Stand by, no way, stop

[sovay]

So my family made the decision not to hold a seder tomorrow night because my mother is still coughing (I will break matzah, pour wine, and open the door to the stranger, because that is the most important thing) and I think it was just as well because I appear to have come down sick. I was invited out to a movie tonight, but instead I fell over sideways and have alternated the last few hours between staring vaguely into the middle distance while feeling nauseated and sort of sleeping, minus rest and plus whiting out when I tried to stand up. I am not thrilled.

1. Erin Horáková seriously analyzes the popular reception of Captain James T. Kirk in context of the simplifying and not apolitical rewriting of the past: "Freshly Remember'd: Kirk Drift." (I feel some of this same process may explain my feelings toward neo-noir vs. noir, especially where the supposed ubiquity of the femme fatale is concerned. Somebody please remind me to write about the Wachowskis' Bound (1996); I loved that movie and it's been more than half a year.) The statement below flashed out at me:

Heterosexuality has been through the fucking ringer in cultural productions in the last decades due to backlashes against feminism and queer visibility that have transformed portrayals and interpretations alike into dumbshows—crude pantomimes, as before the play. These frantic defenses have done more to render the proposition of men and women loving one another a piece of one-note unsustainable ridiculousness than women's lib and LGBTQ rights ever could.

Boyd McDonald was making much the same frustrated point in the 1980's. I am not pleased that the problem has worsened again since. Also I had not actually realized that not everyone thinks of William Shatner as Jewish.

2. These poems were not published back-to-back, but I read them that way and they resonate interestingly: Robert Peake's "Homesickness" and Dante Di Stefano's "National Poetry Month."

3. I was just trying to run down a reference using Google Books. I ran into a biography of Wilfred Owen. Oh, hey, I thought to myself, I should read one of those sometime. Pat Barker's Regeneration (1991) doesn't count. I began flicking through the randomly available pages and then—

Robert Graves: "Sassoon and Wilfred Owen were homosexuals; though Sassoon tried to think he wasn't. To them, seeing men killed was as horrible as if you or I had to see fields of corpses of women."

JESUS H. MAGDALENE GRAVES.

Seriously, every time I try to parse that, it just gets worse. I feel sufficiently lousy that I would be going to bed right now no matter what, but really, Robert Graves, you're not helping! [edit] The former Archbishop of Canterbury agrees with me! Goodnight.

Comments

[yatima]

Please write about _Bound_! I have loved it for years and think it gains immeasurably now we know that it was made by two woman :)

[thawrecka]

JFC Robert Graves, what a total tool.

I'm totally going to have to read that link about the popular reception of James Kirk later but I had to comment now about how awful Graves is in that quote. Just, what a dirtbag.

[cyphomandra]

I love Goodbye to All That, but Graves does have some weird ideas about people. Especially women, but the whole kerfuffle with Sasson is just painful to read.

I would also love to see your thoughts on Bound! My first same sex relationship didn't have a lot going for it, in hindsight, but there were some good movies and this was one of them. I need to disentangle it a bit more from my past.

[desperance]

I am tolerably sure that William Shatner thinks of William Shatner as Jewish, which is probably the only measure that matters [we saw his one-man show last year; I went expecting to be disappointed, and was delightfully impressed]. Also, Robert Graves may have ended up the only person who didn't see Robert Graves as a jerk.

[sovay]

I am tolerably sure that William Shatner thinks of William Shatner as Jewish, which is probably the only measure that matters

I don't argue. I may have worded things confusingly. Horáková just mentions that more people remember Nimoy's Jewishness than Shatner's and that surprised me.

[we saw his one-man show last year; I went expecting to be disappointed, and was delightfully impressed].

Nice! What kind of show was it?

Also, Robert Graves may have ended up the only person who didn't see Robert Graves as a jerk.

I imprinted very hard on the novel of I, Claudius in high school and that is never going away, but, yeah.

That was a very well-balanced comment, by the way.

[sovay]

I'm totally going to have to read that link about the popular reception of James Kirk later but I had to comment now about how awful Graves is in that quote. Just, what a dirtbag.

I think it's worse than that time Kipling was racist about Einstein because relativity scared him.

[thawrecka]

I didn't know that about Kipling but I am unsurprised; what little I know of his work has a reputation for racism, after all.

[lilysea]

I was invited out to a movie tonight, but instead I fell over sideways and have alternated the last few hours between staring vaguely into the middle distance while feeling nauseated and sort of sleeping, minus rest and plus whiting out when I tried to stand up. I am not thrilled.

Oh no! :(

I hope you feel better soon! ^_^ <3

[sovay]

I didn't know that about Kipling but I am unsurprised; what little I know of his work has a reputation for racism, after all.

It came up in a panel I moderated at Readercon about six years ago. Writing in November 1919:

Do you notice how their insane psychology attempts to infect the Universe? There is one Einstein, nominally a Swiss, certainly a Hebrew, who (the thing is so inevitable that it makes one laugh) comes forward, scientifically to show that, under certain conditions Space itself is warped and the instruments that measure it are warped also . . . When you come to reflect on a race that made the world Hell, you see how just and right it is that they should decide that space is warped, and should make their own souls the measure of all Infinity. The more I see of the Boche's mental workings the more sure I am that he is Evil Incarnate, and, like all evil, a pathetic Beast. Einstein's pronouncement is only another little contribution to assisting the world towards flux and disintegration.

It's a case of someone saying a terrible thing which I find intellectually fascinating (Kipling's automatic conflation of German and Jewish identity—go tell that to Germany, dude—and the fact that I can't tell if the theory of relativity would have bothered him as much if it hadn't been proposed by German-born Jewish Einstein, although since he associates it with "flux and disintegration" I think so) which is still completely terrible. I enjoy a lot of Kipling's poetry and prose and I liked finding out that some of the ways he thought about England were more complicated than straight-ahead imperialism and he wrote gorgeously about the sea, but I am not going to try to defend his anti-Semitism (or any of his other racism) with a ten-foot pole. It's of a piece with other remarks he made, chiefly in his travel writing. He wrote sympathetic Jewish characters in "The House Surgeon" and there is a curious attempt to write a benevolent Jewish conspiracy (I guess it makes a change) in "The Treasure and the Law," but seriously, you can object to the idea of the universe working in non-intuitive ways without dragging evil incarnate into it.

[sovay]

Please write about _Bound_! I have loved it for years and think it gains immeasurably now we know that it was made by two woman

Absolutely! At present I am in the middle of a film post which is trying to spill over into an essay, but afterward I will see what I can do.

[sovay]

I love Goodbye to All That, but Graves does have some weird ideas about people.

I love I, Claudius, but I'm not even sure what he's trying to say here, except every interpretation I can think of is awful.

Especially women, but the whole kerfuffle with Sasson is just painful to read.

So I can think of several things about Graves and Sassoon that might apply; which one do you mean?

I would also love to see your thoughts on Bound!

So noted!

My first same sex relationship didn't have a lot going for it, in hindsight, but there were some good movies and this was one of them. I need to disentangle it a bit more from my past.

I'm glad there were good movies, at least.

[sovay]

I hope you feel better soon!

Thank you! Virtual tea much appreciated.

[thawrecka]

Wow, that is stunningly racist. And a way of thinking about the world that I find so bizarre I can't fully get my head around it.

Edited to add and I've now also read that Freshly Remember'd: Kirk Drift article which is interesting, especially because I've been rewatching Star Trek lately. I do agree with a lot of it.

I think also a lot of the reason people want to think of Kirk as a womaniser is because the show tries to position him as a shirt-ripping sex symbol, sweating and golden-skinned - but totally not shagging around nearly as much as pop cultural reputation would suggest, and frequently rebuffing women when he thinks it's inappropriate to go there. There is some pretty awful sexist creepy stuff with Yeoman Janice Rand in the first season of the show, though, especially with the 'evil Kirk' episode where he tries to assault her, so I wouldn't say he's always written as respectful towards women. But I do think this is the same as people thinking of Spock as the logical rule-bound character, when Spock was breaking rules left, right and centre, even committing mutiny once.

The pop-cultural view of these characters has drifted so far from who they were, because people are attached to certain ideas of 60s masculinity - and this idea that Kirk fits in the 'womaniser' role and Spock in the 'uptight nerd' role - and this idea that we've advanced beyond that sexism. When really, we've just moved to different sexist ideas of what men and women should be, & etc.

[rosefox]

Count me among those who had no idea that Shatner was Jewish.

That piece of Horáková's is marvelous.

[cyphomandra]

So I can think of several things about Graves and Sassoon that might apply; which one do you mean?

Ha! Well, yes, but it's when Sassoon does his Soldiers Declaration, at considerable personal cost, and Graves immediately sets about making sure that everyone knows that he doesn't mean it and he's just a little stressed, how about a nice hospital visit instead of the imminent court martial? I think he could have actually done this in a way that didn't repel me, but the whole thing feels like a desperate attempt to preserve Graves' idea of Sassoon whatever happens to the man himself.

I also didn't know Shatner was Jewish, if you're keeping track!

[poliphilo]

Fancy an Archbishop of Canterbury producing something as good as that!

Graves was an enthusiastic homophobe and a very silly man- the very epitome of a wise fool- but he wrote some cracking poems.

I like the picture at the head of the TLS article. It's a reminder of just how young most of the soldiers of the Great War were. Incidentally, I live just outside Tonbridge where the picture was taken.

If Cuthbertson is right about Owen's (lack of) sexual experience it follows that all the best known poets of the War- with the exception of Brooke- went into it- and exited it- as virgins.

[poliphilo]

Please don't forget The Village That Voted The Earth was Flat- in which the narrator and his pals concoct a very elaborate revenge on a local magistrate who has fined them for speeding through his village in their motor car and in his speech from the bench makes a casual antisemitic remark about one of them. If I'm remembering rightly they don't so much mind the fine; it's the racial slur they find unforgivable.

[tree_and_leaf]

I think Horáková is right, fwiw. I certainly know Nimoy was Jewish long before I knew Shatner was - though that might be partly because I was more interested in Nimoy than Shatner....

[tree_and_leaf]

Rowan Williams is a very perceptive writer (and a decent poet).

[kore]

I am so sorry you are sick! I was getting better but had a relapse, but nothing like you and your mom, sounds like. Bleah.

Graves, not unlike Lawrence, is a fine poet and a bit of a shit human being, and he was always very weird about possibly being bi- or homosexual himself, like Lawrence was. It's like this bizarre pre-WWI British male cultural Thing. OH NOES I AM ARTISTIC AND FIND MEN HOT I MIGHT CATCH TEH GAY.* So they became hypermasculine in consequence in ways that make you go "...." like the way Graves writes about Sassoon and the wrestling scene in Women in Love. I don't know.

That essay was quite interesting -- it's very true the progressiveness of the original Trek (including the casting of Uhura and how the original deck crew is supposed to look like the UN) gets erased and turned into a weird notion of planetsfull of willing alien women and miniskirted = available crew women and so on. I was pretty surprised they didn't mention Janeway even once, though, and the discussion in the comments is disappointingly dismissive -- Janeway isn't written as a coherent character and so she's not really worth bringing up? Hunh. (Early Janeway is at leas as consistent as TOS Kirk, I think.)

*You can also see this a bit in US male literary culture a bit later? like in the 20s.

[kore]

YES, DO WRITE ABOUT BOUND, I FORGOT TO MENTION

[kore]

I wonder if that's possibly also because Spock is Othered, is very visibly alien, and Kirk is from that cliche shorthand most whitebread of places, Iowa.

[moon_custafer]

^^^^^^

[moon_custafer]

I feel like the Graves quote comes out of the same place as using "misogynist" to refer to gay men -- as though it's impossible to have any sort of respect or care for women in the absence of sexual attraction.

[moon_custafer]

Wilde's trial and imprisonment were not only rotten for Wilde, but for everyone else -- I think we're still seeing the fallout from that particular bit of society-wide gay panic. See every article about modern* straight men being unable to show affection for each other.

*In North America and the UK, anyhow. Also, I'm fascinated/depressed by the apparent greater freedom for men to hug each other in countries where homosexuality is outlawed. It's probably the only way for the ban to be tenable -- after all, if public displays of affection with your best buddy is just Normal Manly Stuff, a lot can hide in plain sight, the authorities only have to arrest people they want to, and the real size of the LGBT population is unknown, thus never recognized as normal. Of course some places seem to have the worst of both worlds.