. The result is a mess of ideas about masculinity, which on their own would simply be forgettable. But Mae West's campy vamping snatches defeat from the jaws of defeat, not quite redeeming the film or rescuing it from its downward spiral, but at least transforming it into a joy to watch on its day down.

Clips of Stuff we Talked About

Music

Parisian Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

I Was a Teenage Theater Tyrant (Ep. 117 - Pee-wee Herman)

This Week's Guest: Tom Lenk

Have you ever proved yourself wrong? My guest this week is actor Tom Lenk, who appeared as Andrew on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Tom was convinced for years that he lacked the skills that seemed to come naturally to other actors -- and so he was terrified when cast in a show that demanded more of him than he thought he could deliver. Facing that challenge changed the course of his career -- thanks in part to confidence he absorbed at an early age from the most beautiful woman in Puppetland.

By the way, Tom's the subject of a new documentary coming out this month called Nerdgasm. The film follows his quest to stage a show in the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, and it's available to watch on Amazon starting June 16th. 

And the Sewers of Paris is independent and ad free thanks to the support of listeners. If you're enjoying the show, head over to SewersOfParis.com and click "Support the Show on Patreon" to help keep the show going for as little as a dollar per episode.

And one more note -- I'm going to be at the Lyst Symposium in Copenhagen this coming weekend, from June 9th to June 11th, presenting a talk about queer sex, love, and relationships in games. If you're in Copenhagen, come check it out, or follow along with my travels on twitter @mattbaume. I'll be visiting several European cities all throughout this summer to report on international LGBT issues -- and hopefully, to visit the actual Sewers of Paris.

This Week's Recommendation: Pee-Wee's Big Holiday

Thanks again to Tom for joining me, and head over to TomLenk.com to check out his work -- including the documentary Nerdgasm, available June 16. The doc's about what happens when you push through self-doubt and believe in your own abilities, and for my recommendation this week, I hope you'll watch another another movie about queer self-confidence: the Netflix special Pee Wee's Big Holiday. 

Now I am not a big believer in nostalgia reboots, which are almost always unable to live up to the unreliable memories of the original. But somehow Pee Wee's Big Holiday is a bundle of unmitigated charm and delight, just like Pee Wee himself.

The film is centered around friendship, and the lengths to which we're driven by feelings of affection. Pee Wee plays a small-town boy who's never vacationed far from home. But when he meet a famous hunky actor named Joe, he takes the plunge and goes on an epic journey to New York for Joe's birthday party.

The story tingles with queerness throughout, from the breathless interest of the male leads to the suggestive insertion of a fist in a friendship bracelet. But what makes it so joyful to me is Pee Wee's confidence, self-assuredness, and comfort in his own weird skin.

He is, to be clear, a very strange boy. And at no point does it even seem possible to imagine him being anything else. Even when he's in trouble and things aren't going his way, he is unswervingly himself -- giddy, curious, playful, and sincere.

And so are the heroes he encounters, from hairdressers to bank robbers to an odd heiress. Each one is a strange, happy caricature; each one unabashedly eccentric; each one -- as we all should aspire to be -- a Pee Wee in their own big holiday.

Clips of Stuff We Talked About

Music

Parisian Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Queer Desire Has Always Been There (Ep. 116: Kurt Cobain)

This Week's guest: Hamed Sinno

What did you rebel against when you were a teenager, and are you still rebelling today? This week's guest is Hamed Sinno, whose Lebanese upbringing afforded him only brief glimpses of gay culture and queer voices in pop culture. In college, he formed a band with some friends and discovered to his surprise that his defiant songs resonated with other folks. But with that heightened visibility came new risks -- particularly when he came to America.

This Week's Recommendation: Once More With Feeling

Thanks again to Hamed for joining me, and if you're having trouble finding his band, you can try Googling the English translation -- Leila's Project. I do advise finding translations of the lyrics, because they're quite lovely: confessional, emotional, brutally honest. And so for my recommendation this week, check out the musical episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, "Once More with Feeling."

The episode came a bit after a weird 90s trend of inserting surprise musicals into otherwise nonmusical TV shows, but unlike, say, The Drew Carey Show, there is an actual reason that the characters on the show burst into showtunes: a dangerous demon curse that forces them to confess feelings that are too hard to say without being sung.

As is par for the course with Buffy, the show is funny and clever but with a dark undercurrent that, when the music's over, leaves the characters to deal with the consequences of honesty. Some are brought closer together, others pushed apart, and some are closer but in a way that might not be an entirely good thing. 

What I love about this episode is how singing changes the act of communication. It comes at a point of crisis on the series, where the characters have, like so many families, spiraled into a failure to communicate. The opportunity to perform changes all that -- it turns difficult words into a show, introduces a level of remove that makes confession bearable. And then the music's over. And it's time to deal with what's been said, which may be painful for everyone -- but not as painful as the secrets they kept.

Clips of Stuff We Talked About

Music

Parisian Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Impersonating Dinosaurs (Ep. 115: Jurassic Park, Queer as Folk, and Weekend)

This Week's Guest: Adam Smith

How do you make up for lost time after spending years in the closet? My guest this week is journalist Adam Smith, who avoiding coming out for years because he felt that he needed to maintain a sort of sexual neutrality for the sake of his family. Now that he's finally experiencing the world as an out gay man, there's lots to explore -- which has meant shedding his inhibitions, and occasionally, all of his clothes.

This Week's Recommendation: The Outcast

Thanks again to Adam for joining me. He mentioned Star Trek as being a particularly meaningful laboratory for testing ethical positions, and so for my recommendation this week I'm pleased to have an excuse to recommend the Next Generation season 5 episode "The Outcast," in which the crew encounters a race that has no gender -- or at least, isn't supposed to have a gender. Those that do express an unsanctioned tendency towards male or female traits are subjected to therapy intended to "normalize" them.

Even though The Next Generation never had an explicitly queer character, this episode is as on the nose as the prosthetics on most aliens' faces. Through the metaphor of aliens, it explores the nature of gender, the fear of being subjected to conversion therapy, and issues of consent. There's even a sci-fi metaphor for the closet in the form of a phenomenon known as "null space" where objects can undetectably exist.

Star Trek is at its best when it's a venue for us to explore contemporary ethical questions, which is why the show of the 60s is so different from the show of the 90s. It makes sense, given that the episode aired in 1992, that they would attempt to grapple with sexuality. But the episode is also notable for how timidly it explores the topic. It ends on a fairly neutral opinion of conversion therapy, and of attacks on queer existence. And though the characters are gender-neutral, the casting confines the romances to opposite-sex actors. It's disappointing that to this day, the Star Trek canon remains relatively silent on the topic of sexual orientation, despite its founding captain being a essentially a walking sex gland.

But there's a new series in the franchise set to debut in a few months, this time helmed by an openly gay man. So hopefully now, over fifty years after the series first aired, it'll finally be ready to make up for decades of lost time in its own sort of null space.

Clips of Stuff We Talked About

Music

Parisian Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Failed Mystics (Ep. 114: Buffy, X-Men, He-Man, and Lwaxana Troi)

This Week's Guest: Anthony Oliveira

Have you ever been lucky enough to enjoy the sensation of villainy? My guest this week is Anthony Oliveira, who you might also know for his incisive tweeting as Meakoopa. Anthony's always felt a sympathy for monsters and villains -- or at least, the figures assumed to be monsters and villains -- even before he was old enough to realize that he might be considered one himself.
 

This Week's Recommendation: Bowser

Thanks again to Anthony for joining me and for his neverending stream of excellent tweets, which you can find at meakoopa. And that brings me to this week's recommendation -- not a book or movie or song or any kind of text, but a character. Specifically Bowser, the king of the Koopas, and an unlikely gay icon.

Let me explain.

Bowser's been around since 1985, and for those early first few years, he was depicted as your standard pixelated 8-bit monster. But as games moved into 3D and we started seeing him rendered in more detail, Bowser seems to have caught the eye of a certain fandom. He's big and burly, with leather spiked cuffs on his forearm and a perpetually wide stance. So of course, as Bowser entered his thirties, along with his earliest fans, he's become something of a heart throb.

This reached a sort of a peak in 2014, with a commercial where he was depicted in a cute polka-dot jacket with hipster glasses, and then again earlier this year when he was depicted as a responsible dad. 

As a result, it's now easy to find loving fan art, ranging from the chaste to the filthy, lovingly portraying Bowser as a sort of perfect boyfriend. My favorite is when he's styled as a "nerd dad," wearing dorky square glasses and a blazer, a tough-looking hunk with a secretly tender heart. But if you want something more explicit, I'm sure you won't have any trouble finding that, too. 

I'll always love when a character gets queered, but I'm particularly delighted by the queering of Bowser -- not just because big nerd dads are my type, but also because making him a dreamboat is about as queer as it gets. In his original incarnation, he was a literal monster, a mindless avatar for evil and fear. Turning him into various admirable gay tropes, from leather daddy to porn star to cool gay uncle, subverts every rule about what a bad guy's supposed to be -- namely, bad.

And if there's a sexy queer future awaiting the fire-breathing lizard as he matures, well, there's hope for any of us.

Clips of Stuff We Talked About

Music

Parisian Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0

I Was About to Lose my Mind - (Ep. 113 - Dave Holmes)

This Week's Guest: Dave Holmes

My guest this week is Dave Holmes, who you might know from the podcast International Waters, or his articles in Esquire, or his book Party of One. I first saw Dave on MTV, in a proto-reality show competition to become a VJ back in the late 90s. On screen, it was clear that Dave was the most qualified, most knowledgable, and most engaging contestant, with an encyclopedia knowledge of music and an infectious passion for talking about it. But what nobody who was watching could know was that for Dave, entering that competition was an urgent bid to change the course of his life before he went absolutely crazy.

This Week's Recommendation: Mame

Thanks again to Dave for joining me. Check out his podcast International Waters, and his book, Party of One, now out in Paperback. The book's a memoir, structured around 21 songs that were pivotal in his adventuresome life. And as he mentioned, those adventures nearly didn't happen, since he grew up believing that his passion for art and culture and expression was something that had to be put away as an adult.

For my recommendation this week, take a look at the movie Auntie Mame with Rosalind Russell, later remade with Lucille Ball. I think the original non-musical version is more fun, but the important thing is the message of both -- that famous line, "life's a banquet and most poor suckers are starving to death."

Mame is a flamboyant New York socialite, the kind of woman who knows where every good party is happening because she's it's not a good party unless she's there. Her nephew Patrick is tragically conventional, and the story unfolds we see Mame's indomitable spirit gradually overtake Patrick's cringing conventionality, singlehandedly stoking the family's optimism and excitement for adventures that might lay ahead.

Like Peter Pan or Puff the Magic Dragon, Mame's a guardian to a world of imagination and curiosity. But unlike them, she doesn't shut the door to that world when you reach a certain age. Life doesn't have to stop being a banquet when you become an adult. And even through growing up does require some measure of responsibility, growing up doesn't have to mean giving up.

Clips of Stuff we Talked About

 

Music

Parisian Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/