Skip to main content

Everyone Is Gay

It has been a funny old week-end, or so, here in the UK. Reading The Sunday Times I have discovered that the new Booker winner despises the telegenic parents of a missing child, that Mr. Clegg, a candidate for the Lib Dems leadership allegedly wrote glowingly of opium at Oxford when 18, that Hilary Clinton has no chance of winning the Presidency as she coldly jilted Socks post-White House, that one of the great geneticists and Nobel winners has been banned from his lecture tour of England as he is apparently a bigot - and, mostly oddly of all, that Dumbledore is "gay". J.K. Rowling, not to be confused with other initialled geniuses W.B. Yeats or T.S. Eliot, has "outed" one of her fictional characters, after selling a billion dollars worth of merchandise, some of it in text-based format, to adults and children - now, this once-anodyne billionairess is able to go all po-mo on us. Harry is bi, and Hogwarts is a cover for an S&M club. Why not go further J.K and tell us God is dead.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

IQ AND THE POETS - ARE YOU SMART?

When you open your mouth to speak, are you smart?  A funny question from a great song, but also, a good one, when it comes to poets, and poetry. We tend to have a very ambiguous view of intelligence in poetry, one that I'd say is dysfunctional.  Basically, it goes like this: once you are safely dead, it no longer matters how smart you were.  For instance, Auden was smarter than Yeats , but most would still say Yeats is the finer poet; Eliot is clearly highly intelligent, but how much of Larkin 's work required a high IQ?  Meanwhile, poets while alive tend to be celebrated if they are deemed intelligent: Anne Carson, Geoffrey Hill , and Jorie Graham , are all, clearly, very intelligent people, aside from their work as poets.  But who reads Marianne Moore now, or Robert Lowell , smart poets? Or, Pound ?  How smart could Pound be with his madcap views? Less intelligent poets are often more popular.  John Betjeman was not a very smart poet, per se....
3 comments
Read more

"I have crossed oceans of time to find you..."

In terms of great films about, and of, love, we have Vertigo, In The Mood for Love , and Casablanca , Doctor Zhivago , An Officer and a Gentleman , at the apex; as well as odder, more troubling versions, such as Sophie's Choice and  Silence of the Lambs .  I think my favourite remains Bram Stoker's Dracula , with the great immortal line "I have crossed oceans of time to find you...".
1 comment
Read more

Heard The One About The Starlet and The Writer?

Last year, Eva Green won the Rising Star award at the Orange BAFTAs - and this year the ceremonies promise to be even more glamorous. The old joke goes that the starlet was so dumb, she slept with the writer - but the striking film writers in America silenced the Golden Globes, and look set to do the same for the Oscars, which means London may get a world-class awards night. Eyewear , like all UK citizens, has yet to see some of the films nominated (members get sent copies to watch at home in some instances before general release), but can make some predictions - want to bet? Atonement will likely win Best Film. The Bourne Ultimatum should win Best British Film, though Control may do. The Bourne trilogy was astonishingly good genre work, and has rejuvenated The Bond series in the process, so deserves the kudos. Film Not In The English Language should go to The Lives of Others . Lead Actor will be Daniel Day-Lewis . Lead Actress will be the brilliant Julie Christie , whose w...
Post a Comment
Read more