From the ‘Suffering Sappho’ file the Chicago Tribune (4-2) has an item noting that the 60-year-old lesbian icon, Wonder Woman, has been given a makeover: short hair, a camouflage bustier, no bullet-deflecting bracelets or golden tiara. One wonders how much of the not-so-subtle pro-dyke flavor of the old strip will remain.
The Atlantic Monthly (5-3) in an overview of the many books written, and still being written about Oscar Wilde 100 years after his death concludes that he ‘… cannot be simplified into an Irish rebel, a subversive socialist, or a gay martyr.’ Not only was he vastly more complicated than these posthumous labels, but at least re the gay issue he claimed, against much evidence, that his affair with Alfred Douglas (Bosie) was ‘… entirely spiritual.’ On the other hand, the article calls Wilde’s play The Importance of Being Earnest an ‘authentic masterpiece of gay sensibility,’ that none ‘… of the female characters in ‘Earnest’, can be taken seriously as a woman’ and that the play’s themes of false identity and secret dealings are all related to Wilde’s own double life.
As long as we’re dipping into the Victorian era, perhaps there are history buffs who’d like to peruse a new biography, White Rajah by Nigel Barley as reviewed in History Today (4-3) which tells the story of Sir James Brooke, appointed to be the governor of Sarawak in northwestern Borneo whereupon he appointed himself the absolute ruler. This biographer argues with earlier biographers who said he wasn’t interested in women because of a war wound that unmanned him. Barley says he was wounded in the chest and didn’t care for women because he was homosexual and really liked young working-class men (e.g. soldiers).
In an article called ‘Remembering Billy’ the Chicago Tribune (3-31) tells of a tribute to jazz genius Billy Strayhorn, the ‘alter ego’ and arranger for Duke Ellington. Unfortunately the piece neglects to mention why he was so underappreciated before and after his death: his gayness, which kept him more under the thumb of Ellington than he otherwise would have needed to be.
The NY Times (4-2) has an obit for Leslie Cheung, 46, a Chinese actor and pop singer. Cheung committed suicide saying he was suffering emotional problems. He played numerous gay characters in his movies, one of the few Asian actors who would do so. Americans may remember him as the star of the 1993 movie, Farewell, My Concubine.
All over the world, dictatorial regimes are using the Iraqi war as a cover to rid themselves of dissidents. The NY Times (4-3) says Egypt is cracking down on gays once again. Virtually all of the defendants who were tried for gay offenses two years ago after a series of raids on gay bars in Cairo, and then ordered re-tried because of adverse world publicity, were re-convicted and given longer sentences.