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uristmcdorf · 5 years ago

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I am so, so torn on the casting choices being made for Night Watch. And I also hate that the nonsensical casting choices feel harder to actually critique due to the inevitable “NOOOO PC STUFF BAD” brigade who really care what colour Carcer is and who I can only assume either never read a single Pratchett book in their lives or missed the point of them entirely.

Rambling thoughts and critiques below the dooblydo, because my ramblings contain spoilers for ALL THE BOOKS PROBABLY. I dunno.

1 - On the racial diversity of the casting.

YES.

HELL TO THE YES.

I am all for this. If there’s one area Pratchett never grew as much as he did in others, it’s his approach to race and his insistence on colourblind = good. I love seeing the casting choices here, and I’m excited especially by having a black Sybil, as she’s a woman of power and old money. Since Pratchett never really tackled themes of race, and when he did address it at all he did so very poorly, I think this is about the best way to approach things.

I’d actually like to see more of this as we see more casting news.

1a - On the casting of Vimes and Keel specifically

This... this doesn’t work. A critical aspect of Vimes and Keel, pivotal for the plot of an entire novel, is that they look so similar that a scar and an eyepatch was all it took for Vimes to pass for Keel to everyone except those who knew the real Keel very well. If we’re having a black Keel we should have a black Vimes, too. It makes me worry the people running the adaptation haven’t actually read the books they’re adapting.

2 - On the inclusion of a nonbinary actor for Cheery

UNF.

I am seriously hyped for this, and think it’s an excellent casting choice. The Discworld dwarves canonically only have one socially-acceptable gender identity, and it’s a running theme that ignorant humans assume all dwarves are male because they have extremely low sexual dimorphism, all trending towards being short, stocky, squat, hairy bearded beings who appear AMAB to the human eye. So I’d actually really love it if every dwarf character was cast and played by either genderqueer/nonbinary people who lean on the masc side or butch women. I think it’d actually be a really cool move and a way to play with the fact that, canonically, you have no idea what the actual sex of any Discworld dwarf is. There’s no reason to assume that a dwarf who identifies as a woman is what a human would term AFAB, even!

I don’t actually expect to get that, of course. But I think it’d be incredible if someone did that.

BRB gonna get rich and commission an adaptation of the Discworld series according to me whims.

3 - On the gender-swapping of characters

Now this could be fascinating, or it could be done poorly. But I have Concerns.

For one, we’ve seen quite a lot of characters gender-swapped. Vetinari, Wonse, Throat, Cruces. That’s a third of the cast that’s so-far been announced. And yet while we’re seeing characters like Wonse cast, I’ve not seen any sign of Rosie Palm or the Agony Aunts or Vetinari’s aunt, or other established women characters. Which makes me worry that one of the reasons for the gender-swapping is to compensate for the loss of female characters that happens if you, for example, cut the entire sex worker industry from the adaptation. I can see it happening, a way to “sanitise” a story that has a lot of women in it who are sex workers and who are complex and whole and respected in the narrative and who FIGHT FOR THEIR POWER and, we know from other books, COME TO THAT POWER EVENTUALLY.

I’m simultaneously intrigued and worried about this.

3a - On a Female Throat

This could be either brilliant or terrible, depending on how they play it. Dibbler is a rat of a person, a despicable and dirty grafter, a weed living in the cracks. A female Dibbler who embodies that? Would be something I don’t think we’ve ever before seen portrayed on TV. It’d be thrilling and new in the way that a, say, unapologetically grotesque female Nobby would be.

But if they clean up or cutesify Dibbler as a character to make this an “acceptable” female character I will be severely disappointed. And some of the other casting choices make me feel concerned that this might be what they do.

3b. On a Female Vetinari

Ooooh this intrigues me. I think Vetinari is one of those characters who is especially ripe for genderswapping, although I have a fondness for a aro-ace male Vetinari, which is something of my own personal headcanon. But we know the Assassin’s guild was relatively quick to accept female members compared to other guilds, so this could work. Especially given the themes in Pratchett’s work of sexism, which is not so much a theme in the Night Watch books as it is a constant background radiation - referenced, acknowledged, involved in multiple plot-points but not THE plot itself. A bullied, ignored female assassin’s guild student who comes to power as eventual Patrician of the city has weight and potential and could be great. But other casting decisions make me worry that this might be a missed opportunity. Specifically..

3c. One a Female Wonse who is Now Also a Wizard Apparently?

I don’t understand this one at all. Specifically, casting Wonse as a character at all and then making them a completely different character. Why use the name at all? We have plenty of established wizard characters if you want a wizard. We even have a specific FEMALE WIZARD character in Esk if you want that!

And in fact, that’s where the Wonse casting makes me feel worried for some of the casting decisions that have been made here. As I said before, the Discworld books swim through a sea of subtly but continuously referenced sexism. Pratchett grew increasingly skilled at portraying it and doing so while making his female characters whole, interesting and powerful in their own rights. And an entire BOOK was based on addressing the sexism of enforced gender roles in the magical world. I feel like this casting undermines those themes. It makes the entire gender parity casting feel shallow and sanitary. An attempt to “solve” a problem that didn’t need solving - to give lipservice to equality and progressiveness without doing so in a meaningful way. Throwing out an opportunity to address themes Pratchett himself excelled at, for the sake of pretending sexism doesn’t exist in the discverse.

4. On Sybil

Lady Sybil is not a conventionally attractive woman by Hollywood standards. She’s older, and a towering giant of a woman, tall and fat and large of build and specifically and repeatedly described as such. She’s also bald and wears wigs, due to her dragon-breeding and rescuing and the subsequent continuous loss of hair to flames. And Vimes adores her. And she’s a romantic interest. She’s intelligent, witty, kind, overflowing with compassion, talented, pivotal to many plot points, and treated at all times with dignity and complexity in how she’s characterised. She saves the day multiple times and,while some characters have been shown to mock her for her appearance, the narrative itself never treated her as the butt of a joke. Do you have ANY FUCKING CLUE how RARE it is for a fat woman, an older woman, a woman of large build, to be portrayed as positively and completely as Pratchett wrote Sybil?

I am delighted by the decision to cast a black woman for Sybil. I am dismayed by the decision to cast a relatively young, thin and pretty woman for her. Us fat folks never get to see ourselves portrayed positively. This is such a let-down.

#discworld #terry pratchett #gnu terry pratchett #night watch #bbc america

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theramblingonesie · 6 years ago

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Facing Our Making, Part 3: Makeup and Gender

Welcome to Part 3 of my makeup blog series! This week we’re going to poke at gender and makeup. But before I begin, let’s review parts 1 & 2, and check in about where we’re at:

1. Beauty standards are impossibly harsh and cause a lot of unnecessary pain.

2. Let womxn decide what they want to do with their own damn bodies and stay out of it. Unless they hire you for a consultation.

3. Wearing makeup is awesome

4. Not wearing makeup is awesome

5. Your gender presentation and basically any presentation of your body and behavior do not determine who you are and aren’t attracted to sexually. And no one is the (*^*^%^$#%$#&*&^&%% authority to determine that for you. If they try, remember that they’re judging and labeling you in relation to their own internal gender/sexuality struggles. More on this in today’s blog below.

6. How toxic masculinity ruins the day in relationship to makeup or not makeup needs to die, and YES womxn also support and host this behavior (internalized misogyny). Just because a person has a vagina or presents as femme does not mean they are exempt.

7. Womxn who wear makeup are not whores unless they are, in fact, professional whores. Professional whores keep the world turning, and bless em for it. The problem isn’t sex work. It’s violence against sex workers. Consider your complicity.

8. Womxn are reclaiming the hell out of the word “Slut”, so don’t get caught being a dumb idiot who uses the outdated, violent, misogynist definition. 1000 years vagina dentata upon your entire household.

9. If you want sexual attention because you enjoy sex, then FUCK YEAH GIT IT!!!

10. “Pretty girls are dumb” is a myth that our society desperately seeks to nurture and maintain. This is rooted in dominance, power, control, and whorephobia. Stop it.

11. “Ugly girls are smart” makes no damn sense. Okay, yes I can see the backwards logic, but also if you listen to flat-earthers long enough you could even be like, “ok, I see where you’re coming from with that”.

It is not lost on me that certain beauty trends and habits can trigger and enable body image problems, ranging in severity. After attending a panel discussion that featured a speaker from Media Girls Boston, I learned that girls as young as 9 are learning that they essentially need to brand themselves through social media so that they can merely exist. Saying this is a problem is an understatement.

I support makeup and rituals of adornment. I support a lot of things that, if used improperly with dangerous motivations, can result in severe consequences.

Understand that there’s a lot of nuance in subjects like this, and utilize your critical thinking brain when exploring such topics. Continue your personal research if you’re curious about any subcategory in this series that I have not addressed.

If issues of beauty standards and pressure are uncomfortable or triggering for you, or if you or a loved one believe they may be suffering from a body-image related disorder, please know you are not alone, and there are people out there who are ready and available to support you through this. Links and hotline numbers are available in the resource section at the end of this blog. -------------------------------------------------------------

“If we are all members of one body, then in that one body there is neither male nor female; or rather there is both: it is an androgynous or hermaphroditic body, containing both sexes [...] The division of the one man into two sexes is part of [our] fall.” --Norman O. Brown, in Love’s Body, 1966

Okay! Let’s talk about this super important element of the art and ritual of beauty:

Gender!

To Marie Kondo this: This subject does not bring me joy, and I do not want to write about it, but I feel that I have a responsibility to not play floor-is-lava about it. It does not even bring me the type of righteous rage that fuels me to furiously complete a post. It fills me with doubt, insecurity, self loathing, trust issues, and a desire to disappear.

I need to say this because I know I am not alone in my feelings and experience. But I will keep it very brief because I’d like to move on.

I have experienced a lifetime of pain from the bullshit pressure the heteropatriarchy puts on female bodies. I never anticipated the heartache I would experience as a result of being judged and denied by fellow queers.

I am too butch, too unfeminine to be accepted as the right kind of woman in heteropatriarchal society. I make men question their sexuality, and I am the one made to suffer for it. I am too feminine for queers to believe and accept me when I tell them I’m genderfluid (which I have been, quietly and privately, my entire life). I am not feminine enough to be femme.

Too much woman. Not enough woman. Not woman. Not human. Once again, my body and my soul are everyone else’s to judge, determine, and own. Not mine.

And no one wants to listen when we say the world hates women.

I highly suggest looking up the toxic concept of femme invisibility in queer communities. You can start by reading this great article by Bust:

https://www.bustle.com/articles/166081-what-does-femme-mean-the-difference-between-being-femme-being-feminine.

For the record, I still use she/her pronouns. I stand by my allegiance to the fullness and diversity of womxnhood in a deeply ferocious way. My reasoning for that is both very simple and very complicated. So I guess that just makes it very complicated. Ask me how.

Mood.

Anyway, makeup.

About a month ago, I had wrapped a film shoot with some friends who flew up from Mexico. It was an incredible weekend that filled me up with so much bliss. On the drive back to Boston, I was chatting with my beloved friends and fellow Scarlet Tongue artists, Creature and Cass, about how much I enjoy the company of Mexican men. A large part of that is because it is refreshing to be around men who so easily embrace and express feminine qualities of articulating their emotions, accessing their emotions, gentleness and nurturing. Creature presented the important argument that such qualities don’t need to be classified as feminine or masculine; they’re simply personality and behavioral traits that anybody can have.

Such a point is absolutely crucial in untangling the oppressive nature of the gender binary.

Exercise:

The following traits have been classically designated as “masculine” or “feminine” behavior, but I’ve jumbled them together in the list below. Which traits do you believe belong to whom?

Reserved Warm Sensitive Utilitarian Deferential Apprehensive Reactive Emotionally Stable Serious Lively Socially bold Shy Rule-conscious Expedient Private Perfectionism Anxiety Group-oriented Self-reliant Tolerates disorder Vigilance Extraversion Traditional Grounded Agreeableness Neuroticism Excitement-seeking Attraction to aesthetics

Answer:

Hahahahah, I’m not going to give you the answer. It doesn’t matter.

Yes, hormones do impact some behavior. And YES, how we’re socially conditioned impacts which traits are more dominant. But the point is, there is an imaginary line between the two categories. The saddest reality is that, even though any human is capable of any of these traits on the list, society has determined that consequence and punishment must befall anyone who strays from their category. An enforced gender binary is dangerous.

Enter makeup.

Makeup has served infinite purposes throughout the course of history. It’s an incredible vehicle for expression, as well as radical social and political rebellion. Makeup has shaped entire movements of art, social justice, philosophy, and construction/deconstruction of body politics.

Your lipstick is more than patriarchal pigment in a tube. It is a tool for revolution.

Most people assume that makeup is only for clowns and cisgender women, and anyone else who uses it is simply a deviant who has “stolen” it.

Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

Nononononononono

This probably won’t come as a shock to most of you, but yes-- Christianity also temporarily ruined makeup. Once upon a time, it was quite normal for men to wear makeup. Then the Jesus toe-suckers made up a whole bunch of arbitrary rules about what we currently observe masculinity and femininity to be, and here we are in this stinky pile of crap rules.

I highly recommend reading this article to learn a tiny bit more of the history of men and makeup:

https://www.byrdie.com/history-makeup-gender

Who wears makeup and how people wear makeup has shifted so much throughout history, and the struggles we experience around this today have only been relevant for a hundred years or so. One of the most common forms of rebellion we hear of is when women reject traditional femininity. Whether “burning our bras”, shaving our heads, or growing out our armpit hair, this is not an uncommon experience for a lot of women. The scandal!! The pet has escaped her cage!! So many women I know have experienced an anti-femininity phase at least once in their lives. Sometimes this “phase” transitions into a permanent rejection of gender norms, but it really varies from person to person. Often it’s set off by an overwhelming awareness of how much women are defined by superficial characteristics, traditionally determined and enforced by men. So we attempt to take ourselves out of the system by wearing neutral and aggressive clothing, switching up which parts of our bodies are hairy and which aren’t, and avoiding anything “girlie”. Revisiting my conversation with Aepril, my high-glam friend who inspired this blog and was mentioned in Part 1, she made a good point about honoring such an experience: “I went through a miserable phase in my feminist youth where I thought I was being uber feminist by not shaving or wearing makeup or wearing heels, etc, because to do so was giving into the patriarchy. I was miserable of course. It took my drag queen friends to wake me up to that, as I realized that they were willing to give up family, social status...their safety and even their lives for the privilege of expressing themselves in a glamorous, feminine way. While I had that privilege because I was born in a female body. I might be criticised by both men and women, but I wouldn’t be beaten in the street for transgressing gender roles. I realized how much it meant to me through seeing how much it meant to them. Why should I give that up either? Why should anyone have to?” In Aepril’s situation, she found that her place of authenticity was through femininity. In a world that is so divided between the shoulds and should-nots of who we’re supposed to be, I find it important to squeeze ourselves through and experience all sides so we can settle on what’s true for us. Then it’s no longer conformity; it’s an outlet.

In the 20th and 21st centuries, the use of makeup norms has been subverted to amplify voices that demand human rights and fair treatment. Its application has been largely linked to LGBTQ+ visibility and gay rights movements. The anti-Vietnam movement in the late 60s and 70s utilized makeup to display over-feminization and homosexuality as a way to avoid being drafted. The glam rock movement gave us icons like David Bowie, exposing and exploding restrictive gender norms through outrageous clothing and makeup, utilizing pop culture to spread ideas and acceptance of androgyny. “Female impersonation” has origins dating back to the 19th century in Europe, and the art of Drag Queens & Kings is alive and well today, celebrating, mocking, questioning, and expanding gender in clubs and theaters, in film, and right in our homes through TV favorites like Ru Paul’s Drag Race.

For our trans-sisters, the decision to wear makeup could have life or death consequences. As a transwoman friend of mine disclosed a few months back, when she’s walking down the street and hears a man call after her, her immediate thoughts turn to, “will I experience violence because I’m a woman? Or will I experience violence because he thinks I’m a faggot?” There is a lot of discussion in the trans community about the privilege of “passing”, and I believe these conversations have further supported the struggles womxn generally face-- does wearing makeup make you more or less of a woman? As writer Lux Alptraum points out, “the idea that external appearance is what makes someone a “real” woman is the very thing that many trans women have committed themselves to fighting. To the extent that makeup is an essential part of any trans woman’s gender identity or notion of her womanhood, it’s largely because that’s the message the rest of the world aggressively forces upon her.” Read the rest of this article at https://www.racked.com/2017/3/23/14937266/trans-women-makeup

Makeup is incredibly powerful. It can be used for protest, and it can be used for comfort. It’s daily wear, and it’s political. It’s an expression of freedom, and a bold face confronting restriction. It’s transformative, giving people the opportunity to live in the bodies and images that feel right and true for them. Makeup is art, an embracing of life and physicality, a way to show up, be counted, and be present. It’s an act of defiance, and an act of love.

I recently read that Facebook now has 56 gender identities one can choose from. Facebook blows, but wow that’s actually really awesome! Within that list, some of the more frequently used terms include:

Agender/Neutrois Androgyne/Androgynous Bigender Cis/Cisgender Female to Male/FTM Gender Fluid Gender Nonconforming/Variant Gender Questioning Genderqueer Intersex Male to Female/MTF Neither Non-binary Other Pangender Trans/Transgender Transsexual Two-spirit (Important: this is Native American. Don’t pull a Jason Mraz. Don’t appropriate)

Out of this list, the following folks are allowed to wear makeup:

All of them Everyone Anyone Everybody The General Public The Whole World Human Beings Aliens Animals but only if they’re actually humans in animal costumes

If you’re interested in following makeup artists on IG who are trans or gender non-conforming, here is a great starter list (partially sourced from wearyourvoicemag.com):

@ brownbeautystandards @ vlad_theunicorn @ jade_poncee @ makeupby_bran @ rosalynnemontoya @ miles_jai @ completedestruction

Again, there are infinite reasons why people of any gender do and don’t wear makeup, and I’m not going to be an authority on the matter. But I hope some of this information helps you on your journey to understand yourself better, and hold space of greater allyship and tolerance for others.

Below are some links and phone numbers if you feel you need greater support for the topics being discussed in this blog series. Being beautiful is cool, and so is being safe. You deserve to be here, and you matter.

Enjoy your week, and we’ll see you back here next week for Part 4: Performance Artists and Makeup!

National Eating Disorders 24 hr Hotline: 1-800-931-2237

https://www.nationaleatingdisorders.org/body-image-0

TransLifeline Hotline: 877-565-8860

https://www.translifeline.org/

LGBT National Hotline: 1-888-843-4564

https://www.glbthotline.org/

National Suicide Prevention 24hr Hotline: 1-800-273-8255

http://sexworkersproject.org/resources/

#makeup #nomakeup #gender #intersectional feminism #revolution #queer #drag #androgony #expressyourself

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elizadoolittlethings · 6 years ago

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https://www.room207press.com/2018/01/we-dont-go-back-76-league-of-gentlemen.html

Friday, 19 January 2018

We Don't Go Back #76: The League of Gentlemen (1999-2017)

When

The League of Gentlemen

was first broadcast, I didn't own a TV, and by the time I owned one, I was living with my Beloved, who didn't have any interest in seeing it. Nonetheless, I could tell you a not insignificant amount about the major characters, and reel off catchphrases. I could tell you what it was like. People cared about it. Partly this was because several of my friends adored it, and it entered the referential lexicon of our conversation. But partly it seemed to be present, part of the furniture of our pop culture.

For example, I remember that at the time the university LGB society (the T or the Q were not yet added, which is related to a point I'll pick up later) used pictures of prominent gay and lesbian people on posters for an anti-homophobia campaign and one of them was Mark Gatiss, and I recognised him as the chap from

The League of Gentlemen

. It's fair to say that

The League of Gentlemen

fell firmly into the category of things I'd never seen but which I could take part in a conversation about without getting completely lost.

I never got round to watching

The League of Gentlemen

But now this project is Serious Business, there are some things I can't really get away with leaving out. So I committed myself to watching it. A good friend expressed concern that it might be too late for me to do that. I sort of half understood what he was getting at, but only really got what he was about having worked through it.

The usual caveats about how writing about comedy are the antithesis of funny apply here, by the way (I still think my funniest article was the one about

Planet of the Apes

, but I digress).

Honest town signs.

The League of Gentlemen

are Reese Shearsmith, Mark Gatiss, Steve Pemberton and Jeremy Dyson. All four of them write; Gatiss, Pemberton and Shearsmith appear in front of the camera and divide the vast majority of characters, men and women, between them.

It's set in and around the fictional village of Royston Vasey ("You'll never leave!"), in the North of England, where everyone is a grotesque. It's sort of but not entirely sketch comedy.

Some characters appear in most of the episodes: Pauline (Pemberton), who runs a job start course, loves pens and despises the unemployed; Mike (Pemberton), Barry (Gatiss) and their spectacularly messed up mate Geoff (Shearsmith); disappointed musician Les McQueen (Gatiss); Mr Chinnery the vet (Gatiss again), who kills every animal he touches; Hilary Briss the butcher (also Gatiss) who puts something terrible and evil in his delicious sausages; and perhaps the most iconic characters in the show, Edward and Tubbs (Shearsmith and Pemberton), a pair of debased, depraved yokels who run a Local Shop for Local People and who visit unspeakable fates on anyone who comes who isn't Local.

What's all this SHOUTING?

But unlike many sketch shows, the recurring characters' stories progress from episode to episode. So for example, the fate of innocent Benjamin (Shearsmith) at the hands of his finicky aunt Val (Gatiss) and monstrous uncle Harvey (Pemberton) develops and escalates as he realises he might never be able to leave, and begins to formulate a plan of escape. Pauline finds her nemesis in one of her course attendees. Mr Briss's Special Stuff creates an epidemic of nosebleeds.

Many characters appear in no more than a handful of episodes at most, and become the focus of the episodes they're in. The Legz Akimbo theatre company (slogan: "put yourself in a child!") come to visit the local school but their internal tensions destroy the group. A guide leads a party of tourists through the Royston Vasey caves, while replaying a terrible tragedy for which he blames himself. A farmer keeps a man who slept with his wife as a scarecrow in his field. Kenny Harris (Gatiss), owner of the Dog Cinema, engages in a cutthroat business struggle with a rival who's more into cat films.

And then there's Papa Lazarou.

HELLO, DAVE!

Papa Lazarou (Shearsmith) is the single most nightmarish creation of the League of Gentlemen, and along with Tubbs and Edward, is most representative of the show's folk horror elements. He's the owner of the Pandemonium Carnival, which comes to town early in series 2. Papa Lazarou is a nightmare in human form, his scabrous face caked in black-and-white minstrel makeup. He forces his way into people's houses, insisting on calling them "Dave", and intimidating them through an almost supernatural power of domination into giving him their wedding ring, wherein he spirits them away as his slaves, with the phrase, "You're my wife now."

He is genuinely terrifying, and I wonder how that first episode he's in would play if it didn't have a laugh track (only the first two seasons have laugh tracks). And of course he's one of the two places where people most take offence at

The League of Gentlemen.

The most usual objection to Papa Lazarou is that he's in minstrel blackface. But while minstrel makeup is a blot on our culture, it is, it's obvious from the way that Papa Lazarou is framed is that he's supposed to be horrific because he's precisely the sort of person who wears blackface and always wears it.

In his second appearance (the final episode of series 3) there's an insane visual gag revolving around him disguising himself as relatively normal by painting a pale skin tone

over

his blackface makeup, which I found hilarious. But it's also a bit of a problem for a lot of viewers, evidently, because I've read at least two pieces online that interpret the scene as meaning that he's naturally minstrel-toned, which is... Well, I don't know. I'm starting to doubt my own reading a bit, but part of Papa Lazarou's grotesquerie is that you can see how the black and white paint is caked on his face in closeup, and I'm sort of inclined to go with my original reading, partly because it's much less hard to swallow, and mostly because it's a lot funnier.

The League of Gentlemen

is part of a tradition of British comedy and horror alike that deals with grotesque figres: in a show with Geoff, Mr Briss, Pauline, Harvey and, oh God, Edward and Tubbs, Papa Lazarou is just one more of a parade of freaks and monsters. And he is scary, really scary. The episode where Papa Lazarou and his Pandemonium Carnival comes to town (season 2, episode 1) is the point where I moved from a state of "that bit was pretty good" ambivalence to understanding why people consider

The League of Gentlemen

to be an undisputed classic of British TV comedy. Whatever the framing of Papa Lazarou and his freakshow (and notwithstanding the arguments about whether anyone should be making gags about blackface at all, the politics of freakshows is a subject I am simply not equipped to get into), that whole episode is a delirious comic horror and I have seen little to match it.

I can't go to Dorothy Perkins.

The other point where

The League of Gentlemen

gets some flak is in the figure of Babs the transgender cabbie. And the joke with Babs is partly that she's butch and hairy, so that she looks like a bloke in drag (specifically that she resembles the other women characters on the show, only more so), and partly that she's excessively forthcoming about the mechanical details of her transition with her clients. It's complicated by the fact that most of the people of Royston Vasey like her and are supportive of her. No one on the show is ever an open bigot about Babs. She's never deadnamed, for instance. And she's essentially one of the most sympathetic characters in the show. But nonetheless she embodies most of the most enduring transphobic stereotypes, simply by being so grotesque (so much so that we never see her face).

And back in 1999, as I mentioned in passing, we still talked about LGB issues and a lot of us hadn't added the T yet. And it's not as if trans people hadn't been there all along, but trans rights are in the general sphere of discourse now in a way that in the UK they weren't in the 90s. And this doesn't mean that a character like Babs isn't a problem, it means that many of the people who might be aware of the problem now weren't then because it hadn't been pointed out to them. And that isn't an excuse either. It's like all the history that comes back, unresolved, to haunt us.

You could tell that it haunted

The League of Gentlemen

: in the special episodes that aired over the 2017 Christmas season, she's back. She has to be, really: in a lot of ways, Babs acts like a Greek chorus for the unfolding story. So here she is, opening proceedings as ever. Barbara has transitioned successfully now, and she even says that trans people should not be "a source of cheap laughs" just for being who they are, and given that Barbara is a character who has always been framed as having her heart in the right place, as someone you're supposed to sympathise with, it's pretty clear that this is what Dyson, Gatiss, Pemberton and Shearsmith actually think.

But for her to even appear, and it's more or less obligatory that she does, she still has to supply a joke. So now, no longer an Ugly Trans Person, Barbara is an Excessively Touchy Trans Person who seizes on innocuous statements and takes offence to comic effect.

I wonder if Papa Lazarou and Barbara are problems like this because of the way

The League of Gentlemen

engages with its inspirations.

The League of Gentlemen

owes a great deal to classic British TV and cinema of the 60s and 70s, but crucially it engages with that source material in a way that enriches the show. It's instructive here to compare it with

Dr Terrible's House of Horrible

, which is roughly contemporary and which, unlike

The League of Gentlemen

, has not entered the annals of classic comedy. They both get their inspiration from similar places, in fact in several cases the same places – I mentioned

The League of Gentlemen

's odd relationship with sketch comedy, and it's sort of fair to say that it's sketch comedy in the way that an Amicus anthology horror is sketch horror. But where

Dr Horrible

depended on your being familiar with the source material, at least to some extent, to get the gag,

The League of Gentlemen

tells a collection of stories that don't depend on any foreknowledge at all. It's not a parody, and it's not entirely an homage either, although it has parodic elements and homage is threaded through the whole thing.

Rather, it's a comedy that focusses on the absurdity of evil and the equal absurdity of despair and that uses the grammar of classic British horror to tell those stories.

A Beast.

For example, a narrative thread in the fourth episode has workers on a proposed road digging up an inexplicable creature. Mr Chinnery comes to examine it, and proves as incompetent as ever. And while the scene carries a bunch of signifiers that come from Nigel Kneale, echoing

Quatermass

and

Beasts

in particular, and multiplied by the simple fact that Mr Chinnery looks and acts like Tristan Farnham (Peter Davison's character in

All Creatures Great and Small

), the joke doesn't depend on that. It depends on a moment of uncanny horror punctured when the vet's incompetence is revealed once more.

For the joke to land, you don't have to have seen

Baby

Quatermass and the Pit

, and while the whole scene is richer if you imagine Tristan Farnham in a Nigel Kneale script, that's not the joke. No, for the joke to land, you just need to have seen Mr Chinnery in action enough for you to be waiting for the moment when he fails catastrophically.

And throughout

The League of Gentlemen

, this texture is present. Royston Vasey is a vaguely comical, Northern-sounding name. But it is also the real name of legendarily foul-mouthed comedian Roy "Chubby" Brown, who himself appears later in the series as the town's mayor. And the joke with the mayor is that he's got a swearing problem, and that's a simple enough joke that you don't need to know who Roy "Chubby" Brown is, or that he's guesting as mayor of a town named after him to get it. That other stuff helps, but it isn't essential.

But the problem with the way that

The League of Gentlemen

mines classic horror and comedy is that sometimes it homages the things that perhaps should be left behind, so you get characters like Babs and Papa Lazarou, who are both beautifully played and well-written comic characters, but who reference stuff that is difficult to justify beyond nostalgia.

The League of Gentlemen

is important as the first sign of the folk horror renaissance that we've had in the last few years. Rather than saying "look at all these ropey old films! Aren't they terrible?"

The League of Gentlemen

embraces them, but crucially makes new things. It's a comedy, but it's also a horror: Edward and Tubbs reference any number of pagan village conspiracies. "We didn't burn him!" blurts Tubbs to the Scottish policeman who comes looking for poor missing Martin, but not before Edward tells Tubbs that she "did it beautifully." You don't have to know that they're quoting

The Wicker Man

to think they're funny and scary.

There's nothing for

you

here.

The members of

The League of Gentlemen

have taken active part in the rise of folk horror as a recognised genre. Jeremy Dyson scripted the recent film

Ghost Stories.

Shearsmith of course starred in

A Field in England

, and with Pemberton continues to make

Inside No. 9

, an anthology show that combines comedy and drama, and which has had at least a couple of folk horror episodes. The most notable of these is

The Trial of Elizabeth Gadge

, where Pemberton and Shearsmith play 17th century witch hunters. Just like

The League of Gentlemen

The Trial of Elizabeth Gadge

isn't a spoof or a parody, it's a black comedy that stands on its own merits, even while it draws inspiration from other sources.

And Reese Shearsmith took part in Folk Horror Revival's 2016 event at the British Museum, hearing about which is how I realised that there was a name for the things I liked.

Mark Gatiss is the man who might be credited for extending the name "folk horror" to a genre (Piers Haggard being the first to apply it consciously to his own film). In his 2010 series

History of Horror

, Gatiss popularised the idea of the Unholy Trinity, and talked at length about

Blood on Satan's Claw

, which probably did more to bring about the critical reassessment of that film than anything else. Gatiss also wrote

Crooked House

, which aired on the BBC in 2008, and the 2013 adaptation of

The Tractate Middoth.

Together with Shearsmith, Gatiss has remade

Blood on Satan's Claw

as an audio drama (released January 2018).

You could argue pretty persuasively that without

The League of Gentlemen

, there might not have been a rebirth of interest in folk horror at all. Without them, it would still be an accidental genre. A local genre, for local people.

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supporters got to see this last week! To support my work and read early, please consider donating. No donation too small.

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clefairytails · 7 years ago

Text

lesbian tag game

thx for sending me this @redcladsheikah <3 all my lesbian friends should do this too, if you want uwu i’m too lazy to tag like 50 ppl hhhhhhhhhhhhhhh @lebians @tiedyked @talaxian @lesbian-mcelroy @ireallylikecameras

1: did you ever think you were straight?

not really, i knew i liked girls even as a child. but i did go through multiple periods of trying to convince myself i was straight, needless to say it didn’t work out lol.

2: what’s your favorite element of gay culture?

our sense of humor! it’s amazing that we’re all so funny despite putting up with so much bullshit.

3: are you femme, butch, or neither?

femme! i’ve been looking into femme history lately, bcs the idea that femme is just an aesthetic is a misconception c:

4: do you prefer to date femmes or butches?

tbh every time i declare i have a type i immediately fall for someone that’s the complete opposite of that, so i have no idea. lately i’ve been wanting a goth gf, but i just developed a crush on a prep soooo i’m terrible at self-reflection. this bitch don’t know what she want.

5: what’s the worst part about being a lesbian?

the feeling that there’s a part of you that needs to be fixed, but you can’t do anything about it. it’s like seeing a picture on the wall that’s crooked, but it’s stuck like that and you can’t ever straighten it. or having a hair out of place that keeps sticking up no matter how much you try to gel it down.

6: what’s the best part of being a lesbian?

is women too obvious of an answer? girls are angels and i’d die for all of them

7: how long were you questioning for?

pretty much never, i guess. i had crushes on girls since kindergarten, then in 2nd grade i was told girls could only like boys, so i tried my best to be straight even though in my heart i knew i wasn’t. since i couldn’t make myself like boys, i kinda just ignored the idea of liking anyone at all until middle school, when i found out what the word “lesbian” means online. of course, all the stuff i found about lesbians called us disgusting perverts, so i went through many phases of calling myself literally anything else but a lesbian. i’ve only started using the word lesbian specifically in the last few years, especially since i joined an amazing discord group. i love them so much, they’ve helped me feel so proud of being a lesbian <3

8: what’s the most annoying thing straight people do?

exist.

jk lmao, i’m honestly not annoyed by straight people, but i like making jokes as if i am. it’s hard to annoy me in general, i’ve got a high tolerance for that type of stuff. if i have to answer, i hate it when strangers (usually straight men) pry into my sex life, but i’m not really annoyed by that as much as i am creeped out.

9: what do you look for in a girl?

vampirism is my only requirement.

10: if you had to marry someone you know right now, who would you choose?

@lebians bcs i feel they’d be the most able to put up with my bullshit. everyone else would kill me on sight. if only @ireallylikecameras was still single, then when we got married we could put together our 50% employee discounts at BK and get infinite food for free, ending world hunger. i think that’s how it works, but also im gay and therefore bad at math.

11: do you have a crush right now?

does being in love count as a crush? if so, then i have three.

12: do you fall in love easily?

i crush easily, and i say i’m in love easily bcs i’m a leo (meaning i need to exaggerate to live), but actually feeling love? only once.

13: is there anyone in your life right now you think you’ll date in the future?

fingers crossed.

14: is there anyone you want to be kissing right now?

at the moment i’m feeling very touch repulsed, so no. but i also go through periods of feeling touch starved, and during those times i’d kiss pretty much anyone lmao.

15: do you think you’ve met your future wife yet?

i don’t know if i want to be married. i hate making commitments.

16: top, bottom, or vers?

i suspect i’m a bottom, but i’m also a virgin with no self awareness about what she wants or likes, so who really knows.

17: is there anyone you wish you could fuck right now?

still feeling touch repulsed, so no. also i have issues with actual real life sex. i always think i want to have sex, but when the situation becomes real, i feel disgusted by it and chicken out. i have no idea if this is some sort of asexuality or internalized lesbophobia. i should probably go to therapy lol.

18: rough or gentle?

rough, in theory. like i said, virgin who doesn’t know what she likes. but as a general rule, i don’t like slowness.

19: how many stereotypes do you fit into?

i’m fat, hairy, make lots of jokes about hating men (at least online, not in real life bcs i dont wanna get stabbed), i sometimes look like a guy,

20: what version of the lesbian flag do you like most? (butch, lipstick, original, etc.)

i like the femme one! i have it as my banner, it’s the lipstick lesbian flag without the lip print. the original flag was so fucking good, too bad it got taken by the terfs. the labrys is such a powerful image, and purple is a good color. also i saw a moon lesbian flag going around, that one is so good.

21: do you have a good gaydar?

hhhh i’d like to pretend i do but tbh i’m not very observant and straight up bad at reading people.

22: be honest, would you rather be straight?

yes and no. i’d rather have been born straight, because it would’ve saved me so much pain, but it’s a few years too late for that lol. if there was a magic pill that could make me straight today, i wouldn’t take it. i’ve been through so much as a lesbian, it means something to me now and i wouldn’t trade that for anything.

23: are you cis?

yep.

24: are you a sugar mommy or a sugar baby at heart?

hardcore sugar baby. my dream job is being an older woman’s trophy wife.

25: are you committed to someone at all right now emotionally?

hhhhhhhhhh unfortunately. i don’t want to be.

26: are you looking for a serious relationship currently?

yes, but i shouldn’t be. i don’t think i’m ready to be in one.

27: is there someone you’d like to be in a serious relationship in?

yes, but she’s straight and already married lmao. whoops.

28: do you want children?

no, i’m too selfish and irresponsible.

29: is your family accepting of your sexuality?

my mom and dad are, though they don’t take it very seriously. pretty sure they expect me to grow out of it one day. can’t blame them tho, i’m waiting for the same thing lmao. my extended family is huge, and their opinions range from being extremely homophobic to being gay themselves, but i’m interacting with them less and less as i get older.

30: how confident are you in your sexuality?

very confident, though i don’t want to be. i’m still secretly hoping one day i’ll see a guy i’m attracted to and he’ll fix me, but being realistic, i’m a huge fucking lesbian. women are enchanting.

31: are you polyamorous or monogamous?

monogamous. my insecure ass could not be poly hhhhhh.

32: what advice do you have for your 12 year old self?

be more selfish. you don’t have to put yourself second for the sake of others, especially at your age. nothing you do will matter in a decade, go fucking wild.

33: have you ever been to a gay bar?

nope. i want to go one day, but i have terrible social anxiety.

34: leather jackets or flannel?

both of those are really hot, but i’m gonna go with leather jacket.

35: describe your dream girlfriend

- vampire

- big tiddy goth gf

- nice personality or smthn

- uhhhhhhhhh tiddy

(ok but srsly, i can’t answer this question bcs i NEVER know what i want!! i always thought my type was THICC for sure, but all three of the ladies i have feelings for rn are pretty skinny and flat chested)

36: do you have any lesbian friends?

at least 50 lol.

37: what elements of gay culture do you actively participate in?

air, water, sometimes earth. never fire.

38: do you find straight people irritating?

nope, but i do find straight pda uncomfortable to look at. mostly bcs it reminds me of what i'm supposed to want. but i’d never tell a straight person that, obviously. i’m not rude.

39: would you rather adopt a kid or have a biological kid?

i’ll adopt a tortoise, and feed her any children that cross my path. but if i did ever have a child, i’d want it to be biologically mine and my wife’s. mostly bcs i’d want to know what it would look like, which is a selfish and stupid reason to have kids, and exactly why i’m not gonna lmao.

40: do you love yourself?

i’m a LEO (jokes aside, i don’t know. sometimes i do, sometimes i don’t. but i love myself more as time goes on. definitely more than i did than when i was a teen, at least.)

#tag game #long post #im a LEO

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lesbian-ed · 7 years ago

Note

Hi! I'm really shy, but have a question and I think you guys can answer it better than anyone I know, so here's the thing: what if I know that I'm a lesbian, but when someone asks me, I just can't say it out loud? I will say that yeah, yeah, I like girls, but I can't get the word "lesbian" out of my mouth. I don't know why, because I'm definitely out of the closet though (I'm a butch so it's pretty visible I'm gay). Any advice? Does it happen to anyone else but me? Thanks in advance

Hello, anon!

I’ve been in your shoes. I’ve always been visibly gay as well, so it really was a bit strange to not be able to say the word ‘lesbian’ out loud in those first few years. To me, there was even the fact that, in my country, the word for it has the /k/ phoneme at the end (we say ‘lésbica’), which gives it a very striking sound – there’s no ignoring the word if someone says it aloud; you’re gonna attract attention when you say it.

‘Gay’ ended up being my go-to word in those times. Everyone knew what it meant and it sounded ‘friendlier’ – it wasn’t about wanting to distance myself from ‘rabid, hairy lesbians swinging axes and killing men’ (I always wanted to be nearer to this mythological creature that apparently inhabits the public consciousness, tbqh), it was just shame, I suppose. We all have to deal with our internalized lesbophobia at some point and I had tons of it to sort through. And even though I’m butch, I wasn’t out to my family for quite a while, so there was this half-life I was living: being out to the world and at the same time just formally undefined within my own house. In fact, it’s still hard to say ‘lesbian’, to people in my family, even if it’s not about me, though I’ve been daring lately.

Maybe that’s the answer, though, daring to say it. Not to everyone in the world, of course, you’re not going to get on a bus and randomly tell the driver, ‘good morning, I’m a lesbian’! But if you’re around trusted friends, if you’re in an environment where you can be open about it – why fall back on euphemisms? Why should we ever be ashamed of being who we are?

I’ve said it in another post, but lesbian carries meaning: it has weight, it has a history and it has pride. The fact that we hear this word being thrown around lightly, that we’re subjected to heterosexuals’ leers and frowns and derisive chuckles should not shame us out of our own word.

And it is ours, say others what they may, because none of the others available translate the certainty it does; it doesn’t have that nebulous and frankly juvenile connotation that comes with ‘sapphic’; it doesn’t encompass bisexuality as the useless ‘wlw’ acronym does; it doesn’t include homosexual men as ‘gay’ does; it isn’t as completely meaningless and all-embracing (when not offensive) as ‘queer’ – lesbian is clear-cut. It’s beautiful, it’s powerful to recognize yourself in a definition without having to explain further and to know that it holds not just yourself, but a whole plethora of women who are just like you; it’s amazing to know that, listen, strictly homosexual women actually exist and we’ve existed since the dawn of time -- and we have a word for that! Language is sometimes so lacking, but we have a word that speaks to us. Heteros have tried to take it (be it men stealing it to describe their vile pornographic creations or women co-opting it to justify their political leanings), the trans/q*eer crowd is trying to take it (and erase its meaning and us in the process), but they can’t have it. Try as they might, they cannot and shall not have it.

We are lesbians. And we shall not be made to feel ashamed of it, we shall not be scared off by the word that defines us.

See, daring to find strength in the word is a start – and there is so much strength in knowing who you are, there is so much strength in our recognizing ourselves, even though society tries to hide our natural existence at every cost, tries to make us believe we are hysteric, ill, gross… They can tell all the lies they want, but we, lesbians, are here, we’ve always been here.

I don’t know when things changed and I dropped other words, I don’t know when it will happen to you. But it started when I understood all that is contained in this simple little word, when I read it as a lesbian rather than with the glasses heterosexist society had given me; when it wasn’t heterosexuals’ twisted ideas of us, but when it translated our history, when it brought to mind all the lesbians that came before me – the writers I admire, the artists, the scientists, but also the ‘common’ lesbians who managed to live their lives authentically in defiance of the established order just by loving their partners fully, even if their names have not been passed down onto us…

A few days ago, I went out with an old friend of mine who was there when I first came out. In those times, I don’t think lesbian ever passed my lips. Now? I wear it with honour, I speak it with respect, love, passion. For it is mine, I am it; it does not limit me, it has freed me. And by heavens, it’s a beautiful word and although I was just born like this out of some random occurence in nature, I’m damn fucking proud of being a lesbian.

Say it, write it, roll it around on your tongue, anon. Strip it of the negative meanings others have associated with it, meanings that have nothing to do with it or with us. Dare to name yourself, dare to be. Slowly if you must, but surely.

/Mod T

#Anonymous #answered asks #internalized lesbophobia #language #mod t

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radvegandyke · 4 years ago

Text

1. Do you feel like you fit into the butch/stud + femme dynamics?

Not really no, i’m just plain gnc 🤪

2. Do you currently have a girlfriend, fiancé, wife? How long have you been together? If you’re single, are you enjoying that?

I have a fiancé! we’ve been together for over 2 years, she’s my soul mate 💗

3. Describe your personal style

androgynous lesbian, skater ish

4. List 3 of your favorite accessories (or special clothing items) that you have been wearing lately

My engagement ring is my only special thing I really wear

5. Describe your relationship with shaving and makeup, do you participate? How do you feel about that participation or lack thereof?

I stopped wearing make up around when I got together with my gf and I love being make up free! I’ve never really shaved anything other than my legs but I still occasionally shave them when it’s really hot and I have to wear shorts. I have pcos so i’m super hairy and not at all confident even though I would love to leave my body all natural!!

6. Describe your best friend, what do you love about them?

Don’t have one lmao

7. What are your 3 favorite hobbies?

Plants (specifically indoor plants, i’m obsessed), sewing and bird watching

8. Describe either your pets, or what pets you want to have someday

I have a lot of babies lol. I have 4 birds who are all very unique, 2 are alexandrines, one is an indian ring neck and one is a cockatiel. I also have 2 dogs and a cat, they’re all boys other than one of my alexandrines! Their names are Hera, Pierro, Pluto, Chihiro, Aladdin, Tofu and Finch. I had 2 more birds who have both passed away and they are my guardian angels. Ashby and Harvey ❤️

9. Name one historical woman who inspires you

Oh that’s tough! I admire susan b anthony. I honestly don’t know enough about women in feminist history. I should know more but I read mostly about the current climate

10. List a few of your favorite books

I haven’t been reading as much as I’d like to in the last couple years but some of my old favourites are Sharp Objects and The lovely bones.

11. List a few of your favorite musicians or bands

Maddy Jane, Hozier, Milky chance, Camp Cope and The lumineers

12. List a few of your favorite movies or TV shows

Grace and Frankie and Shameless are my favourite tv shows and I love kids movies lol

13. If you could live in any country, where would it be?

I don’t know! Australia is okay, I’ve always wanted to live in Europe though

14. List a few of your favorite artists

I’m not big on art, I enjoy it but don’t particularly know many artists

15. What is your favorite thing about being a lesbian?

Sharing my life with another woman, the understand and connection you can have with another female is something you could never experience with a male. I feel so lucky to be a lesbian and love other women

Hey! It’s stressful everywhere...all the time. Rad lesbians I know this is so 2010-era Facebook but wanna have some fun with some questions? Either write out all your answers here or wait for your followers to message you a number for a question 😊

1. Do you feel like you fit into the butch/stud + femme dynamics?

2. Do you currently have a girlfriend, fiancé, wife? How long have you been together? If you’re single, are you enjoying that?

3. Describe your personal style

4. List 3 of your favorite accessories (or special clothing items) that you have been wearing lately

5. Describe your relationship with shaving and makeup, do you participate? How do you feel about that participation or lack thereof?