Do I really HAVE to explain to some yutz the many, many reasons why Simoun is a better representation of queer people (even in a fantasy context) and theories and experiences of queerness than Queer as Folk is? Really? REALLY?
One is a Nishimura Junji series (some of the only serious and portentous work the man's ever done, so you know that he felt that this was a story that really had to be told) with input from Mashimo Kouichi (he of the Girls-with-Guns Trilogy) and major Japanese feminists of to-day, inspired heavily by works by Doris Lessing and Ursula K. Le Guin. It explores the nature of gender through a fantasy society and also touches on themes of transcendence, eternity, faith, class, purity, and real and fake realities.
The other is a Russell T Davies show and exhibits the general lack of interest in the ordinary as a mirror for the extraordinary that characterises the man's oeuvre. It doesn't even use the extraordinary as a tedious mirror of the ordinary as his time on Doctor Who did. It is simply (in my opinion) plodding and thinks that it is funnier and more subversive than it is. There is nothing transcendent, eternal, or pure about it.
I don't think there's a contest between these two shows, really. One of them has extremely compelling characters, nearly all of whom are SOME kind of queer, sometimes more than one kind at once, and a beautiful and evocative setting and plot, used to the service of important, resonant themes that lend real power to the idea of a universe in which strong, beautiful, queer people can 'give testament in a ruined world'. And it's not the one that the yutz I was talking to thinks it is.
EVEN MUSIC-WISE. JESUS CHRIST.
DO I REALLY HAVE TO GET INTO THIS?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment