Gay Music for Straight People - Ana Makashvili

“It’s not as easy as it was
Or as difficult as it could be…”

Pet Shop Boys

While Georgia tries to learn and internalize the term LGBT, new letters are being added to the abbreviation such as Q and I. It’s hard to keep up with so many upgrades. However, the term does not get hurt at all by that and nor do the people classified under Q and I.

Normally, a passion for classification or categorization is an entirely natural and even useful thing on a scientific as well as on a more mundane level. But in an increasingly diverse modern world – where the most popular black person is Michael Jackson and where, despite what John Lennon had said (“Woman Is the Nigger of the World”), Naomi Campbell knows perfectly well that woman is not the nigger of the world – classification has become a bit difficult task. For instance, if in the past everything used to be reduced to two (like, for example, natural and humanitarian) or to three (for example, id, ego and super-ego), now everything has increased in number (like L, G, B, T, Q and I) even to the point where you get confused in categories, classes and concepts, and can not understand anymore what’s common between the terms included in the same class or what’s the point…

It seems I am not the only one among confused. Those also get confused, who in utterly human process of searching for meaning and giving names to events, try to categorize other people or certain behav-iors. It’s just that some of them have enough courage (and wit perhaps) to admit their confusion. For example, I recall certain concerns of a British journalist, telling that her mum, 1970’s feminist, encouraged her to “do whatever men do!” As part of this advice, she started to watch porn regularly, emphasizing that she has always been a feminist herself. But as long as in the porn men dominate on women for the most part, she began to doubt whether watching it made her a hypocrite.

Similar hypocrisy, or paradox if you like, popped up when British Elle included free eyeliner in its special issue on feminism. The Independent newspaper mocked Elle for that, but some advocates still came out for Elle, arguing that wearing eyeliner does not make anyone any less of a feminist.

Well, it’s not that easy to know.

A feminist conference held in Czech Republic might serve as a same sort of example: Not all invited guests from Georgia could make it to the conference because their husbands did not let them go there (although, I cannot tell whether this has become a topic for the next feminist meeting or not).
Incident that happened in London in the spring of 2012 belongs to the same genre when two Christian groups planned to place anti-gay ads on the London buses with slogans like “Not Gay! Ex-Gay, Post-Gay and Proud. Get Over It!” Those groups intended to assist homosexuals and to kindle heterosexual potential in them, as they believed that God has not created people gays. So, then the mayor of London and currently the U.K. Foreign Secretary, Conservative Boris Johnson with eccentric appearance (and not only) blocked this possible “gay therapy” immediately, declaring that “London is one of the most tolerant cities in the world and intolerant of intolerance.” Interestingly, one of the most zealous gay rights activists responded to Boris’ step, saying that while the ads were “clearly homophobic”, they should still be allowed for the sake of freedom of speech.
Incidentally, with his expression, Boris Johnson might have echoed one of the most complicated challenges of the modern world that roughly sounds like this: Is intolerance towards intolerance tolerance? The answer to this question is likewise complicated particularly in the age when a pressure of political correctness is rendering media into tedious bunch of euphemisms, terrorism is moving from Hollywood blockbusters to real life increasingly, real life is moving to social media in its turn, and The Simpsons, globally famous animated sitcom, is making the most exact predictions.
It’s easy to get confused, isn’t it? If homophobia, racism, xenophobia and their – it’s safe to say – inflated form, terrorism has been regarded as a realm of fundamentalists and mad bigots, emergence of madmen like Breivik and Donald Trump violates this order. Especially the latter contributes his fair share of madness to the mad world. While in 2008 the U.S. boasted that it elected black president for the first time in its history (and in 2011 prided itself on Obama killing Osama bin Laden, a symbol of terrorism), now, in 2016 America might make the guy its president who would adorn any social psychology hand-books making particularly good illustration to the chapter that deals with prejudice and discrimination. Such handbooks may have already included the case of one of the most influential gays in Britain as chosen by The Independent on Sunday, fashion designer John Galliano, that happened in 2011 and is related to his anti-Semitic tirade taking place in one of the Paris bars, accompanied by Galliano’s arrest, dramatically expressed outrage of celebrities and press, and a farewell to the position of creative director at Dior (by the way, categorization enthusiasts might have found a bit hard to pair the term “gay” with the term “xenophobic”).

Given that, “No To Racism” signs embellishing the UEFA football matches remind of one of those pathetic and good-for-nothing stickers glued on cars in Georgia such as “I Give Way to Emergency Vehicles.” Competing in self-righteousness and kindness is not a bad thing, surely, and is efficient in a number of cases but when on the verge of hypocrisy, those good qualities lose their effect or, at least, turn them-selves into an object of a comedy.

For example in a 1986 movie, Soul Man, the main character, a spoilt boy from a wealthy family is about to study at Harvard Law School. But a psychiatrist tells his father to stop spending so much money on his son and to spend it on himself instead. Having to pay for the Law School by himself seems impossible to the protagonist, so he decides to get the only available scholarship – the one for African-Ameri-cans. To achieve his goal, he starts taking tanning pills and takes them as a many as to become black indeed, obtaining the scholarship and starting to study at the desired school…

There is another, far better and funnier, comedy film, the French one, called The Closet and released in 2001. Daniel Auteuil who plays the leading role is absolutely unremarkable and boring character with a teenager son and divorced wife… He is about to get fired from his position of an accountant at a factory… He is on the verge of committing a suicide when suddenly a new neighbor, a retired gay moves into his flat who happens to be a former industrial psychologist. He is the one who saves Auteuil’s character from committing a suicide and moreover, offers him ways to keep his job, advising him to spread rumors that he is gay. They spread the rumors indeed, producing some fake provocative images to send them to Auteuil’s character’s job… The primary product of the factory where the latter works are con-doms, thus, gay community’s support is crucial to the factory’s leadership. Homophobic boss and employees understand that political correctness is a mandatory price to be paid, leaving Auteuil’s character at the job… By fake coming out, his life is changing, now he seems interesting to everyone, he is the main participant of the local gay pride, his son, who regarded him boring and uninteresting, is now proud of him, he deserves even women’s and ex-wife’s attention… And creator of all this, the elderly gay notes that his neighbor has been left at job for the same reason he himself had been fired for years ago.

But that’s not our comedy. It occurs in the part of the world where, despite pledges, we still need to go through thousands of bureaucratic inconveniences to get there. In Georgia, where acquiring LGBT is at the basic stage, we deal with different kinds of comedies, tragedies and classifications. To give a light, albeit telling example, self-declared Knight of Georgia is openly homophobic, while in Great Britain, in 1998 Queen Elisabeth II knighted one of the most prolific musicians and famous gay parents of our age, Sir Elton John.

The world is full of paradoxes. And if, by that time, you have got confused, too, don’t worry – even God acts in a confusing way sometimes; recently, I ran into a quote by an unknown author that said: “My favorite part of the Bible is when God gives people free will and then kills everyone for not acting the way he wanted.”