Archive for November, 2010

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Make X Not War

November 15, 2010

I’m sending out some postcard versions (from Syracuse Cultural Workers, an excellent source of lefty-progressive materials) of this poster by Shepard Fairey:

The model expression here is the 1960s counterculture anti-Vietnam-War slogan “Make Love, Not War” (Wikipedia page here), which has been varied in a number of ways. Comedian George Carlin, for example, said  that his preferred variant was the plainspoken direct “Make Fuck, Not Kill”.

The ultimate model is, of course the straightforward “Make Peace, Not War”.

You can google up all sorts of variations: a t-shirt with the slogan “Make Levees Not War” in support of the reconstruction of New Orleans (as opposed to spending money in pursuit of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan); the suggestion, from several sources, that in Afghanistan American forces should “make tea, not war”; a slogan of the Muslim Students Association (of the U.S. and Canada), “Make Chai Not War”; a suggestion that young children should be taught to “make cookies, not war” (as a diversion from violent games); t-shirts for peace with “Make Fufu Not War” (fufu being the West/Central African starchy staple food) on them; other t-shirts for peace, from other culture zones, with “Make Samosas Not War” and “Make Falafel Not War” on them; away from the food theme and back to love and sex, jokey t-shirts with “Make awkward sexual advances, not war” on them; an ad for the UnderGarden video game with a contest slogan “Make Flowers, Not War” (referring to the violent content of so many video games); and on and on.

This isn’t a snowclone, just playful variations on a formula, like many other examples I’ve discussed here and on Language Log and even on my X blog (most recently, here).

Posted in Formulaic language, Language play | 4 Comments »

Flash Gordon over the years

November 14, 2010

[I’m not entirely sure which of my blogs this belongs in, but since it continues a thread on gay men and masculinity, begun in “Images of masculinity” (on this blog, here) and doesn’t have material that would require it to go in my X blog, I’m posting it here. But it has nothing of significance about language in it.]

The history began yesterday, when Steven Levine passed on to me a copy of Les Daniels’s Superman, The Complete History: The Life and Times of the Man of Steel (a Chronicle Books reprint of the 1998 original), which I received with delight because a project of mine on gay men and masculinity (described in that earlier posting) had taken me (thanks to Bea Sanford, now Beatrice Sanford Russell) into considering masculinity as presented in material — especially movies — on cartoon(ish) heroes and superheroes.

Superman led us briefly to Batman (which was Bea’s entry point into this material) and then to Flash Gordon, and we recollected with pleasure some of the film presentations of the story of Flash and Dale (and Doctor Zarkov and Ming the Merciless, the evil ruler of the planet Mongo, and the other characters): in particular, the film serials, which I saw on tv as a child, on Saturday mornings (and which presented me with some of my earliest experiences of identification combined with homoerotic desire, for Flash in the person of Buster Crabbe; I now have them on DVD); the 1974 X-rated takeoff Flesh Gordon; and the (to my mind) wonderfully campy 1980 movie version. (These three are starred in the list below.)

We were having some trouble getting the chronology right (many items were re-released, or transferred to other forms), so I spent some time this morning mining the resources of Wikipedia, primarily the main entry on Flash Gordon and the one on Flesh Gordon (where you can find lots of links and more details about Flash Gordon in popular culture).

Here’s a summary of the highlights, in list form:

1a. Flash Gordon, comic strip originally drawn by Alex Raymond, first published on January 7, 1934; further comic strips over the years

1b. pulp magazine adaptation of the original strips: Flash Gordon Strange Adventure Magazine (1936)

1c. novelizations over the years, beginning with Flash Gordon in the Caverns of Mongo (1936)

2a. starting April 22, 1935, the strip was adapted into The Amazing Interplanetary Adventures of Flash Gordon, a 26-episode weekly radio serial, with Gale Gordon as Flash

2b. followed by daily radio serial The Further Interplanetary Adventures of Flash Gordon (1935-36)

*3a. Flash Gordon, 1936 movie serial starring Buster Crabbe as Flash and Jean Rogers as Dale (13 episodes)

3b. sequels: Flash Gordon’s Trip to Mars (1938), Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe (1940)

3c. the 1936 Flash Gordon serial was also condensed into a feature-length film titled Flash Gordon or Rocket Ship or (tv title) Space Soldiers

4a. Flash Gordon (1954-55 live-action tv series, with Steve Holland as Flash

4b. Flash Gordon (1979-80 animated tv series, aka The New Adventures of Flash Gordon)

*5a. Flesh Gordon, a 1974 erotic spoof of the Flash Gordon serial films from the 1930s, with Jason Williams as Flesh Gordon and Suzanne Fields as Dale Ardor

5b. 1989 sequel: Flesh Gordon Meets the Cosmic Cheerleaders, with Vince Murdocco as Flesh and Robyn Kelly as Dale

5c. four-issue comic book miniseries by Aircel Comics, published in 1992

*6. Flash Gordon, campy 1980 film starring Sam J. Jones (as Flash), Melody Anderson (as Dale), Chaim Topol, Max von Sydow, Timothy Dalton, Brian Blessed and Ornella Muti; music by Queen

7a. Flash Gordon: The Greatest Adventure of All (1982), animated tv movie

7b. Defenders of the Earth (1986), a Flash Gordon cartoon show

7c. Flash Gordon (1996 animated tv series)

8. Flash Gordon (2007-08 live-action tv series, with Eric Johnson as Steven “Flash” Gordon)

Posted in Gender and sexuality, Not about language | 1 Comment »

Spear/Smear the Queer

November 12, 2010

My posting on “Fear the beard” got me into phonological association mode, and I pulled up the name of a kids’ game called variously Spear the Queer or Smear the Queer.

The rhyme’s the thing, hurling slurs is a big thing on the schoolyard, and the game has an aggressive component that goes beyond competitive and playful, so the name is no great surprise. Still, distressing.

(more…)

Posted in Language play, Taboo language and slurs | 5 Comments »

Nicks

November 12, 2010

From the Comments Policy on Language Log:

… the software asks you for an email address, which is not published for other readers. Though there is no automatic check, this should be a genuine address. Comments from addresses like noone@nowhere.com are likely to be deleted.

So it is on this blog. But neither blog asks for a real name, so people are free to supply a pseudonym — a “nick” or “handle” — and a great many do. Almost everyone on Livejournal goes by a nick (though I do not); it’s part of the culture of the place. And some people have personal blogs under a pseudonym. In contrast, people post to subscription mailing lists like the American Dialect Society mailing list (ADS-L) under their real names, and Facebook similarly insists on real names. Of course, people lie and cheat, but it’s part of the culture of these places for participants to be in principle identifiable.

(more…)

Posted in This blogging life | 1 Comment »

Zippy’s placenames

November 12, 2010

Today’s Zippy:

It’s the names: Harv Willimantic, Verne Glastonbury, Les Naugatuck, Roland Moosup. Four places in Connecticut (sounds like a Charles Ives composition). A change from Griffith’s most common name source, the movies.

Posted in Linguistics in the comics, Names | Leave a Comment »

Looking it up

November 11, 2010

John McIntyre’s latest Baltimore Sun column, “Just look it up”, begins:

When an article assigned in my editing class contains an uncommon word, I ask my students what it means. The usual response is a row of blank stares. It appears that they just shrug when they encounter unfamiliar vocabulary. And then I explain to them that if you release an article that contains words you do not understand, you have not really edited it. But you will be held accountable for anything in it that is wrong.

(more…)

Posted in This blogging life | 2 Comments »

Short shot #54: red-hot cool

November 10, 2010

Donald G. McNeil, Jr., “New Lines of Attack In H.I.V. Prevention”, NYT Science Times today:

The whole field of protection before sex is “red-hot cool right now,” said Sharon L. Hillier, a gynecology professor at the University of Pittsburgh’s medical school and principal investigator of the Microbocide Trials Network.

Both parts of red-hot cool have undergone semantic shift: red-hot to mean

Of a person or thing: up-to-the-minute, brand new; exciting, sensational, dramatic. (sense 3a in the OED draft revision of June 2010)

and cool, more extravagantly:

Originally in African-American usage: (as a general term of approval) admirable, excellent. (sense 8b in the OED draft revision of September 2010)

The result is that red-hot cool isn’t at all contradictory; instead, the two parts reinforce one another.

 

Posted in Lexical semantics | 1 Comment »

Enjoy the Go

November 10, 2010

From Nancy Friedman (who writes on “names, brands, writing, and the quirks of the English language”), passed on by Ben Zimmer, this site for a recent campaign for Charmin brand toilet paper: the Charmin Go Nation, with the slogan (apparently first floated in 2009) “Enjoy the Go”.

(more…)

Posted in Language in advertising, Nouning, Taboo language and slurs | 7 Comments »

Lives of the pornstars

November 9, 2010

To go along with three recent postings on AZBlogX that concern gay porn films in one way or another —

11/8/10: The Gaze Downward (link)
11/8/10: Peekaboo Dickhead (link)
11/9/10: Lives of the pornstars (link)

I’m supplying here a little bibliography of writing about life in the gay porn film business (most of them books about the lives of the actors in these films). Not included here are books about porn writing, modeling, hustling, stripping, or homoerotic art. (I’ve left the names exactly as they appear on the title pages of the books, though many of them are porn names.)

Bending, J. E. II.  2005.  Last time I drew a crowd: The autobiography of Jim Bentley.  Self-published.

Blake, Blue.  2008.  Out of the blue: Confessions of an unlikely porn star.  Philadelphia PA: Running Press.

Blake, Bobby [with John R. Gordon].  2008.  My life in porn: The Bobby Blake story. Philadelphia PA: Running Press.

Carson, H. A.  2001.  A thousand and one night stands: The life of Jon Vincent.  1stBooks.

Isherwood, Charles.  1996.  Wonder Bread and Ecstasy: The life and death of Joey Stefano.  L.A.: Alyson.

Edmonson, Roger.  1998.  Boy in the sand: Casey Donovan, all-American sex star.  L.A.: Alyson.

– 2000.  Clone:  The life and legacy of Al Parker, superstar. L.A.: Alyson.

LaRue, Chi Chi [with John Erich].  1997. Making it big: Sex stars, porn films, and me. L.A.: Alyson. [primarily a director]

O’Hara, Scott.  1997.  Autopornography: A memoir of life in the lust lane.  Binghamton NY: Haworth.

Poole, Wakefield.  2000.  Dirty Poole: The autobiography of a gay porn pioneer.  L.A.: Alyson. [early director, famous for Boys In the Sand]

Shaw, Aiden.  2006.  My undoing: Love in the thick of sex, drugs, pornography, and prostitution.  NY: Carrol & Graf.

These items vary hugely in quality, and some of the stories they tell are sad and disturbing.

[These are all in my library. I welcome further recommendations.]

Posted in Books, Gender and sexuality, Links | 3 Comments »

On AZBlogX

November 7, 2010

Two pieces on masculinity, the first with an excursion on wordplay:

11/7/10: High-macho (cont.): brutal masculinity (link)

11/7/10: Concealing and revealing (link)

 

 

Posted in Gender and sexuality, Links | Leave a Comment »

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