From: joe@spdcc.com (Joseph Francis)
Newsgroups: soc.motss
Subject: Pride and Preludin
Date: 21 Jul 92 16:37:05 GMT
Article-I.D.: spdcc.1992Jul21.163705.21034
Organization: S.P. Dyer Computer Consulting, Cambridge MA

I've been to gay pride marches in Houston and Los Angeles, as part of
the Los Angeles Lesbian and Gay Marching Band (or whatever it is
called nowadays). I enjoyed the experiences (being of legal
get-in-the-bar-age in Houston), but I found "Pride" lacking.

Money. I suppose the biggest irritation I have is the marketing angle.
Christopher Street West, in Los Angeles, made the events seem like an
enormous, expensive, swapmeet. I didn't feel like paying $20+ to get
into some place to buy gold-lame thread macrame plant hangers, or
airbrush-on-black-velvet Sylvester portraits, if you know what I mean.

Excuse. Where is the pride the other 364 days of the year. In my
alternative lifestyle of studying literature, decades ago, I remember
some research I did on the subject of the medieval "triumph", an
allegorical processionial march of celebration. Of course gay pride is
supposed to represent the triumph of "queer" drag queens over the
forces of straight "cop" fascism in New York's Stonewall bar, I'll
leave deeper analogical significance to the semimetic minded (the
triumph of love, the triumph of innocence, the triumph of the
mind...). Now there is supposed to be a "pride" celebration (one of
the classic seven deadly sins, I note), but not specifically a "drag
queen" triumph celebration. I feel a disconnection.

Pride. Self-Satisfaction. Smugness. Self-Importance. I don't deny that
it is a good idea to have a celebration of our revolution; it was an
important event, it serves to re-focus on how we still must labor
under similar yokes of oppression, etc., and through festivals we can
enjoy the spirit of freedom.

Hollow. I just feel that the symbols have been completely effaced;
that the Pride celebrations I have been to are, like the hollow new
small-town "come home to" summer festivals, pure co-opting of purpose
into intent. When people say "<X> bothers me because I'm not sure it
represents me", I can't help but to feel that if there were true,
identifiable symbols of the movement, of the original revolutionary
act, that this wouldn't be an issue.

Media. The media are correct in focussing on the drag-queens, the
hairy leather men, the dykes on bikes. That generates sensation, it
echoes the original events, it is what a 'triumphal' march is about
(sensation, elaboration, spectacle). One doesn't focus in a
4th-of-July parade on the contingent of PTA members, but on the
elaborately dressed carnival-like characters, the militia, the
marching bands. The drag-queens, the hairy leather men, the dykes
on bikes, they are our militia.

The Stonewall Parade of the Mind: I would propose that one elminate
any group which is not spectacle. PFLAG should have an elaborate
"float" consisting of them holding thousands of realistic infant
puppets painted flourescent blue, with approximately half painted a
flourescent green. A contingent of Lawyers should be dressed up as
huge walking briefcases wearing huge, grotesquely out of proportion
British Advocate wigs. Scientists should be on a float duplicating the
interior of the original "Frankenstein", in greys and blacks, with two
tremendous puppets rising up, a Frankenstein and Bride, with the bride
Hissing like the film. There should be a huge animated high-heeled
glittered shoe with a hundred transvestites in it lip-synching to Girl
Can't Help It. There should be a complicated large dungeon with a fire
breathing dragon, populated by lots of large hairy leathermen.
Simulated mass arrests. Hundreds of Pee-Wee herman imitators on
motorized scooters, flashing the crowd and giggling while saying "Made
You Look". A contingent of Dykes on Bikes with a particularly menacing
woman on an oversized bike singing "My Girlfriend's Back, and You're
Gonna Be in Trouble". Outrage. Spectacle. Sensation. A group of
bisexuals nude but with a modesty-conserving stripe running along
their sides doing an unnecessarily close-quarters conga line.

I think "pride" should be given back to the boy scouts to be given to
Eagles when they pass the last test. I don't think the movement in the
US has anything yet to be terribly proud of.



-- 
US Jojo; damp, slighly soiled, but tasty nonetheless.
Newsgroups: soc.motss