When is "Transamerica" Coming to the Kendall?
I daresay it will shock regular readers of this diary (there are three, including Swamp Rat when I remind her) to learn that I'm profoundly obsessed with US Magazine. Basically, I feel that I and the editors of US are in a little conspiracy together. It's a big conspiracy, actually. We're conspiring to uphold the idea that US gives me just a little truth around the edges of my celebrity news. I know that they're promoting a rigidly ritualized image of celebrity life, and they know that I know, and I know that they know that I know . . .
Now, US is relatively dyke-friendly. You can see my column about this here. In the current (Dec. 12) issue, "RPA" writes, "Ever since Sex and the City ended, it seems Cynthia Nixon, 39, can't get out of bed-the hospital bed, that is! The actress, who hit ER last season, now plays a seizure-sufferer for one episode of House. . . . 'I don't have a TV, so I'm out of the loop,' says Nixon, who dates activist Christine Marinoni." And I do believe that, in time, once a popular actor comes out, the magazine will become cautiously fag-friendly.
But they really screwed up on the trans front this week. I haven't seen "Transamerica" yet, but I saw the preview twice in one fifteen-minute period at the Kendall (two different versions of the preview, so it was pretty neat) the day I went to see "The Dying Gaul." Peter Sarsgaard was amazing, wasn't he? He was so gay. Not femmy or flamboyant or anything, just totally gay, like one's gay male friends. Here's what mistersmearcase has to say about "The Dying Gaul":
So the one time in my life, I assume, I get to see Campbell Scott draped, naked, over Peter Sarsgaard, it has to be just at the point in a Craig Lucas script where I'm beginning to wish I'd never learned English.
Isn't he scabrously witty? And it was true. Anyway, having seen the preview twice, I find it difficult to believe that Felicity Huffman's Bree should be referred to with the male pronoun, as Thelma Adams does in her review. She writes, "Desperate Housewife Huffman goes indie and carves Bree into a real character: a man who would be a woman-a prim, lonely, dressed-like-a-librarian woman. The scenes where Bree goes to his parents' Arizona home for a family reunion sporting white espadrilles and a pink manicure have a shaggy [?] humor . . ." Omigod Thelma! You can't really believe that a transsexual (I guess expecting US to use "transgendered person" or "transwoman" is asking a little much?) like Bree should be referred to as "he"? Come on! I learned not to do that six years ago! Okay, so I'm not exactly on the cutting edge of trans culture. But at least I try.
Maybe after I see the movie I won't think this review is so bizarre. But I doubt it.
I haven't got a tag for gay issues. I guess the whole diary is kind of about gay issues. Isn't that funny? Back when I was a bitty thing, I was terribly in love with a newly out gay man. He said to me once, with a touch of chagrin, "I never intended to be this gay."