Boring suburban gays and the death of bohemia
Boring suburban gays and the death of bohemia
Borstalboy
Broadway Legend Joined: 2/9/04
#1Boring suburban gays and the death of bohemia
Posted: 5/12/15 at 9:50pm
David Hockney is bored with your condo.
"Impossible is just a big word thrown around by small men who find it easier to live in the world they've been given than to explore the power they have to change it. Impossible is not a fact. It's an opinion. Impossible is not a declaration. It's a dare. Impossible is potential. Impossible is temporary. Impossible is nothing.”
~ Muhammad Ali
#2Boring suburban gays and the death of bohemia
Posted: 5/12/15 at 10:04pm
I'm sorry, but it is not my purpose in life to entertain Mr. Hockney. I did the bohemian thing in my 20s; now I'd rather spend time with my stepchildren and grandchildren.
So shoot me!
FindingNamo
Broadway Legend Joined: 7/22/03
#2Boring suburban gays and the death of bohemia
Posted: 5/12/15 at 10:30pm
Yes, he was talking specifically about YOU.
Take whatever you can use and leave the rest. That's from YOUR generation. Why are you being defensive?
Twitter @NamoInExile
Instagram none
#3Boring suburban gays and the death of bohemia
Posted: 5/12/15 at 11:13pm
No, Namo, I was speaking as one member of a class of millions of gays that Mr. Hockney derides as "suburban". I don't think we are obligated to behave in a certain way for his entertainment.
Hockney is not the first person to make this argument. Although Kathy Griffin has come around to be a staunch supporter of marriage equality, when the issue first arose she had a conversation on her reality show with Mario Cantone, both mocking the idea of gay marriage because it would "ruin" gay culture.
And they may be right: as I'm sure you know, every minority faces the problem of assimilation and the risk that by assimilating the group will almost certainly give up some of the qualities that make it special. But that's the price we pay for equal rights.
As for your last question, I am not in the least "defensive". I too sometimes miss the "forbidden" gay culture of the years right after Stonewall. But arguing for gay marginalizaion to preserve camp (which is basically the "bohemia" of which Hockney speaks) is like arguing for the return of Jim Crow laws to preserve the blues.
Updated On: 5/12/15 at 11:13 PM#4Boring suburban gays and the death of bohemia
Posted: 5/12/15 at 11:24pm
Confidential to Namo: BTW, your overly literal reading of my first post comes closer to the sort of thing Hockney derides than anything I wrote. In the good old days, every self-respecting gay would have read the irony in "It's not my job to entertain Mr. Hockney."
Updated On: 5/14/15 at 11:24 PM
FindingNamo
Broadway Legend Joined: 7/22/03
#5Boring suburban gays and the death of bohemia
Posted: 5/12/15 at 11:38pm
I agree with him. There was never a meeting where it was decided that marriage and the military were top priorities. Those of us who are gay liberationists, who thought we could create a better world for ourselves and consequently everybody else, have a right to be dismayed by all the people who whine "But we're JUST LIKE EVERYBODY ELSE."
Twitter @NamoInExile
Instagram none
#6Boring suburban gays and the death of bohemia
Posted: 5/13/15 at 12:30am
I actually agree with you both. I don't know what that makes me. A Hillary supporter?
#7Boring suburban gays and the death of bohemia
Posted: 5/13/15 at 5:57am
All these generalizations are silly.
There are suburban gays, boho gays, and gays who like flair
There are urban gays, so-so gays, and gays with no hair
Be who you are and accept the rest
There's room for all in our big gay nest
....but the world goes 'round
#8Boring suburban gays and the death of bohemia
Posted: 5/13/15 at 8:02am
As an artist, David Hockney is brilliant and fabulous.
As a human being, David Hockney is an assHole.
Liza's Headband
Broadway Legend Joined: 5/28/13
#9Boring suburban gays and the death of bohemia
Posted: 5/13/15 at 9:05am
...Those of us who are gay liberationists....
How does one get to be in a position of such authority that they can label themselves as a "gay liberationist"? Many of us went through 1980s and survived, many of us protested, many of us are gay. Does that mean we're all liberationists?
Updated On: 5/13/15 at 09:05 AM
Phyllis Rogers Stone
Broadway Legend Joined: 9/16/07
#10Boring suburban gays and the death of bohemia
Posted: 5/13/15 at 9:45am
Per your most recent claims, you'd have been about 13 at the latest in 1989. Who is this we that survived and protested in the 80s?
#11Boring suburban gays and the death of bohemia
Posted: 5/13/15 at 9:46amWell, it's certainly easier to be bohemian when you've been wildly successful.
"...everyone finally shut up, and the audience could enjoy the beginning of the Anatevka Pogram in peace."
#12Boring suburban gays and the death of bohemia
Posted: 5/13/15 at 9:51am
I'm not sure I get his point. It sounds as though he's just saying that people who want things he doesn't want are boring to him.
To which my response is "So?"
LarryD2
Broadway Legend Joined: 9/1/14
#13Boring suburban gays and the death of bohemia
Posted: 5/13/15 at 10:05am
"Well, it's certainly easier to be bohemian when you've been wildly successful. "
Bingo.
Phyllis Rogers Stone
Broadway Legend Joined: 9/16/07
#14Boring suburban gays and the death of bohemia
Posted: 5/13/15 at 10:19am
I thought being liberated was that everyone could do whatever they wanted, not that we had to live in direct opposition to the norm to have our experience validated. I mean, I get there's a certain subset of the movement that believes that anything that even remotely smacks of hetereosxualism is anathema, but I dunno. Maybe it's because I'm Midwestern, but gay men around me have wanted to and have been coupled up in relationships similar to straight people for as long as I can remember.
I've been single the better part of my 20+ years of being out, so marriage isn't high on my priority list, but I see the importance of the things it provides to married couples, not to mention my general antipathy toward laws that are created just to discriminate.
As someone who started getting the "faggot" stuff hurled at him at the age of seven and still gets some kind of anti-gay threat directed at me couple of times of year, I've never once worried that i was going to become too ordinary.
I just find this shlt exhausting.
Updated On: 5/13/15 at 10:19 AM
#15Boring suburban gays and the death of bohemia
Posted: 5/13/15 at 10:26am
Who the hell can afford to be bohemian in San Francisco anymore?
#16Boring suburban gays and the death of bohemia
Posted: 5/13/15 at 10:38am
I agree, PRS.
I also don't think you're far off when you say it's because you're Midwestern; the gay movement has always been based out of large metropolitan areas. Go to the cities and reinvent yourself and do whatever!
"...everyone finally shut up, and the audience could enjoy the beginning of the Anatevka Pogram in peace."
Phyllis Rogers Stone
Broadway Legend Joined: 9/16/07
#17Boring suburban gays and the death of bohemia
Posted: 5/13/15 at 10:50am
And yet those assimilationists foisting marriage on us are all coming out of big cities, too! I've lived in NYC, I've lived in Chicago. I've spent oodles of time in San Francisco. Gay men I knew were coupling off and settling down in all those places, too! I think it's kind of a universal human thing.
Another quality that is universal is the SH*Tty judgment and superiority from other gays who think their experience is somehow more valid that everyone else who doesn't conform to their nonconformity. Is that what bohemia is?
Updated On: 5/13/15 at 10:50 AM#18Boring suburban gays and the death of bohemia
Posted: 5/13/15 at 10:53am
It's what bohemia has become.
....but the world goes 'round
#19Boring suburban gays and the death of bohemia
Posted: 5/13/15 at 10:55am
I was going to make a separate post, but I think there's enough overlap in the topics to bring it up here.
Has anyone else read this Slate article?
Can You Be Homosexual Without Being Gay?
"...everyone finally shut up, and the audience could enjoy the beginning of the Anatevka Pogram in peace."
henrikegerman
Broadway Legend Joined: 4/29/05
#20Boring suburban gays and the death of bohemia
Posted: 5/13/15 at 11:12am
David Hockney, Dolce and Gabbana and Giorgio Armani should realize that we only need to be true to ourselves, not their idea of us. That we don't answer to them. That we are our own people, and make up our own minds about where and how we each want to live, dress and commit to each other (when we do).
If they can't get that, they should just do us all a favor and shut the **** up.
It's not about being just like everybody else.
It's not about having to get married.
Or join the military.
It's simply about equal rights.
It's also about being free to be as bohemian or conventional as each of us actually is.
And we are not all the same - in either conventionality or unconventionality - just because we're queer.
#21Boring suburban gays and the death of bohemia
Posted: 5/13/15 at 11:56am
That Hockney article is more boring than the domestigays Hockney whines about.
Hockney said in an interview that too many gay men were determined to lead ‘ordinary’ lives by entering into civil partnerships and having children through adoption or surrogate mothers.
“They want to be ordinary – they want to fit in,” said Hockney, “Well I don’t care about that. I don’t care about fitting in. Everywhere is so conservative.”
Asked if he would ever have married a man, he was aghast at the suggestion. He also insisted he had never wanted children.
Reginald summed it up best. "So?" I've seen and known domestigays for over 30 years. Legal equality may have made them more visible, but those dreary boring vanilla gays have always been around. I really don't think gay culture is being diluted so much as it is being more open about its diversity. I've never had a determination to be "ordinary" (and I don't believe I am). I'm determined to achieve what I've always desired and that which makes me personally happy, which has nothing to do with "fitting in". For someone so bohemian, Hockney sure has a small-minded view of gay culture.
If Madonna were to make a relevant comment on another British icon, she might refer to him as "reductive" and she would be right. But I don't see her doing that.
"What can you expect from a bunch of seitan worshippers?" - Reginald Tresilian
#22Boring suburban gays and the death of bohemia
Posted: 5/13/15 at 12:19pm
Kad...that article may need its own thread. Hockney's diatribe is tiresome and easy to dismiss...but Lowder's article is sensational and fascinating. It deserves a lot of space to discuss and dissect.
#23Boring suburban gays and the death of bohemia
Posted: 5/13/15 at 1:55pm
Lowder's article IS fantastic...and it's going to take me about a week oir so to finish it. It's the gay War and Peace.
But Lowder also defines what Namo means specifically by "gay liberationists"--so go read the article, Headband.
#24Boring suburban gays and the death of bohemia
Posted: 5/13/15 at 2:13pm
It's an epic, right?
It's a nuanced look at gay culture and how to preserve it. I also LOVE his breakdown of what being 'gay' is. It's so facile to talk about diva worship in a way that feels important. He's managed to say so much about it without ever addressing it. He breaks down the fundamentals and defines it in a way that feels true...to me, at least.
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