If John Waters made a sequel to The Wizard of Oz

John Waters says he has been invited to speak at all sorts of different events. In this excerpt from his memoir/self-help book, Mr. Know-It-All, Waters remembers one unusual event. He wondered aloud what might have happened in it were he to have made Wizard of Oz II: 

At a Wizard of Oz celebration in Chicago, I described my dream sequel of Dorothy returning to Kansas, and when she can’t stop ranting about her trip to Oz, Auntie Em loses patience after months of telling Dorothy, ‘It was just a dream,’ and Uncle Henry puts his foot down and forces his defiant niece to see a psychiatrist, who gives her shock therapy, but even that doesn’t cure Dorothy of her yearning to return to the magical land. 

Did no one tell John that he was describing the opening scenes of the Disney-studios sequel to Wizard, Return to Oz? That movie came out 40 years ago! Maybe John did hear about it, but then convinced himself the ideas were his own; I mean, who could believe Disney would put out a major motion picture in which innocent little Dorothy is strapped down for electro-shock therapy? There are good things about Return to Oz — the costumes are great! — but that opening sequence still gives me the willies. 

The rest of the plot is all Waters:

She tries LSD, but these hallucinations are not the same as the poppies of Oz. Mushrooms, too, but there’s no great and powerful anything much less a wizard. Finally she sniffs poppers and it works! She’s back in Oz. The Scarecrow is old but still brilliant, the Tin Man is a yoga instructor, and the Cowardly Lion is now a drag queen named Roara. They give her the Wicked Witch’s magic broomstick and Dorothy flies back to Kansas, starts cross-dressing as Margaret Hamilton, and opens a gay bar called the Yellow Brick Load.

source:

Mr. Know-It-All: the tarnished wisdom of a filth elder

by John Waters

2019. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York

John Waters, political actor

When you meet a celebrity while traveling what do you do? John Waters sat next to one, but was circumspect. He didn’t fanboy gush or, well, the opposite of that. But then, Waters didn’t know which celebrity he was seated next to. 

Seated in first class next to a gentleman who never made eye contact the entire coast-to-coast flight, I kept thinking, ‘I know this man, but who is he?!’ His signature suspenders and Brooks Brothers-type suit rang a bell, too, but for the life of me, I couldn’t figure it out. When we landed and everybody started exiting the plane, other passengers who recognized me started laughing and one said, ‘I couldn’t believe you were sitting next to [Supreme Court Justice] Clarence Thomas that whole time!’ I thought, ‘You’re kidding me.’ But, of course, it was him. That lying bastard! ‘I believed Anita Hill!’ I wanted to yell. 

Once he knew what chances he’d missed, John Waters thought about what he should have done:

During the flight I should have nonchalantly ordered a Coke, and when it was served, started picking at something imaginary on the can before turning to him and saying, ‘Excuse me, is that a pubic hair on my Coke?’

source:

Mr. Know-It-All: the tarnished wisdom of a filth elder

by John Waters

2019. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York

“a worldwide punishing squad”

After my last blog post offered up a rather meager serving of hope for LGBT progress in Africa, you might wonder if there’s something more you can do. Well, John Waters (you know, the Pink Flamingos writer/director) has given it some thought.

“It’s illegal to be gay in seventy-six countries around the world,” John Waters says. How can that be changed? The gays have gotta rise up! Waters makes a few suggestions on how we could do that. 

Let’s drop a massive stink bomb on Uganda and have our own [gay] navy ‘Seal and Squeal’ squads round up all the American Christian evangelical preachers who went there and provoked Uganda’s parliament to try* to pass a bill to impose the death penalty ‘for the offense of homosexuality.’ We’d spray their thinning hair with industrial strength hair spray and light a match. Voooom! Off with their hairdos. Then we’d track down the snitches who obeyed the other, more liberal Ugandan law that required heterosexuals ‘to report a gay person to authorities within twenty-four hours of hearing of their homosexuality of be jailed for up to three years in prison.’ Why this twenty-four-hour grace period? I wonder. So straights could get their hair done, flowers arranged, homes interior-decorated before the most obvious of their gay merchants were hauled away? Fag hags would be forced to go underground, where they would form their own railroad of resistance to smuggle out queers and lesbians of all degree of butchness, man of whom would later form the Lavender Avengers, who would lead a worldwide punishing squad of queer revenge.

_______

* "Try” no more; Uganda has the evil law on the books. 

source:

Mr. Know-It-All: the tarnished wisdom of a filth elder

by John Waters

2019. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York

Cause for hope in Africa? Or just more lies ...

LGBT news out of Africa is often bad. In spring of 2023 Uganda enacted a new death-to-the-gays law. The first attempt several years ago got struck down by the Ugandan Supreme Court. Ghana’s legislature just passed — by unanimous voice vote — a whole new anti-gay law. The president of Ghana hasn’t yet signed it. Do the politicians who enact these laws really consider queer people a threat? Or are they pandering to an anti-gay populace? Are they merely trying to distract observers from the lousy jobs they’re doing? Whatever the motivation, laws like these have only one effect — pain. They certainly don’t help anyone.  

Chike Frankie Edozien quotes Goodluck Jonathan, Nigeria’s former president, at a London conference saying about an anti-gay law he himself promulgated:

“When it comes to equality, we must all have the same rights, we must all have the same rights as Nigerian citizens. In the light of the deepening debates for all Nigerians and other citizens of the world to be treated equally and without discrimination, and with the clear knowledge that the issue of sexual orientation is still evolving, the nation may at the appropriate time revisit the law.”  

Were Jonathan’s words in London a good sign or just pandering? He probably got asked about the law. I imagine Jonathan knew that justifying himself by condemning the gays in a forum in London would not go over well. 

Just days after his pronouncement came the grisly massacre of forty-nine gay people by a deranged gunman at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida. [The ex-president of Nigeria] sent out a message of condolence to the grieving families via Twitter. That small gesture … understandably confused [readers, Goodluck Jonathan having been responsible for] an extremely anti-gay law for which there had been small public clamor.

When the anti-gay law in Nigeria was originally enacted there was criticism by at least two African presidents. Former presidents, anyway. “[F]ormer Mozambican president Joaquim Chissano came out forcefully against it.” Fetus Mogae, former president of Botswana, also spoke up for LGBT equality. “A change in attitude is underway," Edozien says. “The fact that Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, Djibouti, Guinea Bissau, Cote d’Ivoire, Niger, Mali, Lesotho, Mozambique, Sao Tome, the Seychelles, Rwanda, the two Congos, the Central African Republic, and South Africa don’t criminalize their gay citizens leaves me hopeful.”

Unlike Uganda in its embrace of American hate-evangelist Scott Lively, South Africa refused entry in 2016 to “Steven Anderson, a pastor at Faithful Word Baptist Church in Tempe, Arizona” who was plotting an anti-gay crusade. “South Africa ha[s] again led the way, becoming the first African nation to expressly ban someone from entry because of his homophobia.”

This isn’t my first post about a former African leader saying something hopeful once he was no longer in power. Check out this from Feb 2023: Human beings who can do what they like 

source:

Lives of Great Men

by Chike Frankie Edozien

2017. Team Angelica, London UK

how they amused themselves

Of two 9th century Chinese poets:

“They both lived in poverty because of poetry until their deaths. And yet all their lives they amused themselves by writing lines about their suffering.”

source:

Mei Yao-ch’en and the Development of Early Sung* Poetry

Jonathan Chaves

1976. Columbia University Press, New York

*Sung is a ruling dynasty in China

word of the day: mummer

word of the day: mummer

lines from “Up into the Clouds Music” by Li Po, translated by Elling Eide

Flowery canopies hang down to his lower lashes,

A lofty mountain looms over his upper lip.

Not seeing his strange, uncanny form,

How could you know the Lord of Creation?

The Great War was this mummer’s stern father,

Primal ether this mummer’s elderly kin.

definition (dictionary.com):

1. a person who wears a mask or fantastic costume while merrymaking or taking part in a pantomime, especially at Christmas and other festive seasons.
2. an actor, especially a pantomimist.

from the editor’s notes:

This poem describes a Wen-sang performance, a kind of mummery with music, dance, and song that served as the grand finale for certain rather elaborate musical entertainments. … The poem was probably commissioned by the sponsor of the celebration and may have been recited during the performance.

So a mummer is an actor, a performer in a theatrical work. The mummer of the poem is supposed to represent a non-Chinese person, thus the “lofty mountain” which is Li Po’s metaphor for a big nose, the editor says. The “flowery canopies” are long eyebrow hairs. The poem is too embedded in a Chinese cultural context to be easily understood in translation. The editor uses 24 footnotes to illuminate obscure references. 

I wonder at the translator’s choice of “mummer,” such an obscure word in English. I didn’t know what it meant. When translators choose unusual words in their target language to bring over meaning from the original language, I balk a bit. If the appropriate English word is that obscure you could leave the word in the original language and append a footnote, as translators sometimes will. “Li,” for example is a term for measuring distance that is often left untranslated because there is no precise English language equivalent. On the other hand, if the translator’s word was chosen because it was the closest equivalent in the target language, the translator going from Chinese jargon to English jargon, then ... 

source:

The Columbia Anthology of Traditional Chinese Literature

edited by Victor H. Mair

1994. Columbia University Press, New York

gay men and Oz

“What is it about gay men and The Wizard of Oz?” [a student asked.] Thirty or so pairs of eyes focused on me. … Never a teacher to discourage genuine curiosity, I searched my gray cells for record of a study on the subject. It was an unsuccessful split-second search. I fell back on my natural insight, born of years of watching The Wizard of Oz since its first showing on television, and even more years of humming ‘Somewhere Over the Rainbow’ whenever things got tough.

… “Most of us little gay boys felt as if we were growing up in black-and-white Kansas, when what we really wanted was to live in the Technicolor place where people wear funny hats and pink taffeta and burst into song and dance whenever they wanted without anyone thinking it was weird or sissy.”

… I challenge [skeptical gays] to listen at your next party … and count the number of references to Oz in the conversations.”

It’s a theory. I have better thoughts on the queer-friendliness of L. Frank Baum’s books than for the MGM movie. In his community college English class Robert Gorman makes no mention of the Oz books. Perhaps he never read them. 

I didn’t fall in love with the MGM Wizard of Oz. It wasn’t my Oz. Oz was the books. That’s where I went to be transported. 

That said, the movie is an excellent piece of filmmaking. Besides the big Hollywood musical treatment, all of which works, the MGM movie retains the essence of Baum’s book — Dorothy’s agency. The little girl is the leader. I think it’s also important that the qualities her friends seek are ones they prove they already have — smarts, courage, love. Dorothy gets home, naturally, but she gets there because she has acquired the power to do so, not because she is helpless and has to be rescued. The male authority figure turns out not to be the source of power, but a sham. 

Why would gay men identify with a girl? Because she is worth identifying with. She’s not arrogant; she’s practical. She’s doesn’t intend to take over; she’s just living her life, trying to help her friends and herself. Dorothy remains ordinary, and yet shows how powerful that can be.

source:

The Empress is a Man: stories from the life of Jose Sarria

by Michael Robert Gorman

1998. The Haworth Press, New York

I swear I won't call no copper, if I'm beat up by my papa. Tain’t nobody's business

In his recent memoir Siya Khumalo includes feminist critiques of men and homophobia. 

I once heard some of my friends discuss violence against women. Without exception, they, male and female, agreed it was unacceptable for a man to hit a woman who is not his own girlfriend. Consider, also, a conversation I overheard at a bus stop. ‘I don’t date a man who doesn’t beat me,’ one woman was saying. Her friends thought this was excessive; it was enough for him to warn and threaten to beat her, wasn’t it?

But the first woman’s argument was, how would she know that he really cared to have her (and have her to himself) unless his jealousy and possessiveness boiled over now and then? … By offering her body to patriarchy’s son, this lady at the bus stop was serving her role in the tribe perfectly.”

The woman who needed to be beaten, Khumalo says, was helping to reinforce the culture of wife-beating. She had become an advocate for her own victimization, seeing violence against women as a necessary proof that men were … I don’t know … too stupid to resolve disputes without fists? so incontinent with their feelings that they easily lost control? only strong enough to pick a fight with a weaker opponent? 

Hatred of gay people is of a piece with wifebeating, Khumalo says. 

Homophobia isn’t a stand-alone prejudice. It’s normalised so all other violence and bigotry may be tolerated when it comes.

Tolerable prejudices are the gateway drug to harder stuff, the solvent in which the next scapegoating prejudice can dissolve.

No one who hates his brother, whom he has seen, can claim to love God, whom he has not seen.

source:

You Have to Be Gay to Know God

Siya Khumalo

2018. Kwela Books, Cape Town, South Africa

the secrets mothers keep

One of my last reads of 2023 was a memoir by a gay black South African. I enjoyed the book. Khumalo has a sharp mind and sharp tongue. 

Here’s the passage where he comes out to his mother:

[O]ne week after my thirteenth birthday, I decided to tell my mother [I was gay]. … One of the magazines in the house had a story about a gender non-conforming man. I took it to her and said, ‘I’m like him.’ I couldn’t say, ‘I’m gay.’ She replied, ‘I know.’

‘How? Since when?’

‘I’ve known about you since you were two. A mother just knows.’

‘When were you planning on saying something?’ I asked, absurdly wanting to say, ‘You’ve kept my attraction to guys a secret from me for ten years?’

Her view was that God had sent me to shake up … the world.

Mom goes on to call her son a blessing. If by some magic he turns het, that’s okay, but it’s not something to wish for, she says.

I wondered … whether her openness to loving a gay kid was what had let me slip into actually being gay. Had she never been that open to the possibility, I realised, I’d have never felt safe enough to discover the truth. Wait. Did reality scare me so much that I was willing to resent Mom for loving me and hate myself for facing the truth?

Yeah, Mom. If you weren’t such a good person I wouldn’t be gay! You needed to be meaner! 

Fortunately, our hero gets over that toxic mindset. 

source:

You Have to Be Gay to Know God

Siya Khumalo

2018. Kwela Books, Cape Town, South Africa

Best Poems of 2023

These are the poems, the best poems, the poems that made reading the lesser poems worthwhile because I knew I would find poems that were this good if I just kept looking, but, really, reading the other poems was okay even so, there being poems among them that were quite enjoyable and even the ones that I left behind after that quick read usually did things that I go to poetry for, that is, weird stuff or a heightened sense that what was being said was more than just a message but an incantation of sorts, a calling forth of powers beyond the denotative, a scrawling on the wall of a door that, once you push on it, gives into a room or a world or a limitless void, a place wholly new, or familiar and not, the fragrance of it stuck in my nose, a hunger meeting the hungers I failed to fully stuff up with bonbons and bon mots and bonfires, hunger to hunger hanging over the swamp, a miasma as pretty as a pail of pickles at the end of the rainbow freeze-dried and shellacked to the skin of a tuba. 

James Cagney ….. Between a Rock Wall and an Immigrant

Katerina Canyon ….. I Left Out ‘Bells and Whistles’

Michael Koch ….. Color Of

Michael Koch ….. Tempus Fugit, Part Two

Jeanne Lupton ….. tanka: “new house”

Rebecca Radner ….. I dreamed my daughter

Rebecca Radner ….. I thought I’d lost my keys

Rebecca Radner ….. My old friend Ferenc

Kelly Shaw ….. haiku: “at the county fair”

Orhan Veli Kanik ….. For You

Orhan Veli Kanik ….. Mahmut the dreamweaver

Julia Vinograd ….. An Extra Thanksgiving with a Friend

Julia Vinograd ….. Poem (homage to the surrealists)

Julia Vinograd ….. Remembrance of Things Present

**

When I read a book of poems, I keep handy a small stack of placemarks. Should I read a poem I want to revisit, I tuck a placemark in next to it. Before leaving the book I go back to the marked poems and reread them. Often that’s it — I take out the placemark and move on. But those poems I’m not ready to let go I read a few more times over the course of days or weeks. If I decide it’s a poem I will want to read again and again as the years go by I copy it out by hand and add it to a three-ring binder. At the beginning of every year I read aloud the poems I copied out the previous year. And, of course, any time during the course of my days I can pull a binder from the shelf and reenter poems that worked for me — and rarely do they not work all over again.