8 WDL They Do Things Differently There

So one of the job searches that didn't succeed this year was the one for my position.  Or should I say the search for two replacements for my position. 

Needless to say, at the urging of friends I now think of myself as "irreplaceable."

It's not true, of course, anymore than it was true that they needed to look for two people to replace me.  The college has needed another full time speech teacher for years and they just chose this year make the give.

As I've been remembering my own job search and looking at those happening on campus this spring I've been cast back into a decades-old memory of Mike Swan.  I became very close friends with Mike my first two years at Utah.  He was loudly out and I was out as queer as well and so circumstances threw us together and then we came to like each other.  He was five or six years younger than I -- around 26, I think and thin with a sweet face.   After I moved into the apartment right below his in the old, chopped up Salt Lake City Mansion, we would often finish out school days with a cup of cheap from-the-bin instant cocoa and episodes of Dr. Who and Monty Python on KUED.

I don't know how Mike was as a teacher.  I heard him speak at conferences a couple of times and he seemed a bit shy and hesitant.  As a student speaking in classes, however, he was super intelligent, quick witted, and funny.   He was often able to explain to me those cultural studies and critical theoretical concepts with which I struggled.  He was also a wonderful companion to the gay bars and clubs of Salt Lake, circa 1985.  We both had memberships at The Sun and other gay establishments and many Saturday nights would find us out, dancing  a lot and drinking as cheaply as possible.  (More about Gay Salt Lake at the time that I was just leaving may be found in the "Lambda Lore" column at QSaltLake.  I remember a famous leftist communication scholar, Phil Wander from San Jose State, visiting the department.  Mike and I took him down to the Sun.  We thought he enjoyed himself but it turned out that he didn't "get" it.  Years later he would remember it to me as a "dive bar" rather than a well-known and exciting gay dance club.  His memory altered my memory of him.)

Mike was a golden child of the critical studies group.    He could see the inherent self-deconstructing position of the deconstructers.  Yet he was also really silly (we would sometimes walk down the halls of the U's English Department imitating John Cleese's bureaucrat from the Ministry of Silly Walks).

Maybe he would have become a good teacher.  Maybe he would have gotten gig at an Research 1 Humanities department and written difficult and witty critical analyses of media texts.  Instead, he died of an unsafe sex practice.  Not the one killing off so many young gay men in those days -- simple unsafe sex.  He was very aware of AIDS (as all in the queer community were) and talked often about using safe sex.  But he was less safe in his pursuit of the pleasure in S&M.  And whether by his own hand or that of another he died of auto-erotic asphyxiation one August night in 1986.

He had become so important to me so fast, in a romance of friendship, that I was broken by his sudden and unexpected exit.  And now he is frozen in my memory in his bright, amusing perfection, never to grow old, never to disappoint, never to change and violate the expectations people have of him.  Or to surpass those expectations. 

To be changeless is to be dead. 

(blogpost title)

LY #109 Summary paragraphs

"The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there."
-- L. P Hartley, The Go-Between

So the past is past and not necessarily prologue and yet its structures and interactional patterns continue to impact the present unless and even when made visible.

Last week I burrowed into and through the old wounds for a couple of reasons.  First because I felt "called" to do so.  My relationship with my muse is a perverse and tricky one and sometimes s/he insists that I write about particular topics without letting me in on the reasons.  Because this blog is a spontaneous and time-pressed text, I pretty much respond to what that "still, quiet" and, thankfully, no longer "still quiet" voice requests of me.

Second, so that my friends would have a deeper understanding of me through learning about two shaping two foundational events that occurred when I was turning into what might be thought of as an adult.  If it had not been for those two events there's a good chance I would neither have stayed in Idaho nor married.  I might also not have carried with me for so long that mix of rage and its covering craving for connection which have, at times, gotten me into trouble.  (Thanks going out now to the doctors and therapists who've helped me manage or at least understand each over the decades.)

Third, I posted The Family Tragedy stories for members of Sally's high school class who might still be wondering "whatever happened to . . ." and search for her online.


The Amazing Criswell used to say, "The stars do not compel, the stars impel."  The same is true of the past.  It sends us back to the future with the collection of attitudes and communication tools it has available.  New patterns and means are available to us along our path but only if we see them and only if we choose to pick them up and use them.

LY #88 An Unfortunate Intrusion of Reality at Downton

Dame Kiri Te Kanawa as Nellie Melba

This blog entry contains 4th season spoilers for Downton Abbey.

I watch Downton Abbey for the costumes, the soap operatics, and to have the imperial past cleaned up, as Maureen Dowd has noted, and reconstructed before my eyes.  I do not watch it to have my own PTSD triggered.  Sadly, last night's episode did just that.

The cleaning of history was discontinued last night in an ugly and unfortunate manner.  While the oppression of women is certainly historically accurate, the intrusion of real-life ugliness into the fantasy of Downton was not welcome.  The climactic scene echoed other classics of crosscutting, like the christening and gang-war blood bath in The Godfather, discussed here by Oliver Gayken as an example of parallel editing.  In Downton, a house concert by the famous (and nonfictional) opera singer Nellie Melba (played by real life opera star Kiri Te Kanawa) is cross cut with the violent rape downstairs of ladies maid Anna.  The happy or bored faces of the house guests and staff, all upstairs, is contrasted with the horror of the actions taken by Lord Gillingham’s charming valet, Mr. Green.

I was very disturbed by this scene as were many others.  When the episode was broadcast in Britain in the fall, it created an uproar, dividing many fans.  The Mirror ran a collection of tweets and posts, including this one from a viewer named Zoe: “Having a rape on Downton is like having a murder on Teletubbies”"   The Express also reported the Abbey fandom's attacks on Julian Fellowes.  The Telegraph's Glenda Cooper wrote, "So when the scene finally occurred - the rape of lady’s maid Anna Bates by a visiting valet - it came out of nowhere. I sat up, and gasped in horror.  No - not Anna! Not one of the best-loved characters (and genuine acting talent) treated this way? And - surely not using rape as Sunday night entertainment in order to spice up a flagging franchise and eclipse the return of Homeland?"


All these responses occurred last fall while I was teaching and not thinking about Downton after my summer of catching up to the show.  Then, after last night's stateside broadcast, there was more outrage.   June Thomas, at Slate.com, noted that the rape is just one more sadistic act against a female character on a show that depends on the suffering of women for its drama.  Tom McCarthy, at The Guardian, said  "What befalls Anna is more brutal, as presented, than anything the series has yet seen, and that includes literal trench warfare."  (Mr. McCarthy also recognized the Coppola-esque cross cutting)

A story in today's New York Times quotes Katherine Hull, a spokeswoman for the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network,  saying, “Because this crime can be so isolating, for many viewers who may have a strong attachment to a character, to see them go through an experience that they’ve been through is incredibly powerful.”

Yeah, it was powerful for me in an unfortunate way.  Although my own rape occurred over 40 years ago, it still has some inner psychological potency, it's panic and fear revived at times when I see scenes of rape or even simple scene of women in jeopardy.   The story line of Anna being slugged and battered brought back memories of the two men who kidnapped me for a few hours one night in 1972, took me into the hills above Pocatello, and did what they did while threatening me with death.   After a week of shock (during which I pretty much drifted through my life and flunked all my midterms) I recovered, eventually coming to understand that I if I ever found out who my attackers were I would have the will to kill them.  Fortunately, sometime in my late forties, my mind and heart went the other direction and I realized that if I ever found out who my attackers were I would have the will to forgive them.

I thought about all that last night as I was not sleeping after the violent episode.  So, in an attempt to calm myself as I've been writing this post I've looked into the future by looking at the past.  I've just read the re-cap of the season 4 finale of Downton and found out that Mr. Green perishes (off stage) "in the street" in London and there's talk that Bates pushed him (though some believe that Anna herself did the deed, an ending I would prefer).  So, I may continue watching.