...on whatever crosses my mind

Jay-Z on Gay Marriage

I just saw this on my Facebook timeline

 

 

There's some talk online about Jay-Z's endorsement being more powerful than Obama's. I don't really think that's terribly useful. These are two of the most culturally important black men in the world.  I guess I'd like to think of their endorsements as a one-two punch, rather than quibble about who will make the most individual impact.

That said, I'm struck by the simplicity and the almost nonchalance of Jigga here. Even though I know that's pretty much Shawn Carter's demeanor whenever he talks.

Fuller thoughts to come...

Get Into 'The Chadwick Journals'

I often feel like because same-sex attraction is so misunderstood and so denigrated, that so much of black gay male interactions end up becoming a big mess of power plays and mixed signals. So much of our sexuality is confused and complicated by how we think it affects our ability to be men in a partriarchal society.

I Spent the Week at Alyssa Rosenberg's Crib on ThinkProgress

My friend, Alyssa Rosenberg, asked me to guest post on her blog on ThinkProgress this week.  I accepted and it was a really effin good time.  Her commenters are awesome and spending time at her crib really forced me to step my game up. I think I did ok.  

• Will ‘The Best Man’ Sequel Treat Its Women Characters Better?
• ‘Reed Between The Lines’ Is No ‘Cosby Show,’ Thankfully
• How Do You Create A Bisexual Film Character?
• How Can We Get Majority Audiences Consuming Culture About Minority Experiences? ctd.

What do y'all think?

Pretty Ricky's Retreat

What the....?

 

 

The sad thing is that H-Town, K-Ci and Lingerie all sound really good. It's just that they are singing a really really really bad song that isn't the least bit sexy or sensual - and yet they really seem to think it is.

Tragic.

Getting the 'Invisible Life' Movies Right

The deal that E. Lynn Harris and Tracey Edmonds struck to make a series of feature films based on Harris' Invisible Life is historic. This is not just one feature film about gay and bisexual black gay men and black women. It's a series of films about gay and bisexual black men and black women.

It might sound hyperbolic, but there is actually no way to understate just how important these films are going to be. Gay and bisexual black men have almost always and only been portrayed in films as stereotypes and they have too infrequently appeared as the center of a film narrative (with Noah's Arc: Jumping The Broom the most prominent and most problematic, as a result). So these films represent a real opportunity to portray gay and bisexual black men and black women as the complicated, messy, three-dimensional human beings that they are.

If Edmonds and Co. are smart though they will treat the films exactly the way that Warner Bros. treated the Harry Potter films* - with a keen understanding that a world must be built and sustained over the life of the films, a world that most Americans have never seen before and will have to (at the very least) believe and appreciate, if not outright love.

Because there is real danger in these films, real danger in reinscribing harmful, narrow, representations of gay and bisexual black men, black women, and black culture. Harris was unafraid to introduce characters in melodramatic, and sometimes stereotypical, ways and then graft tremendous dimension on them in later books. As a writer juggling multiple perspectives, he understood how to balance the essential humanity of his character and the way that characters were perceived by other characters.

The filmmakers must do the same, and they have to do it earlier in the books in order for the films to work as a series**. Raymond has to be more than just self-loathing, Kyle has to be more than the life of the party, Nicole has to be more than a BAP, and, critically, Yancey and Basil have to be understood as deeply damaged people first, monsters second. The filmmakers have to resist the urge to oversimplify. The early films must be set in the 80s and the later films must reduce the bourgie name-dropping that infected the later books.

And the films have to stay true to the fact that some of the characters do horrible things to one another but for reasons that make sense to them. For instance, they have to keep in mind that John Basil Henderson emerges as the single most complex character in all of Harris' work and, perhaps, the single most fascinating and complicated portraits of a modern black male in contemporary African-American fiction.

And perhaps most importantly, the first film, Invisible Life, has to be Raymond Tyler's story, not Nicole's. Ever since Oprah inflicted JL King on America, we've been inundated with the trope of the DL black man as demon, hellbent on destroying the black community and killing black women***. That cannot happen here. The film will not succeed unless we emphathize with Raymond's inability to choose between Nicole and Quinn and understand why it is so hard for him to do so.

Anything less will be a failure and an insult to Harris, the books, and the audience.

 

*And like Warner Bros, the filmmakers should cast unknowns in all the principal roles. Though I could see an actress like Irma P. Hall readily as Mama Cee.

**When it comes to Basil and Yancey, the filmmakers should really study the way David Benioff fleshed out Cersei Lannister in Game of Thrones so she felt like a real person instead of a cartoon villain as she is portrayed in the books.  In fact, the filmmakers should study everything Benioff did with GOT.

***The one exception is the cancelled-far-too-soon The DL Chronicles, in which creators Quincy LeNear and Deondray Gossett did a magnificent job exploring the many ways that sexuality is manifest in black communities.

Beauty Unqualified

This open letter from model Leomie Campbell to the Sunday Times about racism in the fashion industry is fascinating. Not so much for the tales about the racism.

Nope, what is most striking to me is how Campbell equivocates throughout the entire piece and then ends with:

I don’t think talking about racism in fashion will change anything. Even if fashion changes, it’s not going to change the world. I’d rather just have a positive attitude. If I were feeling discriminated against, I might go into a casting thinking I’m not going to get this job. It’s negativity that will disadvantage me.

Well, what's the point of writing this open letter if not to "talk about racism"? Lawd!

It's interesting to watch the millennial generation - Campbell is 19 - tie themselves in knots trying to talk about race in a world where they have been told that it is not something that we need to talk about anymore. Clearly they want to. Clearly Campbell wants to talk about what it is really like to be a black model, but she knows she can't just call the entire industry racist -- even though the primary goal of the fashion industry is to reinscribe whiteness and white beauty standards around the world, i.e. racist.

If anything, despite her prostestations, Campbell's letter makes the need to address racism in the fashion industry more critical than ever.

(H/T The YBF)

Marsha Ambrosius - Far Away video

The story - and its meaning - is a little muddled...

 

 

...but take note of the fact that a major Black artist has made a music video that shows Black homosexual love (doomed tho it ultimately is).  

This may seem like it's not a big deal, but it really is.

Ciara's Career: Stomping on the Line Between Male and Female

 

I think that we are supposed to just marvel at Ciara's dancing in this video. 

But the truth is, acrobatic though it may be, there is nothing here to really shout about. She's a better dancer than Beyonce by a longshot, but Bey has a greater sense of how movement can accentuate or punctuate a song. So even if she's not doing quite as much, it usually adds an interesting visual dimension to the song.

Here Ciara is moving and her dancers are moving, but we don't know why. We don't care. It doesn't move us.

But more importantly - Ciara is simply not all that interesting when she's not dancing (pun intended) right on that line between male and female performer. Her claim to fame was being the pretty girl who danced "like a man." And for a time she seemed unconcerned with how people responded to that fact.

Take "Oh":

 

 

Ciara dancing on the hood of that car should go down as one of the great iconic images in pop music history. But what is most interesting is how throughout the video she jumps back and forth between "feminine" and "masculine" movements, so much so that the difference between them is rendered completely meaningless.

Or take "Promise" in which she shows an admirable level of comfort displaying this duality, donning baggy sweats to play (essentially) her own love interest.

 

 

...and then makes that duality memorably explicit in "Like A Boy":

 

 

It's not an accident that these three songs were her most critically lauded. The charms of each are quite apparent even if you take away the great videos. 

But it seems now that Ciara is so shook by the omnipotence of Rihanna and Beyonce, that she's completely lost her identity in a series of uninteresting hypersexualized and offensive images designed, presumably, to make her into a conventional sex symbol.

There is probably an audience for videos where Ciara puts in a good 4-minute workout, but I don't know that it will extend her career much longer.

You Knock Me Offa My Feet

Watching Ne-Yo's latest:

 

 

...and remembering Usher's "You Remind Me":

 

 

...could make you forget just how disturbing the original video actually is:

 

 

The video for "The Way You Make Me Feel" makes explicit the song's depiction of male insecurity - a man who can't control his dick blaming it on the woman.

The capacity for violence in this video is palpable and fits beautifully with the almost violent lead vocal. That opening riff - "You knock me offa my feet now baby. WHOO" - is like a punch. And Tatiana Thumbtzen, here playing the love interest, is genuinely scared throughout much of the video.

We forget that sex and love were often very twisted in Michael Jackson's work, largely because those who mimic him are probably far more well-adjusted than he was. Indeed his genius might have been his ability to make the whole world fall in love with some crazy shit. Which, of course, means that his downfall makes perfect sense because how long are you going to listen to songs like "Billie Jean," "Dirty Diana," "In The Closet," and "Human Nature" before the ideas therein start to disturb you?

So it is interesting that the concept has become so romantic now. Both Usher and Ne-Yo strike playful notes, but they also play up the romantic vibe considerably: Usher chases three girls but ends up with his one true love at the end and Ne-Yo floats a rose to his intended (which is genuinely inspired). But there is no element of danger even though you are watching men chase a woman around, ignoring her protestations to be left alone.

It is an open question whether the loss of that realism is good or bad.

Crushin VII

Black is most certainly beautiful, people.

Lance Gross, ladies and gentleman.  More after the jump...

Tribute to E. Lynn Harris

Yesterday, I woke up after sleeping most of the day away to find a text on my phone from my friend Randy saying that E. Lynn Harris had died.

E. Lynn is an icon.  For a lot of gay and bisexual men, E. Lynn wrote our lives (or, in his later books, the lives some of us wanted to live). 

I discovered his books in 2002 when I was trying to decide what to do about my life having lived the previous years as a celibate man.  Invisible Life's cover art, a man caught between a man and a woman, drew me in immediately.  I saw it in a bookstore and I just picked it up and read that two-page prologue right then and there. 

I was hooked and I bought it and Just As I Am up right there.

Unlike most, I think, E Lynn's Invisible Life novels -- Invisible Life, Just As I Am, and Abide With Me -- confirmed for me that I was bisexual and that that was something that was okay to be.  I thought Raymond's story was beautiful and it spoke to a tug of war that I was dealing with that I didn't even know I was dealing with. 

Though Raymond decided he was gay in the novels, I knew after reading Raymond's story that bisexuality was real and that I was bisexual.  As E. Lynn wrote it, I understood perfectly why Raymond would fall in love with Nicole and Quinn and though I understood why the plot unfolded the way it did, for me, I knew that I would never make the choice that Raymond did, choosing one gender over the other.  And I set out to live my life as a bisexual man, of course, having no idea how to even go about doing that (still don't, by the way). 

E. Lynn gave me that.

Over the years, I've followed E. Lynn's career, reading all of his books, attending his readings, and debating with my friends about whether Boris Kodjoe or Rick Fox would make the better Basil Henderson.  Though I haven't enjoyed his books much since the Invisible Life saga, I appreciated that our stories were being told.

People often criticized E. Lynn's later work for being simplistic and formulaic, which it was.  And the elements of the earlier work that I liked least -- the name dropping and preoccupation with status -- eventually overwhelmed his work. But even if he continued to turn out serviceable fiction like his latest, Basketball Jones, nothing he could have done would diminish the beauty, sincerity, and heartbreaking prose in the Invisible Life saga. 

Raymond and Nicole were ambitious buppies, but they had deep insecurities and struggled to find a center in their frequently tumultuous lives, all of which made them relatable and human.  And Basil Henderson is probably one of the finest, most fully realized portraits of black male humanity in contemporary Black fiction.  While Raymond eventually receded into the background in later books, Basil's emergence as the most complex individual in E. Lynn's world was surprising, rewarding, and frequently quite moving.

E. Lynn apparently used to tell folks that he was no James Baldwin.  He's wrong.  Invisible Life, Just As I Am, and Abide With Me are still completely unique, incomparable works that should be read every bit as much as Giovanni's Room, Another Country, and Tell Me How Long The Train's Been Gone.  Like Baldwin, E. Lynn wrote about black love.  About its redemptive power. Its sometimes frightening intensity.  And its haunting, elusive beauty.

E. Lynn is a hero.  Little confused black boys and girls will pick up his Invisible Life saga for generations to come and get yet another glimpse of the beauty of black humanity and love.

Rest in Peace.

For the record, I still think Rick Fox has the stronger acting chops and would the better choice to play Basil, though Boris is what I see in my head when I think of Basil.

Crushin V

Osian, ladies and gentleman.

Howard Stern Goes Hard for The Gays

This is old, but peep the shock jock king on gay rights:

This is really dope.  Mad props to Stern for being eminently reasonable. 

Crushin IV

Jill Marie Jones, ladies and gentlemen.

I adore this woman - always have, always will. 

She's the reason I started watching Girlfriends and the reason I kept watching Girlfriends (until she left, of course)

There are not enough photos of her when she had short hair, which is actually the style I like best on her.  This photo is just simple and she's transcendantly beautiful in it.  Stunning!

Bow Wow Does Sinatra...Nancy, that is.

No joke - I kinda like this. His bootleg Jay-Z flow is pretty darn good (I smell ghostwriter, folks).

This song falls into the Sweet Potato Pie/I Got A Man category - hip-hop songs so ridiculous that you like them because they are ridiculous.  It's different than say the willful denial of Lil Wayne's wackness (or T.I.) that fuels that love and adulation. 

Who is Young Shad fooling with this cartoonish masculinity, you ask?  No one.

So just sit back and watch the hot mess.

Iowa for Gay Marriage

So Iowa is down with the gays.

Money quote from the eminently rational, reasonable Iowa Supreme Court:

“Equal protection under the Iowa Constitution is essentially a direction that all persons similarly situated should be treated alike. Since territorial times, Iowa has given meaning to this constitutional provision, striking blows to slavery and segregation, and recognizing women’s rights. The court found the issue of same-sex marriage comes to it with the same importance as the landmark cases of the past.”

Word.

crushin III

After the jump is one of my new obsessions. 

For the feint of heart, a couple of things:

• Picture is hot!

• Dude is hot!

• It's a dude.

• He's a porn star. 

mmmm, Jon Stewart

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

Mike Huckabee Pt. 2

Barack Obama Interview
John McCain Interview

Sarah Palin Video
Funny Election Video

I'm actually a bad liberal.

I do not watch The Daily Show with Jon Stewart religiously, even though when I do I laugh uproariously.

Watching him dismantle Mike Huckabee on marriage equality, respectfully, forcefully and passionately, is thrilling.  Thrilling!  I really should be watching this show on the regular.  Warms my heart, yes it does.

The Right really has to come with something more than the "Bible" and "marriage means one man, one women."

Crushin II

Toccara aka proof that Tyra Banks doesn't have a clue what the fuck she's doing.

Damn, ma!

Crushin...

Even wit the weave, Keshia Knight Pulliam is making it so my 20+ year crush on her will never die.

Damn.