THE DARK MIND OF BLACKWINGBEAR

Saturday, April 2, 2022

Happy birthday, Sir Alec Guinness

In 1914 , Sir Alec Guinness was born, English actor (d. 2000); Guinness married the artist, playwright, and actress, Merula Salaman in 1938, and they had a son in 1940, Matthew Guinness, who later became an actor. All well and good, of course. But in his biography Alec Guinness: The Unknown, Garry O'Connor reveals that Guinness was arrested and fined ten guineas for a homosexual act in a public lavatory in Liverpool in 1946. Guinness avoided publicity by giving his name as "Herbert Pocket" to both police and court. The name Herbert Pocket was taken from the character in Charles Dickens' Great Expectations that Guinness had played on stage in 1939 and was also about to play in the film adaptation. The incident did not become public knowledge until April 2001, eight months after his death. The authenticity of this incident has been doubted, however, including by Piers Paul Read, Guinness's official biographer, who believes that Guinness was mixed up with John Gielgud, who was infamously arrested for such an act at the same period of time, though Read nonetheless acknowledges Guinness's essential bisexuality.

Happy birthday, Camille Paglia

In 1947, Camille Paglia was born today. American feminist writer, born; an American social critic, author and teacher. Her book, Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson , published in 1990, became a bestseller. She is a professor of humanities and media studies at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, PA. She has been variously called the "feminist that other feminists love to hate," a "post-feminist feminist," "one of the world's top 100 intellectuals" (which, along with $2.50 will, I believe, get you a ride on the NY subway system....if it's running) by the UK's Prospect Magazine, and "a feminist bisexual egomaniac." Paglia describes herself as a feminist and as a Democrat who voted for Bill Clinton and Ralph Nader, and even campaigned for John F. Kennedy as an adolescent. Her vocal skepticism of global warming, however, indicates her willingness to break with liberal orthodoxies. Her views on the legalization of recreational drugs and prostitution, and on the relaxation of sexual consent laws, are more libertarian. (Won't someone save us from Ayn Rand and her children?) She is a strong critic of much of the feminism that began with Betty Friedan's 1962 The Feminine Mystique and compared feminists — whom she considered to be victim-centered — to the Unification Church. At the same time Paglia's embrace of fetishism, pornography, sex work and most prominently, male homosexuality, effectively puts her at odds with the "family values" of American social conservatives.

Happy birthday, Hans Christian Anderson

Happy birthday, Hans Christian Anderson. Born 1805. Forget the silly Danny Gay, um...er...Kaye movie of yesteryear in which Hans sings to inchworms and measures all the marigolds. Anderson was an odd duck, all right, but odd in ways not even hinted at in that Technicolor monstrosity. The real story, on the contrary, might actually make a good film. One can already see the scene between his poor parents as they realize something is a little strange about the lad. When the other kids are out doing masculine things, like circle jerks and pulling wings off flies, all he wants to do is sew clothes for his dolls. Then we can have the scene where he decides to leave his place as an apprentice to a tailor to try to make it as an opera singer. He’s really torn about leaving, because he just loves being surrounded by all those clothes to sew. Then there’s his time of starvation on the road until he’s taken in by two Gay musicians who see to it that the hunky young man is plenty stuffed. Passed on to a middle-aged poet, and getting a little wiser, he decides it’s much more fun being kept than taking dancing lessons, as he had originally wanted, in return for services rendered. Eventually he makes it big as the greatest fairy tale writer in Europe, and the entire cast joins in the great production number, “It Takes One to Write One.”