The New Jerusalem

Michael Cunningham

Have I mentioned how much I hate him? Lots. Based entirely on "the Hours". I read it, about a year ago, while waiting in a borders. I love Borders. In a world where Big chain book stores spread with SARSy certainty, I'd rather to live in a world populated by the playful cafes of Borders than those damned Barnes & Noble author caricatures.

Dickinson is my favorite.

So I hate Michael Cunningham. I hate him because he's the celebrity representative of the homosexual i'm not. He's about wearing black sweaters and being good at wearing black sweaters and having complex facial hair theories but still officially "smart" and pulitzer prize-worthy. in ways, he's my naomi wolf.

If he were simply an attractive 40-something New York homosexual in the arts... well, I'd evenly mix my envy and hatred and leave it at that. The thing is, he's a cliche, and cliche is the negation of art, because art, of course, is choice. When you're a cliche, you're not making any choices. But beyond that, the book is bad.

The book is told from the perspective of women. women who spend an inordinant amount of time thinking about and describing how hot various gay men are. women whose primary consern is the men, usually gay, they have to take care of. It's a book about women by a man who has no idea how or what goes on in the heads of women.

can i say i do? i guess it's a habit of gay men to feel like their rejection by straight male gender identification (and to any who would claim that either gay men are not, definitively, incapable of accessing the fullness of straight male gender identity, or that it is the norm that does the rejecting of the gay, get the fuck out of my blog. This is not a place for you. Try www.stupidpeople.com, or, alternately, www.andrewsullivan.com) that they thereby fall gingerly into the world of women and may access its fullness to their heart's content.

but no. that hinges on an illusion that since masculinity is so treasured and priviledged that even imperfect men are capable of being better women than women. it ignores the reality that femininity is as complex and difficult and profound as masculinity.

And who am i to say this? not a woman, but i daresay a more active, more aware observer than most, especially fucking Michael Cunningham.

THe problem is that our culture has evolved enough to allow gay men a more rounded and fertile culture for our self-expression, and in the process we no longer have to rely on women as proxies for expression. We can be pretty, we can write stories about boys kissing boys, we can sing heart-wrenching torch songs. but in the course of creating our ghetto, we've left the intense contemplation of femininity which was once a great source of emotional intelligence for us. (it's like 4 am, i may be losing lucidity) But look at Tennessee Williams, look at Shakespeare (understood through the different circumstances of a bisexual) or Wilde. Look at Pedro Almodovar.

I hate Michael Cunningham because he wants to be a black turtleneck clad Chelsea gayboi, but he won't write the satisfying gay pulp romances that are the food of his people. He wants the powers of an Almodovar to observe the larger world. And he fails.

For a long time, homosexuals were two great big eyes looking at a world in which they could not (fully) participate. Yes, it is horrible, but it was horrible for Jews and African Americans and women, but it also MADE THEM BETTER. Alienation is perspective.

I just realized why the Bluest Eye is so good, because it turns the girl into her eyes. Her capacity to see the world through whiteness. It is portrayed as a kind of insanity, her final insistance that she has blue eyes, but homosexuality is an alienation where passages of many sorts are possible. it's a blackness where your brown eyes can become blue.

but can they? Are the jewish frat boys who aren't alienated or defensive in their identity, are they jews?

That's what Michael Cunningham is. He's a jewish frat boy explaining the plight of african americans to me.

i LOOOOve a good ramble. thought this would be a nice, focussed rage like my Jeff Whitty complaint, but this is totally just a ramble.