#urban myths (2017-2020)

[masterroadtripper]

Con O'Neill as Tony in Urban Myths (2018) ↳ Episode 2x02, Backstage at Live Aid

(Remaining screenshots below cut)

"you are asking me to play god in the atheist world of physics!" - Tony

[coochiequeens]

“We want you to understand what it is to be our kind of outcast—but also to understand our kind of love, to hunger for your own sex. Because unless you understand this, you will continue to look at us with uncomprehending eyes, fake liberal smiles; you will be incapable of loving us.”

– Martha Shelley, “Gay Is Good,” Rat (February 24, 1970), reprinted in Out of the Closets: Voices of Gay Liberation, edited by Karla Jay and Allen Young (1972/1992)

Women Are Human shares with our readers the following excerpt from Martha Shelley’s essay “An Honest History” on the historical negationism around lesbian and gay history since the Stonewall uprising. Her essay appears in the anthology Not Dead Yet: Feminism, Passion, and Women’s Liberation, published this past year by Spinifex Press. Martha Shelley was born in Brooklyn, NY, in 1943. She organized the first gay protest march that took place one month after Stonewall, and was a founder of the Gay Liberation Front. She wrote for the GLF’s newspaper, Come Out! and RAT newspaper after the women’s takeover, as well as producing the first lesbian radio show in NYC, Lesbian Nation. In 1974, she moved to California and worked with the Women’s Press Collective until it dissolved. After that she devoted herself to research and writing, and co-parented two sets of children. Currently she lives with her wife Sylvia Allen in Portland, OR, where they run a small urban farm. She is the author of four poetry collections, numerous essays and short stories, and a trilogy of historical fiction about the life of Jezebel, Queen of Israel. Her most recent work can be found at https://ebisupublications.com. For other helpful resources on Shelley’s life and work, see the following:

Sara Toce, “Martha Shelley Reflects on Stonewall, Writing, and Activism,” Windy City Times, May 23, 2012.

Julia Diana Robertson, “Remembering Stormé—The Black Butch Lesbian Who Started the Stonewall Revolution,” The Velvet Chronicle, June 4, 2017.

Julia Diana Robertson, “Honoring a Queen—The Marsha Johnson Story,” The Velvet Chronicle, March 22, 2019.

Martha Shelley, “Lies, Myths, and Stonewall,” Ebisu Publications, July 21, 2019.

Julia Diana Robertson, “Martha Shelley—The Lesbian Who Proposed a Unified Front After Stonewall,” The Velvet Chronicle, August 31, 2020.

An honest history—truth about the past, whether distant or recent—is essential.

[…]

In recent years, I’ve seen the erasure of lesbian and gay activists. And all the work we did for gay liberation is credited to two people: Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P Johnson. Even statues are planned to be erected in honor of them in New York. These two are now hailed for having organized the Stonewall Riot and the GLF and even the historic gay occupation of Weinstein Hall at New York University in protest against the administration’s homophobia. All of this is false. I know, because I and the women and men I worked with were there. Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P Johnson are today widely celebrated as transgender people of color. However, Rivera identified as a transvestite male, not as transgender. Malcolm, a.k.a. Marsha Johnson, was a self-proclaimed gay man, and drag queen, up until his death in 1992. Johnson deserves to be honored with respect and integrity, not rebranded as a ‘trans-woman’ postmortem. Johnson was probably transgender, though there was no such terminology at the time. Toward the end of his life he was considering raising funds to go abroad for what was then called a sex-change surgery. Nobody led the Stonewall Riots. It was a spontaneous uprising. Neither Rivera nor Johnson appeared on the scene until the riots were well underway. Neither Johnson nor Rivera attended any of the early meetings of GLF in July 1969. I was one of the founders, along with five other women and 13 men. Ellen Broidy and I were among those who called for the occupation of Weinstein Hall in September 1970. Johnson and Rivera were not present. They joined in after a group of us had already entered the building, and it was after the occupation that I first noticed them at GLF meetings. They were inspired by our Weinstein Hall action to start a new group, Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries (STAR). This was the important work they did and how they should be remembered. Through STAR, Rivera and Johnson labored on behalf of homeless street queens who, like themselves, often had to support themselves through prostitution, often strove to overcome drug addiction, and often found themselves in trouble with the law. They provided shelter and counseling, and visited those in prison. They were heroes in their own right. But the false legends have been widely promulgated in the international press, and give them credit for the work of hundreds of others, and never even mention what they actually accomplished. The city of New York has not built any statues to any of us lesbians or any of the gay men who were involved in GLF. Just those two are the heroes. Stormé DeLarverie, who is considered responsible for starting the first Stonewall Riot on June 28, 1969, after the crowd reacted when she was arrested by police, was a woman of color and a butch lesbian. She doesn’t get a statue either.

These smaller fabrications are perhaps not as dangerous as the ones that lead us into war. But what is dangerous is that, by depicting one or two chosen individuals as great leaders and expunging the rest of us from public memory, they strip us all of the knowledge that we ordinary human beings have made history and can do so again. Excerpted from “An Honest History” by Martha Shelley, from Not Dead Yet: Feminism, Passion, and Women’s Liberation, edited by Renate Klein and Susan Hawthorne, pp. 378-380. Copyright © 2021 by Martha Shelley. Reprinted by permission of Spinifex Press.

“ I am still perplexed about the transsexual issue. On the one hand, it is clearly subsumed under the right to control your own body. On the other, the essence of GLF thought (and where it intersected with feminist thought) was that we had the right to be anything we wanted with the bodies we had. That we could reclaim our bodies from a society that denigrated them, and learn to love them. That the whole gamut of human expression—clothing, gesture, emotion, sexuality—was permitted to anyone. Now it seems that there is considerable social pressure for young lesbians who would have been butch in the old days to alter their bodies, chemically and surgically, and become men. (I don’t know whether effeminate men feel the same pressure.) Nobody knows what the long-term consequences of these medical interventions will be”. – Martha Shelley, “Our Passion Shook the World,” Smash the Church, Smash the State! The Early Years of Gay Liberation, edited by Tommi Avicolli Mecca (2009)

[abolitioncommunism]

“Congressional Democrats want to make it easier to identify and prosecute police misconduct; Joe Biden wants to give police departments $300 million. But efforts to solve police violence through liberal reforms like these have failed for nearly a century.

Enough. We can’t reform the police. The only way to diminish police violence is to reduce contact between the public and the police.

There is not a single era in United States history in which the police were not a force of violence against black people. Policing in the South emerged from the slave patrols in the 1700 and 1800s that caught and returned runaway slaves. In the North, the first municipal police departments in the mid-1800s helped quash labor strikes and riots against the rich. Everywhere, they have suppressed marginalized populations to protect the status quo.

So when you see a police officer pressing his knee into a black man’s neck until he dies, that’s the logical result of policing in America. When a police officer brutalizes a black person, he is doing what he sees as his job.

Now two weeks of nationwide protests have led some to call for defunding the police, while others argue that doing so would make us less safe.

The first thing to point out is that police officers don’t do what you think they do. They spend most of their time responding to noise complaints, issuing parking and traffic citations, and dealing with other noncriminal issues. We’ve been taught to think they “catch the bad guys; they chase the bank robbers; they find the serial killers,” said Alex Vitale, the coordinator of the Policing and Social Justice Project at Brooklyn College, in an interview with Jacobin. But this is “a big myth,” he said. “The vast majority of police officers make one felony arrest a year. If they make two, they’re cop of the month.”

We can’t simply change their job descriptions to focus on the worst of the worst criminals. That’s not what they are set up to do.

Second, a “safe” world is not one in which the police keep black and other marginalized people in check through threats of arrest, incarceration, violence and death.

I’ve been advocating the abolition of the police for years. Regardless of your view on police power — whether you want to get rid of the police or simply to make them less violent — here’s an immediate demand we can all make: Cut the number of police in half and cut their budget in half. Fewer police officers equals fewer opportunities for them to brutalize and kill people. The idea is gaining traction in Minneapolis, Dallas, Los Angeles and other cities.

History is instructive, not because it offers us a blueprint for how to act in the present but because it can help us ask better questions for the future.

The Lexow Committee undertook the first major investigation into police misconduct in New York City in 1894. At the time, the most common complaint against the police was about “clubbing” — “the routine bludgeoning of citizens by patrolmen armed with nightsticks or blackjacks,” as the historian Marilynn Johnson has written.

The Wickersham Commission, convened to study the criminal justice system and examine the problem of Prohibition enforcement, offered a scathing indictment in 1931, including evidence of brutal interrogation strategies. It put the blame on a lack of professionalism among the police.

After the 1967 urban uprisings, the Kerner Commission found that “police actions were ‘final’ incidents before the outbreak of violence in 12 of the 24 surveyed disorders.” Its report listed a now-familiar set of recommendations, like working to build “community support for law enforcement” and reviewing police operations “in the ghetto, to ensure proper conduct by police officers.”

These commissions didn’t stop the violence; they just served as a kind of counterinsurgent function each time police violence led to protests. Calls for similar reforms were trotted out in response to the brutal police beating of Rodney King in 1991 and the rebellion that followed, and again after the killings of Michael Brown and Eric Garner. The final report of the Obama administration’s President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing resulted in procedural tweaks like implicit-bias training, police-community listening sessions, slight alterations of use-of-force policies and systems to identify potentially problematic officers early on.

But even a member of the task force, Tracey Meares, noted in 2017, “policing as we know it must be abolished before it can be transformed.”

The philosophy undergirding these reforms is that more rules will mean less violence. But police officers break rules all the time. Look what has happened over the past few weeks — police officers slashing tires, shoving old men on camera, and arresting and injuring journalists and protesters. These officers are not worried about repercussions any more than Daniel Pantaleo, the former New York City police officer whose chokehold led to Eric Garner’s death; he waved to a camera filming the incident. He knew that the police union would back him up and he was right. He stayed on the job for five more years.

Minneapolis had instituted many of these “best practices” but failed to remove Derek Chauvin from the force despite 17 misconduct complaints over nearly two decades, culminating in the entire world watching as he knelt on George Floyd’s neck for almost nine minutes.

Why on earth would we think the same reforms would work now? We need to change our demands. The surest way of reducing police violence is to reduce the power of the police, by cutting budgets and the number of officers.

But don’t get me wrong. We are not abandoning our communities to violence. We don’t want to just close police departments. We want to make them obsolete.

We should redirect the billions that now go to police departments toward providing health care, housing, education and good jobs. If we did this, there would be less need for the police in the first place.

We can build other ways of responding to harms in our society. Trained “community care workers” could do mental-health checks if someone needs help. Towns could use restorative-justice models instead of throwing people in prison.

What about rape? The current approach hasn’t ended it. In fact most rapists never see the inside of a courtroom. Two-thirds of people who experience sexual violence never report it to anyone. Those who file police reports are often dissatisfied with the response. Additionally, police officers themselves commit sexual assault alarmingly often. A study in 2010 found that sexual misconduct was the second most frequently reported form of police misconduct. In 2015, The Buffalo News found that an officer was caught for sexual misconduct every five days.

When people, especially white people, consider a world without the police, they envision a society as violent as our current one, merely without law enforcement — and they shudder. As a society, we have been so indoctrinated with the idea that we solve problems by policing and caging people that many cannot imagine anything other than prisons and the police as solutions to violence and harm.

People like me who want to abolish prisons and police, however, have a vision of a different society, built on cooperation instead of individualism, on mutual aid instead of self-preservation. What would the country look like if it had billions of extra dollars to spend on housing, food and education for all? This change in society wouldn’t happen immediately, but the protests show that many people are ready to embrace a different vision of safety and justice.

When the streets calm and people suggest once again that we hire more black police officers or create more civilian review boards, I hope that we remember all the times those efforts have failed.”

[the-inner-weebs]

K-Drama Recommendation Masterlist

RICH GUY POOR GIRL

Coffee Prince (2007) 커피프린스 1호점 ~

Genre: Food/Friendship/Comedy/Romance/Drama

𝐆𝗼𝐧𝐠 𝐘𝗼𝗼 ~ Choi Han Gyul

𝐘𝗼𝗼𝐧 𝐄𝐮𝐧 𝐇𝐲𝐞 ~ Go Eun Chan

Choi Han Gyul is the grandson of chairwoman Bang of Dong-in Foods, a company that has a thriving coffee business. He has never had a job and does not care for responsibility. Han Gyul is hung up on his first love, Han Yoo Joo, who only sees him as a friend.

Go Eun Chan is a 24-year-old tomboy who is often mistaken for a guy. Her father died when she was 16 years old and since then she has taken over as the breadwinner in her family.

When Han Kyul and Eun Chan meet, he, not knowing that she is a girl, decides to hire her to pretend to be his gay lover so that he can escape the blind dates arranged by his grandmother. After getting an ultimatum from his grandmother, Han Gyul takes over a rundown old coffee shop, later renamed "Coffee Prince," to prove that he's capable, both to his grandmother and to Yoo Joo. In order to attract female customers, he only hires good-looking male employees. Eun Chan, desperate for money, continues to hide her gender to get a job at Coffee Prince.

Director: Lee Yoon Jung

Secret Garden (2010) 시크릿 가든 ~

Genre: Comedy/Romance/Drama/Melodramatic/Supernatural

𝐇𝐲𝐮𝐧 𝐁𝐢𝐧 ~ Kim Joo Won

𝐇𝐚 𝐉𝐢 𝐖𝗼𝐧 ~ Gil Ra Im

The drama tells the story of Kim Joo Won, an arrogant and eccentric CEO who maintains the image of seeming perfection, and Gil Ra Im, a poor and humble stuntwoman whose beauty and body are the object of envy amongst top actresses. Their accidental meeting, when Joo Won mistakes Ra Im for actress Park Chae Rin, marks the beginning of a tense, bickering relationship, through which Joo Won tries to hide a growing attraction to Ra Im that both confuses and disturbs him. To complicate matters further, a strange sequence of events results in them swapping bodies.

Director: Kwon Hyuk Chan/Shin Woo Cheol

Personal Taste  (2010)  개인의 취향 ~

Genre: Comedy/Romance

𝐋𝐞𝐞 𝐌𝐢𝐧 𝐇𝗼 ~ Jeon Jin Ho

𝐒𝗼𝐧 𝐘𝐞 𝐉𝐢𝐧 ~ Park Gae In

Jeon Jin Ho is a straight guy who is mistaken as gay when he applies to become Park Gae In's roommate. His hobbies include organization and ironing, and he's known for his stoic poker face. He's a stickler for cleanliness, but he also has a talent for figuring out a women's feelings. Gae In is very trusting even though she has a habit of being betrayed. However, that doesn't stop her from giving people the benefit of doubt and Jin Ho is no different. How will Gae In react when she finds out that her gay roommate is not actually gay at all and that he has fallen for her?

Director: Song Hyung Suk/Noh Jong Chan

What’s WrongWith Secretay Kim (2018) 김비서가 왜 그럴까 ~ 

Genre: Friendship/ Business/Comedy/Romance

Park Min Young ~ Kim Mi So

Park Seo Joon ~ Lee Young Joon

The series revolves around the narcissistic Lee Young Joon, the vice president of a company run by his family. He is very self-absorbed and thinks highly of himself, so much that he barely acknowledges the people around him. Lee Young Joon has a capable and patient secretary Kim Mi So who has remained by his side and worked diligently for 9 years without any romantic involvement. However, Mi So now wants to set her life & focus on herself so when she decides to resign from her job, hilarious misunderstandings ensue. After 9 years of their strictly-workplace relationship, can it now develop in something more?

Director: Park Joon Hwa

SUPERNATURAL

Goblin (2016) 도깨비 ~ 

Genre: Comedy/Romance/Fantasy/Melodrama/Supernatural

Gong Yoo ~ Kim Shin

Kim Go Eun ~ Ji Eun Tak

Kim Shin was once an unbeatable general in Goryeo's military who died a tragic death. He now possesses immortality but is tired of living while everyone else around him dies. For 900 years, Kim Shin has searched for his bride, a mortal who can pull out the sword and end his life. One day, he encounters Ji Eun Tak, a positive, upbeat high school student who can see the dead and has gone through tragic events, yet still stays strong. She claims to be the Goblin's bride who can end his immortal life, but what appears to be an easy task, only gets complicated, as the two fall in love.

Director: Lee Eung Bok

Moorim School (2016) 무림학교 ~

Genre:Action/Romance/School/Drama/Martial Arts/Fantasy

𝐋𝐞𝐞 𝐇𝐲𝐮𝐧𝐖𝗼𝗼 ~ Yoon Shi Woo

𝐇𝗼𝐧𝐠 𝐁𝐢𝐧 ~ Wang Chi Ang

𝐒𝐞𝗼 𝐘𝐞 𝐉𝐢 ~ Shim Soon Duk

𝐉𝐮𝐧𝐠 𝐘𝗼𝗼 𝐉𝐢𝐧 ~ Hwang Sun Ah

The Moorim School is a hidden school that can only be seen by special individuals, it isn't focused solely on high academic scores but on physical abilities. The school teaches its students great virtues which include honesty, faith, sacrifice, and communication. The teachers and students at the school come from different countries and each has their own stories. Everything is very extraordinary and normal until a student who doesn't seem to fill the role wanders into the academy and changes the destiny of all the students.

Director: Lee So Yeon

Strong Woman Do Bong Soon (2017) 힘쎈여자 도봉순 ~

Genre: Action/Thriller/Comedy/Romance/Drama/Supernatural

Park Bo Young ~ Do Bong Soon

Park Hyung Shik ~ Ahn Min Hyuk

Ji Soo ~ In Gook Doo

Do Bong Soon is a petite, unemployed woman who is honest and kind. She appears little and sweet on the outside, but she is in fact very, very strong. In her family, for generations the women have been gifted Herculean strength to use for the greater good. If abused, however, their power will be taken away. Whilst standing up for herself after gang members bully her, she finds herself approached by Ahn Min Hyuk, the handsome and somewhat childish CEO of Ainsoft, a gaming company. Ahn Min Hyuk, who holds a great distrust towards the police, witnessed the whole exchange of Bong Soon's superhuman strength, and now wants to employ her as a bodyguard after being threatened by an unknown enemy. Min Hyuk falls in love with super-strong Bong Soon at first sight, but there's a catch. Bong Soon has eyes for someone else; police officer and childhood friend, In Guk Doo, whom she has known since high school. When chaos ensues after a series of kidnappings in Do Bong Soon's hometown of Dobong-dong, Dobong-gu, Bong Soon must decide whether to use her strength and stand up to evil, or play it safe and keep her powers hidden from the world. Combined with the love triangle she faces between In Guk Doo and Ahn Min Hyuk, as well as having to keep Min Hyuk safe, Bong Soon's life is thrown into turmoil. Can she use her strength for the greater good, or will it prove in the end to be too much?

Director: Lee Hyung Min

He is Psychometric (2019) 사이코메트리 그녀석 ~

Genre: Thriller/Mystery/Comedy/Romance/Drama/Fantasy

𝐏𝐚𝐫𝐤 𝐉𝐢𝐧 𝐘𝗼𝐮𝐧𝐠 ~ Lee Ahn

𝐒𝐡𝐢𝐧 𝐘𝐞 𝐄𝐮𝐧 ~ Yoon Jae In

𝐊𝐢𝗺 𝐊𝐰𝗼𝐧 ~ Kang Sung Mo

After losing his parents in a fire, Lee Ahn acquires the power of psychometry, the ability to read a person or an object's past through physical contact, and he decides to use it to take bad people down. While he does not know how to control his power yet, he meets Yoon Jae In who tries her best to hide her painful secrets. Together with his foster guardian, prosecutor Kang Seong Mo, and the latter's colleague, investigator Eun Ji Soo, they team up to solve an elusive case that has been haunting the lives of Ahn, Sung-Mo, and Jae In. The case revolves around the life of prosecutor Kang his mother and father who were the main cause of the fire. Jae In and Lee Ahn heal each other through their past present and future and find the culprit.

Director: Kim Byung Soo

Memorist (2020) 메모리��트  ~

Genre: Action/Thriller/Mystery/Crime/Supernatural

Yoo Seung Ho ~ Dong Baek

Lee Se Young ~ Han Sun Mi

Dong Baek has an extraordinary ability. He can peer into the memories of whoever he touches. With his supernatural power, get it done attitude, and eye-pleasing looks, he is fervently revered worldwide as a superstar detective. However, when his punches meet with suspects before words, he can be a bit of a headache to his comrades. Starting from the age of twenty, Han Sun Mi is the youngest to have passed the bar exam, obtain a doctorate in criminal psychology, and become a senior superintendent in the police force. Having solved five cold cases that even a detective with supernatural powers couldn't do, she is a genius profiler. She has a secret that drives her to do what she does. These two highly-skilled professionals meet their match—a serial killer with abilities that transcend theirs combined. It's going to be a fight worth watching.

Director: So Jae Hyun, Kim Hwi

Tale of the Nine-Tailed (2020) 구미호뎐 ~

Genre:Action/Suspense/Thriller/Horror/Romance/Fantasy

Lee Dong Wook ~ Lee Yeon

Jo Bo Ah ~ Nam Ji Ah

The mythical nine-tailed fox, or gumiho, Lee Yeon had to settle in the city many centuries ago. Able to transform into human form, he eradicates supernatural beings that threaten the mortal world. His real aim is to find the reincarnation of his lost first love.

The talented television producer Nam Ji Ah works in a show that features urban myths. In the past, her parents were involved in a mysterious car accident and disappeared, and she suspects that Lee Yeon might be connected with this accident.

The half-brother to Lee Yeon is the captivating Lee Rang.  Despite being half-human himself,  he harbors a deep-seated contempt for all people. For sport,  he will unleash his seductive prowess upon his human-du-jour,  by promising to grant them their wishes, only to trick them into paying a hefty price for their earthly desires.

Director: Kang Shin Hyo

PSYCHOLOGICAL

Heal Me Kill Me (2015) 킬미힐미 ~

Genre: Psychological/Comedy/Romance/Drama

Ji Sung ~ Cha Do Hyun

Hwang Jung Eum ~ Oh Ri Jin

A traumatic childhood experience leaves Cha Do Hyeon, suffering from memory loss and dissociation. The latter has resulted in the creation of seven distinct personalities. Wanting to regain control over his life, he asks Oh Ri Jin, a first-year psychiatric resident, to help him, but she eventually falls in love with one of his personalities. Ri Jin’s twin brother, Oh Ri On, a famous mystery novelist, investigates Do Hyeon and his family.

Director: Kim Jin Man, Kim Dae Jin

It’s Okay to Not Be Okay (2020) 사이코지만 괜찮아 ~

Genre: Psychological/Comedy/Romance/Drama/Family

𝐊𝐢𝗺 𝐒𝗼𝗼 𝐇𝐲𝐮𝐧 ~ Moon Gang Tae

𝐒𝐞𝗼 𝐘𝐞 𝐉𝐢 ~ Ko Moon Young

𝐎𝐡 𝐉𝐮𝐧𝐠 𝐒𝐞 ~ Moon Sang Tae

The story of a community health worker at a psychiatric ward who lives on 1.8 million won (approximately $1,520) a month and a storybook writer suffering from an antisocial personality disorder. A man who denies love and a woman who doesn’t know love defy fate and fall in love, finding their souls and identities in the process.

Moon Gang Tae is a community health worker at a psychiatric ward who was blessed with everything including a great body, smarts, ability to sympathize with others, patience, ability to react quickly, stamina, and more. Meanwhile, Ko Moon Young is a popular writer of children’s literature, but she is extremely selfish, arrogant, and rude.

Director: Park Shin Woo/Jung Dong Yoon

MEDICAL

Emergency Couple (2014) 응급남녀 ~ 

Genre: Comedy/Romance/Drama/Medical

𝐒𝗼𝐧𝐠 𝐉𝐢 𝐇𝐲𝗼 ~ Oh Jin Hee

𝐂𝐡𝗼𝐢 𝐉𝐢𝐧 𝐇𝐲𝐮𝐤 ~ Oh Chang Min

𝐋𝐞𝐞 𝐏𝐢𝐥 𝐌𝗼 ~ Gook Chun Soo

Jin-Hee led a satisfying life as a dietitian. She then met medical school student Chang-Min. Despite his wealthy family's strong opposition, Jin-Hee and Chang-Min decided to get married. Chang-Min's family is full of doctors. Chang-Min though gave up his medical internship and began working as a pharmaceutical salesman. Their marriage life was not happy. Chang-Min's family looked down on Jin-Hee and even Chang-Min seemed to change. Chang-Min began to think terribly of Jin-Hee and they finally divorced. After their divorce, Jin-Hee became a medical student and now works as an intern. Chang-Min also graduated from medical school and begins to work as an intern. One day, they meet in the emergency room of a hospital where they will both work together.

Director: Kim Chul Gyu

Doctor Stranger (2014) 닥터 이방인 ~ 

Genre: Thriller/Romance/Drama/Medical

𝐋𝐞𝐞 𝐉𝗼𝐧𝐠 𝐒𝐮𝐤 ~ Park Hoon

𝐉𝐢𝐧 𝐒𝐞 𝐘𝐞𝗼𝐧 ~ Song Jae Hee

𝐊𝐚𝐧𝐠 𝐒𝗼 𝐑𝐚 ~ Oh Soo Hyun

𝐏𝐚𝐫𝐤 𝐇𝐚𝐞 𝐉𝐢𝐧 ~ Han Jae Joon

As a child, Park Hoon and his father were kidnapped by North Korea. In North Korea, he was trained to become a doctor by his father who was already a doctor. Park Hoon became a genius-like heart surgeon. He then flees to South Korea. Park Hoon begins to work as a doctor in South Korea's top hospital Myeongwoo University Hospital, but he feels like a complete outsider. To bring his love from North Korea, he does anything to make money.

Director: Hong Jong Chan/Jin Hyeok

Blood (2015) 블러드 ~

Genre: Action/Vampire/Romance/Drama/Medical/Supernatural

𝐀𝐡𝐧 𝐉𝐚𝐞 𝐇𝐲𝐮𝐧 ~ Park Ji Sang

𝐆𝐮 𝐇𝐲𝐞 𝐒𝐞𝗼𝐧 ~ Yoo Ri Ta

Park Ji Sang is a doctor specializing in hepato-pancreato-biliary surgery in the best cancer research hospital in the country. He is also a vampire. Despite seeming cold and unfeeling, Ji Sang masks his soft heart and inner pain and yearns for closeness with people. He believes very strongly in the sanctity of human life and suppresses his thirst for blood to treat terminally ill patients and save lives.

Among his colleagues is Yoo Ri Ta, a hotshot physician who entered medical school at the age of 17 and is also the niece of the chaebol group chairman who owns the hospital. Ri Ta is highly capable but snooty and prideful, yet Ji Sang finds himself falling for her. He also gets drawn into a conflict between good and evil as he encounters Lee Jae Wook, a two-faced hospital chief who gains everyone's trust with his gentle demeanor but inwardly harbors a dangerous ambition for power and a talent for cruelty.

Director: Lee Jae Hoo/Ki Min Soo

D-Day (2015) 디데이 ~ 

Genre: Romance/Drama/Medical

Kim Young Kwang ~ Dr. Lee Hae Sun

Jung So Min ~ Dr. Jung Ddol M

An unprecedented 6.5-magnitude earthquake has struck Seoul, destroying roads and buildings, and preventing ambulances from reaching victims. Woefully unprepared for such a massive disaster, Korea can only watch the desperate situation and listen to the pleading cries for help. Hae Sung, a competent surgeon, can’t resist doing everything he can to help the injured people during the emergency. This upsets his hospital and they put him on a blacklist, as his benevolent help is against the hospital's profit. Ddol Mi, beautiful and ambitious, chased money and fame as a doctor, but now wants to become a truly compassionate doctor after meeting Hae Sung. Woo Jin has been building a successful career as Korea’s rising doctor, but secretly, he truly cares about being a genuine doctor, saving the lives of the sick. These three characters team up to rush into emergencies, holding onto hope in the most desperate situations, and taking all sorts of risks for the sake of saving lives.

Director: Jang Yong Woo

Hospital Ship (2017) 병원선 ~

Genre: Romance/Drama/Medical

Ha Ji Won ~ Song Eun Jae

Kang Min Hyuk ~ Kwak Hyun

Lee Seo Won ~ Kim Jae Gul

Army doctors board a hospital ship, which is a floating hospital that serves people who live on remote islands. But were these doctors interested in helping underprivileged people for free? Not at all. There is the non-army doctor Eun Jae, a cold perfectionist surgeon whose fast-track career was derailed. Kwak Hyun who practices internal medicine is the first army doctor to volunteer for duty on the hospital ship. Then there is the irritating Jae Geol, an oriental medicine doctor who drew the short straw and now has to serve on the hospital ship. A bunch of doctors with different backgrounds finds themselves afloat at sea. They are too old to be called youthful doctors as they are all in their thirties. Though they have skills obtained through long years of studying in medical school, their hearts and souls are barren. This is a coming-of-age story about doctors who have experienced setbacks in life that they are trying to bounce back from while they learn how to be a compassionate doctor and pursue fulfilling lives.

Director: Park Jae Bum, Kim Sang Woo

Doctor John (2019) 의사 요한 ~

Genre: Mystery/Comedy/Romance/Life/Drama/Medical

Ji Sung ~ Cha Yo Han

Lee Se Young ~ Kang Shi Young

“Doctor John” is a new medical drama about doctors specializing in pain management. In a refreshing take on the genre, “Doctor John” will portray the doctors’ search for the cause of their patients’ mysterious pain as a thrilling chase, almost like a detective hunting down the perpetrator behind an unsolved crime. 

Cha Yo Han is a genius anesthesiologist, who is also the youngest professor at his medical school. The brilliant doctor goes by the nickname “10 Seconds,” referring to his ability to figure out his patients in the 10 seconds that it takes for them to enter an examination room and walk to their seats.

Kang Shi Young is a legendary anesthesiologist, who was always at the top of her class throughout medical school. The talented doctor inherited her skills from her cool-headed, rational mother, while she inherited her empathy, listening skills, and warm bedside manner from her father.

Director: Jo Soo Won

ROMANCE COMEDY

Pinocchio (2014) 피노키오 ~

Genre: Thriller/Mystery/Comedy/Romance/Melodrama

Lee Jong Suk ~ Choi Dal Po 

Park Shin Hye ~ Choi In Ha

The idealistic Choi In Ha has her work cut out for her when she becomes a broadcast journalist, especially when she suffers from a condition known as “Pinocchio syndrome,” which makes her break out into hiccups whenever she tells a lie. Her rookie colleagues include Choi Dal Po, whose shabby appearance masks his true eloquence and sharp memory; Seo Bum Jo, a wealthy heir who has had everything handed to him in life; and Yoon Yoo Rae, whose fangirl knowledge comes in handy in covering the news. The 20-something newbie reporters pursue justice as they try to discover themselves in the process.

Director: Jo Soo Won

I am Not a Robot (2017) 로봇이 아니야 ~ 

Genre: Friendship/Comedy/Romance/Drama/Sci-Fi

𝐘𝗼𝗼 𝐒𝐞𝐮𝐧𝐠 𝐇𝗼 ~ Kim Min Kyu

𝐂𝐡𝐚𝐞 𝐒𝗼𝗼 𝐁𝐢𝐧 ~ Jo Ji Ah

𝐔𝐡𝗺 𝐊𝐢 𝐉𝗼𝗼𝐧 ~ Hong Baek Gyun

Kim Min Kyu is the largest shareholder of a financial company. He suffers from a "human allergy", preventing him from normal interactions with other people. He becomes interested in a robotic project named Aji-3 created by the Santa Maria robotic team. The team is headed by Hong Baek Gyun,  inventor of Aji-3 and world-renowned robotics professor. He modeled Aji-3 after his ex-girlfriend, Jo Ji Ah, a struggling inventor that also works as a personal shopper to make ends meet.  Just when Kim Min Kyu wants to test the robot, an accident causes the malfunction of the robot's battery. Hong Baek Gyun begs Jo Ji Ah to take the place of Aji-3 and pretend to be the robot so they can get funding from Kim Min Kyu. But, Aji-3 becomes the closest thing that the lonely Min-Kyu has to real contact with another person.

Director: Jeong Dae Yun

My Shy Boss (2017) 내성적임보다 ~

Genre: Business/Comedy/Romance/Drama/Melodrama

𝐘𝐞𝗼𝐧 𝐖𝗼𝗼 𝐉𝐢𝐧 ~ Eun Hwan Ki

𝐏𝐚𝐫𝐤 𝐇𝐲𝐞 𝐒𝗼𝗼 ~ Chae Ro Woon

When a young, energetic employee joins a public relations firm with an introverted and severely misunderstood boss, she makes it her life’s mission to show the world who he really is.

Eun Hwan Ki is the boss at a PR company. He is really shy. So shy that even his employees don't know him that well. He prefers to hide in his office. Everyone thinks he is a cold, prickly, arrogant grouch. They call him the "Silent Monster".

Chae Ro Woon is a recent hire at the same company. She is energetic, bubbly, loves to be the center of attention, and always has something to say. The exact opposite of her boss, who she seems to have an old grudge against. Her goal in life is: to expose the big boss man for who he really is and take her revenge.

The same company also employs Kang Woo Il, co-boss at the company. He, unlike his partner, is warm, sensitive, and well-liked.

Eun Yi Soo is a chaebol heiress who has been engaged for three long years.

Director: Song Hyun Wook

Thirty But Seventeen(2018) 서른이지만 열일곱입니다 ~

Genre: Friendship/Music/Coemdy/Romance/Life/Drama/Family

Shin Hye Sun ~ Woo Seo Ri

Yang Se Jong ~ Gong Woo Jin

Woo Seo Ri, a violin prodigy at 17 who was about to study in Germany, got into a bus accident and fell into a coma waking up 13 years later. Mentally she is still only 17, while physically she is now 30.

Due to a trauma he experienced 13 years before, Gong Woo Jin does not want to have a relationship with others.

This series is about a man and a woman whose lives in their own ways essentially stopped when they were 17. Together, they use all their might to try and open the door to the happiness that they once thought had been closed to them.

Director: Jo Soo Won

Romance is a Bonus Book (2019) 로맨스는 별책부록 ~

Genre: Frienship/Business/Comedy/Romance/Life/Drama/Melodrama

Lee Na Young ~ Kang Dan Yi

Lee Jong Suk ~ Cha Eun Ho

Cha Eun Ho is a successful and handsome writer who is also the youngest chief editor at a publishing company.  He has a calm demeanor and remains reasonable at work.  He then becomes involved in the life of his childhood friend, Kang Dan Yi who was once a popular copywriter. She is now divorced, a single mother, unemployed and struggling in life though still attempts to find a job, but even with her once good career, she cannot. 

However, in a desperate attempt to find a job, she lies about her background and begins to work as a temporary worker in the same building under none other than Cha Eun Ho. As they become involved in each other’s life more than often, a love story begins to unfold.

Director: Lee Jeong Hyo

DoDoSolSolLaLaSol (2020) 도도솔솔라라솔 ~

Genre: Music/Comedy/Romance/Drama/Melodrama

Go Ah Ra ~ Goo Ra Ra

Lee Jae Wook ~ Sun Woo Joon

Goo Ra Ra is a naive rich girl, who dreams of being a great pianist with her father's love guiding her. But her path becomes rocky when her father passes away, and she finds herself going bankrupt. Being scammed of home and needing an escape, she goes on a ride where she encounters an accident trying to avoid Sun Woo Joon, a diligent worker trying to meet ends. Being hospitalized with a broken arm and no place to go, guilty Sun Woo Joon decides to take responsibility and take care of her. With Go Ra Ra’s naive personality, she slowly begins creeping into Sun Woo Joon's heart, while trying to deal with the challenges of living an adult life.

Director: Kim Min Kyung

YOUTH/LIFE

You’re beautiful (2009)  미남이시네요 ~

Genre: Friendship/Music/Comedy/Romance/Drama

Jang Geun Suk ~ Hwang Tae Kyu

Park Shin Hye ~ Go Mi Nam 

Jung Yong Hwa ~ Kang Shin Woo

Lee Hong Ki ~ Kang On Yu

The management company of the idol group A.N.JELL insisted on adding a new singer to the group as the lead vocal, Tae Kyung's voice was hurting. However,the new member, Mi Nam, had to go to the States to repair a botched eye job just before signing the contract. His agent came up with the idea of having his twin sister, Mi Nyu,to stand in for him and pretend that she was her brother. The two of them grew up in an orphanage and Mi Nyu, who was all set to become a nun, agreed to this charade as she didn't want to spoil her brother's chance of fame which would make it easier to look for their mother.

Director: Hong Sung Chang

Boys Over Flowers (2009) 꽃보다 남자 ~ 

Genre: Friendship/Comedy/Romance/School/Youth/Drama

Gu Hye Seon ~ Geum Jan Di

Lee Min Ho ~ Goo Joon Pyo

Kim Hyun Joong ~ Yoon Ji Hoo

Kim Bum  ~ So Yi Jung

Kim Joon ~ Song Woo Bin

Geum Jan Di comes from a poor family who owns a dry-cleaning shop. One day, she visits Shinhwa High School, a prestigious school for the wealthy, and saves a student trying to commit suicide because of bullying. For her heroic act, Jan Di receives a swimming scholarship and starts attending the school.

In school, she meets the notorious F4, the most popular and powerful group of boys at the school, consisting of Gu Jun Pyo; the leader of F4 and heir to the Shinhwa Group, Yoon Ji Hu; the grandson of a former president of Korea, So Yi Jung; a skilled potter who comes from a family that owns the country's biggest art museum, and Song Woo Bin; whose family runs the country's largest construction company.

Her life at school starts out miserable, as she doesn't fit in with other students because of her status, and later becomes worse when she is labeled as the new bullying target of the F4.

Director: Jeon Ki Sang

To the Beautiful You (2012) 아름다운 그대에게 ~

Genre: Comedy/Romance/School/Youth/Drama/Sports

Sulli ~ Goo Jae Hee

Choi Min Ho ~ Kang Tae Joon

Lee Hyun Woo ~ Cha Eun Gyeol

Tae Joon became Jae Hee’s strength during her toughest time, and she leaves the US for Korea to enroll in a men’s physical education high school to help Tae Joon restart his high jump career.

Tae Joon announces his retirement from the high jump national team and closes his heart, but his closed heart begins to open after meeting Jae Hee.

Eun Gyul is confused about his sexual orientation as he falls in love with Jae Hee who is masquerading as a man. The student-athletes have a fun time training with each other and are not tied down to setting a record or competition. 

Director: Jeon Ki Sang

Strongest Delivery Man (2017) 최강 배달꾼 ~

Genre: Friendship/Business/ Comedy/Romance/Life/Youth

Go Kyung Pyo ~ Choi Kang Soo

Chae Soo Bin ~ Lee Dan Ah

Choi Kang Soo is a deliveryman. In spite of his humble beginnings, Choi Kang Soo is fearless and gives it all in everything he does. Lee Dan Ah is another delivery worker. She hates her current socioeconomic status so much that she, like many young people, calls her country “Hell Joseon.” Lee Dan Ah is so focused on making money and changing her life that she has no time for men. But when she comes across the charming Choi Kang Soo, her attitude is due to be moved.

Together, Choi Kang Soo and Lee Dan Ah have a budding competition and romance in their quest for glory. And, for them, glory means being like rich folk Lee Jin Yoon and Oh Jin Gyu. They compete to conquer life but, as our two delivery workers soon learn, being the strongest does not guarantee success.

Director: Kim Shin Il, Jeon Woo Sung

Weightlifting Fairy Kim Bok Joo (2016) 역도요정 김복주 ~

Genre: Friendship/Comedy/Roamnce/School/Youth/Sports

Lee Sung Kyung ~ Kim Bok Joo

Nam Joo Hyuk ~ Jung Joon Hyun

Bok Joo is a weightlifter who is pursuing her dream of winning the gold medal but she then finds romance for the first time in her life. While she is a woman who trains with heavy steel weights, she is also very feminine when it comes to relationships. To focus solely on weightlifting would jeopardize her relationship but leaving her weightlifting career for love would keep her from attaining her dreams. Can she find a way to have love as well as glory at the age of 20? The characters within this drama are elite athletes in weightlifting, swimming and rhythmic gymnastics who work hard to reach their goals in life. It covers their coming-of-age stories and relationships through hectic life.

Director: Oh Hyun Jong

Itaewon Class (2020) 이태원 클라쓰 ~

Genre: Food/Friendship/Business/Romance/Life/Drama

Park Seo Joon ~ Park Sae Ro Yi

Kim Da Mi ~ Jo Yi Seo

Kwon Na Ra ~ Oh Soo Ah

Park Saeroyi's life has been turned upside down after he gets expelled from school for punching a bully and his father is killed in an accident. Following his father's steps, he opens a pub named "DanBam" in Itaewon and, along with his manager and staff, strive towards success and reaching greater heights.

Director: Kim Seong Yoon

ROMANCE

One Spring Night (2019) 봄밤 ~ 

Genre: Romance/Life/Drama/Melodrama

Jung Hae In ~ Yoo Ji Ho

Han Ji Min ~ Lee Jung In

Feeling trapped in a stale four-year relationship and reluctant to take the next step into marriage, Lee Jung In stumbles into Yu Ji Ho's pharmacy one morning, nursing a hangover after a night of drinking with her friend. As she tries to reassemble herself before going to work, Jung In discovers that she has forgotten her wallet and cannot pay. Ji Ho kindly helps Jung In, despite her prickly personality. What begins as an innocent daily interaction, develops into a deeper attachment as the two find themselves drawn to one another. They embark on a secret friendship while navigating the minefield of familial and societal expectations. 

Director: Ahn Pan Seok

Crash Landing on You (2020) 사랑의 불시착 ~

Genre: Military/Comedy/Romance/Drama/Political

Hyun Bin ~ Ri Jung Hyuk

Son Ye Jin ~ Yoon Se Ri 

Tells the story of two star-crossed lovers, a South Korean heiress and a North Korean elite who also happens to be an army officer. One day, while paragliding, Yoon Se Ri has an accident caused by strong winds, leading her to crash land in North Korea, where she meets Ri Jung Hyuk, a North Korean army officer, who agrees to help her return to South Korea. Over time, they fall in love, despite the divide and dispute between their respective countries.

Director: Lee Jeong Hyo 

THRILLER

Extracurricular (2020) 인간수업 ~ 

Genre:  Friendship/Psychological/Crime/Life/School/Youth/Drama/Mature

Kim Dong Hee ~ Oh Ji Soo

Park Joo Hyun ~ Bae Gyu Ri

"Extracurricular” is centered around three high school students who start committing crimes to earn money and the unpredictable dangers they face as a result.

Kim Dong Hee will portray Ji Soo, who goes from a model student to a criminal after committing an unthinkable act. Jung Da Bin as school bully Min Hee, who gets caught up in Ji Soo’s crime. Park Joo Hyun will portray Ji Soo’s dangerous partner in crime Gyu Ri, while Nam Yoon Soo will appear as Min Hee’s boyfriend and the school’s most popular guy Ki Tae.

Director: Kim Jin Min

[bls2021]

SOURCES:

Adegoke, Y. (2016, September 12). “Jesus Hasn’t Saved Us”: The Young Black Women Returning to Ancestral Religions. VICE - VICE; 5700553057239040. https://www.vice.com/en/article/bjgxx4/jesus-hasnt-saved-us-young-black-women-returning-ancestral-religion

Araoujo-Hawkins, D. (2021, January 6). Why some young Black Christians are practicing hoodoo-The Christian Century. The Christian Century; https://www.christiancentury.org/article/features/why-some-young-black-christians-are-practicing-hoodoo

Arora, A., & Elawar, M. (2015). Questioning God: A Spiritual Feminist Dialogue. CrossCurrents, 65(4), 457–468. https://doi-org.libproxy.uncg.edu/10.1111/cros.12155

Bardella, C. (2001). Queer Spirituality. Social Compass, 48(1), 117–138. https://doi.org/10.1177/003776801048001010

Boswell, M. (2019, September 14). Black Spirituality and Black Religion — Progressive Southern Theologians. Progressive Southern Theologians; Progressive Southern Theologians. https://progressivesoutherntheologians.com/news/2019/9/2/black-spirituality-and-black-religion

Burton, N. (2020, July 31). How some Black Americans are finding solace in African spirituality - Vox. Vox; Vox. https://www.vox.com/2020/7/31/21346686/orisha-yoruba-african-spirituality-covid

Carrette, J.R. & King R. (2005). Selling Spirituality: The Silent Takeover of Religion. Psychology Press.

Chan, D. (2017) A Critical Analysis of Systemic Influences on Spiritual Development for LGBTQ+ Youth. Journal of Child and Adolescent Counseling 3:3, pages 146-163.

Chan, C.D. & Daniels, P.F., (2019). Deconstructing and Reconstrcuting Queer Spirituality in the South: Intersectionality as a Means from the Micro to the Macro. In: Queering Spirituality and Community in the Deep South. IAP.

Conner, R. P., Sparks, D. H., & Sparks, M. (1997). Cassell’s Encyclopedia of Queer Myth, Symbol, and Spirit. Burns & Oates.

Crenshaw, K. (1989). Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory, and Antiracist Politics. University of Chicago Legal Forum. 139-167.

Crumpton, T. (2019, September 11). Finding Healing in the Spiritual Practices of Our Ancestors. Shondaland; Shondaland. https://www.shondaland.com/live/body/a28989067/finding-healing-i-spiritual-practices-ancestors/

Dayan, J. (1998). Haiti, History, and the Gods. University of California Press.

Doyle, J. (2019, January 31). How Capitalism Turned Women Into Witches - In These Times. In These Times. https://inthesetimes.com/article/capitalism-witches-women-witch-hunting-sylvia-federici-caliba

Elizabeth, M. (2020, February 4). Representations of Black Witches in Popular Culture: Unpacking Distorted Discourse - Bubblegum Club. Bubblegum Club; https://bubblegumclub.co.za/discourse/representation-of-black-witches-in-popular-culture-unpacking-distorted-discourse/

Federici, S. (2018, October 1). Witches, Witch-Hunting, and Women. PM Press.

Fuller, R. C. (2001). “Exotic Messages, Familiar Themes”. Spiritual, but Not Religious: Understanding Unchurched America. Oxford University Press.

Lorber, J. (1994). Night to His Day: The Social Construction of Gender. In Paradoxes of Gender. Yale University Press.

Keneke, L. (2021, January 5). African spirituality offers Black believers ‘decolonized’ Christianity. Religion News Service; RNS.

Magdalene, M. (2017, September 29). The Intrinsic Queerness of Witchcraft, and Why It Matters. Outside the Charmed Circle; Patheos. https://www.patheos.com/blogs/mishamagdalene/2017/09/intrinsic-queerness-witchcraft-matters/

Marshall, B. (2019, October 23). Most Witches Are Women, Because Witch Hunts Were All about Persecuting the Powerless. The Conversation. https://theconversation.com/most-witches-are-women-because-witch-hunts-were-all-about-persecuting-the-powerless-125427

Martínez, N. (2019). Bruja Feminism & Cultural Production: Reclaiming the Witch in the Neoliberal Era. UC San Diego.

Merriam, S. B., Courtenay, B., & Baumgartner, L. (2003). On Becoming a Witch: Learning in a Marginalized Community of Practice. Adult Education Quarterly, 53(3), 170–188. https://doi.org/10.1177/0741713603053003003

Mies, M. & Shiva, V. (1993) Ecofeminsim. Zed Books Ltd.

Pearson, Joanne (2002). "The History and Development of Wicca and Paganism". In Joanne Pearson (ed.). Belief Beyond Boundaries: Wicca, Celtic Spirituality and the New Age. Aldershot: Ashgate. pp. 15–54. ISBN 9780754608202.

Prasad, P. (2019, August 2). Reimagining Witchcraft as a Refuge for Marginalized Groups. The Swaddle. The Swaddle. The Swaddle; https://theswaddle.com/feminism-witchcraft-refuge-marginalized-groups/

Rhee, J., & Subedi, B. (2014). Colonizing and Decolonizing Projects of Re/Covering Spirituality. Educational Studies, 50(4), 339–356. https://doi-org.libproxy.uncg.edu/10.1080/00131946.2014.924941

Rubin, G. (2002). "Studying Sexual Subcultures: the Ethnography of Gay Communities in Urban North America", in Ellen Lewin and William Leap, eds., Out in Theory: The Emergence of Lesbian and Gay Anthropology. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.

Whaley L. (2011) The Wise-Woman as Healer: Popular Medicine, Witchcraft and Magic. In: Women and the Practice of Medical Care in Early Modern Europe, 1400–1800. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230295179_10

Wicker, A. (2016, October 27). Witchcraft is the Perfect Religion for Liberal Millennials. Quartz. Quartz; Quartz.

https://qz.com/821298/witchcraft-is-the-perfect-religion-for-liberal-millennials/

Zwissler, L. (2018). "‘I am That Very Witch’: On The Witch, Feminism, and Not Surviving Patriarchy," Journal of Religion & Film, 22. (3).

https://digitalcommons.unomaha.edu/jrf/vol22/iss3/6

Zwissler, L. (2018). Religious, Feminist, Activist. U of Nebraska Press.

[dd20century]

Trailblazing Hollywood Architect Paul R. Williams, Part Two

Read Trailblazing Hollywood Architect Paul R. Williams, Part One.

Paul R. Williams’s Early Commercial Works

By the 1930s, Paul R. Williams’s architectural career had taken off, he was hiring more staff for his firm, and he had built an impressive portfolio of private residences, yet like all architects, Williams yearned for important commercial contracts (3). In 1926, he had collaborated with Norman Marsh to build the Second Baptist Church in Los Angeles, that would later become an important site to the civil rights movement in that area (7). One of Williams’s first solo commercial commissions was designing the interiors for the Beverly Hills Saks Fifth Avenue department store in 1938 (6). The following year he built the headquarters of Music Corporation of America (MCA) also in Beverly Hills (8). The clients hired Williams for their project because they envisioned their offices to look more like an English Georgian Revival style home than a typical office building of the time (3). He also designed the Arrowhead Springs Hotel in 1940. In 1941 Williams took on an international commission designing the Hotel Nutibara in Columbia (8).

Paul R. Williams, Music Corporation of America Building (1938), Los Angeles, CA. Photo credit: Maynard L. Parker. Image source.

During World War II Williams closed his architectural office in order to take on work for the military. “In 1942 Williams designs 125 housing units for the Army at Fort Huachuca,” 8 and over the following years he worked with the Allied Architects on the Roosevelt Naval Base Project.  Also during the war years, like European architect Jean Prouvé, Williams became interested in providing low-cost pre-fabricated metal housing. Williams established the Standard Demountable Homes Company of California in the mid-forties. The firm built mainly “Quonset-style homes [which] quickly fell out of favor after the war” 8.

Williams’s Post-war Buildings of the Mid-Century

After the World War II Williams teamed up with architect A. Quincy Jones, who had worked in Williams’s office in the years before the war. The two architects worked on several “projects in Palm Springs, including the Palm Springs Tennis Club (1947) and the Town & Country (1948) and Romanoff's on the Rocks (1948) restaurants” (6).

Williams’s most notable post war works include, the West View Hospital (1947), his 1949 additions to the Beverly Hills Hotel, the Al Jolson Memorial (1951), renovations to the Knickerbocker Hotel in Los Angeles (1954), the Frank Sinatra House (1955), and the Founder’s Church of Religious Science (1960).

During the 1950s Williams began a lifelong friendship with the popular comedian Danny Thomas when Thomas commissioned Williams to work on renovations to his existing home. When Thomas shared his vision of a children’s hospital open to all children regardless of race or religion that would offer free care, Williams was whole-heartedly on board. He designed the hospital gratis as an act of love for his dear friend (3). Saint Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital was built in Memphis, Tennessee in 1962, but was demolished in the early 1990s to make way for a larger more modern hospital (3).

Paul R. Williams, St. Jude’s Hospital Rendering (1961), Memphis, TN. Image source.

In 1960, Williams joined the Los Angeles Airport (LAX) planning and design team (1). He was not, however, the architect of the airport’s iconic Theme Building as many believe. It was designed by Gin Wong of Pereira & Luckman but [a] photo by Julius Shulman cemented the urban myth (5).

Paul R. Williams published two books on residential architecture: “The Small Home of Tomorrow (1945) and New Homes for Today (1946)” (5). He also wrote the essay "I am a Negro" first published in the 1937 and reprinted in Ebony in 1986 (5).

Architect Paul R. Williams in front of the LAX Theme Building in Los Angeles, CA. Williams is erroneously credited with the design of this building. He served on the LAX planning and design team, but did not design this structure. Photo by Julius Shulman. Image source.

Paul R. Williams’s Contributions to the African American Community

According to Paul R. Williams’s grandson Paul Hudson, Williams was instrumental in working on behalf of Los Angeles’s African-American community and in supporting its leaders and businesses. For his Golden State Life Insurance Building (1949) he commissioned two murals depicting the struggles of African Americans in United States history. A memorial to Williams was built in that building when it underwent a restoration in 2005 (3).

In 1946 along with Dr. H. Claude Hudson, Williams founded the Broadway Federal Bank. Its mission was to loan mortgages to African-Americans, and enabled many African-Americans to realize their dreams of home ownership. The bank also provided the financing on the 1960 Stall Case Study home designed by Pierre Koenig. Due to the house’s experimental nature, the owners could not obtain funding through traditional banks (3).

Williams’s Housing Project Work

Although Williams is best known for his mansions for movie stars and film moguls, he did design low-cost housing. Williams worked with another African-American architect Hilyard Robinson on the first federally funded public housing project in the Unites States Langston Terrace,  Washington, D.C. in 1938 and later on the Pueblo del Rio project (1941) in southeast Los Angeles. Williams also designed, Carver Park, a segregated development in Henderson, Nevada. It opened in 1943. “Many of the units were destroyed between 1994 and 1999” (5). Williams was the Chief Architect on the The Hacienda Village Housing Project, other architect who collaborated on the project were Adrian Wilson, Richard J. Neutra, Walter Wurdeman and Welton Becket (5).

Paul R. William’s Endangered Legacy 

In 1973 after a five-decade long career Paul R. Williams closed his firm and, he  retired (6). He spent his final years devoted to his family and to causes supporting the African-American community. He died on January 23, 1980; his friend Danny Thomas gave the eulogy at Williams’ funeral (3).

Paul R. Williams, Frank Sinatra House (1956), Los Angeles, CA. Destroyed. Image source.

Williams received many tributes and awards for his work during his lifetime among them, “the AIA Award of Merit, the NAACP Spingarn Medal, and USC’s Distinguished Alumni Award. In 1957, he became first African American to become an AIA Fellow (1). He was “posthumously awarded the AIA's 2017 Gold Medal, America's highest honor for an architect. Williams is the first African American to receive the AIA Gold Medal” (1). In 2020 a documentary about his life and work aired on PBS (3).

Tragically all of Williams’s business documents were destroyed in 1992 in a fire at the Broadway Federal Bank in the riots that took place in Los Angeles in the aftermath of the verdict in the Rodney King trial. Luckily, Williams’s blueprints and drawings had been saved by his granddaughter Karen E. Hudson who had borrowed them from the bank to do research on her grandfather’s career (3).

While several of Williams’s buildings have been placed on the National Register of Historic Places (6), an astonishing number of important buildings have not survived; notable among them are the Ambassador Hotel (1), the Frank Sinatra House, Perino’s Restaurant, the Sunset Plaza Apartments (3), the Claude A. Wayne House (1926), The George S. Seward House (1928), E. L. Cord House, aka Cordhaven (1932), The Lucy and Desi Arnaz Ranch (1941), The Tevis and Colleen Morrow House (1948) (5), La Concha Motel (1961) in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Paul R. Williams, La Concha Motel (1961), Las Vegas, NV. Destroyed. Image source.

References

LA Conservancy, (2020). Paul Revere Williams,  FAIA (1894-1980), https://www.laconservancy.org/architects/paul-r-williams

Budds, D., (13 December, 2016). The Overlooked Legacy Of Pioneering African-American Architect Paul Revere Williams, Fast Company (online), https://www.fastcompany.com/3066503/the-overlooked-legacy-of-pioneering-african-american-architect-paul-revere-williams

Public Broadcasting System, (6 February, 2020). Hollywood’s Architect [Documentary Film]. https://www.pbs.org/video/hollywoods-architect-3prwsa/

Brane, K.D, (15 January, 2020). Paul R. Williams, Black Listed Culture, Issue 2. https://blacklistedculture.com/paul-r-williams/

US Modernist, (n.d.).  Paul Revere Williams,  FAIA (1894-1980), https://usmodernist.org/pwilliams.htm

Wikipedia.com, (10 December, 2020). Paul R. Williams, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_R._Williams

Wikipedia.com, (12 December, 2020). Second Baptist Church (Los Angeles). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Baptist_Church_(Los_Angeles)

Paul Revere Williams Project, (n.d.). Education | Timeline, https://www.paulrwilliamsproject.org/education/timeline 

For Further Reading

Hudson, Karen E. (1993). Paul R. Williams, Architect: A Legacy of Style. New York: Rizzoli. p. 240. ISBN 0-8478-1763-6. LCC NA737.W527 H84 1993

Hudson, Karen E. (1994). The Will and the Way: Paul R. Williams, Architect. New York: Rizzoli. pp. 64. ISBN 0-8478-1780-6. LCC NA737.W527 H85 1994

[weirdletter]

Post-9/11 Heartland Horror: Rural Horror Films in an Era of Urban Terrorism (The Cultural Politics of Media and Popular Culture), by Victoria McCollum, Routledge, paperback edition, 2020 (2017). Info: routledge.com.

This book explores the resurgence of rural horror following the events of 9/11, as a number of filmmakers, inspired by the films of the 1970s, moved away from the characteristic industrial and urban settings of apocalyptic horror, to return to American heartland horror. Examining the revival of rural horror in an era of city fear and urban terrorism, the author analyses the relationship of the genre with fears surrounding the Global War on Terror, exploring the films’ engagement with the political repercussions of 9/11 and the ways in which traces of traumatic events leave their mark on cultures. Arranged around the themes of dissent, patriotism, myth, anger and memorial, and with attention to both text and socio-cultural context in its interpretation of the films’ themes, Post-9/11 Heartland Horror offers a series of case studies covering a ten-year period to shed light on the manner in which the Post-9/11 Heartland Horror films scrutinize and unravel the events, aspirations, anxieties, discourses, dogmas, and socio-political conflicts of the post-9/11 era. As such, it will appeal to scholars and students of film studies, cultural studies and media studies, and those with interests in the relationship between popular culture and politics.

Contents: Foreword by Emily Satterwhite Preface Introduction 1. The Unbearable Unrightness of the Righteous & Sympathy for the Devil: War on Dissent, Forced Loyalties & Zombie’s The Devil’s Rejects (2005) 2. Divided We Fall: Fear God! & Loathe Thy Neighbour: Bush’s Demand For Patriotic Correctness & Smith’s Red State (2011) 3. The Family That Slays Together, Stays Together: Contesting Truth, Contempt For Weakness & Paxton’s Frailty (2002) 4. Malev(i)olence, Malevolence & Misogyny: 9/11, Gender, Torture & McKee’s The Woman (2011) 5. ‘Knock ‘Em Dead’: Bush’s White House Of Horrors: Post-9/11 Memorial Mania & Dougherty’s Trick ‘r Treat (2007) Conclusion References Films Cited Music Cited Index

[smylealong]

Year in review - 2020

2020 has been a mixed bag of an year. Where on one hand it has been a raging dumpster fire with a global pandemic, lockdowns, social distancing, online schools, politics, forest fires, Karens and the general sense of ennui that the year brought. On the other hand, the year gave us all time. Time to reflect on ourselves. Time to teach ourselves new things. Time to binge watch. And boy did the streaming platforms make full use of it. Listed below are the best things I saw in 2020. (Across languages and in no specific order.) IT IS A LONG POST. PROCEED WITH CAUTION.

HINDI Thappad: Dir: Anubhav Sinha. Starring: Tapasee Pannu, Pavail Gulati, Diya Mirza, Kumud Mishra and Ratna Pathak Shah. On surface level, the premise seems frivolous. After all, it was just a slap. Just. One. Slap. Yet, with that one slap, the protagonist’s neatly organized world comes apart at the seams. From there begins Amruta’s (Tapsee Pannu) journey into exploring the micro-aggressions and tiny slights that she has turned a blind eye to, for the sake of keeping peace. The film never veers into a glorification of violence nor does it get overly preachy. It is a mirror to the patriarchal society and raises pertinent questions about the things that the society as normalized. Things that shouldn’t be normalized.

Bulbbul: Dir: Anvita Dutt. Starring: Tripti Dimri, Avinash Tiwari, Rahul Bose, Parambrata Chatterjee and Paoli Dam.

Horror does not always lie in the things that go bump at night. Sometimes, horror is what society expects of you. Horror is the consequence of not fitting into the role that has been written for you. Sometimes, it is terrifying to be a woman in a male-dominated society. That is what Bulbbul explores. Wrapped in a beautiful package, Bulbbul tells the raw story of a child-bride who is punished, harshly, inhumanly, for acting her age. If you haven’t seen it yet, drop everything and watch it. It’s on Netflix.

Lootcase: Dir: Rajesh Krishnan. Starring: Kunal Khemu, Rasika Duggal, Vijay Raaz, Gajraj Rao.

This was a charming little movie that had me in splits. A story of a simple man who chances upon a bag full of money. What follows is a hilarious tale of lies, deception and comedy of errors. Kunal Khemu proves that Bollywood does not realize just how talented he is. Vijay Raaz’s deadpan comedy and Gajraj Rao’s evil smiling desperation are a delight to behold. I’m smiling even as I am writing this. This was fun!

Raat Akeli Hai: Dir: Honey Tehran. Starring: Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Radhika Apte, Ila Arun, Shweta Tripathi, Tigmanshu Dhulia.

This was India’s answer to Knives Out. Nawazuddin Siddiqui is at his finest as the honest and frustrated (in more ways than one) police officer who finds himself attracted to the mistress of the murdered man. What follows is a tale so full of twists and turns that I could not predict where it is going. When you have Siddiqui at the helm, you are almost certain to get a good film. But when he is backed by stellar performance from the able cast, that takes the film to another level altogether.

Patal Lok: Dir: Avinash Arun and Prosit Roy. Starring: Jaideep Alhawat, Niraj Kabi, Abhishek Bannerjee, Swastika Mukherjee, Gul Panang, Ishvaak Singh.

Wow. Just. Wow. This is arguably the BEST thing that I have seen all year. On the surface this is an attempted murder case. But what it actually is, is a mirror to our society. It is a human story. A story of greed, corruption, power, violence, misogyny, depravity and true evil. It is a story of love, hope, support, kindness and humanity. It is a story of us. My hats off to the entire cast and crew for coming up with something truly special.

ENGLISH

Haunting of Bly Manor: Created by: Mike Flannagan. Starring: Victoria Pedretti, Oliver Jackson-Cohen, Amelia Eve, T’Nia Miller, Rahul Kohli.

Based on Henry Jame’s Turn of the Screw, this was a poignant tale of love, loss and pain. While it pales in comparison to its brilliant predecessor, Haunting of the Hill House, and the 1961 screen adaptation of the novel, The Innocents, Bly Manor still manages to be a worthy watch. In Mike Flannagan’s deft hands, we get to see a completely different perspective of the Haunting. I won’t say more, for spoilers, but this was definitely one of the better things I watched this year. Especially since I almost eschewed English movies/series this year. (I did watch some forgettable movies like Extraction and Mulan, but even mentioning them here feels sacrilegious.)

Korean

This year, I returned to Korean Dramas after a long time. My last Korean Drama before this year was Faith that I saw in 2014. Since Boys Over Flowers (Read Kim Bum) is my guilty pleasure watch, I decided to have it on in the background sometime in March or April this year. (Honestly, in 2020, who knows?). BOF took me to The King: Eternal Monarch. And TKEM introduced me to Woo Do Hwan who gave me some of the best times in this year. Three of his dramas feature here.

Save Me:- Dir: Kim Sung-soo. Starring: Ok Taec-yeon, Seo Yea-ji, Woo Do Hwan, Jo Sung-ha, Jo Jae-yoon.

Do you fancy a kick to your teeth? Because that is what this series is. What starts a simple story of a regular family’s struggles upon moving to a new town, quickly turns into a harrowing nightmare in which you are simply the viewer. The story delves into cults and the insidious power they hold. Through Seo Yea-ji’s brilliant performance as Im Sang-mi, we see a K drama heroine who is not a damsel in distress. She isn’t the one throwing the punches, that is done by Ok Taec-yeon and Woo Do Hwan. Still she is the one that leads the fight. If that wasn’t enough, Woo Do Hwan, plays Seok Dong-chul. Arguably one of the best male leads I have seen.

Mad Dog:- Dir: Hwang Ui-kyung Starring: Yoo Ji-tae, Woo Do Hwan, Jo Jae-joon, Ryu Hwa-young, Kim Hye-sung.

What a treat this show is! Smart protagonists pitted against equally intelligent antagonists and a taut plot that rarely sags (It does sag just a wee bit in the middle but it picks up pace very quickly). Woo Do Hwan is fantastic as the ever changing, tough to pin down, Kim Min Joon. The layers in this character! This show will keep you guessing. Every cast member is stellar and no one has a single misstep. A must watch!

My Country: Dir: Kim Jin-won Starring:  Yang Se Jong, Woo Do Hwan, Kim Seol-hyun, Jang Hyuk.

This series brings a set of very complex emotions in me. Don’t get me wrong. I love the series. Its story, characterization, costumes, cinematography, acting, action scenes, OST. They are top notch. A+. But... and this is a big one, this series is also a glaring display of what happens when a writer falls in love with one of their characters. As a writer, I can say that we love all our characters. But it is very dangerous for a writer to move from simply loving the character to falling in love with the character. When that happens, the writer becomes afraid of letting that particular character make mistakes. Or glosses over their flaws. Often at the expense of the other character. Which is what happened here. The writer fell in love with Seo Hwi and Nam Seon ho paid the price. Hwi could literally assassinate people in front of Hui Jae and still be forgiven for it, while Nam Seon-ho gets demonized for trying to save Hwi by telling lies. I could go on and on about how unfair this series was to Seon-ho, but that would be a separate post altogether.

Tale of a Gumiho: Dir: Kang Shin-hyo Starring: Lee Dong Wook, Jo Bo-ah, Kim Bum.

I started this series for Kim Bum (I LOVE THE GUY). I was prepared for some cheesy, goofy fun with some good looking people. But soon, I was watching it for the story. A smart Urban Fantasy with elements of Korean Mythology, this was UF done right! This series made me do research. I am so tired of seeing the same old myths in fantasy that this came as a breath of fresh air. Intelligent protagonists who communicate well (gasp! what? That happens?). A flip-flopping anti-hero. A truly psychopathic villain and a bunch of other well-fleshed characters make for one entertaining watch. I highly recommend it.

Chinese:

K-dramas made me revive the Tumblr account that I had created sometime in 2017 and which lay dormant since then. Soon, my Tumblr feed was filled with gifs and metas of a show with pretty men. I did not pay much attention to it, till a post about Jin Ling’s Uncle made me snort. Even though I didn’t understand what it was talking about, it was still funny. Realizing that the show is on Netflix, I saw the trailer and wasn’t impressed. Then there was the length. 50 episodes! Holee-moleee. “No. I ain’t got that much time,” I said and moved on. But then, I saw a gif of a man smiling. I had never seen a smile that dazzling. There was something about that smile that made me go back and click on the first episode. And in less than ten minutes of the episode, they killed the man whose smile drew me to the show. WTF? But I had seen gifs of him. There had to be more. Then, the show began and I had no idea what was happening. I decided no smile could be worth the brain-cells I am having to expend for this. Chuck it. But people in Tumblr said, hold on. You will understand it. Episode 2, and I still wasn’t sold. I gave it till episode 5. Then, before I knew it, I finished the 50 episodes and currently reside in the rabbit hole that is The Untamed.

Dir: Zheng Weiwen and Chen Jialin Starring: Xiao Zhan, Wang Yibo, and a host of others. I can’t write the name of the entire cast, even though I want to.

PS: In case you don’t know, the man with the pretty smile is Xiao Zhan.

[letterstothemidnightsociety]

THURSDAY OCTOBER 8, one of the longest running television shows of our time begins airing the final episodes of it’s final season. Guys, Supernatural is 15. FIFTEEN. It can practically drive a car now. As one friend put it, “that show had a Quinceañera.” And if you don’t know how significant that is, think of the last show you know of that made it to season 10. Take your time, I’ll wait. 

Whoever I stole this birthday invite from, they are probably older than this show.

I started watching Supernatural in 2008. I was 19, I had just begun my journey towards Over-Worked, Under-Slept Millennial, and my best friend recommended it. I can’t really remember how the conversation went, but I’m sure at some point it was “It’s scary, and it’s got these two brothers, I’ll send you a link!” cuz we were trash and we were broke and Netflix...existed? Hulu existed, but not in the way that either of those sites work now, so we watched by...ahem...other means. It is probably why my first laptop stopped working after 3 semesters of college.

And damn, I was hooked. I don’t do scary movies and honestly, I was legit creeped out by a lot of these episodes, but it had two hot dudes who took down a monster every week and then (the real kicker) had a bigger, season-long mystery they were trying to solve. And occasionally, they got punched in their big dumb beautiful faces. If I had known what a kink was at the time, I would have said that someone was reading my dream diary. 

Over the next 12 years - Let me say that again for those of you in the back - TWELVE YEARS - I had an on-again-off-again relationship with the Winchesters. It was pretty hot and heavy in the beginning. I was jumping on the back of this 67 Chevy Impala 3 years in, so I had three seasons that I bought on DVD that I binged and was caught up with season 4 by the time the midseason started to air in late January of 2009. I was introducing all my friends to Supernatural, I made several people watch the entire first disc of season 1 with me, irregardless of whether they’d asked or not. Things started to cool down towards the end of season 4 as life started picking up and I know...I caught...the tail end of season 5? I think? I distinctly remember the final scene of the final episode, but honestly, I can’t remember how much of that season I actually watched.

At that point, I considered Supernatural to be a weird pseudoaddiction. I’d be clean for a while, years even, and then Netflix caught up with consumers and I could binge whole seasons in a weekend. It’d be, oh, I could just watch an episode. Just one episode. Maybe two. And then the weekend is gone in a blaze of classic rock and rock salt and I’m left with something like but not necessarily a hangover where my feelings live. I think I did this for seasons 6 through, like, 8? Eventually, Netflix stopped putting it at the top of my dashboard and it was easier to avoid. And I said to myself, well, when they finally get to the last season, THEN I’ll go on one last run, one last big score, and watch the whole series again in one go. 

But the seasons kept coming?? And they?? Didn’t stop?? Guys, I don’t know how many of you care about this but, Friends, one of the most popular sitcoms of all time that defined an entire generation had ten seasons. TEN. Supernatural is ending with fifteen! For an industry where most shows don’t make it past a pilot, let alone a season 1, this is INSANE. 

But now it’s ending. Even though a pandemic halted production just two episodes away from the finale, Supernatural is finally outta cassette tapes. The Wayward Sons may finally (??) be laying their wearied heads to rest (?? lol, I know).  

And frankly, 2020’s been a real sh*tshow so I thought “Why not?” 

And if I’m doing this and I’m not interacting with anyone on a human level, I might as well chronicle this epic dive into a time capsule of television because frankly, what the hell else am I doing? 

Cuz that’s what this is guys. 15 years in TV time is multiple lifespans. Shows are born, grow into something Emmy-worthy, and die in less time than Supernatural has been on the air. You know what else aired their pilot episode in 2005? The American version of The Office. You know when The Office ended? 2013. 

So let’s talk about pilots because that in and of itself may be a thing of the past not too far from now. 

Guys, I love pilots. I will probably say this a lot over the next, uhhhh...many months, but I love pilots and I love season ones, especially for a sci-fi and fantasy shows because that’s where your characters are at their most vulnerable, their most unsure. The writers and producers are really digging around, trying to figure out what the groundwork for this world is and there’s something so exciting about exploring it with them, as an audience. 

Pilot’s are great, pilots on spec are even better, and that’s a lot of what the Supernatural Pilot feels like. It’s got a real indie/guerilla-style horror movie vibe, like the crew scraped together just enough cash for that one special effect scene but had to skimp out on a lot of the other production stuff, and still managed to turn something around that is totally, 100% watchable and somehow more charming than if they’d had the budget to make something really polished? Go watch Night of the Living Dead (1968) and tell me that movie would have been better if they’d had a bigger budget. You could, but I won’t agree. 

Ok so a quick break down of technical terms. A television pilot is basically the first episode of a TV show. Well, that’s not exactly true. A pilot is kind of like making a sample or a blueprint of your show that you hand over to the television networks and say, here! This is what my TV show will look like. Will you pay me money to continue making it? And the networks (think ABC, NBC, CBS, FOX and The CW - remember, this is Network, not cable) will spend January through April of every year reviewing pilots and deciding if they want to pay you money to make more episodes. Well, every year except 2020. See: sh*tshow. Sometimes the network comes to you with an idea, or maybe, you’ve pitched your script/show to some executives and they buy in for that first pilot episode to see where things will go. Neither of these scenarios are a sure thing, and pilot season is always rife with will-they-won’t-they tension. In fact, if you’re working on the show, there’s a real possibility that pilot will get re-shot after studio notes, you’ll lose your job to someone the studio liked better, and then the show still may not get picked up. A pilot shot on spec is in even more of a limbo scenario because nobody asked for this! And just to follow through on Pilot Season - after the networks decide to buy your pilot, they then air the pilot at Upfronts (usually in May) where their many ad companies decide if they will pay money to air their ads during those shows. This is where we get things like prime time and key demographics - if you thought TV was all about the art, you are very wrong. TV, like most other industries, is still a business that’s about making money. 

Back to the Supernatural pilot. Now, from my research, series creator Eric Kripke had been working on the concept for 10 years. He was big into classic rock, big into urban legends and big into cowboys and all those things get married ever so neatly in this show. A lot of his initial ideas remain unchanged, at least for the first season - he wants two brothers, traveling across the country, facing off with America’s Spookiest Myths and legends. A lot of it did change. I honestly feel like I remember reading an early draft of the pilot where Sam and Dean are cowboys? But I’m also pretty sure I’m imaging that. What I’m not imagining is this ridiculous early draft where John’s been locked in an insane asylum, dies before the first episode starts, and Sam’s been living with an aunt and uncle his whole life and knows nothing. They still use something close enough to the La Llorona legend as the catalyst for the episode, but a lot of other things are changed. This is not the Sam and Dean we come to know and love. This is also a good example of when you SHOULD listen to notes, because this draft was rewritten after executive producer McG and his Wonderland Sound and Vision production company signed on, but before they actually shot the script. 

Now from what I’ve read, the WB picked the show up for (4) episodes initially, and ultimately picked it up for a full season of (22) episodes. This was, at the time, a pretty standard season and a pretty standard way to get it. They had a better deal than The Office, anyway, which only got picked up for (6) episodes in their first season, then got picked up four episodes at a time for season 2. 

Now let’s go over that paragraph one more time and talk about what a hecking DINOSAUR this show is - 

FIRST off - Supernatural premiered on THE WB. It PREDATES The CW!!

Man guys, you remember they had a frog as a mascot? Oof, that would not work today.

Secondly, it got 22 EPISODES. We’ll get into this some more when we talk about that evil bugs filler ep, but think about how many episodes were in the last show that you binged on Netflix? 8? Maybe 10?

Welcome to the exciting world of GRAPHS brought to you buy https://www.theringer.com/tv/2017/8/4/16094348/inefficiency-week-mourning-the-lost-long-tv-season

OH! And SPEAKING of Netflix and streaming services like them, they’re kind of killing pilot season AND upfronts. They pick up shows when they want to. They “air” them when they feel like. There are no ads because you pay for that content on a monthly basis and also they don’t even have commercial breaks. I am slowly seeing the passage of time in one (1) episode of television and I think I’ve aged 100 years. 

Here is just one of MANY articles about the death of Pilot Season 

Finally, and most importantly, this show got a better deal than The Office. And that show was an NBC primetime show. 

This show was nominated for 193 awards and won 50. And it ended when my nephew was still in kindergarten. He’s gonna be in high school next year. 

So what about this Supernatural Pilot? Was it any good? Honestly, I’m gonna say yeah. This is some very solid Hero’s Journey here. I think the only weird thing about it is that Sam is our Hero, our point of contact character that gets us into this world. And I only say that because I’ll be real up front and say that I’m a Dean girl through and through. I don’t hate Sam, but because we live in a world where we have to choose, it’s Dean 4Eva. 

From that early script draft, we learn the plan was for Sam to be in the dark and essentially be our audience stand in so that Dean can explain all the backstory. I think the decision to make John Winchester raise his kids as a weird fringe paramilitary outfit and establish Sam as the brother that tried to get away is a good one. It’s a very “Arrive Late” (or if you’re fancy, in media res,) sort of attitude and it works and you’ve already started building in the Atonement with the Father. There’s still some pretty excellent exposition dialogue, but what are ya gonna do. Sam, did you really need to explain to Dean that your collective father “raised you like warriors”? Or that you “kill everything we CAN find?” It’s fine. You’re beautiful and I love you. But also, he knows all that.

You have the Call to Adventure - Dean showing up and saying “Dad hasn’t been home in a few days.” You have the refusal of the call (“He’ll sleep it off”). You have your supernatural aid (hah!) giving Sam a push out the door - that’s Dean. You have your famous line that I quoted along with the TV - Dad’s on a hunting trip. And he hasn’t been home in a few days. 

The dead mom backstory seems pretty on the nose, but the “burned on the ceiling” concept was new and unique enough that I was intrigued to find out more. Listen, I’ve already admitted I don’t watch a lot of horror so if this has been done before, don’t @ me. 

La Llorona or Woman in White or Weeping Woman was a new trope to me at the time, so it too seemed fresh. I see that myth show up in a lot more Supernatural-type shows now, but in 2008, at 19, I was like, oh this is different. Not to mention - this definitely leaned in to the horror aspect. I know I’m a baby, but it aired at 9pm, which is the more adult side of Prime Time, so the WB thought it was too spooky for kids who had early bedtimes. So there. 

I HATE when they do this cuz it freaks me out EVERY TIME and THAT’S NOT EVEN HOW THESE MIRRORS WORK??? SHE’S NOT EVEN IN THE BACK SEAT IN THIS SHOT!

And then at the END, when Sam STILL refuses the call to adventure, you have the real Crossing of the Threshold - Jess is ALSO stuck on the ceiling, dead, and on fire. Spoiler alert, but they had to fridge her early to make the rest of the season work and so it shouldn’t be a big surprise. Sam’s all in and we get 21 more episodes of him and Dean and that car. 

Is it technically fridging if she’s lit on fire?

And let’s talk about Jess for a second cuz actress Adrianne Palicki is giving a LOT more in this performance than a fridged girlfriend should be required to. She’s likeable, she’s down to earth, she’s crushing it and and all this with only, like, two scenes of dialogue. I say this even though we meet her in a slutty nurse costume - COME on WB. 

WB what the hell is this wardrobe. What the HELL is THIS. 

In fact, all of the extras in this show are crushing it? Louis is instantly likeable and he disappears after his first scene, never to grace our TV’s again. And these extras in the town in Jericho, California - I kind of love them. As CW (or I guess, WB) as Jessica is, these extras look like they found them at the local highschool and I LOVE THEM FOR IT. They probably came to set already in makeup and wardrobe! They POSSIBLY brought their own jewelry! They’re weirdos and they are GREAT. I’m pretty sure this will NEVER happen again on this show because once the $$ came in, so did the more polished-looking one-off characters.

 Lookit these magnificent goth weirdos! And great news, both these actresses have very full, non-goth careers after this. 

Also, heckin’ Joseph Welch is just crushing it. This man has NOTHING CW about him and that’s maybe why I like him so much? Everything about the scene with him and Sam is pretty heartbreaking, from his rundown car graveyard to his rundown physique with his rundown accent to the fact that we never actually see his face. Seriously, really LOOK at this scene - WHAT is going on with this cinematography? Is this a reference to something? It’s SO bleached out and SO stark and WHAT is going on???

WHAT is this lighting? And also this guy was played by Steve Railsback was on X-Files!

You can’t talk about Supernatural without talking about the chemistry between Sam and Dean and that’s probably the real hook here? I mean a) very beautiful. I will probably talk about this a lot. Let’s call it what it is here, they’re beefcakes and they’re made for me and people like me. It is weird that this show is so macho but their primary audience was mostly there for the babes. And by babes I mean Jensen Ackles and Jared Padalecki. And b) they REALLY sell the whole brothers thing. They’re both from Austin, TX which feels like a weird coincidence. They were both already on WB shows before this one, also a weird coincidence. And they just click. They just do. It’s impressive, and occasionally creepy when we start to get into the Wincest of it all, but lets not talk about that.

Oh, and the MUSIC! The music just makes it. If you don’t believe me, watch the Netflix version of the first season and then find yourself a DVD version. See, TV shows need to acquire a license to play popular music during the show. Nowadays, the CW actually tags their songs in the episode so you can find and presumably buy it later, but they still have to pay royalties for using those pop songs. When Netflix acquired Supernatural, they did NOT acquire the licensing to use the classic rock songs from ACDC, Metallica, etc. and so you’re left with some pretty bland and generic production music that’s something like but not necessarily Back in Black. More like, Back in...Grey? This pun didn't work how I wanted it to. 

And the show just...doesn’t work? Like, who knew BACKINBLAAAAACK! Was so instrumental to whether I thought this was quality programming or not. Side note - it ruins my favorite piece of dialogue of maybe the entire series - 

Sam: I swear, man, you gotta update your cassette tape collection.

Dean: Why?

Sam: Well, for one, they're cassette tapes.

Do the young people even know what a cassette tape is? I AM the CRYPTKEEPER.

So yeah, you got a lot of ingredients to make something pretty great. Did we know then that it would launch a juggernaut of a television program that would still be on the air in the Year of Our Reckoning, 2020? I was a big fan of Firefly, so I was 99.99% sure this show was gonna get canceled at any second. In fact, I was thrilled, in 2008, to find there were two more seasons after the one I was currently watching. Of course, season 3 aired around the time of the great Writer’s Strike of ‘07, where nothing looked good and few programs survived, but we’ll get there. 

In a final, kind of spooky, almost premonition-type decision the WB actually decided to air this pilot episode a whole week early on Yahoo!. Yeah, you remember Yahoo!, right? The search engine that briefly tried to have its own original streaming content and then we all abandoned it in favor of the monster that is Google? Yeah. This episode premiered online. I haven’t done enough research, but I’m gonna go out on a limb here and say this was probably one of the first ever TV shows to start on the internet? Weird to think that was a novel and innovative concept at one time. 

So this is it. This is the end of the era. Are we gonna get any more shows that last as long as this one did? Who knows. Are we as a culture gonna care at that point? I don’t know. Our TV habits have changed so much in the last few years that it’s hard to say how we’ll watch TV in the future. But credit where it’s due, boys. Nice huntin’. 

[ogscholars]

Gangs in Portland: Past & Present

S. Mohamed, R. Northman, & L. Eskinazi

Portland State University

UNST 242: Leading Social Change

Dr. Peter Chaille

October 25, 2020

  Gangs in Portland: Past & Present

The history of gangs in Portland begins in the 1980’s when individual Crips and Bloods gang members from Los Angeles, California sought refuge in Portland from LAPD Chief Daryl Gates’ CRASH team and their harsh police tactics such as Operation Hammer. The LAPD’s response to the rise in gang violence during the 1980’s had been heavy-handed, and involved the deployment of militarized police units, including air support, used to campaign against the gangs (Murch, 2015).

The LAPD’s tactics appear to have resulted in a mass exodus of Crips and Bloods departing to other cities across the nation, fleeing what they may have viewed as racism and police oppression. Portland was one of the many cities across the United States where those Crips and Bloods gang members fled to. The Crips and Bloods that left L.A. did not do so in any organized, concerted effort as the Crips and Bloods from Los Angeles were not at all structured into a centralized organization with any common goals or purposes (p. 30, Howell & Griffith, 2015)(“Overdose,” 1989).

When various individual Crips and Bloods gang members arrived in Portland, they were welcomed and embraced by local-area youth. Some of these young people joined the individual L.A. gang members, mimicking them and becoming members of those L.A. gangs themselves. From the beginning, there were local Portland offshoots of infamous L.A. gangs such as the Four-Tray Gangster Crips, 107 Hoover Crips, Rollin 60’s Crips, Inglewood Family Bloods, West Side Pirus, and more (Holley, 2015).

Local-area youth that did not join the gang members from Los Angeles in joining their L.A. gangs, wasted no time in forming gangs of their own, loosely based on the style of the L.A. Crips and Bloods gangs. In the late-1980’s then, Portland saw the creation of several homegrown gangs that mimicked the L.A gangs they’d recently come into contact with. The Columbia Villa Crips, the Woodlawn Park Bloods, the Kerby Blocc Crips, and the Loc’ed Out Pirus, just to name a few (Holley, 2015). Portland was no exception as this same phenomenon of gang growth occurred in cities across the nation (Katz & Webb, 2004).

Although these new local gangs used the Crip and Blood names and styles, the youth that formed these gangs were from Portland and did so without any control, knowledge or say-so of L.A. Crips and Bloods. The Portland offshoots of the L.A. gangs were similarly independent with respect to their activities (p. 31, Howell & Griffith, 2015). In contrast to the violence taking place in L.A., these earlier Portland gang members were rarely violent in their formative years.

In the summer of 1988, Joseph Ray Winston, also known as “Ray Ray,” a 17 year-old Columbia Villa Crip gang member was gunned down in North Portland’s Columbia Villa public housing projects (Associated Press, 1988). The killing of “Ray Ray” triggered gang violence that erupted into all-out urban warfare, and, by the following summer, Oregon’s governor Neil Goldschmidt had to send National Guard troops into Northeast Portland to help Portland Police quell the gang violence (“The Nation,” 1989).

In the 1980’s and 1990’s, myths and stereo-types about gangs and gang members contributed to moral panic in America. In this state of moral panic, political and social leaders suddenly defined  a specific  group  of people  as  a major  threat  to our  values and behavioral standards. (Howell & Griffith, 2015)

           Since 1988, police claim that gang feuds became the new norm for gangs in Portland and throughout the 1990’s, Portland had hundreds of murders which police attributed to gang violence. Portland Police would eventually adopt many of the same “tough” tactics implemented by the LAPD against gangs in Los Angeles (pp. 2-3, Katz & Webb, 2004), which subsequently resulted in a mass incarceration of these local gang members into Oregon prisons (“Overdose,” 1989).  

The Portland Police formed a Gang Enforcement Team, and a multi-agency Gang Task Force. They also adopted a gang database and gang designation procedures intended to keep track of gang members. Passage of minimum-mandatory sentencing laws, and involvement of federal law enforcement agencies have also become new norms; however, Portland has not seen a decline in gang membership (Ch. 3, MCCGA, 2014).

As violent crime decreased throughout the end of the 1990’s, and remained low throughout the next decade, gang membership continued to rise both in Portland and nationally (Katz & Webb, 2004)(“NGTA,” 2011)(“Uniform crime report,” 2020).

In 2017, the Portland Police rescinded its policies with respect to the designation of gang members, and purportedly dissolved their gang database (Saul, 2017). The Gang Enforcement Team changed its name to the Gun Violence Reduction Team, but changed nothing about how they operated tactically (“Gang enforcement patrol,” 2018). The following year a city auditor’s review reported that the Gun Violence Reduction Team still maintained a gang database; only the new one provided no due-process, and the collection and maintenance of the data had no oversight or transparency (“Gang crime investigations,” 2018). The same audit also found that the Gun Violence Reduction Team was racially profiling those who they stopped.

After the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis Police officers in May of 2020, the City of Portland announced it would be disbanding the Portland Police Bureau’s Gun Violence Reduction Team. In the months to follow, Portland Police have blamed the dismantling of the GVRT for a rise in Portland area shootings (“Police leaders tie recent shootings,” 2020).

In a 2011 interview with the Washington Journal, then FBI Assistant Deputy Director Robert Daniels was asked if it were illegal to be in a gang. Daniels’ reply was:

It is not. It is illegal to, um,  be involved in criminal activity as a gang member, but, to just align yourself with a gang, if you’re not involved in any criminal activity, you know, that’s your First Amendment Right to do that.

Despite acknowledging this, The FBI, in their latest National Gang Threat Assessment (2011), which is nearly a decade-old, describes street gangs as “criminal organizations” and reports that there are 1.4 million gang members in the United States. In fact, the figure of 1.4 million is a 40% increase of gang members from the FBI’s 2009 estimates of only 800,000 just two years earlier. It’s no wonder why then that the Department of Justice has increasingly used the Racketeering Influenced Corrupt Organization (RICO) Act, a law enacted to fight organized crime, against street gangs (NGTA, 2011).

Even right here in Portland, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Oregon is currently prosecuting the local Hoover gang for murders, drug offenses, and other crimes for which the government claims the Hoovers have committed as agreed-upon gang centered purposes, rather than as individuals (Bernstein, 2019).

Scholars disagree. Malcom Klein, as quoted by Howell & Griffith (2015), pointed out, “gangs are not committees, ball teams, task forces, production teams, or research teams. They do not gather to achieve a common, agreed-upon end.”

Also noted by Howell & Griffith (2015), was that, “street gangs are a product of U.S. history and are homegrown.” They go on to state, “the myths and stereotypes, coupled with a lack of research to address their validity, contribute to our lack of ability to address the gang problem effectively.”

Could it be that changes are needed to the ways in which we address the problems we describe as “gang problems”?

In conclusion, it has been established that:

·         Gangs are legal, and members have a First Amendment Right to be in a gang;

·         Gangs are not going to be eradicated and are likely to grow in number (NGTA, 2011);

·         Much of what is thought to be true with respect to gangs are myths and stereotypes (p.30, Howell & Griffith, 2015);

·         Since the early 1990’s, although gang membership in Portland and nationally has risen, crime has steadily decreased in Portland and nationally (UCR, 1985-2019)(NGTA, 2011) (“UCR,” 2020).

With these facts established, it seems that the past and current approaches to gangs are outdated and perhaps should be reconsidered. The reality is that gangs are likely to continue to be blamed for the lack of societal and political remedies. While society and politicians ignore their role in the problem, it only continues to worsen—not only for society and government—but for the gangs too, and the individual members who are not involved with any criminal activity who suffer from mere guilt-by-association.

 References:

Murch, D. (2015). Crack in Los Angeles: Crisis, militarization, and black response to the late twentieth-century war on drugs. The Journal of American History, 162-173. https://academic.oup.com/jah/article/102/1/162/686732

“Portland Police increase presence after gang leader shot” (1988, August 18). Associated Press. https://apnews.com/article/ad3c61d74dd79fd2cd9a8ee3cc91e97a

“The Nation” (1989, July 13). The Los Angeles Times. https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1989-07-13-mn-4567-story.html

“Overdose: cocaine and crime in Portland” (1989, September 10). The Oregonian. https://www.mentalhealthportland.org/overdose-cocaine-and-crime-in-portland/

Saul, J. (2017, September 15). In a first for the nation, Portland Police end gang list to improve relations with Blacks and Latinos. Newsweek. https://www.newsweek.com/2017/10/06/gang-violence-portland-police-tear-gang-member-list-effort-rebuild-community-665374.html

Holley, S. (2015, March 22). Is Portland’s gang problem getting worse? Vice. https://www.vice.com/en/article/jmbymd/is-portland-oregons-gang-problem-getting-worse-322

“2011 National Gang Threat Assessment” (2011). Federal Bureau of Investigation. https://www.fbi.gov/stats-services/publications/2011-national-gang-threat-assessment

Katz, C., & Webb, V. (2004, April) Police response to gangs: a multi-site study. Arizona State University. https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/205003.pdf

Howell, J., & Griffith, E. (2015). Gangs in America’s communities. Sage. https://us.sagepub.com/sites/default/files/upm-binaries/93052_Chapter_2_Myths_and_Realities_of_Youth_Gangs.pdf

“Gang crime investigations: lack of accountability and transparency reduced the community’s trust in police” (2018, March). Portland City Auditor. https://www.portlandoregon.gov/auditservices/article/677594

“Gang enforcement patrol: The Police Bureau must show that traffic stops are effective” (2018, March). Portland City Auditor. https://www.portlandoregon.gov/auditservices/article/677598

“Uniform Crime Report” (2020). Federal Bureau of Investigation. Department of Justice. https://crime-data-explorer.fr.cloud.gov/explorer/national/united-states/crime

Bernstein, M. (2019, November 7). Alleged Hoover gang members accused of 3 murders, other crimes in racketeering conspiracy indictment. The Oregonian. https://www.oregonlive.com/crime/2019/11/federal-prosecutors-to-unseal-new-racketeering-indictment-against-alleged-hoover-gang-members.html

“Multnomah County Comprehensive Gang Assessment” (2014, June 30). Lore Joplin Consulting. https://multco.us/lpscc/multnomah-county-comprehensive-gang-assessment-and-implementation-plan

“Police leaders tie recent shootings to end of Portland’s Gun Violence Reduction Team” (2020, August 5). Oregon Public Broadcasting. https://www.opb.org/article/2020/08/06/gun-violence-portland-reduction-police-lovell-turner/

[redstoreroom]

The King of Singapore

The young man in blue paid him two dollars reluctantly then walked away. He dropped the money into his pouch and, with weathered fingers, zipped it up. His hands were still sticky so he wiped them on his shirt. His clothes looked like he had had years of sticky hands.

The sky was blushing mauve; he should start packing up. His ice-cream cart was parked by the suspension bridge over the river. He stretched his back with a groan. It had found an uncomfortable curve as its daily normal.

His precious cart was one of those with a large umbrella and conjoined to a bicycle. He looked too old to cycle, in my opinion. He knew it too. He also knew that one day, he wouldn’t be able to anymore. His joints were less like joints than bends lately. There weren’t much of muscles left on his bones either. And it worried him. Money, it worried him a lot. He could survive without shelter and homelessness was familiar. Food however… When that day comes, he’ll be fucked. His stomach too. Empty and fucked.

He lifted the metal lids of his cart, one after another, peeking into their freezing chambers. They usually contained many flavours of ice-cream. Vanilla, chocolate, strawberry, cookies and cream, mango, sweet corn, red bean, raspberry ripple. He even had durian flavoured ones; they taste better than you think, trust me. They cost more too; more than they should. You can buy them scooped on cones or cups, or sliced from icy blocks and sandwiched between wafers or bread. He had them on sticks too. However, that evening as he peered into the compartments, he saw that they were empty except for cold exhalations meeting his face and a single popsicle. The tubs were all scooped clean. The blocks for the sandwiches were all gone. It had been a busy day so he hadn’t noticed. Even the corn flavoured ice-cream had sold well. One more popsicle.

His heartbeat rushed. Happiness; he hadn’t felt it for a long time. He turned to the river and the towering buildings beyond it as he tried to girdle his emotions to his wasted body. He wanted his entire nervous system to experience every droplet of the contentment. He needed it to nest in him forever. He smiled. He listened to the distant of laughter that travelled from nearby bars and restaurants; laughter of smoking and drinking people. Feasting people. Joyful people. With them, he felt a shared glee from afar. It was lonely but not lonely.

This land, my land.

He was a king of this country, centuries ago; a raja, when the gods of the sea were still awake and sending bladed hordes from their depths to the shores of this island. A young boy, still unclaimed by puberty, but with smarts and banana trees, saved the land from the piscine attackers.

When his subjects—with mouths stuffed with panggang garfish—threw adorations at the child, our king grew worried the story would end with him throne-less. The boy was the David to his Saul.

He sent five men to kill the boy when the moon turned blind and unable to bear witness. They went to his home upon the hill and entered his room through the window. His parents were asleep. Five men. Five blades. Seven stabs each. They left quicker than they came.

As his life began its migration from his body, he wept to the gods. His final breaths called to the gods of the winds. His tears called to the gods of the waters. His temperature, lowering fast, called to the gods of fire. His blood seeped through the floor and called to the gods of the earth and thus began the slow and famous red-dyeing of the hill; Bukit Merah.

Forgiveness or revenge, the gods asked the boy.

Revenge, he said. Revenge and multiplied.

And so, they commenced the punishment. Food from the earth withered black in the mouths of our king’s family while water turned to poison down their throats. When they are shrivelled and broken, air then fled their lungs in slow hisses and rattles and so much pain. One by one, members of the royal family died, leaving our monarch completely alone. You see, fire, most cruel, cursed him with a promethean spark of life, so that he will never die. He will age, slow, but no death.

For hundreds of years, he searched for Death. He found her, one day, during the second world war, and asked her to take him. She laughed. Ask someone else, she told him. Then she left. She said she was rather busy. She had a lot of work to do.

It wasn’t till the nineteen eighties, that he met that ‘someone else’; at this very bridge, in fact. She looked like an old woman, greying hair and all that. Her ill-fitting blouse was a vomit of tiny purple and grey flowers, and dark patches of sweat under her arms, on her chest and her back. Her black trousers were too loose for her legs. He approached her.

“You’re the Devil, yes?” he asked her. “I need your help.”

“Cavenagh Bridge.” She placed a hand on a railing of the bridge. He wasn’t sure if it was for emphasis or support. “Did you know, it was built in Glasgow, dismantled and reassembled here in 1969?”

“Yes. I worked on it. Forced to. I was in prison then.” He placed a hand on the railing too but found it too hot from the sun and retreated his hand. She kept hers on it.

“My, my. From king to convict. When the mighty fall, they plummet.”

“At least I had meals behind bars. Out here… Empty belly and immortality; brutal combination.”

“Tell me, did they really sacrifice children when building bridges? Or is that just an urban myth? Oh, please tell me they did! It would really make my day!”

“Even if they did, who am I to judge?”

She laughed, hard and with bouts of coughs. “I like you. You’re hilarious. Your entire situation is hilarious. And you’re pathetic; that’s lovely too! Like a monkey. Like a drowning monkey. And that makes me smile. So, fine. How may I help you?”

“I want to die.”

“And in this heat, I want ice-cream. Boohoo! We all want something. You were given life without expiration. You could have earned every ounce of your riches back. Your land, even! I don’t understand how you managed to waste it all. Why are you such a failure?”

“Bad choices?”

She smiled a sigh. “Well, I can’t fault you for that, can I? Even God makes choices He regrets. I’m proof of that. Fine, I’ll help. But my dear, I can’t peel the curse off you. Amend it, however—”

“I’ll take it.”

And a contract was signed on Cavenagh Bridge, with the river and sun as witnesses, and the Devil gave the ex-convict king an ice-cream cart, telling him that once it is empty and frozen goods all sold, he will die. Easy, right? Yet for some reason, the thing never seemed to empty.

He could see its contents decreasing yet there was always more left. As time went on, the cart grew and accommodated more flavours and types of ice-cream. It even added a bicycle to itself. The king—now ice-cream man—could never remember when or how these changes to his cart occurred. He could only notice that it was different from before. Like realising there were now wrinkles under your eyes but never being too sure when they first appeared.

When he started selling popsicles, he tried counting them to keep track of their number but could never finish the task. So, he gave up. No surprises there. Once, he tried to buy his own wares. That didn’t work either. Everything in the cart doubled itself in quantity.

For years, he peddled. It turned his dark skin papery and covered it with wrinkles and spots. He joined the country’s army of the aged men and women who toiled—often disregarded—right up to their deaths. And like him, a small few toiled for their deaths as well; praying they lose balance at the next foodcourt table they cleaned or the next floor tile they swept, and fall, snapping their cervical spine, killing them instantly. It was the nation’s waiting game and our king feared he would be playing it forever.

Yet that night, he found his cart finally empty save a single popsicle, more than three decades after his compact began. He called to people to buy it. No luck. I was walking by his cart when he begged me. I asked him what flavour it was. Yam. Who the hell eats yam flavoured anything? So, I said no. He fell onto his knees, crying and pleading. I heard him screaming as I walked away.

I wonder whether anyone bought it. I really hope no one ever does. Such a waste of money. Living is so expensive as it is. I mean… yam, for god’s sake.

(Note 1: This story was inspired by the Singapore folktale, Attack of the Swordfish, a tale of how Singapore was attacked by schools of swordfish and saved by a young boy, Hang Nadim (using a wall of banana stems), who was then murdered by the king. 

Note 2: An earlier version of this piece was initially posted on 12th June 2017 and has been edited and revised on 4th August 2020)

[masterroadtripper]

NAVIGATION

✩ ✩ ✩ ✩ ✩ ✩ ✩ ✩ ✩ ✩ ✩ ✩ ✩ ✩ ✩ ✩

Con O'Neill's Filmography Jackson, One Summer (1983) - 1x01, 1x04 Leggers, Brookside (1984) - here Peter, Travelling Man (1984) - here Mickey Johnstone, Blood Brothers (1988) Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8 Tom Fitzgerald, The Lilac Bus (1990) - here Denis Simpson, Casualty (1993) - here Michael, Scarborough Ahoy! (1996) - here Nick Gillespie, Peak Practice (1997) - here Ben Walker, Wycliffe (1997) - here Colm Hare, Waking the Dead (2001) - 1x05, 1x06 Martin, My Hero (2005) - here Bruce Shapiro, The Stepfather (2005) - here Gerry, Learners (2007) - here Ralph Stone, Criminal Justice (2008) - 1x01, 1x02, 1x03, 1x04, 1x05 Joe Brierley, Ordinary Lies (2016) - Version 1 Version 2 Part 1, Version 2 Part 2, Version 2 best stand-alone shots Patrick, Riot (2017) - here Tony, Urban Myths (2018) - here Graham, Cleaning Up (2019) - here OFMD Behind the Scenes - 03/05/24 The Leather Jacket (Dancin' Thru the Dark and Uncle combo) - here

✩ ✩ ✩ ✩ ✩ ✩ ✩ ✩ ✩ ✩ ✩ ✩ ✩ ✩ ✩ ✩

James Lance's Filmography Matt Harvey, Teachers (2002) 2x10, 3x01, 3x02, 3x03, 3x04, 3x05, 3x06, 3x07, 3x08, 3x09, 3x10, 3x11, 3x12 part 1, 3x12 part 2, 3x13 part 1, 3x13 part 2 Behind the scenes of Teachers 3x12 - here Doug McConnell, Legendary (2013) - here

✩ ✩ ✩ ✩ ✩ ✩ ✩ ✩ ✩ ✩ ✩ ✩ ✩ ✩ ✩ ✩

Top Gun (1986, 2022) Observations on Iceman’s House and Office - here Mav's Hangar - here Mav’s Ford Bronco - here

✩ ✩ ✩ ✩ ✩ ✩ ✩ ✩ ✩ ✩ ✩ ✩ ✩ ✩ ✩ ✩

9-1-1 Lone Star Observations on the Reyes House - here Onions in 3x13, Riddle of the Sphinx - here 4x01; the telenovela element - here

✩ ✩ ✩ ✩ ✩ ✩ ✩ ✩ ✩ ✩ ✩ ✩ ✩ ✩ ✩ ✩

Misc Media Posts Private Romeo (2011) - "he jests at scars that never felt a wound" Spartacus (2011-2013) - "you shall always be remembered" Spartacus and Night Shift (2014) - give me TV shows with gay characters Knives Out Universe (2019, 2022) - how Phillip and Benoit met Ted Lasso (2020-2023) - the gay couple in the Richmond Stadium

[makaris]

Holy fuck, the Iowa Caucus

Okay so I want to break this down, mostly as a way to help myself make sense of it all.  If this helps other folks understand the time line of events, all the better.  My ‘sources’ are scattered and random, as I’ve been absorbing most of this stuff through osmosis and it’s super hard nailing down the ‘best’ link to something, given how fast all this is moving.

I will arbitrarily start my rant here.

BUTTIGIEG BLOCKS CRITICAL DES MOINES POLL

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/02/iowa-poll-swiftly-spiked-after-buttigieg-campaign-issues-complaint

Shortly before the Iowa Caucus was to begin, the CNN/Des Moines poll was set to release. This is, apparently, a very important poll that a lot of the mainstream media (MSM) had already scheduled a lot of coverage for, as it would be a good indicator of the final state of things just before the election.  

Then, Buttigieg campaign blocks its release. Why?  Well, their campaign claimed that one of the pollsters may have not been giving out Buttigieg’s name while calling out.  Not for any nefarious reason, just what is basically an IT issue.  This alone isn’t really too bad.  And, in a vacuum, not really worth too much fuss over.  Like, I do think it’s a bit weird that CNN would let all that money/effort go to waste over a single campaigns minor complaint, but, still, whatever.

The fact that the poll ended up getting leaked and was very favorable to Bernie (and VERY unfavorable to Biden) is another small annoyance.  It would have probably helped get a bit of positive / surprise coverage shortly before the caucus.  But again, whatever.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/unreleased-final-iowa-poll-had-biden-in-fourth

Given what all ends up happening, it’s a just a prelude to some REAL hinky shit.

THAT FUCKING APP

So election day comes.  I and many others are tuned into various outlets.  We have the NYT and other vote trackers open, watching it all roll out.  Looks like it’s going good for Bernie.  Oh Boy!

Then, around 10PM, the numbers get pulled.  We’re told that some app that was being used to communicate the votes was messing up.  Numbers were going missing.  They aren’t adding up.  Tons of nonsense goes down.  

The company that created the app is a company called Shadow (yes, really), which is part of a larger group called Acronym.  It is staffed by ex Clinton staffers and other failures closely tied to the establishment, so the app being a POS should not be a surprise to anyone.  Oh, and the company accepted over $42k from Buttigieg’s campaign. 

https://www.truthorfiction.com/did-pete-buttigiegs-campaign-donate-42500-to-iowa-caucus-app-developer-shadow-inc/

It should be mentioned that this company and the people behind it will face no real repercussions.  Yeah ‘Shadow’ might go under, but and they might have temporarily lost a few contracts with the DNC.  But never underestimate how corrupt the democratic consultant class can be. They’ll be back to fuck some other shit up in no time.

Now, again, not trying to be conspiratorial here.  Maybe the vapid bougie fucks behind this had no ill intent.  Maybe their worst crime is being morons who did not test their software and accepted money unthinkingly.  But at the very least, their history as agents positioned against one of the front runners, and acceptance of money from one of the others, is a clear conflict of interest and should not have been allowed to happen.

Moving on.

BERNIE RELEASES INTERNAL NUMBERS, BUT BUTTIGIEG VICTORIOUS?

Sander’s campaign releases their internal numbers, showing they are leading by a solid 5 points.

https://twitter.com/reaIKevin/status/1224685920504504321/photo/2

The above is the best we had that night. 

Then, Buttigieg ended up reporting that he was ‘victorious’.  This is obviously misleading at best, as he’d have no way of really knowing that.  It was just blustering.  An attempt to get ahead of the chaos and create The Narrative.

I won’t go into it right now, as this post is going to be long.  But, in the end, the truth is not nearly as important as what people believe.  If Pete can successfully insert the idea that he is winning, enough people won’t question it that you’ll gain some converts, regardless of it being untrue.  Now, MSM would (surprisingly!) criticize him, a bit, but not nearly enough to make it a bad play, strategically.  Pete is dangerous, because he’s the kind of guy that can identify an opening like this, see how it will play out, and shameless act on it.

When he got called out on it (again, surprisingly), he would later claim that he was being just being poetic / flowery, and didn’t mean to say that they had come in 1st and won, which is what victorious means. Pete’s lying, of course, because he is a liar who lies.

We’re getting head of ourselves.  Let’s see what happens the next morning...

CONTROLLING THE NARRATIVE

The party decides that they need to do a LOT of ‘quality control’, and it’s just too much to release all at once.  They need to do it small batches.  And the initial 62% they decide to first release excludes all the area’s where Bernie is doing the best.  

https://twitter.com/joules1971/status/1225057375540916226/photo/1

Hey look, Pete’s fucking winning now (if you exclude all the poorer, urban, or minority focused areas)!  The numbers aren’t in yet, but it fits The Narrative, so who cares!

From then, past initial 62% release up to the 80-something-% yesterday, we at least have some data.  We can look past the noise and see that Buttigieg’s claim to victory is NOT based on the popular vote. It turns out that, even with the releases being poised against him, Bernie is still leading in both the 1st and 2nd round of voting.  The only thing he did not take is the SDE count, so they are end up tied for Delegates.  What are SDE’s?  They’re State Delegate Equivalents.  I’m not going to claim to understand how it works, as it is extremely arcane, but an easier way to think about it is that Bernie won the popular vote, but Buttigieg won some Iowa-based electoral college. And even there, is only winning by a slim margin.

It is very important to stress that the delegates from Iowa BARELY MATTER.  They’re not why Iowa is significant.  The reason we care at all is winning Iowa means you get positive press, and a news cycle dedicated to you.  Most voters do not pay much attention, and will generally vote for whoever they perceive to be winning.  And who they perceive to be winning is generally based on what the media tells them. 

If the goal was to hurt whoever truly won the Iowa election, you would do exactly this.  You would you string along the release of info for as long as possible, so that either A) someone else gains the benefits of the election, based on misrepresenting, incomplete data OR B) folks stop paying attention.

Let’s stop and think.  A bunch of stuff has happened already.  Is it gross incompetence?  Or is there nefarious intent?  Both?  Does the DNC even deserve the benefit of the doubt, after all the shit that they are on the record pulling in 2016?  

Let’s assume incompetence for now, and see if it’s even still possible to think that later.  

The point is, Bernie was getting his (OUR) media cycle stolen, and Buttigieg is now starting to gain in the polls.

UH OH, MATH IS HARD!  

It starts coming out that the totals we were getting were incorrect. 

https://twitter.com/Harvard4Bernie/status/1225189173998411778

Bernie votes (and a few from Warren even!) were going to other candidates. Black Hawk County managed to break into the news cycle, but they were far from alone. 

https://twitter.com/MCulshawMaurer/status/1225198291140268033

https://twitter.com/crulge/status/1225185093091840002

https://twitter.com/Banalization/status/1225199174171451393

https://twitter.com/MikePrysner/status/1225229056519503872

Turns out TONS of counties were seeing major discrepancies.  And, for some reason, all these errors and miscalculations were seeming to only break against Bernie.  In some areas, all of Bernie's votes going to fucking Deval or Steyer, who otherwise had basically no support.  The only reason we found out is because of local leaders that were smart enough to keep there own numbers, were paying close attention, and caught it.  If they hadn’t, we would have never known.  Now that’s what I call ~~~QUALITY CONTROL~~~~<3

I goes without saying that the DNC’s numbers at this point are EXTREMELY SUSPECT, and Bernie’s numbers are starting to look like they might be closer to the truth.  However, even with this blatant idiocy / corruption (your pick), Bernie still has the popular vote. 

TOM PEREZ NEEDS TO RESIGN

That brings us to earlier today, 02/06.  97% of the votes are in.  Bernie is only down by 0.1 points in SDE’s, still will ahead in the popular vote, and we’re clearly going to win at this point.

https://twitter.com/micahuetricht/status/1225131303189852160

The remaining votes are coming from satellite locations, mostly minority groups.  These groups were pulled in by the Bernie campaign and with their support we would surely pull in that last 0.2 percent needed to win in EVERY metric.  There would be no way that the MSM or other campaigns could spin this.  Bernie Won!

Then, Tom Perez puts his foot down, sees Bernie Winning all these unfortunate, unforeseen issues, and decides it’s high time to pull the plug and start the whole thing over from the beginning.

https://twitter.com/TomPerez/status/1225468833458245632

Tom Perez, in case you don’t remember, has been in control of the DNC since 2017 but was an opponent of Sanders during the 2016, including him offering plans on how to best shiv Bernie that were discovered in the Podesta leaks.

https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/4429

Notably, he helped engineer the narrative that Bernie could only connect with white liberals (ie the Bernie Bros myth), which has been something the Bernie campaign has been able to successfully push back on until it is now not only untrue, but the exact opposite of the truth.  POC are the back bone of Bernie’s campaign!

https://twitter.com/CANCEL_SAM/status/1225566817889980418

ANYWAY, Tom Perez, sleazeball he is, decided to wait until just before we had crossed the finish line to pull this stunt.  This is a pretty transparent attempt to delay the results (and the left’s victory!) as long as possible.  It also achieves the goal keeping Pete out front and able to boost his polling going into the next states.  Which is so far working for them, gaining 6-9 points just this week in NH.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/latest_polls/democratic_nomination_polls/

I don’t think anyone would be opposed to a recount, but there can be no reason to not release the last 3% (which they already had: (https://twitter.com/JennUWinn84/status/1225474355028746241).  It is overt, blatant corruption.

THE TAKE AWAY / WHAT DO WE DO?

- Don’t feel hopeless.  That’s what they want.

- It is super important that we not only win, but we need to win in CRUSHING numbers.  Because the DNC will pull every trick in the book to stop us, and we need to be ready.

- Paper. Fucking. Ballots.  You’re not a Luddite for wanting this.  It’s just the most practical, tamper-proof method. The app was a technocratic solution that was sold to the DNC, based on a problem they invented.

- More transparent oversight of our elections.   We invade South American countries due to electoral malfeasance with weaker pretenses then what just happened.

- Capitalists will always break fascist when confronted with the possibility of marginally higher taxes. ALWAYS.  For these reasons, If/When Bernie takes over the party, the DNC needs to be purged of EVERY LAST Reagan/Bush/Clinton era asset.  We don’t need them, they are not our allies, they will actively try to sabotage us, and for all these reasons and more unity with them is impossible.

- Do not play into the ‘VOTE BLUE NO MATTER WHO’ game.  It is not the time for that.  We are in the primary, and Bernie is the front runner.  The old arguments no longer apply, and no longer matter.

There are real fucking stakes here, and half/partial measures aren’t worth shit.  It doesn’t matter if YOU think you’re being principled by showing up to cast a vote for Bloomburg over Trump. Anyone other then Bernie will suppress the vote, full stop.  When people don’t vote, republicans win.  You will not be successful in holding poor / underprivileged people hostage and trying to activate them politically if all your promising them is the status quo, or wonky means tested BS.  

- We’re winning!...

https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2020-primary-forecast/

... But pretend we’re losing!  We can’t get complacent.

Ok that’s enough.  I have idea if anyone will read all this as I have like... four...? Followers?  Sorry for my rant, but it’s time to get politically engaged!  

[gaypoetrycapstone]

Bibliography

"These People Are Frightened to Death". (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/2016/summer/lavender.html

(2012, March 27). Retrieved from https://www.annelyle.com/homosexuality-in-elizabethan-england/

(2021). Retrieved 15 April 2021, from https://www.cdc.gov/nchhstp/newsroom/docs/factsheets/cdc-msm-508.pdf

(n.d.). Retrieved from https://medhum.med.nyu.edu/view/1127

(n.d.). Retrieved from https://poets.org/poet/allen-ginsberg

(n.d.). Retrieved from https://poets.org/poet/jack-kerouac

(n.d.). Retrieved from https://poets.org/poet/sappho

(n.d.). Retrieved from https://poets.org/text/brief-guide-beat-poets

(n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.bachelorandmaster.com/britishandamericanpoetry/howl.html#.YFpz5dzYrrc

(n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.blackwellpublishing.com/content/BPL_Images/Content_store/Sample_chapter/0631226354/001.pdf

(n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.foundsf.org/index.php?title=Gays_and_Beats

(n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.nps.gov/subjects/lgbtqheritage/upload/lgbtqtheme-law.pdf

(n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.sparknotes.com/shakespeare/life-and-times/social-context/sexuality-in-shakespeares-england/

(n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.sparknotes.com/shakespeare/life-and-times/social-context/sexuality-in-shakespeares-sonnets/

-, T., By, -, Thehistorianshuthttp://thehistorianshut.comIf you enjoy the content produced by this website and want to support our research and publications, Thehistorianshut, & If you enjoy the content produced by this website and want to support our research and publications. (2020, October 22). Sappho of Lesbos And The Husband Hoax. Retrieved from https://thehistorianshut.com/2020/10/21/sappho-of-lesbos-and-the-husband-hoax/

28, J., & Duncan, A. (2021, January 26). How Queer Writers Are Creating Queer Genres. Retrieved from https://electricliterature.com/how-queer-writers-are-creating-queer-genres/

5 Countries in Africa That Have Legalized Same-Sex Relationships in the Past 10 Years. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/countries-legalized-same-sex-relationships-africa/

About Emma Baldwin Emma graduated from East Carolina University with a BA in English, & About. (2021, February 26). XII by Sappho. Retrieved from https://poemanalysis.com/sappho/xii/

About Jamie Jenson Jamie joined the Poem Analysis team back in November, About, Says:, M. S., Says:, E. B., Says:, J. B., & Says:, L. B. (2021, March 02). A Supermarket in California. Retrieved from https://poemanalysis.com/allen-ginsberg/a-supermarket-in-california/

About the AuthorDiana ChandlerDiana Chandler is Baptist Press’ senior writer.Read All by Diana Chandler ›, & Diana ChandlerDiana Chandler is Baptist Press’ senior writer.Read All by Diana Chandler ›. (n.d.). Philippines high court rejects gay marriage appeal. Retrieved from https://www.baptistpress.com/resource-library/news/philippines-high-court-rejects-gay-marriage-appeal/

Additional informationNotes on contributorsEdward AlwoodEDWARD ALWOOD is a professor of journalism at Quinnipiac University in Hamden. (n.d.). The Role of Public Relations in the Gay Rights Movement, 1950–1969. Retrieved from https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00947679.2015.12059117

Alastair Blanshard Paul Eliadis Chair of Classics and Ancient History Deputy Head of School. (2020, July 20). Friday essay: The myth of the ancient Greek 'gay utopia'. Retrieved from https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-the-myth-of-the-ancient-greek-gay-utopia-88397

Allen Ginsberg. (2021, April 01). Retrieved from https://www.britannica.com/biography/Allen-Ginsberg

Allen Ginsberg. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/allen-ginsberg

AllenGinsberg.org. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://allenginsberg.org/

An Introduction to the Beat Poets. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.poetryfoundation.org/collections/147552/an-introduction-to-the-beat-poets

Ao, B. (2021, March 17). Nearly 75% of LGBTQ people say COVID-19 has harmed their mental health, poll finds. Retrieved from https://www.inquirer.com/health/coronavirus/lgbtq-covid-pandemic-mental-health-20210317.html

Bacon, J. (2021, March 15). Vatican, Pope Francis say Catholic Church can't bless same-sex marriages because God 'can't bless sin'. Retrieved from https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2021/03/15/vatican-says-catholic-church-cant-bless-same-sex-unions/4698628001/

Banerji, A. (2019, September 06). One year after landmark ruling for LGBT rights in India, challenges persist. Retrieved from https://www.reuters.com/article/us-india-lgbt-idUSKCN1VR256

Barkawi, B., & Savage, R. (2020, July 16). 'Great first step' as Sudan lifts death penalty and flogging for gay sex. Retrieved from https://www.reuters.com/article/us-sudan-lgbt-rights-trfn-idUSKCN24H30J

Barnes, S. (2016, May 12). Why Queer Poetry Still Matters. Retrieved from https://www.flavorwire.com/575828/why-queer-poetry-still-matters

Beat movement. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.britannica.com/art/Beat-movement

Beech, H. (2020, July 09). Thailand Moves to Legalize Same-Sex Unions, a Rare Step in Asia. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/09/world/asia/thailand-same-sex-unions.html

BerkeleyJr. (2020, October 29). Doctors worry coronavirus pandemic may hit LGBTQ people harder than most. Retrieved from https://www.cnbc.com/2020/10/29/coronavirus-doctors-worry-pandemic-may-hit-lgbtq-people-harder.html

Besideisagawa. (2018, May 17). [Analysis] " Details of the Woods " by Richard Siken. Retrieved from https://besideisagawa.wordpress.com/2017/08/30/analysis-details-of-the-woods-by-richard-siken/

Brammer, J. P. (2017, December 01). Three decades later, men who survived the 'gay plague' speak out. Retrieved from https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/three-decades-later-men-who-survived-gay-plague-speak-out-n825621

Buckle, B. (2020, October 08). African sexuality and the legacy of imported homophobia. Retrieved from https://www.stonewall.org.uk/about-us/news/african-sexuality-and-legacy-imported-homophobia

Canada, D. O. (2020, March 09). Federal Government introduces legislation to criminalize conversion therapy-related conduct in Canada . Retrieved from https://www.canada.ca/en/department-justice/news/2020/03/federal-government-introduces-legislation-to-criminalize-conversion-therapy-related-conduct-in-canada.html

Centre's Failure to Clear Saurabh Kirpal as HC Judge is an Act of Unlawful Discrimination. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://thewire.in/law/saurabh-kirpal-high-court-judge-appointment-discrimination

Centre's Failure to Clear Saurabh Kirpal as HC Judge is an Act of Unlawful Discrimination. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://thewire.in/law/saurabh-kirpal-high-court-judge-appointment-discrimination

Chan, H. (2020, March 31). Hong Kong court rules against same-sex civil partnerships. Retrieved from https://hongkongfp.com/2019/10/18/breaking-hong-kong-court-rules-sex-civil-partnerships/

ConversionTherapy_and_HR. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/ConversionTherapy_and_HR.aspx

Court Awards Damages to 20 LGBT Youth in Uganda. (2020, November 04). Retrieved from https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/07/10/court-awards-damages-20-lgbt-youth-uganda

Crush Poem Analysis. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.cram.com/essay/Crush-Poem-Analysis/P3PEY5AYHMQW

Cult Classic: Richard Siken's Crush. (2018, December 21). Retrieved from https://therumpus.net/2014/05/cult-classic-richard-sikens-crush/

Daughters of Bilitis. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.britannica.com/topic/Daughters-of-Bilitis

Dear Mr. Brittle: Queer Literature in Africa Is Not a Trend, Has Always Existed. (2019, June 12). Retrieved from https://brittlepaper.com/2017/12/dear-paper-queer-literature-trend-africa/

Desk, W. (2020, September 09). Saurabh Kirpal says his sexuality may have prevented him from becoming Delhi HC judge. Retrieved from https://www.theweek.in/news/india/2020/09/09/saurabh-kirpal-says-his-sexuality-prevented-him-from-becoming-delhi-hc-judge.html

Does Place of Residence Matter? Rural–Urban Differences and the Wellbeing of Gay Men and Lesbians. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00918369.2013.806166

Embensadoun. (2020, March 11). Canada just tabled legislation to ban conversion therapy. Why is it necessary in 2020? Retrieved from https://globalnews.ca/news/6649396/canada-conversion-therapy-ban-legislation/

Enze Han Associate Professor, & Joseph O'Mahoney Lecturer in Politics and International Relations. (2019, April 16). How Britain's colonial legacy still affects LGBT politics around the world. Retrieved from https://theconversation.com/how-britains-colonial-legacy-still-affects-lgbt-politics-around-the-world-95799

Factora, J. (2020, August 26). William Shakespeare Was Bisexual, New Book Confirms. Retrieved from https://www.them.us/story/william-shakespeare-was-bisexual#:~:text=Confirming what queer people have,that the Bard was bi.&text=In a victory for current,Shakespeare was “undeniably bisexual.”

Facts About Suicide. (2017, September 20). Retrieved from https://www.thetrevorproject.org/resources/preventing-suicide/facts-about-suicide/

Fadel, L. (2019, April 04). New Study: LGBT People A 'Fundamental Part of The Fabric Of Rural Communities'. Retrieved from https://www.npr.org/2019/04/04/709601295/lgbt-people-are-a-fundamental-part-of-the-fabric-of-rural-communities

Fitzsimons, T. (2020, July 15). 40 percent of LGBTQ youth 'seriously considered' suicide in past year, survey finds. Retrieved from https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/40-percent-lgbtq-youth-seriously-considered-suicide-past-year-survey-n1233832

For LGBTQ in rural communities, pride festivals can be key connection but pandemic is raining on the parade | CBC Radio. (2020, June 14). Retrieved from https://www.cbc.ca/radio/day6/rural-lgbtq-pride-festivals-1.5609765

Gayle, H. D., & Hill, G. L. (2001, April). Global impact of human immunodeficiency virus and AIDS. Retrieved from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC88977/#:~:text=The human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)/AIDS epidemic has already,civil order and economic growth.

Ginsberg, A. (n.d.). A Supermarket in California by Allen Ginsberg. Retrieved from https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47660/a-supermarket-in-california

Ginsberg, A. (n.d.). Howl by Allen Ginsberg. Retrieved from https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/49303/howl

Ginsberg, A., Asked by angku k #393684 Answered by Aslan on 10/16/2014 9:39 AM, #393684, A. K., Asked by angku k #393684 Answered by Aslan on 10/25/2014 12:27 PM, Asked by jessica T #1004139 Answered by Aslan on 4/14/2020 3:03 AM, & #1004139, J. T. (n.d.). Allen Ginsberg's Poetry "A Supermarket in California" Summary and Analysis. Retrieved from https://www.gradesaver.com/allen-ginsbergs-poetry/study-guide/summary-a-supermarket-in-california

Global Legal Monitor. (2020, January 24). Retrieved from https://www.loc.gov/law/foreign-news/article/philippines-supreme-court-rules-on-same-sex-marriage/

Global Trends in LGBT Rights During the Covid-19 Pandemic. (2021, February 24). Retrieved from https://www.hrw.org/news/2021/02/24/global-trends-lgbt-rights-during-covid-19-pandemic

Glossing over it: Homoeroticism in Shakespeare's sonnets. (2002, August 06). Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/books/2002/aug/06/shakespeare

Greek Homosexuality. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.livius.org/articles/concept/greek-homosexuality/

Green, E. (2019, August 18). America Moved On From Its Gay-Rights Moment-And Left a Legal Mess Behind. Retrieved from https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2019/08/lgbtq-rights-america-arent-resolved/596287/

Haynes, S., & Aneja, V. B. (2020, December 22). History You Didn't Learn About the Anti-Gay Lavender Scare. Retrieved from https://time.com/5922679/lavender-scare-history/

Hays, J. (n.d.). HOMOSEXUALITY IN ANCIENT GREECE. Retrieved from http://factsanddetails.com/world/cat56/sub406/entry-6202.html

Herz, Z. (2017, November 14). Law v. History. Retrieved from https://eidolon.pub/law-v-history-2ccfc296ca80

Heyward, G., & Gray, M. (2020, November 22). The pandemic is hurting gay and lesbian bars. The consequences for the community could be devastating. Retrieved from https://www.cnn.com/2020/11/22/business/gay-lesbian-bars-covid-consequences-trnd/index.html

Historical Background of Homosexuality. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://homosexualityinshakespeare.weebly.com/historical-background-of-homosexuality.html

History of HIV and AIDS overview. (2019, October 10). Retrieved from https://www.avert.org/professionals/history-hiv-aids/overview

History.com Editors. (2017, June 28). Gay Rights. Retrieved from https://www.history.com/topics/gay-rights/history-of-gay-rights

HIV/AIDS: Snapshots of an Epidemic. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.amfar.org/thirty-years-of-hiv/aids-snapshots-of-an-epidemic/

Hogg RS;Strathdee SA;Craib KJ;O'Shaughnessy MV;Montaner JS;Schechter MT;. (n.d.). Modelling the impact of HIV disease on mortality in gay and bisexual men. Retrieved from https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9222793/

Horton, C. (2019, May 24). After a Long Fight, Taiwan's Same-Sex Couples Celebrate New Marriages. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/24/world/asia/taiwan-same-sex-marriage.html

Hubbard, T. K. (2020, May 29). Historical Views of Homosexuality: Ancient Greece. Retrieved from https://oxfordre.com/politics/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228637.001.0001/acrefore-9780190228637-e-1242

Human Rights Watch Country Profiles: Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity. (2020, October 28). Retrieved from https://www.hrw.org/news/2017/06/23/human-rights-watch-country-profiles-sexual-orientation-and-gender-identity

Hussain, N. Z. (2020, October 27). Legal hurdles faced by LGBT people in Africa. Retrieved from https://www.reuters.com/article/us-nigeria-lgbt-lawmaking-idUSKBN27C2XQ

Importance of the Beat Generation - AP Comp: The Beat Generation. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://sites.google.com/site/ahsapcompthebeatgeneration/section-four/importance-of-the-beat-generation

Is 10% of the population really gay? (2015, April 05). Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/apr/05/10-per-cent-population-gay-alfred-kinsey-statistics

J;, J. A. (n.d.). The Social Impact Of AIDS In The United States. Retrieved from https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25121219/

Jacqueline Sahagian More Articles July 24, 2. (2015, July 25). Everything You Need to Know About The Beat Generation. Retrieved from https://www.cheatsheet.com/entertainment/entertainment-101-the-beat-generation.html/

Janet Olsen, M. S. (2018, September 20). Youth report higher rates of homophobic behaviors in rural and small town schools. Retrieved from https://www.canr.msu.edu/news/youth_report_higher_rates_of_homophobic_behaviors_in_rural_and_small_town_s

Japan court finds same-sex marriage ban unconstitutional. (2021, March 17). Retrieved from https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-56425002

Jennings, A. (2018, June 01). Is Thailand LGBTQTraveler Friendly? Retrieved from https://www.worldnomads.com/travel-safety/southeast-asia/thailand/thailand-for-lgbtqi-travellers

JK;, L. M. (n.d.). Comparing supports for LGBT aging in rural versus urban areas. Retrieved from https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23350566/

Kibbe, K. (2020, August 25). Scholars Have Taken It Upon Themselves to Declare William Shakespeare "Undeniably Bisexual". Retrieved from https://www.insidehook.com/daily_brief/books/scholars-say-william-shakespeare-bisexual

Kinsey in the News. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/kinsey-news/

Kinsey in the News. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/kinsey-news/

Kirchick, J. (2019, July 02). The Struggle for Gay Rights Is Over. Retrieved from https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/06/battle-gay-rights-over/592645/

Kushner, J. (2019, June 18). The British Empire's Homophobia Lives On in Former Colonies. Retrieved from https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2019/05/kenya-supreme-court-lgbtq/590014/

Learning, L. (n.d.). Introduction to Sociology. Retrieved from https://courses.lumenlearning.com/cochise-sociology-os/chapter/sexual-behavior-kinseys-study/

Levine, J. (2016, September 25). LEAKY CULTURE 5: Richard Siken. Retrieved from https://entropymag.org/leaky-culture-5-richard-siken/

Lgbtmap.org. 2019. Where We Call Home: LGBT People in Rural America. [online] Available at: <https://www.lgbtmap.org/file/lgbt-rural-report.pdf> [Accessed 17 April 2021].

LGBTQ Inequality and Vulnerability in the Pandemic. (2020, October 28). Retrieved from https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/06/18/lgbtq-inequality-and-vulnerability-pandemic

LitCharts. (n.d.). A Supermarket in California Summary & Analysis by Allen Ginsberg. Retrieved from https://www.litcharts.com/poetry/allen-ginsberg/a-supermarket-in-california

Lopez, G. (2015, December 01). The Reagan administration's unbelievable response to the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Retrieved from https://www.vox.com/2015/12/1/9828348/ronald-reagan-hiv-aids

Map of Countries that Criminalise LGBT People. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.humandignitytrust.org/lgbt-the-law/map-of-criminalisation/?type_filter=crim_lgbt

Marguerite Johnson Professor of Classics. (2021, March 31). Guide to the classics: Sappho, a poet in fragments. Retrieved from https://theconversation.com/guide-to-the-classics-sappho-a-poet-in-fragments-90823

Maria Thomas, I. S. (n.d.). In over 40 countries, laws against homosexuality are a lasting legacy of British rule. Retrieved from https://qz.com/india/1380947/section-377-the-former-british-colonies-with-laws-against-gay-people/

Mason, E. (2020, November 26). What was pederasty in ancient Greece? Retrieved from https://www.historyextra.com/period/ancient-greece/pederasty-homosexuality-ancient-greece-boys-sparta-girls-plato-sappho-consent/

McCarthy, J. (2021, March 28). Americans Still Greatly Overestimate U.S. Gay Population. Retrieved from https://news.gallup.com/poll/259571/americans-greatly-overestimate-gay-population.aspx

Mendelsohn, D., & Mead, R. (n.d.). How Gay Was Sappho? Retrieved from https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/03/16/girl-interrupted

Mercury, S. (2012, October 24). Shakespeare WAS bisexual it is revealed. Retrieved from https://www.birminghammail.co.uk/news/local-news/shakespeare-was-bisexual-it-is-revealed-229808

Milestones in the American Gay Rights Movement. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/stonewall-milestones-american-gay-rights-movement/

Mishler, P., & By. (2014, December 03). The Doubling of Self: An Interview with Richard Siken. Retrieved from https://tinhouse.com/the-doubling-of-self-an-interview-with-richard-siken/

Mmoneymaker. (2019, September 06). One Year On Since Repeal of Section 377 in India: A Third of the World's Countries Continue to Criminalize Same-Sex Relations. Retrieved from https://outrightinternational.org/content/one-year-repeal-section-377-india-third-world’s-countries-continue-criminalize-same-sex

Morgan, J. (2016, April 22). Here are 12 arguments to prove William Shakespeare could have been gay or bisexual. Retrieved from https://www.gaystarnews.com/article/12-reasons-prove-shakespeare-was-gay-or-least-bisexual220414/

Mugisha, F. (2019, January 22). India and the Global Fight for LGBT Rights. Retrieved from https://foreignpolicy.com/gt-essay/india-and-the-global-fight-for-lgbt-rights/

Newport, F. (2021, March 23). In U.S., Estimate of LGBT Population Rises to 4.5%. Retrieved from https://news.gallup.com/poll/234863/estimate-lgbt-population-rises.aspx

News Releases. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.uclahealth.org/study-focuses-on-mental-health-of-gay-men-amid-pandemic

News, B. (2020, July 08). Thailand Leads Way in Southeast Asia With Same-Sex Union Bill - BNN Bloomberg. Retrieved from https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/thailand-leads-way-in-southeast-asia-with-same-sex-union-bill-1.1462152

Noa. (1970, January 01). Scheherazade by Richard Siken. Retrieved from http://noa-betweenthelines.blogspot.com/2017/02/scheherazade-by-richard-siken.html

Ohlheiser, A. (2013, December 20). Uganda's New Anti-Homosexuality Law Was Inspired by American Activists. Retrieved from https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/12/uganda-passes-law-punishes-homosexuality-life-imprisonment/356365/

Outmagazine. (2015, February 06). 9 Things To Know About 'The Lavender Scare'. Retrieved from https://www.out.com/entertainment/popnography/2013/04/26/9-things-to know-about-lavender-scare

Pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu. 2021. [online] Available at: <https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1203&context=younghistorians> [Accessed 17 April 2021].

Perloff, M. (n.d.). Allen Ginsberg by Marjorie Perloff. Retrieved from https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/articles/70013/allen-ginsberg

Pickett, B. (2020, April 28). Homosexuality. Retrieved from https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/homosexuality/

Poetry's Chokehold: A Look at Richard Siken's CRUSH. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.interabangbooks.com/article/poetry’s-chokehold-look-richard-siken’s-crush

Poitras, C. (2019, June 13). The 'Global Closet' is Huge-Vast Majority of World's Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual Population Hide Orientation, YSPH Study Finds. Retrieved from https://medicine.yale.edu/news-article/20510/

Pokharel, K., & Abrams, C. (2018, September 06). India's Top Court Rules Gay Sex Isn't a Crime, Striking Down Part of Colonial-Era Law. Retrieved from https://www.wsj.com/articles/indian-supreme-court-strikes-down-377-british-era-law-criminalizing-gay-sex-1536215972

Progression of American Society - AP Comp: The Beat Generation. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://sites.google.com/site/ahsapcompthebeatgeneration/home/pictures-to-describe-the-beat-generation

Queerstorian. (2019, April 07). Kerkylas of Andros. Retrieved from https://worldqueerstory.org/tag/kerkylas-of-andros/

Revisiting Siken. (2018, February 12). Retrieved from https://www.stanforddaily.com/2018/02/11/revisiting-siken/

Rosefield, H. (2015, February 03). Things you might not know about William S. Burroughs. Retrieved from https://www.dazeddigital.com/artsandculture/article/23472/1/things-you-might-not-know-about-william-s-burroughs

Sappho, Asked by hglioygi9 ' #954234 Answered by Kimayda Y #956244 on 11/27/2019 2:29 AM, #954234, H. '., Asked by joshua s #262651 Answered by judy t #197809 on 12/19/2013 3:21 PM, #262651, J. S., Asked by carolina g #104979 Answered by jill d #170087 on 11/2/2011 1:03 PM, & #104979, C. G. (n.d.). Sappho: Poems and Fragments Summary. Retrieved from https://www.gradesaver.com/sappho-poems-and-fragments/study-guide/summary

Sappho. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.enotes.com/topics/sappho/critical-essays

Sappho. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/sappho

Sappho. (n.d.). Sappho Fragment 31 Summary. Retrieved from https://www.gradesaver.com/sappho-fragment-31/study-guide/summary

Says:, D. M., Says:, D. M., Says:, T., Says:, R., Says:, J., Says:, E., . . . Says:, P. S. (n.d.). The Poetry of William S. Burroughs. Retrieved from https://realitystudio.org/texts/the-poetry-of-william-s-burroughs/

Says:, M. D. (n.d.). "Burroughs Is a Poet Too, Really": The Poetics of Minutes to Go. Retrieved from https://realitystudio.org/scholarship/burroughs-is-a-poet-too-really-the-poetics-of-minutes-to-go/

Says:, M., Says:, D. S., & Says:, J. E. (2010, September 29). Banned Books Week & the Beats. Retrieved from https://www.beatdom.com/banned-books-week-the-beats/#:~:text=It was the last major obscenity trial in the United States.&text=According to the American Library,United States at some point.

Scher, A. (2019, April 12). Gay in rural America: Up to 5 percent of rural residents are LGBTQ, report finds. Retrieved from https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/gay-rural-america-5-percent-rural-residents-are-lgbtq-report-n993936

Schjeldahl, P., Adler, R., Goodyear, D., Menand, L., & Gopnik, A. (n.d.). The Extraordinary Life of William S. Burroughs. Retrieved from https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/02/03/the-outlaw#:~:text=According to Miles, Kerouac and,, Julie, of uncertain paternity.

Shakespeare, sexuality and the Sonnets. (2017, March 30). Retrieved from https://www.bl.uk/shakespeare/articles/shakespeare-sexuality-and-the-sonnets#

Shmoop Editorial Team. (2008, November 11). Allen Ginsberg, "Kaddish" (1961). Retrieved from https://www.shmoop.com/beat-literature/confessional-characteristic-kaddish-example.html

Sinha, B., Here, P. E., -, H. C., -, J. P., & -, M. B. (2020, September 08). Not being named judge could have something to do with my sexuality - lawyer Saurabh Kirpal. Retrieved from https://theprint.in/judiciary/not-being-named-judge-could-have-something-to-do-with-my-sexuality-lawyer-saurabh-kirpal/497643/

Social Scientists and Homophiles, 1950s and 1960s · Lesbians in the Twentieth Century, 1900-1999 · OutHistory: It's About Time. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://outhistory.org/exhibits/show/lesbians-20th-century/social-scientists

Social Scientists and Homophiles, 1950s and 1960s · Lesbians in the Twentieth Century, 1900-1999 · OutHistory: It's About Time. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://outhistory.org/exhibits/show/lesbians-20th-century/social-scientists

Spacey, A. (2018, November 08). Analysis of Poem Howl by Allen Ginsberg. Retrieved from https://owlcation.com/humanities/Analysis-of-Poem-Howl-by-Allen-Ginsberg

Spector, D. (2013, October 18). Why Kinsey's Research Remains Even More Controversial Than The 'Masters Of Sex'   . Retrieved from https://www.businessinsider.com/why-alfred-kinsey-was-controversial-2013-10

Story by Kimon de Greef. (2019, July 08). The Unfulfilled Promise of LGBTQ Rights in South Africa. Retrieved from https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2019/07/southafrica-lgbtq-rights/593050/

Suciu, P. (2021, March 15). Catholic Church Cannot Bless Same-Sex Marriage – Social Media Reacted. Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/petersuciu/2021/03/15/catholic-church-cannot-bless-same-sex-marriage--social-media-reacted/?sh=f68ef976e315

Team, F. (2020, March 16). The Mortifying Ordeals of Being Known: A Review of Richard Siken's Crush. Retrieved from https://falwriting.com/new-blog/2020/2/14/the-mortifying-ordeals-of-being-known-a-review-of-richard-sikens-crush

Team, R. C. (2018, April 20). Commonwealth summit: The countries where it is illegal to be gay. Retrieved from https://www.bbc.com/news/world-43822234

The AIDS epidemic's lasting impact on gay men. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/blog/aids-epidemic-lasting-impact-gay-men/

The Culture of the 1950s. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.let.rug.nl/usa/outlines/history-1994/postwar-america/the-culture-of-the-1950s.php

The evolution of workplace behaviours, attitudes and technology. (2018, April 27). Retrieved from https://www.worktechacademy.com/evolution-workplace-behaviours-attitudes-technology/

The Homophile Movement. (2017, September 01). Retrieved from https://info.umkc.edu/makinghistory/the-homophile-movement/

The Lavender Scare: The shocking true story of an anti-LGBT witch-hunt. (2019, June 18). Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/jun/18/the-lavender-scare-the-shocking-true-story-of-an-anti-lgbt-witch-hunt

The LGBTQ Community and the Beat Generation. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://queerbio.com/wiki/index.php?title=The_LGBTQ_Community_and_the_Beat_Generation

The Stage. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://rmc.library.cornell.edu/HRC/exhibition/stage/stage_3.html

Theresa May 'deeply regrets' UK's colonial anti-gay laws. (2018, April 17). Retrieved from https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-43795440

Thisisloyal.com, L. |. (2020, June 24). LGB people who have undergone conversion therapy almost twice as likely to attempt suicide. Retrieved from https://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/press/lgb-suicide-ct-press-release/

Thisisloyal.com, L. |. (2021, February 03). How Many People are Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender? Retrieved from https://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/publications/how-many-people-lgbt/

Tripathi, K. (2021, April 05). How Homophobia Precludes Saurabh Kirpal From Becoming a Judge. Retrieved from https://www.thequint.com/news/law/how-homophobia-precludes-gay-lawyer-saurabh-kirpal-from-becoming-judge#read-more

UN expert calls for global ban on practices of so-called "conversion therapy". (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=26051&LangID=E

Wareham, J. (2020, March 30). Singapore Upholds Colonial Anti-Gay Laws: Being Gay Remains Illegal For 5.7 Million People. Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamiewareham/2020/03/30/singapore-upholds-colonial-anti-gay-laws-being-gay-remains-illegal-for-57m-people/?sh=254d69d67ad9

Wareham, J. (2020, October 10). Map Shows Where It's Illegal To Be Gay – 30 Years Since WHO Declassified Homosexuality As Disease. Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamiewareham/2020/05/17/map-shows-where-its-illegal-to-be-gay--30-years-since-who-declassified-homosexuality-as-disease/?sh=5c92e002578a

Wareham, J. (2021, March 23). This Is Where LGBTQ 'Conversion Therapy' Is Illegal. Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamiewareham/2021/03/08/this-is-where-lgbtq-conversion-therapy-is-illegal/?sh=1fb9f6884ae0

Was Shakespeare Gay? (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.shakespeare.org.uk/explore-shakespeare/podcasts/lets-talk-shakespeare/was-shakespeare-gay/

What is the Beat Generation? - AP Comp: The Beat Generation. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://sites.google.com/site/ahsapcompthebeatgeneration/home/what-is-the-beat-generation

What is the Beat Generation? - AP Comp: The Beat Generation. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://sites.google.com/site/ahsapcompthebeatgeneration/home/what-is-the-beat-generation#:~:text=The Beat Generation also set,and battle racism in American.

Why were the ancient Greeks so confused about homosexuality, asks James Davidson. (2007, November 10). Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/books/2007/nov/10/history.society

William Shakespeare Biography. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.shakespeare.org.uk/explore-shakespeare/shakespedia/william-shakespeare/william-shakespeare-biography/

William Shakespeare was undeniably bisexual, researchers claim. (2020, August 23). Retrieved from https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/news/shakespeare-bisexual-sexuality-evidence-plays-a9684056.html

William Shakespeare. (2020, December 10). Retrieved from https://www.biography.com/writer/william-shakespeare

World Report 2019: Rights Trends in South Africa. (2019, January 17). Retrieved from https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2019/country-chapters/south-africa#

Written by Rivonia Pillay, A. C. (n.d.). South Africa still hasn't won LGBTQ equality. Here are 5 reasons why. Retrieved from https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/11/south-africa-road-to-lgbtq-equality/

Yi, B. L. (2020, May 21). 'Happily ever after' eludes Taiwan, a year after Asia's first gay marriages. Retrieved from https://www.reuters.com/article/us-taiwan-lgbt-rights-feature-trfn-idUSKBN22X03A

[hannahstockwell00]

Oh I do love a freebee - A personal epiphany

(wordcount:504) 

A  white porcelain Buddha

A Himalayan salt lamp

A hand bashed metal tray

A matt black candelabra 

It has become an automatic response to scour the my neighbouring streets for unwanted items to take home. Urban foraging for new things. I do not know if it is the objects themselves that make the activity so fulfilling or a sense of reward derived from finding that object. The absence of money helps as well. The abstract ‘symbol of value’ (Marx, 1867, p.82) that dictates everything. I have always hated shopping, a constant source of anxiety. The mindset of ‘do you really need that’ has been ingrained in me from years of free school meals and working two jobs. Even though I find myself in a position of financial security - thank god for student loans- I feel detached from my ability to utilise it. Dissociated from this alien wealth. But when I find things, I feel I have earned my right to be titled the owner of these unusual objects. A participation in the ‘circulation of commodities’ (Marx, 1867, p.85) that is ingrained into our perceived worth without engaging in monetary value.

The objects are all subjects of someone's clear out, all saved from landfill and lovingly filling my space. It feels like a baffling level of frivolity and privilege to put unwanted belongings on the street. I have always clung onto everything, a hoarding mentality learnt from my mother which was a post-war survival tactic ingrained by hers.

Yet despite the expected disparity of wealth between those who forage and those discarding, I can't help but love this cycle of sustainable swapping occurring in this community. It is a familiar mentality to me, perhaps due to pre-established stinginess. I constantly swap belongings with friends and family and although they react by lovingly moaning, I revel in this rebellion against the wasteful ‘Consumer Society’ (Baudrillard, 2017) we live in. The idea that value is found in the ‘new’ and our obsession of ‘commodity fetishism’(Marx, 1867) needs to be dismantled. We create an obscure hierarchy of value that rates a ‘diamond over fresh water’(Smith, 1776) when money does not equate to worth. 

 I often find myself in a dilemma- how do I support the good in objects that I recognise as a designer but without bringing new things onto the earth and wastefully contributing to capitalism? Foraging what is already out there as a form of designing, acts as a solution that allows us to continue to love objects without the ecological and economical impact. The street as a platform for the distribution of value is a perhaps a form of community participatory design. Sharing belongings and wealth with each other to combat fast paced consumer driven capitalism. ‘Eco-socialism ‘(Morris, 1883) on a micro scale that helps relieve capitalist competition. Buying new and spending money ‘merely puts in evidence the phenomenon itself’ (Marx, 1867, p.81) but by exchanging commodities for free we can redefine the value of what we surround ourselves with.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

-Smith, Adam(1776). ‘Of the Origin and Use of Money’, from An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, W. Strahan and T. Cadell, London

-Marx, Karl (1867)‘The Fetishism of Commodities and the Secret Thereof’, from Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, trans. S. Moore and E. Aueling, New York: The Modern Library, pages. 81-85

-Baudrillard, J. (2017). The consumer society : myths and structures, Sage, London 

 -Bradley J. Macdonald(2007) “William Morris and the vision of Eco socialism” Available at: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1028258042000266013 [Accessed 27 Jan 2020.]

[newstechreviews]

In a speech last week to commemorate 70 years since China’s entry into the Korean War, President Xi Jinping launched a thinly-veiled attack on the U.S. “No blackmailing, blocking or extreme pressuring will work” for those seeking to become “boss of the world,” Xi told veterans and cadres crammed into Beijing’s Great Hall of the People. The 1950-53 Korean War, he went on, “broke the myth that the U.S. military is invincible.”

With U.S.-China relations at a decades-long nadir, it was fitting that Xi threw down the gauntlet on the anniversary of one of the only times the People’s Liberation Army and U.S. troops have faced off on the battlefield—a conflict still known in China as the “War to Resist U.S. Aggression and Aid Korea.”

The upcoming U.S. election on Nov. 3 could be a turning point for American foreign policy, particularly regarding Beijing, which has borne the brunt of the Trump Administration’s sledgehammer approach to diplomacy. Chinese trade practices, tech companies, diplomats and even students have been in the crosshairs, feeding Beijing’s paranoia that the U.S. is pursuing a Soviet-era policy of containment.

Much hangs in the balance: economics, nuclear proliferation, the climate crisis, human rights as well as possible military confrontations. Whether Donald Trump or Joe Biden controls the White House may decide if the last four years of rancor was an aberration or the new normal for relations between the world’s top two economies.

“China, of course, is very concerned about the election,” says Wang Yiwei, director of the Institute of International Affairs at Renmin University in Beijing. “If Biden wins, he may take a multilateral approach, more coherence with U.S. alliances. If Trump wins, he’ll definitely continue harsh policies toward China.”

But whoever sits in the Oval Office in January, a return to fulsome engagement appears off the table.

AFP via Getty Images Containers are stacked at the port in Qingdao, in China’s eastern Shandong province on November 8, 2019. – China’s exports suffered their third month of decline in October, and while the drop was less than expected there were warnings on November 8 of more pain to come as the US trade war rumbles on.

Global rivalry between the U.S. and China

Washington’s attempts to isolate Beijing from an integrated and interconnected global economy have forced U.S. companies to relinquish established supply chains in China. Senior administration hawks like Secretary of State Mike Pompeo have also openly questioned the legitimacy of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and called for regime change.

As a result, the U.S. is losing the goodwill of ordinary Chinese, with moderate voices within society replaced by resurgent nationalism. Meanwhile, the vacuum created by the Trump Administration’s America First approach has allowed Beijing to co-opt international institutions. China now sits on the U.N. Human Rights Council despite detaining one million Muslims in its far west region of Xinjiang. It champions the Paris Climate Accords and free trade despite, being the world’s worst polluter and propping up key industries with state funds.

This has allowed China to develop a narrative that it is reasserting its rightful place in global leadership while the U.S is in terminal decline—riven by income inequality, political polarization, racial injustice and toxic nativism. That has been strengthened this year by Trump’s inability or unwillingness to tackle the COVID-19 pandemic in the U.S. while China has successfully controlled the coronavirus within its borders and is the only major economy heading for growth this year.

At the same time, China has torpedoed some of its relationships around the world as it seeks to swell its influence. When the normally urbane Foreign Minister Wang Yi visited Europe late August—ironically to smooth trade tensions—he threatened Norway with reprisals were it to give the Nobel Peace Prize to Hong Kong protesters, and swore that the president of the Czech senate would pay a “heavy price” for visiting the self-ruled island of Taiwan, which China regards as a breakaway province. (The affront prompted the Mayor of Prague to brand Chinese diplomats “rude clowns.”) On Oct. 21, China responded to Sweden’s decision to ban Huawei from its 5G network by threatening a “negative impact” on Swedish companies.

Qilai Shen/Bloomberg via Getty ImagesU.S. President Donald Trump, left, and Xi Jinping, China’s president, shake hands during a news conference at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, China, on Thursday, Nov. 9, 2017.

China’s military capability

Worryingly, Beijing’s hawkish Wolf Warrior diplomacy has gone beyond rhetoric and strayed into saber-rattling with U.S. allies. In recent months, China has ramped up military drills around Taiwan, sailed a record number of sorties into Japan’s territorial waters and engaged in deadly Himalayan border clashes with India. This appears to be more than mere chest-thumping; analysts suspect that China may be pitting its formidable yet untested military against unprepared foes in order to better gauge its own capabilities as well as the likelihood of an international backlash.

“India is a perfect target because it’s not a treaty ally of anybody,” says John Pomfret, a former Beijing bureau chief for the Washington Post and author of The Beautiful Country and the Middle Kingdom: America and China, 1776 to the Present. “You push the Indians around a little bit, declare victory and leave. That would signal the rest of the world that China’s big and bad and can do this type of stuff so watch out.”

Beijing insists that it is the victim of Indian aggression in the recent Himalayan skirmishes. But it is less meek about designs for Taiwan, which split politically from the mainland following China’s 1927-1949 civil war and is by far the CCP’s most coveted prize. Xi considers reuniting the island with the mainland a historic “mission” and analysts agree it is the most likely issue to force a military confrontation between the superpowers.

Read more: How TikTok Found Itself in the Middle of a U.S.-China Tech War

In an Oct. 10 speech, Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen called for “reconciliation and peaceful dialogue” with Beijing. Instead, Beijing responded within hours by releasing previously unseen footage of a large-scale military exercise simulating the invasion of an unidentified island, as well as video of a staged confession from a Taiwanese businessman charged with spying on the mainland.

Oriana Skylar Mastro, a specialist on China’s military at Stanford University’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, says that up until 2015 the main consideration of Chinese military leaders was Washington’s resolve to defend Taiwan. Now, however, she says they tell her: “It doesn’t matter. We would still win.”

The veracity of those sentiments is a matter of hot debate, but concerningly, “China has a remarkable tendency to overestimate its power,” says Pomfret. In September, the PLA Air Force released a video on its official social media showing nuclear-capable H-6 bombers carrying out a simulated raid on what looks like Andersen Air Force Base on the U.S. Pacific island of Guam. In a clear reference to U.S. support for Taiwan, Xi told the Great Hall of the People last week that any attempt to invade or separate China’s “sacred territory” will be met “with a head-on blow!”

Photo by Andrea Verdelli/Getty Images Soldiers of the People’s Liberation Army march during a parade to celebrate the 70th Anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, at Tiananmen Square on October 1, 2019 in Beijing, China.

Sino-U.S. relations after the election

It’s a precarious situation in need of deft diplomacy. Some China hawks in the Trump Administration are calling for Taiwan to be provided with an explicit U.S. defense guarantee. But that would be “provocative and expensive,” says Benjamin H. Friedman, policy director for the nonpartisan Defense Priorities think tank. “I’m not in favor.”

Trump’s distaste for multinational institutions like NATO, and dislike of U.S. troop deployments overseas, has made America’s allies take their own security more seriously. On Monday, the U.S. State Department approved the sale of 100 Boeing-made Harpoon Coastal Defense Systems to Taiwan in a deal worth as much as $2.37 billion, prompting China to impose sanctions on the U.S. companies involved.

“Taiwan could do more, Japan could do more,” says Friedman. “They could buy more defensive systems, particularly mobile missiles and radar that will make it harder to be invaded.”

Biden, by contrast, has voiced support for a multilateral approach in the region, restoring America’s role in global governance and re-establishing a liberal democratic order. Writing on Oct. 22 in World Journal, America’s largest Chinese-language newspaper, Biden vowed to “stand with friends and allies to advance our shared prosperity and values in the Asia-Pacific region … That includes deepening our ties with Taiwan, a leading democracy, major economy, technology powerhouse—and a shining example of how an open society can effectively contain COVID-19.”

Biden has railed against Trump’s trade war—which studies estimate has trimmed 0.7% from U.S. GDP—and would likely rollback many tariffs. He also said that he would organize and host a global Summit for Democracy to “renew the spirit and shared purpose of the nations of the free world” during his first year in office.

Read more: What Happens Next With the U.S.-China Rivalry

Reasserting such historic alliances could cause Beijing much heartburn. “We are 25% of the world’s economy,” Biden told the audience at the final presidential debate Oct. 23. “We need to have the rest of our friends with us saying to China, ‘These are the rules, you play by them or you will pay the price for not playing by them, economically.’”

While there’s no doubt that Biden would be tougher on China than Obama, many in diplomatic circles hope he could reopen lines of communication with Beijing to seek pragmatic solutions on trade, the environment, human rights and other issues. America still has many tools. The dollar’s role as global reserve currency has become more important during the pandemic. And the U.S. still boasts the world’s biggest economy, spearheading innovation.

But the U.S. has never faced a rival that can compete economically and militarily as China can. In the week before his Korean War anniversary speech, Xi addressed the nation on state-run television: “We Chinese know well we must speak to invaders with the language they understand,” he said. “So we use war to stop war, we use military might to stop hostility, we win peace and respect with victory. In the face of difficulty or danger, our legs do not tremble, our backs do not bend.”