#matt wobensmith | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

this-is-the-salivation-army · 7 years

Text

REVISITING THE PERMISSION FACTORY Scott Treleaven (2015)

You’ll have to forgive a few extremely unsexy paragraphs so we can get down to figuring out the lifelong, tenuous romance between punk and gay culture: how it got started in the 70s, how it got revitalized in the 90s, and why this unique relationship persists. It’s the story of how gay culture rescued the first would-be punks from the sexual puritanism of their parents, and how punk would later resuscitate the fury of a devastated gay scene. When I first got into punk music as a kid I found that I connected with a sensibility that seemed to exist nowhere else. What I could only later describe as “Weimar-esque,” punk seemed to have awareness not only of how sex could be liberating and daring, but how it could also be used to *entertain* without being sapped of its vitality. Whatever can be said about punk’s stance against normalcy and capitalism, punks knew the importance of putting on a show; it didn’t have to be a good show, it didn’t have to be a long show, but punk always promised that there’d be something genuine to experience. The fact that some twenty years on it would become relevant again, in a regenerated form as “queercore”, is a testament to punk’s original intent. And once again this reincarnation would come partly as vaudeville, and partly as social hammer.

Of all the ‘origin of the species’ stories about how and where punk got started, who its progenitors were and what historical and cultural factors came together to birth it, Jeff Nuttal’s appraisal in BOMB CULTURE (1968) rings most true for me. Written almost a decade before punk existed, Nuttall surmised that the somber and shell-shocked post-World War II generation would also have to deal with the profound moral schizophrenia brought on by a moment that annihilated the reassuring binary simplicity of ‘good guys versus bad guys,’ forever. The men and women raising children in the late sixties in the UK and the US, the children that would eventually become the first “punks,” must have had found it hard to countenance that the good guys who liberated Europe had gone on to commit the unspeakable atrocity of dropping an atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Not only did it mean that the shadow of nuclear war hung over the world’s future from now on, but it begged the mostly unspoken question of how one raises a child with any kind of moral assurance when the supposed good guys were capable of the very atrocities they had fought against. Unlike the Bright Young People who emerged as a sort of upper-class, upbeat and insolent post-WWI phenomenon, the pervading air of nihilism and punk’s working class roots had more in common with the clownish despair found in Dada. The closeness of the US/UK alliance might also explain how mutual culpability created a climate that lead to punk’s simultaneous emergence in both countries. Always in the background, the same subliminal refrain, that the dominant culture no longer held moral authority.

The staggering austerity that punk emerged from made it seem like there literally was no future to be had. When I hear tales of kids playing in the bombed out ruins of an empire I think how it must’ve made the edifices of society seem as flimsy and impermanent as they, in fact, are. The only thing you could be sure of was that your young body was alive and filled with a kind of vitality that wasn’t mirrored in the landscape. Suspicion of tradition gave way to a thirst for what was outside, what was verboten. What the parents rejected the kids embraced. Reggae was alien, exciting and new; the Nazi paraphernalia that terrified their elders could be wielded partly for shock value but also to disgrace its symbolic power; and there was also a more pronounced cognizance that underneath the New York Dolls’ and Bowie’s slap was a frank acknowledgement of the wild frontier of gay culture and its influence on style. Along with the draggish maquillage, the bondage gear and the outright porn, what punk found thrilling in the burgeoning gay scene was its frank embrace of fringe and coded styles, its penchant for hidden venues, its gender non-conformity, and the inherent power in outsider camaraderie. After all, “punk” meant “gay” before punk meant punk. The queered sexiness that would become intrinsic to punk had the dual purpose of titillating the uninitiated while simultaneously ridiculing the uptight behind-the-plastic-curtains realm to which sex (or any arousing image outside of sanctioned smut and/or artwork) had been relegated by older generations. Punks were all about giving each other permission to flaunt, demystify and explore own their sexuality.

Eventually, after a particularly cold-blooded breed of Conservatism (perhaps there is no other kind) took hold at the end of the 70s, the virulence of its free market spirit had the effect of turning punk signifiers into just another load of feel good shopping experiences. Stock slogans, mohawks, safety pins and leather jackets became a uniform; anathema to the very things punk was initially about. While punk was defanged, an even more horrifying extermination of subcultural potential was taking place as the sexual libertinism and freedom that characterized the gay scene was ravaged by AIDS. Whereas the radioactivity from Hiroshima eventually dissipated, and the West somehow got back to convincing itself of its own decency, the AIDS epidemic was just getting started and the banner of morality was callously plied to create an exponential body count, and effectively ensuring a plague that could never be contained. By the early 90s the gay scene had gone back to adopting an attitude similar to the “clone” mentality of the late 70s; originally used as a way of signifying sexual difference and availability, the gay scene had now become cautious, conformist and grim as AIDS killed off most of the renegades and sexual astronauts. After approximately 500,000 cases of AIDS and 300,000 deaths in the US alone were reported by the mid-90s, gay culture was reeling and understandably desperate for some kind of homogeneity to patch together what was left. It was from this gloomy fray that queercore first emerged.

As punk had once turned to queer culture for its social-sexual strategies, now it was returning the favor. The blinkered gay and lesbian mainstream in the mid-90s felt neither inclusive nor progressive, or even particularly political, suffering as it was from what can only be called battle fatigue. Under siege for so long, the scene seemed to want to return to some kind of clement version of a pre-AIDS heyday where everyone could listen to mediocre dance music in the company of others who wanted to conform to the new gay normal. If the world was fair, the likes of Queer Nation, Outrage and Gran Fury would’ve thrived, but there was less room now for the libertine weirdos and troublemakers who might (or might not) have caused all of the chaos in the first place. Eventually two Toronto-based punks, G.B. Jones and Bruce LaBruce, would change everything by launching an incendiary campaign through zines, music and manifestoes, to call out the gays on their conservatism and to make the supposedly open-minded punks put their inclusivity to the test. Following their lead, queercore bands, zines and record labels – like Matt Wobensmith’s Outpunk – flourished. For me personally, as a twenty-year old punk recently transplanted back in Toronto in 1993 after a year of living hand-to-mouth in London, discovering that I could reconcile my music, my politics and my sexuality was a revelation. Already ideologically hopped-up on publications like RE:SEARCH, RAPID EYE and HOMOCULT, I’d also had a fortuitous meeting with queer saint Derek Jarman shortly before my return who clinched for me the idea that there was more to one’s sexuality than simply who you fucked. Jarman’s idea of queerness was that it was a blessing of sorts, a radiant kind of permission. It reinforced for me what I’d always felt: that being queer meant that you could slough off a past, an ideology and a trajectory, that's not yours to inherit and keep on forging paths that are as yet unimagined. And if that wasn’t punk, I didn’t know what was.

Graduating from art school in 1996, and with G.B. Jones’ help, I shot the world’s first queer punk documentary. More of a polemic than a who’s-who, QUEERCORE: A PUNK-U-MENTARY was an attempt to unify some of the politics and positions of the company of outcasts I was keeping. Combining these ideas with some stark pseudo-military aesthetics copped from postpunk bands like Psychic TV and New Model Army, I also started publishing my own zine, THIS IS THE SALiVATION ARMY. Rejecting salvation as a nebulous, ludicrous concept, *salivation* was where it was at; always on the tip of your tongue, something your body knows. And in the wake of the full on body-terror that followed AIDS, this kind of fluidic moniker was about more than just spit. Branding itself as a the mouthpiece of a full-fledged “queer pagan punk” movement with hundreds of members and everybody fucking each other, it didn’t seem useful, or poetically true, to tell readers that in reality it was just me with a gluestick, alone at 3am in an all-night photocopy shop. Another lesson learned from punk: print the legend. Aside from the hyperbole, the zine distinguished itself by trying to be an honest platform to discuss and celebrate sexuality in all its forms, and to this day it’s a point of pride to know that my readership wasn’t solely made up of horny homocore boys, but an equal amount of women, bi and straight readers, too.

Eventually the zine spawned a film of the same name in 2002 that would try to keep the myths alive alongside the truth. The fact that the zine and the film still get unearthed says something, to me at least, about its view of sexuality as something innately powerful, and the punk ethos at its core still gives the go-ahead to explore in the company of like-minded others; being part of an ongoing, swelling history is always better than being part of something unique. When punk first reared its head in the 70s, decrying sex as squelchy and boring was a genius way of disarming the shame-makers, the rockers and the doting hippies, showing a preference instead for anger and action over getting your rocks off and calling it a weekend. In the 90s however the slogan had shifted to take aim at the puritans and fear-mongers with a distinctly feminist pitch. The patches on people’s jackets were daubed with slogans like: You Say Don’t Fuck, We Say Fuck You!, Silence = Death, and Not Gay As In Happy, But Queer As In Fuck You! On the heels of this declaration that queers weren’t the filthy creatures that the religious zealots and right wing would have you believe, another reinvigoration of sexual awareness came in the form of a wave of punk-made porn. It’s almost impossible to imagine now, but in the pre-selfie, pre-internet world, occupying pornography was a radical act. Like industrial musician and performance artist Cosey Fanni Tutti’s astutely aware ownership of her participation in pornography – usurping the male-made-for-male-gaze structure – the queercore scene wrestled its bodies away from the overly muscled uniformity of the Aryan sideshow freaks that populated gay porn and made images of their own. Like Warholian superstars, Jones’ and LaBruce’s zines and films launched a new blue generation and everyone, myself included, loaned their time and their bodies to one another in the pursuit of a new kind of radicalism. Suddenly you weren’t jerking off to the too perfect torsos in mainstream porn, instead you could find insanely erotic homegrown smut to get off on that also served the purpose of smashing the stereotypes purveyed by the other mags. The empowerment had positive effects on the models, too. Starring in a couple of centerfolds and films, I found that the lowly view I’d held of my weedy twenty-year old body started to vanish. Better yet, as I got behind the camera I learned to make other models snap out of their narrow views of what turned people on as we added our own brands of eroticism to the collective pool.

The notion that punk was anti-sex, entirely cynical or entirely nihilistic is overplayed. There would’ve been no bands, no shows, no pageantry and no studied provocation if that were true. Now that gay culture has become obsessed with the push for “equality” an ugly, overwhelming sense of genteel propriety has come along with it. The church and the army – the last places on earth a punk or a queer should be – are the mindboggling territories being fought for. When I think about the first time I saw Pete Shelley mincing around in the video for ‘Homosapien,’ even at the tender age of eight I felt that the elegant futuristic world he occupied was going to be mine too, someday, not the weddings and wars that were the destiny of my other little friends. As the 2000s kicked in, my hometown Toronto was a hotbed of queercore activity well past the time when most of the early bands had hung up their guitars and the zines had folded. The late, great artist impressario Will Munro organized a vibrant scene there that was dedicated to the idea that the sexual vitality of the queer scene aligned with the restless utopic cravings of punk could still come together to create something *other*, something *better*. The entire planet is currently groaning under the weight of conservative corporatism, and those thinly veiled fascists are floating the idea that there is no other way but theirs. The spirit of punk, if it truly did anything in the past, and if it can do anything now, is to keep kicking the can further down the road; to say, “This is bullshit and it’s not enough, we can do better. And if you can’t make it better we’ll smash it up and start over.” Sex, punk-sex if you will, can remind us of where that desire originates. It’s in our bodies, it’s innate and it says something more to us about our human place in the world than simply being on a conveyer belt through a shopping-mall-cum-torture-chamber.

– originally published in ‘SHOWBOAT: PUNK/SEX/BODIES’ (2016), edited by Toby Mott http://bit.ly/2twFApe

#queercore #queer zines #queer punk #punk

8 notes · View notes

courtneytincher · 5 years

Text

For US and Chinese regional officials, economic summit was a chance to heal frayed ties. For the White House, it rang alarm bells.

In May, around 400 governors, mayors, government officials and business figures from the United States and China descended on Lexington, Kentucky.They were there not for the bourbon or the horse races, but for a three-day economic summit for US and Chinese regional leaders, an annual gathering that began in 2011 with the backing of the Obama administration.Eight years on, relations at the national level have been battered by an ever-escalating trade war and have made the forum " the US-China Governors Collaboration Summit " all the more important, say its supporters.But among its detractors this year, according to previously unseen documents obtained by the South China Morning Post and sources familiar with the matter, was the White House.Before this year's summit, the Trump administration raised concerns about the event's courting of Chinese investors and the involvement of an organisation believed to have ties to Beijing's overseas propaganda wing " the Chinese People's Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries (CPAFCC), which co-hosted the conference along with the US National Governors Association (NGA).One email sent between Maryland state government staff members, which was obtained through US Freedom of Information requests, described the White House as "not happy" with the event.A marker of Washington's rising hawkishness against China, White House displeasure with the summit came as US President Donald Trump and his administration remain locked in an expensive trade dispute with Beijing, rocking global markets, eviscerating American agricultural exports and raising consumer prices.But to Kentucky's Republican governor, Matt Bevin, the trade war was a "blip" that would be resolved, he told attendees at the close of the conference, which brought together leaders and deputies from the US states of Washington, Kentucky, Colorado, Tennessee and Michigan; the Chinese provinces of Shaanxi, Jiangxi and Gansu; and the city of Chongqing."When China is strong, it is good for America; when America is strong, it is good for China," said Bevin, adding that suspicion and misunderstandings would vanish "when people talk".Those remarks were somewhat contrary to the current reality of bilateral relations at the national level. They were delivered after more than a year of failed trade talks and Trump's recurring accusations that China's economic rise has come at the expense of the US, which last week saw the president announce fresh tariffs on US$300 billion of Chinese goods. Beijing retaliated on Monday, allowing its currency, the yuan, to fall below seven to the US dollar and halting the purchase of American agricultural products.Kentucky Governor Matt Bevin, whose state played host to the US-China Governors Collaboration Summit in May. Photo: AP alt=Kentucky Governor Matt Bevin, whose state played host to the US-China Governors Collaboration Summit in May. Photo: APReflecting the administration's aggressive strategy regarding China, and the tension such an approach has caused at the local level, internal communications among Maryland government staff indicate that the White House had its concerns about the Kentucky summit before it took place.In one email from April, Maryland Secretary of State John Wobensmith wrote that he had been told by staff at the National Security Council (NSC), the US president's chief advisory body on national security issues, that the White House was "not happy about this event".In his email, Wobensmith said he expected the executive branch not to participate in the summit; ultimately, though, two deputy assistant secretaries attended, plus a video message from the US ambassador to China, Terry Branstad.Emails regarding this year's US-China Governors Collaboration Summit that were acquired through a Freedom of Information request. alt=Emails regarding this year's US-China Governors Collaboration Summit that were acquired through a Freedom of Information request.Among the White House's worries, the Maryland governor's director of federal relations, Tiffany Waddell, wrote in a subsequent email, were the scheduled roundtable sessions for Chinese investors on Opportunity Zones, economically distressed areas around the US where, in order to stimulate growth, investors can enjoy tax breaks.A source familiar with the matter, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that concerns from the White House revolved around whether states should be courting investors from China for the zones, given the increasing scrutiny over Chinese capital flowing into the US under tightening foreign investment regulations.The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), an inter-agency body tasked with screening foreign transactions for national security implications, is currently undergoing an expansion of its powers. Though country-agnostic on paper, the changes are widely regarded as targeting China, which the Trump administration has accused of stealing trade secrets via investments and acquisitions.Officially, there are no limits on whether a foreign entity can make use of the Opportunity Zone tax breaks.Still, after discussions with the White House, summit organisers "scaled back" the breakout sessions, said the person.In a statement, the NGA said it was in "regular contact with the White House and administration officials on a wide range of matters, including the US-China Governors Collaboration Summit"."Concerns from administration officials were limited to a private breakout session," the statement added, "which we took into account in structuring the format and goals for the session."But more than just the investor session, White House concerns extended to the ties between co-host organisation CPAFFC and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).Those concerns were aired directly with the governors association by the National Security Council, a senior US administration official said.Nominally a civic organisation, CPAFFC is believed by both Western observers and the US administration to be a subsidiary " or at least fulfil the mandate " of the CCP's United Front Work Department, a wing of the party that oversees foreign propaganda and influence operations.Though it claims to be non-governmental, CPAFFC is listed on the Chinese foreign ministry's website as one of the country's three primary foreign relations bodies, established in the 1950s to conduct outreach to countries with which China did not have diplomatic relations.About 400 governors, mayors, government officials and business figures gathered for the conference in May in Kentucky. Image: Handout alt=About 400 governors, mayors, government officials and business figures gathered for the conference in May in Kentucky. Image: HandoutAfter a lull in activity in the 1980s as China established official diplomatic ties with many of the world's nations, the association has had a resurgence under the rule of President Xi Jinping, China scholar Anne-Marie Brady wrote in a 2017 paper for the Washington-based Wilson Centre.In a sign of its proximity to the upper echelons of the party, leaders of the association have been traditionally drawn from CCP princeling families, including the current head Li Xiaolin, who is the daughter of former Chinese president Li Xiannian and who attended the summit in Kentucky."It's widely acknowledged by academics and policymakers alike that CPAFFC is a United Front organisation that operates in close coordination with China's ministry of foreign affairs," said the US official, speaking on condition of anonymity.At the governors association's request, the NSC provided a selection of publicly available materials, which included resources to inform members of "certain risks in working with some entities that are Chinese state-sponsored actors", said the official.It is not clear whether the governors association took action based on the information about CPAFFC, which went on to play a prominent and public role in the event.Governor Bevin, who did not respond to requests for comment, said in remarks at the conference that he was grateful for the Chinese association's support. And, according to a CPAFFC press release, he accepted the organisation's invitation to attend the next summit in China.US President Donald Trump remains locked in an expensive trade dispute with Beijing. Photo: AP alt=US President Donald Trump remains locked in an expensive trade dispute with Beijing. Photo: APThere was a "certain naivety" among some US officials to assume that organisations like the CPAFFC were equivalent to the foreign outreach organisations of other countries because they shared a similar outward structure, said John Dotson, an analyst who heads the China Brief at the Jamestown Foundation."They're totally different animals," Dotson said. "And they might think they're dealing with a representative of a civic organisation but they're not. They're actually dealing with people who are functionaries of the Chinese Communist Party, and who are carrying out the marching orders of the Chinese Communist Party."There are differences of opinion among experts as to whether CPAFFC, which did not respond to requests for comment, is officially enshrined under the auspices of the United Front Work Department or is a separate entity tasked with fulfilling the department's mission."From the US government's perspective, the distinction is irrelevant," said the administration official.Though he emphasised that in no way did he support the prohibition of such exchanges, Dotson pointed to a heightened risk among officials from trade-war-stricken regions to delude themselves "more than they otherwise might to the identity of the organisations that they're dealing with".One American attendee, however, said he was not troubled by the potential ties between CPAFFC and the CCP because of the open role China played in helping organise the conference.While acknowledging the "blurry" lines between China's civic organisations and government, Washington state's lieutenant governor, Cyrus Habib, said the likely links were not a matter of concern, since Beijing's involvement was evident by the attendance of local officials."If the friendship association is wrapped up with the government, so too is the governor of Hunan province," Habib said. "We already knew that we were having a meeting with representatives of the regime."Another attendee, former Missouri governor Bob Holden, understood the administration's concerns about CPAFFC's involvement but said the world's "rules of engagement" were changing.The situation calls for the US to be flexible in how it interacts with other countries in order to preserve cultural ties, said Holden, who served as the Midwestern state's Democratic governor from 2001 to 2005."We've got to do what's in our self-interest to protect our sovereignty and our way of life, but at the same time we've got to understand the issues of other countries that may or may not be in line with us politically in understanding those relationships," said Holden, who now heads the US Heartland China Association.When asked recently about the participation of CCP-tied interlocutors in subnational relations, the Democratic governor of Oregon, Kate Brown, who is a member of the NGA but did not attend this year's summit, said she decided which organisations to engage with "depending upon their philosophies".Brown did attend the summit in 2015, also co-hosted by CPAFFC.Oregon Governor Kate Brown is a member of the National Governors Association but did not attend the China-focused event in Kentucky. Photo: AP alt=Oregon Governor Kate Brown is a member of the National Governors Association but did not attend the China-focused event in Kentucky. Photo: APFrom within China, the response to the summit in Kentucky was resoundingly positive, with the foreign ministry lauding the event as proof that "the dialogue and cooperation yearned for by the US and China was the trend of the times".Xin Qiang, a professor at Fudan University's Center for American Studies in Shanghai, said Beijing believed such people-to-people exchanges "avoid disruption between the two states and slow down the deterioration of bilateral relations".Such events also conformed to Beijing's belief that "the tough and confrontational policy towards China advocated by Washington politicians is not welcomed and supported by US local governments, who regard China as more an opportunity than a threat," Xin said.Certainly, US governors and local leaders have been generally disapproving of Trump's use of tariffs as a negotiating tool, citing increased prices for consumers and plummeting exports as a result of retaliatory measures by Beijing."What is happening nationally has had a chilling effect on commodity prices and our ability to sell goods to China," said Brown, the Oregon governor.Her state bucks the national trend by enjoying a goods surplus with China, with US$4.74 billion of exports topping its US$3.33 billion of imports from the country in 2018.Speaking at a recent Brookings Institution event on subnational relations between the US and China, Brown said that other non-tariff barriers like lengthened inspection processes at Chinese ports were having a "killer impact" on Oregon's fresh produce exports.Beyond high-profile events like May's governors summit, Chinese officials have also moved behind the scenes to call on governors to lobby for a more moderate approach from the Trump administration.After the president imposed the first tranche of tariffs on US$34 billion of Chinese goods in July last year, Hong Lei, China's consul general in Chicago, wrote to Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds asking her to "exert your influence and work with us to bring US-China economic and trade cooperation back to a healthy track"."Escalating trade restrictions on China will not force China to recoil, but will only incur China's countermeasures," Hong warned in the letter, obtained through a US Freedom of Information request.In the face of such escalation, which has driven tensions on a number of fronts beyond trade, many agree that new strategies to navigate the bilateral relationship are needed, said Cheng Li, director of the Brookings Institution's John L Thornton China Centre."But few agree on what those should be," Li said at the think tank's recent event on US-China relations at the regional level.Suggesting that a renewed focus on subnational relations should be a component of any new approach, Li said: "Washington may not be reflective of the entire country, just as Beijing does not reflect all of China."US-China relations are too important to be decided exclusively within the Beltway."This article originally appeared in the South China Morning Post (SCMP), the most authoritative voice reporting on China and Asia for more than a century. For more SCMP stories, please explore the SCMP app or visit the SCMP's Facebook and Twitter pages. Copyright © 2019 South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved. Copyright (c) 2019. South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.

from Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines

August 09, 2019 at 10:30AM via IFTTT

#Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines

0 notes