Reflections on reflections
The fundamental desire for one's reflection is one's base instinct. And yet, if something is a collective media, viewed by many people and made by someone with specific intentions (treated by many to be as holy as the word of a Christian God), then it is often that reflections are also shared. A collective stew we all throw something into. And if someone's reflection is aberrant, it becomes a duty to correct this - for what, if in reflection of someone else, is something I view as sickly, despite one's best efforts? Besides, the majority does not see it. So the person saying it is wrong. And stupid. Clearly, shaming and correction is in order. We can become teachers. Superiors.
A dramatic entrance for something that had stuck to my mind like a leech - a common dismissal of queer readings of media by people. There are many layers to this dismissal - seeing the author as the only meaning-maker, dismissing the one who interacts with the art, a deeply ingrained homophobia, a desperate need to engage in intellectual superiority etc.. Or maybe there is more - I am too stupid to fully articulate it. But as I am reading Twice-Dead King, I have been thinking about it. Because I am perfectly aware of how saying "yea this is queer" would sound to the massive majority of people who reject queer readings like....well poison. There is a reason Benshoff wrote a whole book on the state of Homosexual and Horror, and how the two intertwine at the roots. Fear of queer people and how he depicts aberrance and disease (and ironically how then people deny any queerness to horror, despite the fears and disgusts being all too same).
It 's difficult to disentangle all of it. For me, for anyone. It's also bafflingly surreal to me, because most people understand the basics working of deep feelings awakened by the media. They also understand, on some level, that stories of Others, will strongly resonate with the Others in question. But there always has to be a barrier in a way - so that the sickness of the real Others will not contaminate the larger narrative. No this can not be this. It is a metaphor, it is something fully and utterly different. As if one thing can only be enjoyed in one way, with nothing deeper. If you ever dare suggest that curtains are more than something blue, then you are a moron reading too deep.
I never understood this chiding. As if the massive majority of queer people do not understand the missive that most things aren’t about us. That they can’t be. That we are distorting something else to our sick vision. Like a drip, drip of water cheering the dissolving fungus on. Destroying some grand temple, or Mona Lisa by making it queer. Most of us, when we say we mean something is queer, we mean that it speaks to our existence. Reflects it. That we can easily imagine that this can be us. We don’t mean to speak to existence that it is queer to everyone to everything. But many declarations on pieces of art, well they speak of authorial declarations and intents, and of culture surrounding the work. Proof, proof, proof. As if the work is an elementary particle and us all physicists plotting its course. If something is said of something well we need objective proof! But if we are thinking of deep feelings, of resonance deep within our heart how can we measure it? In this simple understanding of saying something about art, it is as if we have cast it in that colour only, rather than added something to the multispectral kaleidoscope that shifts for everyone.
It’s not all of us of course. That’s the thing often forgotten. We are all different and we want different things. Many other queer people look on this tendency with real anger. It is not needed. We have real representation and we should stick to it. Stop making it a poison. Stop spreading our poison. We have one day on which we can show our pride. We can buy corporate stickers. Please just stop.
It’s not like folks who want normalcy and can pass easily into polite society are evil schemers wanting to throw anyone else under the bus. But they are not the monolith of queerness we should all look up to. Plenty of us who are still degenerates, who will never be polite people who chose a side, or had a neat marriage and all the markers of cisheternormativity just in rainbow. It is fine to want it, of course. For many of us, queerness is an integral part of us that explains a lot of our choices and existence. It appears in our art, in our joy and in our sorrow. It is shown differently, for we are all different. It is an insult to forget us and act like we are ridiculous. Like we all reflect on that bland guy wearing a suit.
I am not making sense. I need coffee. This is getting too long. I am getting worked up but that’s the purpose of art?
These words of mine are not meant to shame, or demean. It’s a torn up journal entry, pleading with the heartless machine that will never understand or care to understand. Opening my heart to vultures but I suppose that’s fine. I am a ridiculous crazy person who was saved by shipping, a fucking insane looney who would call anything queer because I am too stupid. Maybe I ask for sympathy, if empathy isn’t allowed. You don’t need to suddenly start shipping Sasunaru, or proclaim there is a secret gay message in Assassin Creed. But I would perhaps ask clemency and less eye rolling when people start discussing their reaction as queer people to the media.