White Day, White Night....Milk
Valentines Day is over. The men have been fed their tidbits and now the supermarket shelves are lined with white chocolate products. The same bloody thing as Valentines Day. Different name, less cocoa. Any cocoa? White Day happens a month later, reciprocating the 'obligation' chocolate to female workmates and responding to the handmade 'love' choc given by women to those they fancy the pants off. I suspect if it was the other way round there'd be little to respond to- I can't imagine the boys cycling round to 40 of their female classmates on their bikes as one of the girls did on V-Day. There prevails a belief that men shouldn't really like chocolate- as we ate the meringue dessert I demonstrated for Saturday's UK cooking class, the mother explained her son Kouka's reluctance to finish as his being a 'boy'. Nothing to do with the fact that the poor wee thing had just shovelled down a sizeable dish of cottage pie...echoes of Ghana and the excess of sweetness as an incitement to abortion (the excess of blood, misplaced, the loss of what happens when a woman's body is truly affected by a man's, the reversion to 'womanhood').
White Day. Manufactured by a marshmallow company. I suspect I wrote about it last year. This time around I wish to reflect instead upon what remains in San Fran rebels' minds as 'White Night', when people rioted in protest at the light sentence awarded racist homophobe Dan White, assasin of Supervisor Harvey Milk and George Moscone. White got off on the 'Twinkie Defense', claiming an excess of junk food had made him crazy. We all know from Morgan Spurlock what a diet of Maccie Ds and KFC can do to your mental health, but White's subsequent suicide merely tops off the sense that this was justice unserved, a man tortured not by Twinkies but his own ambiguous sexuality (as hinted in Gus Van Sant's film 'Milk'), professional jealousy and anti-gay bias in the law.
The film ends with torch-bearing processors mourning Milk's death, not the overflowing of rage that took place upon hearing the Naughty Boy sentence upon White. White, the colour of rage made seething, seering the cranium, disturbing the quiet shadows of night. A simplicity that masks messy history and sets off the glittering frocks of the Oscars. Sean Penn won the gong yesterday for his portrayal of Milk, a triumph recognising a film that for once raises vital issues, speaks to our times and cuts beyond the showcasing of individual talent to document activism and a social movement whose torch we must not forget to carry over. Some personal context is the way I have thought recently about friends who campaign for workers rights, LBGT rights, legal reform and the theory building upon experience of those issues in today's world. I am both impressed by their diligence and aware of the way a single-minded focus on concrete issues can lead to the neglect of the individual. I am so incredibly lucky to be sitting here at a desk THINKING about a plethora of such things, whilst doing precisely NOTHING about them. I've been reading about the philosophy of American-style democracy, individual self-realisation at challenging frontiers and Cold War fear of big government in the founding of the Peace Corps. I watched Penn declare that the struggle for gay recognition "isn’t about me as an individual. This is bigger than me. This is about a movement". However, at one point during the film, a largely male crowd are gathered together and Milk exhorts everyone present to come out to their families, claiming that without losing that fear they can never achieve their goal. It reconfirms the self-centric notion of homosexuality that I criticised in my recent writings about homosexuality in Japan and its difference from the Western narrative of coming out. Speaking on ethnicity, Stuart Hall challenged the notion of the realistic, biologistic assumptions of an inner 'husk' that exists within and contrasts with the less-authentic face we show to the world. Many writings on gay identity reflect this notion, of a conversion-like coming out in which the individual is fully realised through the externalisation of the inner husk.
That was the one moment of questionable appeal for a film that otherwise applauds the courageous co-operation and innovation in fighting prejudice, segregation and oppression. It documents the coming together of those existential souls, the spoiled brats like me sitting at their desks and thinking they're being radical by thinking through problems. On the other hand, in many of these movements people are often suspected if they are not held truly 'authentic' in the cause. Individual self-expression and unambiguous loyalty is demanded, as shown in Byatt's portrayal of the ethnographer Brenda infiltrating the cult of Joseph Lamb and risking her life as her '68 Anti-University lover lets her increasingly desperate letters gather dust, unopened. It made me think about the frequent accusations of relativism and credibility laid at my feet as an anthropology student. Maybe my relatively unreflective, comfortable childhood is partly to blame for my lack of willingness to take sides, or question assumed values on issues such as whale hunting, human rights and plastic surgery. Or my recognition of the propensity among educated peers to debate on issues they truly care little about in the pursuit of intellectual admiration. Or my lack of experience. However, I am in some ways grateful for the flexibility afforded by this position, that allows me to admire all kinds of expressions of frustration, ambition, desire for change...
White Day. Manufactured by a marshmallow company. I suspect I wrote about it last year. This time around I wish to reflect instead upon what remains in San Fran rebels' minds as 'White Night', when people rioted in protest at the light sentence awarded racist homophobe Dan White, assasin of Supervisor Harvey Milk and George Moscone. White got off on the 'Twinkie Defense', claiming an excess of junk food had made him crazy. We all know from Morgan Spurlock what a diet of Maccie Ds and KFC can do to your mental health, but White's subsequent suicide merely tops off the sense that this was justice unserved, a man tortured not by Twinkies but his own ambiguous sexuality (as hinted in Gus Van Sant's film 'Milk'), professional jealousy and anti-gay bias in the law.
The film ends with torch-bearing processors mourning Milk's death, not the overflowing of rage that took place upon hearing the Naughty Boy sentence upon White. White, the colour of rage made seething, seering the cranium, disturbing the quiet shadows of night. A simplicity that masks messy history and sets off the glittering frocks of the Oscars. Sean Penn won the gong yesterday for his portrayal of Milk, a triumph recognising a film that for once raises vital issues, speaks to our times and cuts beyond the showcasing of individual talent to document activism and a social movement whose torch we must not forget to carry over. Some personal context is the way I have thought recently about friends who campaign for workers rights, LBGT rights, legal reform and the theory building upon experience of those issues in today's world. I am both impressed by their diligence and aware of the way a single-minded focus on concrete issues can lead to the neglect of the individual. I am so incredibly lucky to be sitting here at a desk THINKING about a plethora of such things, whilst doing precisely NOTHING about them. I've been reading about the philosophy of American-style democracy, individual self-realisation at challenging frontiers and Cold War fear of big government in the founding of the Peace Corps. I watched Penn declare that the struggle for gay recognition "isn’t about me as an individual. This is bigger than me. This is about a movement". However, at one point during the film, a largely male crowd are gathered together and Milk exhorts everyone present to come out to their families, claiming that without losing that fear they can never achieve their goal. It reconfirms the self-centric notion of homosexuality that I criticised in my recent writings about homosexuality in Japan and its difference from the Western narrative of coming out. Speaking on ethnicity, Stuart Hall challenged the notion of the realistic, biologistic assumptions of an inner 'husk' that exists within and contrasts with the less-authentic face we show to the world. Many writings on gay identity reflect this notion, of a conversion-like coming out in which the individual is fully realised through the externalisation of the inner husk.
That was the one moment of questionable appeal for a film that otherwise applauds the courageous co-operation and innovation in fighting prejudice, segregation and oppression. It documents the coming together of those existential souls, the spoiled brats like me sitting at their desks and thinking they're being radical by thinking through problems. On the other hand, in many of these movements people are often suspected if they are not held truly 'authentic' in the cause. Individual self-expression and unambiguous loyalty is demanded, as shown in Byatt's portrayal of the ethnographer Brenda infiltrating the cult of Joseph Lamb and risking her life as her '68 Anti-University lover lets her increasingly desperate letters gather dust, unopened. It made me think about the frequent accusations of relativism and credibility laid at my feet as an anthropology student. Maybe my relatively unreflective, comfortable childhood is partly to blame for my lack of willingness to take sides, or question assumed values on issues such as whale hunting, human rights and plastic surgery. Or my recognition of the propensity among educated peers to debate on issues they truly care little about in the pursuit of intellectual admiration. Or my lack of experience. However, I am in some ways grateful for the flexibility afforded by this position, that allows me to admire all kinds of expressions of frustration, ambition, desire for change...