The Crucifixion of Aaryn Gries

First published in The Daily Beast on August 25, 2013. Read the original (entitled "Real Racism: What Aaryn Gries Reveals about Reality TV") here.

Aaryn Gries is a racist.

If you’ve watched CBS this summer, this isn’t new information about the twenty-two-year old Big Brother contestant. From saying that Korean-American houseguest Helen Kim should “go make some rice,” to flipping over the bed of African-American houseguest Candice Stewart, Gries has offended half the house—and country—with her sweet-faced, mean girl racism. Her actions have prompted CBS, for the first time ever, to publically address offensive statements made on the show (though they declined to comment for this article).

As a result, Gries has been dropped by her modeling agency and protested at her college. But far from exposing racism on Big Brother, the maelstrom surrounding Gries (and to a lesser extent, fellow houseguest GinaMarie Zimmerman), has had the ironic effect of hiding other, more systemic forms of racism that exist on Big Brother—and in reality television as a whole.

“On the televised show, absolutely, Aaryn was the martyr,” says blogger Jun Song, who is the only person of color to win BB in fourteen seasons. But, she continues, “there is such a disparity between what is actually going on in the house and what is televised.”

To know what’s really going on you have to watch the live feeds, BB’s saving grace. The feeds give (mostly) unfettered access to the houseguests around the clock, allowing obsessive fans to chronicle their every butt scratch and rape joke. It also allows for fascinating insight into the disparity between reality-TV-as-it-is-experienced-by-the-contestants and reality-TV-as-it-is-edited-for-the-viewer.

Gems caught on camera this season include:

• Saying Puerto Ricans smell funny and don’t shower;
• Suggesting that Nazi medical experiments were ultimately beneficial;
• Warning a biracial contestant that her “black side” was coming out; and
• Calling welfare “n***er insurance.”

But these statements, respectively, were made by contestants Amanda, Spencer, Kaitlyn & GinaMarie—not Aaryn. (The men have also made so many disgusting misogynistic statements that there’s no room to get into them here.)

In many ways, Gries is an easy target for anti-racist anger. She’s pretty, blond, and Southern. Her first name is an anagram for Aryan. But she’s far from the sole racist in the house.

“CBS, if you’re going to show one racist, you need to show all the racists,” says Sistah K, one of the hosts of a popular series of TV podcasts collectively called “Sistah Speak.” Sistah Speak began in 2007, when Sistah K and Sistah J were moved by their love of television—and their frustration with the overwhelmingly white male punditocracy that discussed TV in the media—to address “the need for a Black woman’s perception and honest analysis about certain shows and movies.”

“This goes on on other shows too,” says Sistah J, “but they don’t show it overtly like Big Brother because there are no live feeds.” In other words, they don’t show it because no one can call them out when they don’t.

The idea that by dealing with Gries we will “deal” with racism on reality television is ridiculous.

“Racism exists on reality television,” explains Song, “because it’s a reality in life. And therefore, it has to be a reality in every sliver of our lives.”

But how that racism is portrayed on TV is the decision of producers. It’s less uncomfortable for a majority white audience to believe that there’s simply one bad apple, one racist spoiling the bunch, than to see racism as part of our everyday existence. This not only excuses the other houseguests, it hides the racism inherent in the genre itself, which is particularly obvious in one area: casting.

“Reality television programs are produced to maximize audiences at a comparatively inexpensive price,” says Dr. Bryan Denham, Professor of Communications Studies at Clemson University and co-author of a 2008 academic paper about reality TV called Survival of the Stereotypical. “They do so,” he explains, “by reproducing social stereotypes.”

In essence, reality shows don’t cast (or televise) people, they cast broad stereotypes to get us watching. “They choose very extreme personalities to make for a big summer,” agrees Song, who believes this tendency has gotten worse over the years. This pursuit of extremes is particularly troubling in combination with another reality TV truth: the paucity of contestants of color.

“It’s the same scenario every single season,” says Sistah J. “You’ve got one or two people of color and they get voted out first.” The Bachelor, she points out, has never had a person of color in the title role—a fact they were sued over in 2012.

This point was backed up by Dr. Denham’s research, with an interesting caveat. On shows that involve being “the best” (Big Brother, Survivor) or succeeding in a business (The Apprentice, Top Chef) few contestants of color ever make it to TV. But if the show is about being an entertainer (American Idol, America’s Next Top Model), you see more people of color. Why?

“Having black people succeed as entertainers does not threaten white people in the business world,” Dr. Denham states unequivocally.

When shows like Big Brother cast extreme personalities to fulfill stereotypical roles, and only one or two are people of color, what’s the effect? Those characters are cast to fulfill pre-existing racial stereotypes. Whereas white people might be typecast as a “brain,” a “Southerner,” or a “jock,” people of color are always cast as the “angry black girl,” or the “Asian tiger mom.” The stereotype is always racialized, which isolates contestants of color and makes them even less likely to win. Not only are there always fewer contestants of color, they’re handicapped from the start.

Dr. Denham doesn’t believe this happens on purpose, rather, he points out that the show runners, judges, and network executives are most likely white people with the same pre-existing assumptions. These ideas about races are so ingrained they might not even notice what they are doing. But some viewers have pointed out that it’s quite a coincidence that contestants with extreme racial viewpoints just happen to be on one of the few seasons of BB to feature three contestants of color. Certainly, the controversy has created more buzz around this season of BB than any in recent memory, giving a big boost to ratings—though Song and the Sistahs have stopped watching in disappointment, and it’s not hard to imagine other people of color have done similarly. But has the controversy actually done anything about racism? Not really.

Aaryn Gries deserves the fallout for what she’s said and done. But the idea that by dealing with Gries we will “deal” with racism on reality television is ridiculous. She becomes a sacrifice whose very punishment is the thing that allows us, the mainstream audience, to continue watching, snug and smug inside our own non-racist self-conceptions. Turning racism into a story with a villain—instead of an underlying force of our existence—guarantees that any resulting conversation will go nowhere, mean nothing, and quickly be forgotten. Indeed, despite the anger at Gries inside and outside the house, all of the contestants of color have been sent home, while she remains. Given the chance to put someone up for elimination, America has repeatedly chosen other houseguests.

The problem with crucifying someone is that they rise again. All Gries had to do was keep her head down and play well, let other “scandals” happen inside the house, and leave the rest to the producers. Already, conversations about race and racism have receded into the background. In a Very Special Episode on August 18th, we watched GinaMarie (BB’s “other racist”) befriend houseguest Helen Kim, giving us a nice hint of a Hollywood movie ending, where getting to know a person of color instantly erases centuries of racism. But even if GinaMarie’s mind changed at all in that conversation (which I doubt), that’s just a personal growth moment for a white person, and all the contestants of color are still gone.

Aaryn Gries is racist. But calling her out on her racism while ignoring our own? That’s racist too.

How to Whitewash a Plague

First published in The New York Times, August 3, 2013. Read the original here.

THE New-York Historical Society’s current exhibition “AIDS in New York: The First Five Years” accomplishes a neat trick: it takes a black mark in New York City’s history — its homophobic, apathetic response to the early days of AIDS in the early 1980s — and transforms it into a moment of civic pride, when New Yorkers of all stripes came together to fight the disease. It’s a lovely story, if only it were true.

To judge from the opening animation — a short video titled “What is AIDS?” — this show is aimed at AIDS neophytes, and as an informational vehicle it succeeds. Many of the images and ephemera are powerful testaments. But such details sit against an apologist backdrop that sees the city through rose-tinted glasses.

The medical community is handled with an especially light touch. While the show rightfully praises those who worked tirelessly to find a cure and provide palliative care to the dying, someone without prior knowledge of the epidemic could easily leave without understanding the bitter, hard-fought battles that activists waged to gain treatment.

If any group comes in for censure here, it’s AIDS patients themselves. While doctors sought valiantly for a cure, “Scared, angry people,” one text in the exhibit reads, “were often willing to try untested remedies, some of them potentially toxic, without waiting for official sanction.” This feels uncomfortably like victim blaming: those angry AIDS patients, why couldn’t they just wait? The same text excuses the medical establishment’s general inactivity under the blanket rationale that “research can be slow.”

Though more than 850 New Yorkers had died by the end of 1983, Mayor Edward I. Koch’s administration had spent only a cumulative $24,500 on AIDS. Research, apparently, wasn’t the only thing that was slow. After seeing this show, a newcomer to this history would be hard pressed to understand the rise of the street-activist group Act Up, the takeover of the Food and Drug Administration headquarters by protesters or the legacy of mistrust between the medical-industrial complex and lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people.

That’s not the only time the exhibition boosts the city at the expense of its queer residents. Here is how it explains the glacial pace of the government’s response to the crisis: “The number of New York voters committed to fight for gay causes was insufficient to form a political bloc strong enough to successfully demand public funds for research, housing, and social services. This was in part because so many gay citizens feared that embracing advocacy would reveal their sexual identities.”

Here, grammar is put through the ringer to avoid blaming homophobic, apathetic New Yorkers for their inaction. But the queer community’s own supposed failings are easy to read.

Meanwhile, religious institutions, though often quick to care for the dying, frequently preached a conservative morality that discouraged the use of condoms, promoted heterosexuals as immune and obfuscated AIDS-as-a-disease in favor of AIDS-as-a-punishment. It was Cardinal John O’Connor, New York City’s archbishop at the time, who opened the 1989 Vatican conference on AIDS by declaring: “The truth is not in condoms or clean needles. These are lies,” adding, “good morality is good medicine.”

Statements like this were not uncommon at the time. But the exhibit merely says: “Since many religious groups felt homosexual activity was unnatural and prohibited by the tenets of their faiths, churches, synagogues, and individual religious groups responded to the AIDS crisis in different ways. Some were quick to judge and preached caution.” Caution? That’s one word for it. Others might say fear, misinformation or hate.

When homophobia is directly addressed in the show, it’s often situated as a nebulous force separate from actual people or institutions. “Discrimination, fear and prejudice were forces that had to be countered by education and, when necessary, legal action,” one text reads. “Although the response was certainly not universal, many New Yorkers, gay and straight, began to use their resources to confront ignorance, call attention to injustice and assist in fulfilling basic needs.”

Although not strictly untrue, this is certainly the most forgiving phrasing possible. The unfortunate side effect of this continual soft-pedaling of homophobia is that the queer community — our anger, our mistrust, our fear — is rendered incomprehensible to the viewer. If everyone else behaved so well, why were (and are) we so angry?

The Historical Society deserves some praise for tackling this topic at all, having failed up to now to address queer issues in any way. And yet, precisely because of this background, Jean Ashton, the exhibition’s curator and the museum’s senior director for resources and programs, should have worked harder to include the insight of those already active in chronicling AIDS and its legacy.

The funding for the exhibition came from upstanding sources like the Ford Foundation, and the programming and collections drew on resources from local academic institutions. It’s obvious there was scholarly input in the exhibit’s development, but it is not evident from the museum floor.

Bad history has consequences. I’m not afraid we will forget AIDS; I am afraid we will remember it and it will mean nothing. If we cannot face the root issue — that we let people die because we did not like them — AIDS will become a blip on our moral radar, and this cycle will repeat every time we connect an unpopular group with something that scares us.

A few months ago, I watched a man agonize over the prospect of sitting next to a couple who appeared Middle Eastern on the subway; 30 years ago, that look of fear and hate could easily have been directed at my boyfriend and me.

New Yorkers are strong; we do not need to be protected from our past. Instead, we should learn from the hard truths and bad choices it contains. It is not enough to mourn the dead or memorialize the survivors; we must confront history in all its painful, guilt-inducing glory and use it as a guidepost for our behavior today.

The Historical Society has taken an important first step toward addressing this difficult moment in our collective history. Here’s hoping future portrayals will be less celebratory and more investigatory.

TV’s Transformative Moment

First published in Newsweek, July 17, 2013. Read the original here.

Orange Is the New Black, Netflix’s original series that debuted on July 11, is no women’s prison TV show by way of Victoria’s Secret. Created by Jenji Kohan (the mind behind Weeds), the dramedy portrays with nuance its diverse cast of characters, from prisoners to lesbians of color, poor people, and even WASPs. And, most shockingly, a transgender woman of color—played by a transgender woman of color.

For the first time in TV history, a transgender character is at the forefront of a show and being portrayed by a black transgender woman. (Transgender is an umbrella term that also includes transsexuals.) Laverne Cox plays Sophia Burset, a former firefighter sent to prison for using credit cards stolen from the wreckage of fires she helped put out. In prison, she acts as a hairdresser, friend, and political conscience for the other prisoners, while also trying to ensure access to the female hormones she needs, and repairing her relationship with her wife and son. There has only ever been one other recurring, substantive transgender TV role held by a transgender actor: Dirty Sexy Money’s Carmelita, played by Candis Cayne, who is a staple in small transgender roles, including turns on Nip/Tuck, Drop Dead Diva, Necessary Roughness, and CSI: NY.

“Sophia’s the role I’ve dreamed about, prepared for, trained for,” says Cox, who has been acting for over a decade in shows like Law & Order and Bored to Death, and independent films like The Exhibitionists. Born in Alabama , Cox made her way to Marymount Manhattan College in New York City in the late ‘90s (Cox demurs on her age), where she would come out as transgender and begin her transition. Almost immediately, she began being cast in shows in the theater department, even though she was a dance major. But despite her talent and interest, acting never seemed a viable career path. “I just didn’t think I could have a career as an actor because I’m trans,” Cox says.

Indeed, on television, audiences generally encounter transpeople not as actors, but via some form of reality programming—all too often through exploitative daytime talk shows, for instance The Jerry Springer Show’s 1997 episode “My Boyfriend Is a Girl” (the show aired numerous iterations of the same topic over the years). But modern reality competitions have begun to show transpeople in a more nuanced light. The most obvious example is RuPaul’s Drag Race, but trans contestants have also appeared on America’s Next Top Model (Isis King) and Dancing with the Stars (Chaz Bono). Cox herself had her breakout moment as a contestant on the first season of VH1’s I Want to Work for Diddy in 2008. She parlayed that experience into her own VH1 show, 2010’s TRANSform Me, a touching reality series in which Cox and two other transgender women gave physical and emotional makeovers to cysgendered women.

Still, scripted roles for transgender actors are few and far between. More often than not they are limited to bit parts where they deliver a single sassy line, solicit someone for sex in a sordid alley, or die brutally during the opening credits of a police procedural. Cox is all to familiar with these roles, having played them before, as deeply and richly as their problematic scripts would allow.

“As an actor, it’s not my job to judge characters,” she says, “but to infuse them with as much multidimensionality as I can. I’ve known transwomen who’ve been in the sex industry, and their stories deserve to be told in a human way. I would rather see a transperson playing that character than a cysgendered male actor in a wig.”

Knowing what Cox would face as an actress, her first acting teacher, Actor’s Studio life member Susan Batson told her “it would be my job to bring truth and rawness” to these stereotypical, two-dimensional roles, Cox recalls. In other words, to act—something that network executives and casting directors all too often believe transpeople are incapable of doing.

“The wisdom has been that trans actors can’t or won’t go deep,” says Cox, “because, and a lot of this is because of how we’ve been represented, people think that our identities are not real. We are fake women.” At the GLAAD awards one year, a well-known director told Cox that “all she could do was glamour.”.

This same logic keeps transgender actors from being put forward for non-trans-specific roles. In her talks with casting executives and agents, Cox has been told routinely that this idea is a non-starter. (Cox has gotten roles that weren’t specifically written for transpeople, such as her turn as Blithe Stargazer in 2012’s The Exhibitionist, but only when the director has specifically requested her.) Yet the reverse is commonplace. When substantive transgender characters are written (which happens more in film than in television), cysgendered actors are typically cast—even when it’s a queer film made by a queer director. From Hillary Swank’s Oscar-winning performance in 1999’s Boys Don’t Cry, by Kimberly Peirce, to Felicity Huffman as the transwoman lead in 2005’s Transamerica, written and directed by Duncan Tucker, well-meaning LGB people often write trans narratives without employing actual transpeople. In the current TV landscape, there’s one recurring trans character on network television (Glee’s Unique) and one on cable (Degrassi: The Next Generation’s Adam Torres), according to a GLAAD report; both are played by actors who identify as cysgendered.

Moreover, complex trans characters are almost always written as white. “Black families like the Bursets, going through a transition, with a wife, with a child? I don’t think I’ve ever seen that on TV,” says Cox. “Ever.”

It helps, of course, that Orange Is the New Black is a Netflix original, and thus able to circumvent the scrutiny of advertisers on network and cable television. And Kohan has often shown herself to be more than willing to buck received wisdom and make complex choices.

There are signs that the industry is evolving. Transgender actress Harmony Santana was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award for Best Supporting Actress for her role in the 2011 festival-circuit movie Gun Hill Road, making her the first transgender actor to be acknowledged by a major acting award in the United States. Last November, the Sundance Channel greenlit the TV series “T,” which the network described as a “deeply personal look at Terrence, a transgender male who has recently undergone gender reassignment surgery and is beginning to live life as a man.” Casting for Terrence has yet to be announced, but here’s to hoping a transperson will get the role.

But casting choices won’t matter until there’s good material to be cast in and great actors to cast. And that takes vision and time, says Cox, who is ultimately optimistic.

“I believe in the creatives. When the creatives begin to do it, the casting directors will come along.”

Steve Grand’s ‘All-American Boy’ and the End of the Gay-Panic Defense.

First published in The Daily Beast, July 10, 2013. Read the original (with comments) here.

Just in time for July Fourth, Steve Grand—a singer-songwriter who hopes to become the first gay male country icon—released his debut video on YouTube. “All-American Boy” is a paean to everything country: bonfires, whisky, pickup trucks, the American flag, skinny-dipping, and trying to make out with your best friend as soon as the girls are gone. In just a week it’s already racked up nearly a half million views on YouTube. Not bad for a 23-year-old kid from Chicago with no label, no agent, and no management.

Grand has the voice to make it, not to mention the face and the abs (especially the abs). But is country music ready for him? Who knows? Artists like k.d. lang and Chely Wright have proven that the world is ready for lesbian country singers, at least in a limited capacity; after all, neither of them is (or aspires to be) Miley Cyrus or Carrie Underwood. A true gay country star in his prime still seems as far away as a gay leading man. But even if Grand is just a sexy flash in the pan, the video for “All-American Boy” is still noteworthy.

In the video, we watch as Grand’s puppy-dog eyes stare longingly at his best friend across the campfire, in a pickup truck, and, finally, while splashing in the local swimming hole. As the music climaxes, he kisses his friend full on the mouth while they both tread water naked. For a long moment, everything is suspended as we wonder what will happen next. Is “All-American Boy” in the spirit of a “gay is good” mid-’90s independent film, where the rules of fantasy dictate that love can overcome all obstacles, even good-old-boy heterosexuality? Or are we about to watch the sort of brutal smackdown that’s all too common in both film and real life?

As it turns out, neither. The boy pulls away and returns to the party, as does Grand. The vibe between the two is unchanged. Sure, tomorrow at the rodeo there might be a few awkward moments, but you get the sense that that’s it. Grand gets to be disappointed without being disparaged, disowned, or disemboweled. And somehow, like nearly every living woman on earth, Grand’s love interest is able to handle a man’s unwanted advance without going ape shit and killing him. Astonishing, right?

The tradition of killing a man because he hits on you is so enshrined in our culture, it even has a name: the gay-panic defense (see: Matthew Shepard, Richard Barrett, Scott Amedure, etc., ad nauseum—very nauseum). “All-American Boy” is a sign that perhaps, just perhaps, the fragile flower of American masculinity has finally toughened the fuck up. Not that I don’t cherish my supposed ability to drive men crazy, but I’d like the crazy in question to be a little more metaphorical and a little less murder-y.

If there is a sea change in the making, it’s good news for straight guys as well as us predatory homosexuals. Just this June, the American Bar Association’s Criminal Justice Section announced a proposal to urge the banning of the gay-panic defense in criminal proceedings, which will hopefully pass at its national meeting in August. The relevant text of the agenda for the meeting reads:

The Criminal Justice Section ... urges ... governments to take legislative action to curtail the availability and effectiveness of the “gay panic” and “trans panic” defenses, which seek to partially or completely excuse crimes on the grounds that the victim’s sexual orientation or gender identity is to blame for the defendant’s violent reaction.

In recent years, the gay-panic defense has rarely carried the day in court, making this move somewhat symbolic. But homophobes, consider this a warning: very soon, you may have one less excuse in your arsenal. (Or maybe not very soon, considering the state of Congress at the moment.)

This change isn’t happening in a vacuum. Just a decade ago, the Supreme Court’s rulings on the Defense of Marriage Act and Proposition 8 would have been unimaginable, in large part due to arguments that same-sex marriage would, in some ineffable way, damage straight marriages—or perhaps the very institution of marriage itself, not to mention the family, masculinity, femininity, religion, America, puppies, and apple pie. Today one need only Google around for a few seconds to find any number of amusing essays about what a ridiculous idea this is, many of them written by straight, married people.

Of course, these changes are all well and good in paper and pixels, but the real test will come when the rubber hits the road, or in this case, when the boy hits on the boy. And it should be noted that while the bar association urges banning the “trans panic defense” as well, according to the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Program’s 2012 report, transgender people are 167 percent more likely to experience anti-LGBTQ hate violence than their gender-normative LGB counterparts. In fact, in 2012, 54 percent of all anti-LGBTQ homicide victims were transgender. In many states, anti-transgender discrimination in housing, employment, and other matters is still legal. Though the ABA’s resolution is a step in the right direction, given the magnitude of the problem, it is tantamount to putting a Band-Aid on a flesh wound. The lack of transgender legal protections in this country should be criminal, and it seems depressingly unlikely that the vast apparatus of anti-anti-marriage campaigns will transform any time soon into a broader movement for social justice for all LGBTQ individuals.

But still, I can’t watch “All-American Boy” without smiling, even if the boy doesn’t get the boy in the end. Unrequited longing is the essence of youth. Indeed, without it, Taylor Swift would have no career, and Twilight would have no audience. “All-American Boy” welcomes gay boys into the club.

"Red Dawn”: Dumbest ’80s remake ever?

First published in Salon, November 20, 2012. Read the original here.

If I told you I was making a movie about a small group of child soldiers, who use IEDs and scavenged weapons to fight a guerrilla war against a larger occupying force, what would you picture? The war-torn sands of Gaza? The refugee camps of Somalia? The mountains of Afghanistan?

How about the small towns of rural Colorado? That’s the setting for “Red Dawn,” the 1984 piece of militia porn that pitted a group of American kids against the combined might of the invading armies of Cuba, Nicaragua and the USSR. Led by Patrick Swayze, they lived off the land and harvested what seemed to be a never-ending supply of rocket-propelled grenades, with which they blew up tanks and Soviet-American Friendship Centers.

The film was released in the height of the Cold War, and its ludicrous premise (best summed up as “Hey kids, let’s go fight an insurrection!”) fit well with the rest of the decade’s fear-mongering anti-Soviet propaganda and jingoistic paeans to American exceptionalism. Let’s not forget that this was the same year that Reagan joked, “My fellow Americans, I’m pleased to tell you today that I’ve signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes.”

“Red Dawn” might not have been a great movie, but it fit within the context of its time — a time so far gone as to be almost unrecognizable to Americans today. If you were born the year the Soviet Union collapsed, you would now be 21. Even Mitt Romney no longer thinks Russia is our No. 1 geopolitical foe. As a nation, we’ve seen firsthand the damage IEDs (and a desperate civilian population) can inflict. Instead of one Cold War, there are now dozens of hot zones and areas of civil unrest. At a distance of 28 years, “Red Dawn” seems to sit at the intersection of anachronistic, naive and offensive.

Which raises the question: Why would MGM release a remake? As John Milius, director and co-writer of the original, said to the Los Angeles Times in 2010, “It’s a stupid thing to do.”
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The new “Red Dawn,” which hits theaters on Wednesday, is directed by Dan Bradley and stars Chris Hemsworth, Adrianne Palicki and Josh Hutcherson. Filming actually wrapped in 2009, but its release was delayed for over a year due to MGM’s financial restructuring. In 2011, “Red Dawn” was put off yet again, when leaked footage of its Chinese villains caused an uproar in state-run Chinese newspapers. MGM, terrified of losing access to China’s booming entertainment markets, quickly announced plans to scrub the villains and replace them with someone we can all agree to hate: North Korea. This do-over tacked on another million to the project’s overall $60 million budget, as well as another year to its production schedule, which is how it came to be this year’s Thanksgiving box-office turkey.

It’s an admirable amount of sacrifice for a company to make in order to prevent global hostility. In fact, the only better alternative would have been to pull the movie entirely. Instead of worrying about how “Red Dawn” might play in Asian markets, perhaps MGM should start considering how the message of the movie might play in the Middle East, North Africa or even here in America.

To be clear: to release a movie today that celebrates the moral right — nay, responsibility — of well-scrubbed American children to kill invaders is like giving a giant middle finger to the people around the world who see us as the invading army, and whose children have died by the thousands already. “Red Dawn” is a ghoulish parody of reality, served up earnestly and obliviously, to an audience whose enjoyment will, perforce, be directly proportional to its ignorance.

But that’s not the only way this remake dangerously subverts real-world politics. This new “Red Dawn” encourages an idea of America-in-danger that is absolutely ludicrous. Bioterrorism, dirty bombs, black market nukes — all of these are real national security threats that would make for interesting movie plots. But an invasion by North Korea, a country that can’t even feed its own population without international aid, goes beyond lazy writing. It feels as though the authors have consciously abandoned reality, because any intrusion of the real world would lay bare the fact that this movie is about young children fighting and dying in their hometowns, a horrible fate that’s happening to real children, in real towns, all around the world, every day.

Now is the time for a deft and subtle hand to write layered, intricate movies about the realities of insurgent fighting, nation collapse and life under a foreign army. Now is the time to celebrate heroes like Malala Yousafzai for resisting violence and demanding her rights as a human being. Now is not the time for poorly written calls to violence that use the realities of global conflict as window dressing for a testosterone-fueled orgy of violence and retribution (but if that’s what you’re looking for, the 2016 Republican primaries will start in about three months).

I was 6 when the original “Red Dawn” came out. After watching the movie, my older brother and I made our own camouflage by charring wine corks and rubbing them on our faces. We snuck out at night and hid in the eaves of our roof, to pitch pennies at invading raccoons intent on stealing our all-American trash. I had a hiding hole full of throwing stars, nunchucks and other odds and ends ordered from the back of comic books or purchased at dubious truck stops during family vacations.

Did “Red Dawn” make me violent? No. Years of being socialized to be a boy had already done that. But it did affect my understanding of violence. It made righteous retribution seem glorious, sexy, patriotic and fun. It made me feel like I (and my entire country) could be the target of an unprovoked, all-out assault at any moment — a pre-victim, if you will, whose own violent behavior would be excused by circumstance. In other words, “Red Dawn” simplified global conflict down to something a 6-year-old could well understand: You took my stuff, so now I’m going to hit you until you give it back. Is this the message we want to send to the world today? I sincerely hope not.

One scene from the original movie has stuck with me my whole life (well, two if you count the opening where the kid gets shot in the head during history class). In it, Powers Boothe plays Lt. Col. Andy Tanner, an Air Force pilot shot down in Occupied America, who joins the ragtag resistance group. When asked why the invasion happened, he opines, “Maybe somebody just forgot what it was like” to be at war.

The new “Red Dawn” asks all of us to forget what we know about the world at war today. This is a path that leads in only one direction: toward ever-escalating conflict. There’s an old military adage that says that an army is always still fighting its last war. Do we really need to be fighting the ones from 30 years ago?

Activities in Westchester County for Every Interest: Adventurious Activities

First published in Westchester Magazine, November 2012. View the original here.

Horse riding, gun shooting, rock climbing, river kayaking—no, we’re not talking about the latest Brad Pitt blockbuster. It’s the ideal county journey for spirited, outdoorsy types.

Friday
When the sun sets on Friday night, the adventurer’s weekend begins with a kayak ride down the Hudson River. Atlantic Kayak Tours (914-739-2588; atlantickayak tours.com), with locations in Cortlandt Manor and Staatsburg, New York, offers a variety of evening rides. Watch the moon rise over the Palisades or paddle all the way out to Cold Spring, New York. It’s a great way to get physical without being stuck in a gym on a Friday night. Make sure to bring a flashlight and some waterproof gear. ($25 to $65 for a half-day rental)

Saturday
Cowboys are the original American adventurers, so why not spend an afternoon following in their footsteps? Start the day with some good old-fashioned gunplay at Coyne Park Rifle and Pistol Range (771 McLean Ave, Yonkers 914-377-6488; coyneparkrange.net). This indoor range has everything you need to become the next Wild Bill Hickok, and you don’t even have to bring your own rifle (though handguns are BYO). For new shooters, who must be 21 or older, it offers several NRA-developed orientation and safety programs.

In the afternoon, visit Boulder Brook Equestrian Center (291 Mamaroneck Rd, Scarsdale 914-725-3912; boulderbrookequestrian.com), where you can have a private lesson ($60 for a 30-minute adult lesson) on how to bridle, saddle, and hold the reins, Scarsdale-style. Group and individual lessons are available in the largest indoor riding ring in Southern Westchester.

Sunday
Start the day off right with a long, leisurely hike through the Westmoreland Sanctuary (260 Chestnut Ridge Rd, Mount Kisco 914-666-8448; westmorelandsanctuary.org), a nature center and wildlife preserve in scenic Mount Kisco. The Sanctuary covers 640 acres of wildlife habitat, and offers more than seven miles of trails covering a vast array of terrain, from rocky cliffs to bountiful wetlands. Trail maps are available on its website, so you can plan the perfect hike before you go. If you want to learn more (or if you have little adventurers with you), stop by the reconstructed 200-year-old farm building, which is now the nature center that offers bird watching, a small petting zoo, and other educational programming.

Once you’re warmed up, it’s time to go for some real exertion. Work those arms with a trip to The Rock Club (130 Rhodes St, New Rochelle 914-633-7625; climbrockclub.com), a fully equipped rock-climbing center in New Rochelle. The main climbing wall is a giant, three-dimensional installation that stands 40 feet high. The facility has courses for every kind of climber, from complete novice to seasoned expert, with more than 200 possible climbing routes overall. Beginners have their own area to experiment with rock-climbing, so don’t be intimidated if it’s your first time. All necessary equipment is available onsite (to rent or buy), as are instructors and climbing partners.

Making history cool: The Pop-up Museum of Queer History

First published in History@Work, July 29, 2013. Read the original here.

I founded the Pop-Up Museum of Queer History by accident. Originally, the idea was for a one-night party in my apartment in January of 2011, designed to create a for-us, by-us space where queer people could join together to celebrate ourselves as a valid public, worthy of speaking to; a valid subject, worthy of speaking about; and a valid authority, worthy of speaking on our own terms. But when a few Facebook postings generated nearly 30 exhibits–and over 300 attendees–I realized that what had started as a party had the potential to become something more.

A few of us began holding meetings to define just what “The Pop-Up Museum” was. Eventually, we came up with this as our mission statement:

The Pop-Up Museum of Queer History develops exhibitions and events that engage local communities in conversations about queer pasts as a way to imagine queer futures. We provide a forum to do what we’ve always done: tell our own stories. We are artists, historians, educators and activists and we believe you are too.

Since that time, we’ve had five major shows across the country, run a series of professional development workshops for K-12 history teachers, and are currently gearing up for our sixth show, an exploration of the queer histories of the Brooklyn waterfront, which will take place this fall. With time and experience, I’ve discovered the many strengths (and occasional drawbacks) that the pop-up format brings to the exploration of public history. Here, in no particular order, are a few of the major ones.

It’s All About the Money – As a small, new organization, we’ve never had much money. So we had to be creative about our use of space. The pop-up format has allowed us to get many spaces donated for free, because we use them for such short periods of time. So far, we’ve used community centers, college buildings, private apartments, galleries, and public spaces. We’ve also looked into (although have yet to use) retail/business spaces that are temporarily between tenants, religious centers, and elementary/secondary schools. The more creative a list of places you can brainstorm, the more likely you are to find a host – and the more surprising and delightful your eventual home will be.

Stay Fresh – Queer history is fertile and contested ground at the moment. Our history, as a field, is being defined and codified for a mainstream audience, a process that is as exciting as it is nerve-wracking. Invariably, this mainstreaming comes with a whittling down that reduces queer history to a few touchstone moments. With our pop-up format, we saw right away that our shows would change frequently. If a traditional museum looks to tell the one story that stands in for a thousand, the Pop-Up Museum looks to tell all one thousand stories, messy and conflicting though they may be. No two of our shows ever look the same.
man looking at paintings

Be Cool – At our first major Pop-Up show, gay historian George Chauncey said to those of us who organized it, “You’re making history cool.” Aside from being what I will have etched on my tombstone, I think this gets at the heart of what makes a pop-up format so well suited to the work of public history. By definition, something that is time-delimited comes with a feeling of scarcity–see it now or never–and this can work in your favor in terms of getting bodies in the room. Much of historical education in this country seems intended to deaden history as a subject, and present it in the driest, dullest terms possible. Part of our work as public historians is not just teaching specific content, but also showing the public a different, livelier, more engaged way to approach history. Our shows always begin with a kick-off party, featuring performances, food and drink, and at least some interactive history pieces for people to explore and take part in. We want our community to understand that this is our history, and it is amazing.

Know What Happens Next – Because the Pop-Up Museum has no permanent home, and most of the spaces we work with do not consider themselves archives, the question of what happens to our exhibits after our shows is difficult – and one we didn’t consider until midway through our first major exhibition. Part of our mission is to help all queer people consider themselves worthy of speaking about history, even if it’s just those parts of history they themselves have personally experienced. This means that many of our exhibits are created specifically for our shows, by individuals who don’t consider themselves historians or artists – and thus have no plans for their piece after our show ends. By establishing working relationships with archives, libraries, museums, and galleries, we’re able to give a second life to some exhibits, but this is definitely an area we want to continue working on.