GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE February 11, 2005

eveningsout

A generation of arts

Visibility in all media has increased in 20 years of publishing

by Anthony Glassman

Twenty years ago this month, the Gay People's Chronicle began publishing. Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender films, plays, musicians and performers were not seen as often back then, but have become increasingly common.

While there have been literally hundreds of "gay" or "lesbian" films in that time, countless singers and bands, innumerable plays and musicals and performance artists, more than could be included here, it's a good idea to look at some of the things that have made a lasting contribution to the arts.

Fifteen years ago, for example, four performance artists were denied National Endowment for the Arts grants because of their subject matter, after having passed a rigorous peer screening process. Karen Finley, John Fleck, Tim Miller and Holly Hughes sued, and in 1993 were awarded their grants, resulting in Congress pressuring the NEA to stop giving grants to individual artists.

Fleck, Miller and Hughes are all queer, and

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their pieces dealt with homosexuality, incurring the wrath of congressional conservatives.

Controversy also continues to meet performances of Terrence McNally's play Corpus Christi, in which a young gay man in McNally's Texas hometown is the second coming of Christ. The 1998 play spurred a postcard protest against the Know Theatre Tribe in Cincinnati when they put on a production, and the theater considers the thousands of missives that flooded in a badge of honor.

The Laramie Project, written from transcripts of interviews with the residents of Laramie, Wyoming after the murder of Matthew Shepard, is also a favorite target of the religious right. Campus productions are often protested, with opponents arguing that state schools use taxpayer money to "promote" homosexuality by putting on the play.

AIDS, being an ever-present specter since before the paper started, is also prominently represented in some of the greatest theater of the last twenty years, including the musical

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Rent, the epic Angels in America, Love! Valour! Compassion! and the early As Is, which was filmed for PBS and later released on video, becoming one of the earliest television dramas dealing with the disease.

Women were not left out, either. Gay activist and writer Aubrey Wertheim saluted his sisters with Make Way for Dykelings, while the Five Lesbian Brothers shot to stardom with Four Plays.

The aforementioned Holly Hughes' The Well of Horniness presents a murder mystery where "the men are men, and so are the women."

Showing that true talent never goes out of style, the Five Lesbian Brothers are still touring and performing and will be in Ohio this spring, while The Well of Horniness is still produced across North America.

Musically, lesbian artists continue to be at the forefront of women's music, as well as popular music in general.

In addition to high-profile, already famous artists like Melissa Etheridge and k.d. lang coming out, other artists who never made as big of names for themselves have been in the cutting edge of music.

after leaving Judas Priest. He has since returned as lead singer of the band, and metalheads have continued to embrace him, although they pay more attention to where his hands are when they do.

Along with As Is, An Early Frost was one of the first television dramas to deal with AIDS, although far from the last. Both showed AIDS as a gay disease, while current dramatic programming displays the universal nature of HIV much better.

Also on television in the Gay People's Chronicle's early years was Consenting Adult, the 1987 TV movie based on Laura Z. Hobson's novel.

Flowing out of that were the PBS, then Showtime, adaptations of Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City novels. Showtime developed a taste for gay programming after that, delivering first an American version of the risqué British series Queer as Folk, then turning its attention to women with The L Word.

And while gay and crypto-

Holly Hughes network television for decades, NBC bolstered its ratings by gambling on Will and Grace, the only network show that makes the heterosexuals seem strange. Its parent company then turned reality television on its ear with Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, a campy makeover show that has now spawned at least two spin-offs.

gay characters have been on

Team Dresch, the lesbian punk band, are absolutely seminal, as are Michelle Shocked, Betty and Tribe 8.

Tribe 8, along with the gay boys in Pansy Division, were among the vanguard of the homocore movement of queer punk rock, in fact.

Of course, on the boy side, a few notables have come out as well. George Michael took the offensive after being busted for propositioning a cop in a public lavatory, while Rob Halford threw a monkey wrench into the welloiled gears of heavy metal when he came out

Love has many different tunes

According to a new benefit two-CD compilation, love rocks.

Love, apparently, also country-westerns, hip-hops, technos and does whatever it is that Yoko Ono does.

Love Rocks helps fund the Human Rights Campaign with 32 songs by artists as diverse as John Lennon's widow popsters Christina Aguilera and Pink, folk heroes like Carole King and Jen Foster, and the country-western crossover favorites Dixie Chicks. And that's just Six of 16 artists on the first disc. Super-DJ BT contributes a

track

as do

busty gay icon Dolly Par-

love rocks

ton, Emmylou Harris, Dave Koz, Mandy Moore, the B-52s, Melissa Etheridge and many more.

A bit of everything is the best way to describe it, and producer Centaur Entertainment will donate all net proceeds to HRC

"I think it is so important for us, through music, art and even politics, to stand up and use our voices, to support and promote any and all acts of love and commitment between any and all types of people," said Pink.

The CD is now available in wide release to retailers and online.

-Anthony Glassman

Of course, Will would have been graceless and straight guys would have had to dress themselves were it not for Ellen DeGeneres' much-publicized coming out on her ABC

sitcom.

In the world of film, LGBT issues have made a major impact, from documentary to features, from independent to firmly entrenched in the Hollywood machine.

While many people credit 1993's Philadelphia with breaking AIDS into the movies, it was a pretty mediocre, not to mention late, film compared to Steve Buscemi's 1986 debut Parting Glances, which was just released on video. It's a far more tender tale, and much wittier.

Longtime Companion also beat Philadelphia to the theaters, and Bruce Davison was nominated for the 1990 Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his role. Of course, neither Longtime Companion and Parting Glances were big-budget studio films, but they received a wide enough release to undermine the fever over Philadelphia.

Documentaries were an integral part of LGBT cinema over the last twenty years, with Before Stonewall, The Times of Harvey Milk, Tongues Untied, Paris is Burning, the two The Opposite Sex films and scores of others winning acclaim and, more often than not, awards.

The independent film circuit has resulted in classics like Desert Hearts, High Art, Salmonberries and I've Heard the Mermaids Singing, while Hollywood itself produced Bound.

For the boys, Gregg Araki's Teen Apocalypse Trilogy and The Living End were "the bomb" when they hit screens, and some would argue that My Own Private Idaho is still Gus Van Sant's best film.

Deeper underground films by Barbara Hammer, Todd Haynes, Tom Kalin and Bruce LaBruce, along with foreign imports like Maurice and Fire cross borders with timeless stories.

Fran Leibowitz, in her collection of essays Metropolitan Life, asserts that some of the best entertainment is born out of an age of oppression and suppression. With the current political climate in this nation, it would appear that at least another 20 years of groundbreaking queer entertainment is ahead.