Marsha P. Johnson (L) and Sylvia Rivera (R)

The German blockbuster-directer Roland Emmerich has just released a trailer for his new movie Stonewall, and it’s been already discussed controversially, particularly about its lack of authenticity. Just to quickly recap: The Stonewall Riots were a series of protests in 1969 against the police by the LGBT community in New York after a police raid in Greenwhich’s Stonewall Inn sparked a violent backlash. Stonewall is now referred to as the most significant event in the history of LGBT liberation. People critcize the movie as another example of whitewashing. Even though the film is billed as a “true story”, it appears to be told from the point of view of a corn-fed, white, cisgender boy called Danny who is kicked out of his house because of his homosexuality and retaliates by hitting the big city. In reality, Stonewall was started by black trans drag queen Marsha P. Johnson. While Marsha P. Johnson has been given a role in the Hollywood narrative, she is played by a cisgender male. She is only listed two places higher in the credits on imdb.com than “Woman with Poodle”, played by Nathaly Thibault. Fortunately people reacted promptly. Two days after the trailer’s release, a petition to boycott the movie popped up; by now it has been signed by over 23,000 people. Boycotters claimed that the film had “white-washed” and “cis-washed” history, erasing the significant contribution made by trans and queer women of colour and drag queens in the Stonewall uprising. The petition was created by Pat Cordova-Goff, a trans activist feminine person of colour. She wrote on the page:

“OUR HISTORY WILL NOT BE WHITE/CIS-WASHED. History classes throughout our nation have built a reputation of instructing young generations that white, straight, cis folks are the saviors and founders of this land. Wrong. We were taught that light-skinned people are the goal; the goal to assimilate to. Wrong. We were also rarely taught about queer history, but when we were, it probably revolved around white cis gay men. Wrong.”

Emmerich responded to the controversy stating, “I think we represented it very well[...] We have drag queens, lesbians, we have everything in the film because we wanted to portray a broader image of what ‘gay’ means.” His responds fail even more spectacularly when saying in a Facebook comment “We are all the same in our struggle for acceptance.”

No. We are not all equal in our struggle. People like Emmerich – cisgender, white people – are born into a world that gives them unqualified power. If you, Emmerich, cannot recognise that, you definitely should not be doing a movie about the most significant moments for transgender people of colour.

Marsha P. Johnson was a liberation activist. Despite Hollywood’s latest claims as in the film Stonewall(2015), the African American drag queen was the one who threw the first brick against the police in June, 1969. Literally, according to various sources, this trans woman of color ‘really started it’ − not a pretty clean white boy with luscious muscles.

‘When the construction of gender theorized as radically independent of sex, gender itself becomes a free-floating artifice, with the consequence that man and masculine might just easily signify a female body as a male one, and woman and feminine a male body as easily as a female one’, writes Judith Butler in the bible of queer theory, Gender Trouble (p.9). Lately, the literature for queer theory started to expand. Besides our latest issue that we are proud of with queer producer Terre Thaemlitz a.k.a. Dj Sprinkles, even newspapers like The Guardian started to publish stories of queer personas; yet, the violence against LGBTIQ members is a crucial topic in the agenda. Through such publications, we observe that queer activism is painted with colors of drag. Mottos like ‘Pay it No Mind’, as the P. in Marsha’s name stands for, will conquer the world − reminiscent of the notion of queer utopia by theorist José Esteban Muñoz.

As with many, I sometimes find The Art to be indistinguishable from fashion, design, or decorative art, which is completely fine. However, the trend towards their sugary, whimsical ilk sometimes gives me one too many (hot)flashbacks of semi-reluctant jaunts around Anthropologie and its twee brethren.

When I first saw a feature praising Juan Fontanive, I spotted the Merian hummingbirds nested under the alliterative heading “Beautiful Flip-Books Made From Recycled Bike Parts,” I was skeptical. But less novelty wall art and more an almost holographic zoetrope, the pieces in action reveal a frantic corporeality unable to be contained by the  frames: the animated images hover suspended in margins of air. The rustling slaps emitted by the paper resembles the sound of wings–which in essence, if not in form, the paper is. In some ways then, the image of birds and butterflies act as a visual proxy, the projected spirit, of the actual sculptural work.

Bored with the usual cinema fare?  Look no further.  L’Enfant (or I suppose now l’adolescent or l’adulte depending on your feelings towards said provocateur) terrible Matthew Barney returns to the cinema fray with his operatic River of Fundament, a collaboration between him, several powerhouse thespians, Gaspard Noé, Jonathan Bepler, and…Norman Mailer?!  Premiered at the Brooklyn Academy of Music on February 12, the 6-hour art film marathon is a loose adaptation of Mailer’s late tract on atavism Ancient Evenings, and features the eXXXagerations–is that even possible–of usual Barney motifs–warped Americana, scatology, nudity, sexual outrages, and a preoccupation with the occult and arcane, ornamented impeccably with the artist’s sculptures and installations.  The response is as predictable, a division between numbed  awe and …really?, the centralists sounding the more measured recommendation that Barney’s should leave films alone and stick with still art.

Whatever; nowadays when the specter of shock art sets off warnings of not strange-enough-so-stranger danger around every corner, perhaps an artist that continues to ignite sincere controversy is worth something–not just a pile of shit.

Rebel girl Kathleen Hanna is back! The lead singer of the punk band Bikini Kill and dance-punk trio Le Tigre, rose to national attention as the reluctant but never shy voice of the riot grrrl movement. She became one of the most famously outspoken feminist icons, a cultural lightning rod. Her critics wished she would just shut-up, and her fans hoped she never would. So in 2005, when Hanna stopped shouting, many wondered why. Through 20 years of archival footage and intimate interviews with Hanna, THE PUNK SINGER takes viewers on a fascinating tour of contemporary music and offers a never-before-seen view into the life of this fearless leader. There will be several screenings before the film will be available on DVD. Check it out here!

‘Let them eat pepper gas’
Recep Tayyip Antoinette

‘Welcome the the gas festival’, ‘There is a beach under the stones’, ‘There is a revolution going on here, Signorita’,‘I could not find a slogan’ were some of the slogans written on the walls of beauteous cities of Turkey, the land of pepper. All you have been seeing in the news was a part of the festival organized by the dystopian party of the Prime Minister. One night, in thepalace of the Sultan (!) where a gathering was held accompanied by rakı, food prepared with lots of pepper and dance − a mixture of what he adores − guests decided to write a theater play…

Humour  is being spread in the streets of Turkey, still, on the 17th day of the protests. Today, mothers came to Gezi Park, to make a human chain between the police and the chapullers while the brutality was running wild on the streets of Ankara, the capital. One should also point out that every declaration of the government is like another episode of Monty Python.

#Occupygezi attracts more and more support from all over the world. Berlin residents can show solidarity tonight by joining the fundraising event Weeboogie 4 Istanbul, with musical support by Juke Ellington, Salute and Paul Pre. Resist with music and pizza!

Weeboogie 4 Istanbul
At Chesters / 10 pm
Glogauer Str. 2, 10999 Berlin

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