From: adolphso@mizar.usc.edu (adolphson)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: Paglia (was: Cross-Writing)
Date: 7 Jan 1993 17:23:41 -0800
Organization: University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA
NNTP-Posting-Host: mizar.usc.edu

In article <1igv9pINNguh@phakt.usc.edu> 
rhogan@phakt.usc.edu (Ron Hogan) writes:

> Me:  The Bette Davis cult among male homosexuals is blown out of proportion.

Oh?  Not among my crowd.

> I imagine that the number of male homosexuals who like Bette Davis is not
> significantly greater than those who like other actresses, and also not of
> a greater percentage within the homosexual community as the percentage of
> heterosexuals who idolize Bette Davis.  

I and my friends worship Bette Davis.  My ex has committed all
of "Beyond the Forest" to memory and can -- and does -- recite
huge chunks of it at the drop of a hat.  I don't know of any
heterosexuals whose devotion to Bette is as all encompassing.

> I add in parting:
> >>If male homosexuals were out preserving Thelma Todd's memory or something,
> >>that would be a cult. 

Yes, that would be a cult.  But male homosexuals are out there --
include me in their number -- preserving Maria Montez' memory.
Thelma Todd just isn't very interesting, aside from the mystery
surrounding her death.

> Heather:
> >You *are* kidding, right?
>
> Not at all.  I don't have the numbers to back that kind of claim up--
> I seriously doubt it's ever gone to the polls, but it strikes me as
> a perfectly reasonable claim to make.  Of course, being a film student,
> I'm surrounded by hetero/homo/bi/a/sexual people who do nothing but
> watch films-- so everybody knows Bette Davis' work and the opinions of
> her work are pretty standardized from one group to the next.  Whether
> this is true of what we like to think of as the 'outside world' remains
> to be seen.

I really doubt that the opinions of Bette Davis' work that 
are bandied about in film schools are anything like the opinions
I've been hearing from gay friends and acquaintances since I
was 15 or 16. 

> So I think it's a perfectly reasonable claim in terms of numbers-- but I
> would be so bold to guess that you're referring to the specific intensity
> of idolization in those male homosexuals who dress up in drag and sing
> cabaret songs.

I don't know what to make of this sentence.  By cabaret songs you
mean what, exactly?  I think I sing them -- to myself, of course --
but I've never done drag.

> And again, I say she's blowing it out of proportion, and
> I thought she came close to stating an essentialist link between the two
> states of being.

I don't know that I agree.

> Many heterosexuals idolize Bette Davis/Marlene Dietrick/Judy Garland/et al--
> is this due to different reasons than the reasons homosexuals do?

Yes.

> Some heterosexuals even dress in women's clothing and perform cabaret.  Do
> they do so for different reasons than their homosexual counterparts?

Most transvestites are heterosexual.  

> Some heterosexuals even, though I can't fathom why, enjoy fistfucking.

Umm.  OK.

> My complaint here isn't that Paglia's arguments for why male homosexuals
> enjoy these things are entirely wrong, but that they do tend to lump their
> components into generalized categories.  I'm sure if she were pressed, she'd
> say her arguments may apply to heterosexuals as well, but she didn't then,
> and the way it reads in SP, it runs the risk of being miscontrued.

No, Paglia would *not* say that her arguments may apply to 
heterosexuals as well.  And I don't know what it is that
she's said that "runs the risk of being miscontrued."

> I do a more than passable Ethel Merman impression,
> and yet I am heterosexual.  Many homosexuals can't.

Honey, you ain't never heard an Ethel Merman impression
until you've heard my friend David doing Ethel singing
"Sweet Georgia Brown".

Arne

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