Prop 8 speculation: just the thing for a rainy Saturday in January.

Gay Marriage supporters fear Supreme Court ruling was an omen -- LA Times

If every new motion, decision, and media-spectacle of the Prop 8 trials is this fraught with speculation and hopelessness, the outcome of the case will not matter, for we will all have collapsed in a heap of emotionally whiplashed, heart-wrung queer bodies. Which is a real shame, because the actual bodies and lives of queer people are the furthest things from discussion in any of this coverage. Our flesh-heap might merit brief coverage if it's real gory, on Fox News at very least since it'd be easier to spin our story than cover Haiti, which requires compassion and reporting and all that.

Unfortunately, I happen to side with the pessimists on the likelihood that our current Supreme Court will have the conscience or the gonads to overturn the independent decisions of 40 states to discriminate against a minority. For reasons beyond my understanding, SCOTUS has recently displayed a bizarre desire to limit its own power to overrule both state and federal over-reaches of jurisdiction. In a perfect world the Judiciary would be an excellent solution to the gay marriage problem, since the basic point of contention, the majority’s ability to limit minority rights to access government services and protections, has already been decided several times over. But this isn’t a perfect world and the court is stacked against us, and the specifics of the case provide any number of easy outs for Justices who have no internal compulsion to do the right thing.

That being said, the following was perhaps the most jaw-dropping excerpt of the linked article:

In their opinion, [SCOTUS] worried that opponents of gay marriage and their paid witnesses would face “harassment as a result of public disclosure of their support” for the ban. They concluded that the Prop. 8 defenders “have shown that irreparable harm will likely result” if video coverage of the proceedings were made public.

This is one of those free speech debacles that really ties one’s brain in knots. While in the abstract I appreciate SCOTUS’s protection of representatives of an unpopular opinion from disproportionate retaliation, and their understanding that cameras in the courtroom would have a chilling effect on free speech for witnesses for the defense, my gut reaction of anger and disbelief reigns supreme. The most common misunderstanding of “free speech” is, in my opinion, when bigots aver that “freedom of speech” means “freedom from consequences of speech.” Conservatives usually love accountability, except when it applies to wealthy hate-mongers instead of “Welfare Queens.” I’d never advocate violent retribution against the bigots willing to testify against my basic human rights, but I’d sure like to be able to boycott their businesses and thumb my nose at them on the street and such. Which we will still do without live-camera coverage, but I don’t quite see why these people are receiving extraordinary protection from the civil repercussions of their own sworn testimony.

There’s also a certain irony in the claim that the witnesses for the defense will suffer “irreparable harm” from the distribution of their testimony. I think we should all be a little more interested in the “irreparable harm” caused to millions of queer Americans by systemic inequality, lack of access to services, and dearth of protection from the constant threat of emotional and bodily injury. You know, the irreparable harm to a family that can’t legally adopt their kid or the Queer who dies in a hospital bed alone because hir partner has no legal recourse. But hey! Who asked me.

Anyway, the one thing I can’t really get my head around at present (ha! so untrue, but my heart will give out if I write about this for too much longer) is why it matters so much if Judge Walker sets clear rules for proceedings or not. Everyone knows this case is getting appealed up to SCOTUS regardless of the result, and given the high court’s unusual early-intervention with the trial already, they’re clearly not going to abide by the usual rules of the game, wherein appellate courts don’t reexamine evidence, just rule on the legality of decisions, the validity of the applied precedent, etc. Whatever Walker does in that courtroom will be purely incidental to the final decision of the case, as far as I can tell, although it will determine the specifics of appellate strategy.

Anywho. Another great day to be a gay American in the era of Hope and Change.

"The Phantom Menace" may refer to the Patriarchy. Correct me if the film points to any more plausible thesis.

Star Wars: The Phantom Menace Review (Part 1 of 7)

What I did with my afternoon: watch this 70-minute takedown of The Phantom Menace, compare it with Nick Davis's review (a startlingly solid B- if you can believe that), youtube other Star Wars documentaries, marvel in the brilliance of the original trilogy, and wish I could analyze movies and their making like the pros.

Normally I wouldn't share or recommend a video like the review above, because the creator deems it necessary to mix in a lot of tasteless and triggering "gags" that position the narrator as an abusive, misogynistic sociopath, which a) does nothing to help the ever-beleagured public image of people who like Star Wars/Sci-Fi* as socially-inept jerks, and b) is the most tired strategy for producing an easy chuckle outside of the Poop Joke.

But the fact that the review melds dramatic criticism of plot and character, meticulous cinematographic analysis, and careful research of the process and reception of the film with a shtick-y narrator and cheap editing tricks to produce a biting, compelling, and often genuinely funny attack on the film makes me willing to hold my feminist objections at bay for a hot second and tell you to watch the thing.

In combination with my recent [slightly manic, sorry] obsession with that Le Guin essay, I am wondering today how it is possible, in one lifetime to, consume and analyze art, create effective art, keep up meaningful relationships, and have any sort of impact toward improving the welfare of humanity (which one must feel compelled to do as the result of all the former pursuits, which reveal a flawed world of injustice and pain but usually some hope for redemption). I know this work/life/art balance conundrum is not a new thing, but it's taking on new relevance for me as I cast off the wonderful shackles of coupledom and still can't find time or brain-space for art, work, and friends.

[What does this have to do with the video? I guess that it is, in itself, an overt balancing act between the critique of art and the creation of art, produced by (I believe) a single artist, in which both the referent art and the critique-art attempt to complicate the high art/low art dichotomy by exploiting the peculiarities of their respective media, with varying degrees of success. Although, notably, the video artist is male, which may undermine the validity of this comparison to Le Guin. But I'm going to roll with it anyway.]

I think the answer to the balance question has something to do with the power of culture to change minds and circumstances, and the power of the individual the influence culture, but I am also wondering if it does not specifically have to do with science fiction -- that is, art (of whatever medium) that challenges the basic assumptions, environments, circumstances and ideologies by which we live. Art that is currently dismissively labeled as "genre" because it challenges the status quo in emotionally compelling, widely accessible ways.

Unfortunately, I suck at film analysis and have never thought up a half-plausible science fiction premise (let alone plot) in my life. But maybe those are two things I would like to work on. Even if the genre (sci-fi) and the medium (film) never become the vehicles for my own creative pursuits, I think there is a tremendous power in each (and both) which, if I could better understand, I could harness to make art that is more meaningful, accessible, thoughtful, revolutionary and joyful.

*See also: readers of comic books, players of video games, etc., with a heavy cross-over with bloggers, queers, new-agers, and anyone else who prefers art/recreation/communication/lifestyles that differ from and therefore challenge dominant culture, which has a vested interest in stigmatizing the above groups in order to maintain its dominance and the very hierarchical thought system which allows "dominance" to be accepted as the natural mode/consequence of relation between and among individuals, groups, ideas, and nature.