The New York Times (Jan. 29) reports that Germany is building even more memorials to the Holocaust. It already has an enormous monument in central Berlin but is erecting two more: one to the murdered Gypsies near the Reichstag and another to murdered gays and lesbians near the Brandenburg Gate.
A book, a play, a movie and a TV show from the ‘Mixed-Media’ file: The Chicago Tribune (Jan. 26) reviews the Jennifer Finney Boylan (formerly James Boylan) memoir, I’m Looking Through You: Growing Up Haunted. The story of a boy who imagines himself a ghost because he is really a (missing) girl is, according to the review, both touching and funny. The New York Times (Jan. 30) looks at the play Sisters, Such Devoted Sisters, in which Russell Barr, the author and performer, plays a frightening Irish drag queen who sort of deconstructs herself by disrobing and translating the play’s ‘obscure Scottish slang.’ Sounds a bit off-putting, but for the eerily Edward Gorey fans among you there is a gruesomely sensational ending. Meet the Spartans, a new flick reviewed in the Chicago Tribune (Jan. 30), spoofs the ‘oh-no-not-us homoeroticism of 300’; among other things, the buff warriors trot off to war singing I Will Survive. Finally, on cable TV, the sci-fi series Torchwood has its main hero who, to paraphrase the techno rapper Peaches, ‘he likes girls and he likes boys, he doesn’t have to make the choice.’ Hero Jack, who is cattily referred to as looking and sounding like ‘ … a butch Tom Cruise’ duels with, and then ‘ … makes out like mad’ with Capt. John. ‘ [I] t’s pretty and witty and gay.’
Time magazine (Jan. 28) has a major series of connected essays on the science of romance, with one chapter devoted to gay relationships. These are some of the findings reported from research on lesbigay folks: ‘ … lesbian couples argue less belligerantly than straight pairs’; lesbians are ‘ … more likely to use humor in an argument’; the authors believe ‘heterosexual relationships may have a great deal to learn from homosexual relationships’; and ‘ … gay men are worse at making up after fights, and gays and lesbians split up more often than straight couples.’
Mental Floss magazine (Jan.-Feb.) highlights Allen Ginsberg as ‘America’s Most Dangerous Poet.’ The Beat poet and gay-rights advocate had a high school teacher father and a nudist, Communist, paranoid-schizophrenic mother. He was kicked out of Cuba after he supposedly hit on Che Guevara and had musical/artistic (but probably not romantic) relationships with Bob Dylan, Phillip Glass, Paul McCartney, The Clash and U2. Also, many aspects of Ginsberg’s life uncannily resembled those of the gay poet from 100 years earlier, Walt Whitman. Leaves of Howling Grass?