Among the many interesting things to think about:
1. The way these Internet boyfriends - hand-selected in the aggregate by thousands of Tumblr users screaming in collective agony - become what Sulagna Misra calls "[paragons] of enlightened masculinity." Works both across fiction and real-life: part of why Oscar Isaac's Poe Dameron resonates so deeply with me (more than any male protagonist since Hannibal's Will Graham, played by Hugh Dancy with a compassionate sensitivity) is that he's the rare model of manhood that isn't built on the fundamental insecurity of constantly needing to prove it. This essay on how The Force Awakens may be setting up Poe as Star Wars' first queer protagonist says it better than I can:
In the best possible way, [Poe] has nothing to prove, and it makes for a very refreshing change. He’s an action hero without a chip on his shoulder. Poe is fearless, but not reckless. He’s compassionate, he doesn’t feel the need to pretend he doesn’t have feelings, even about his little droid. When he’s not whooping in delight while flying, he speaks softly and kindly. He’s confident about his abilities — “I can fly anything,” — but it never transgresses into cockiness, and he admits when he’s challenged. Rather than swagger, he moves with an old-Hollywood grace: in the moment where he climbs out of his X-Wing at the rebel base after the battle on Takodana, he looks like an aviator from the 1920s — all he needed was the silk scarf. He’s respected as a commander and beloved as a friend. He doesn’t have to be convinced to believe in things, or in people — there is nothing bitter or hardened about him, but there’s also nothing naive.A few months ago, a friend and I got to see Alicia Garza, the founder of #blacklivesmatter, speak; in the Q&A panel following her speech, she had a charged but productive discussion with a young man. To his question about why "she didn't talk at all to the men in the room," she encouraged him to be critical about how his manhood could serve him. I think a lot about how Garza framed it: she wasn't asking men to deny their identity as men but to reconstruct it, to be thoughtful and intentional about how it serves you, serves other people, serves what you believe to be just and true. The Internet boyfriend, similarly, is the corollary to the (much-deserved) flak men get on the Internet. Idealized? Probably. Powerful? Undeniably.
2. On the other hand, it seems that the power of the fantasy is delegitimized, particularly for women (or, speaking from personal experience, queer men). This is nothing new, obviously, and goes back to probably The Beatles, and before them Elvis. That this happens in a context where, I mean, women or queer people* don't have a lot of models for healthy, happy relationships is troubling. But whatever: we're just as entitled to our private experiences of love as anybody else, even if ours don't happen to be media-sanctioned, and I think it speaks to the potential that our ideals of love and romance have for political transformation. It's no mistake that Misra in conclusion refers to Hindu poet Mirabai's writing about memetic Hindu sex god Krishna, likening the experience to an act of faith.
3. I also appreciate that Misra's piece centers itself on the creative activity that comes out of our crushes; I mean, given that a good 35% of the Western literary canon is men waxing poetic about their beloved's apple-red lips and heaving bosoms, it only seems fair to acknowledge that love makes for great art.
That's about all I have for today. In closing, we take our relational cues from the media more than we would like to admit, but we have power in creating art that derives from and builds on the art that inspires us--and in doing so we also reconstruct what it means to be female, male, queer, single, dating, etc. Also, Oscar Isaac has a really cute face and the voice of an angel, and I dream of waking up to him in that really twee suit singing the Star Wars theme song. Speaking of which:
BYE
No comments:
Post a Comment