LET’S GO TO THE XOLAGRAFIK THEATER! This week in At the Movies With Nezua I present part A of a breakdown of Season 2 of Battlestar Galactica, using the last four episodes as examples. Last week was a focused look on the Cylon character specifically, and how that relates to racist/misogynist icons and ideas in the US, as well as how the casting choices play into the entire mix.

Here is this week’s installment, which delves deeper and broader. I examine not only racial and gender implications but also the messaging on war, protest, abortion, and the Faith Trumps Science theme woven into the narrative (this will be sketched out further in Part B, I introduce it here). Further, I talk about some of the lighting choices employed in the series overall.

There shouldn’t be any spoilers, as currently, the show is in Season 4; this is Season 2.

Images and video clips included. Bring the whole familia!

THERE ARE FEW THINGS as refreshing as the sensation of a stereotype being exploded before your very eyes. Here today to apply a brilliant shade of eyeshadow to the often-referenced machismo of The Latino and Mexicano Male iconry are l@s muxes straight from Juchitan:

JUCHITAN, Mexico (Reuters) – Attaching flowers to a ribbon headdress, pulling a lace slip under an embroidered skirt and draping a necklace of gold coins over his head, Pedro Martinez puts the finishing touches on the traditional costume of Zapotec women in southern Mexico.

“When I get all dressed up like this my father always says, ‘Oh Pedro! You look just like your mother when she was young,” beams Martinez, 28, gluing on fake eyelashes in front of a mirror.

Martinez spent two hours in the hair salon he owns getting ready for this weekend’s festival of the “muxes,” indigenous gays and transvestites in the town of Juchitan who have found a haven of acceptance in Mexico’s macho society.

The muxes (pronounced moo-shes), mostly of ethnic Zapotec descent, are widely respected in the southern town where a dance and parade that crowns a transvestite queen and celebrates the harvest has been held annually for the last 33 years.

Anthropologists say the tradition of blurring genders among Mexico’s indigenous population is centuries old but has been revived in recent decades due to the gay pride movement.

Several dozen muxes were blessed by a Catholic priest at a mass before joining visiting transvestites and other townsfolk at a raucous party on Saturday night. The muxes wore either traditional local costumes or ball gowns and high heels. [...]

Some of the muxes, a Zapotec word derived from the Spanish for woman, or “mujer”, dress as women year round and others are gays who only don women’s clothes at the annual party, or not at all.

The area around Juchitan, a laid-back town near the Pacific, has a history of women playing leading roles in public life.

“The legend here is that mothers pray for a gay son who can take care of them when they are old,” theater director Sergio Santamaria, 56, said over a traditional breakfast of iguana soup and sweet corn tamales.

—Mexican transvestite fiesta rocks indigenous town

I so enjoy the acceptance in these stories. Not only a refreshing blast of love and truth in the face of so much backward fear, hate, loathing, ignorance in our own USA culture (especially as demonstrated as of late by the Mormon Church and others who pushed for Proposition 8/”Prop Hate”), but also a beautiful contrast to what I’ve too often witnessed personally in my own life.

I am grateful I did not take on some of the attitudes I saw demonstrated in my youth. Homophobia staked out a visible presence there. I watched supposed role models start fights with people because they felt that threatened by the presence of gayness. It was amazing.

I never connected to that reaction. Not a bit. Maybe it was another thing where if my (adoptive not biological) father was against a thing, I more or less aligned with that thing. But no, I just think part of my nature could never be like that. The truth is, in my life, I more often felt persecuted by the Male Expectation I felt peering at me through invisible crosshairs than a part of it. In the Male Role world, I was always an outlier, a spy, a fraud. I’m not into and have never been into so many typical “Male” signifiers and activities and maybe that’s because I associate these things (football, visiting strip clubs, hunting, racing, talking luridly about girls you’re with, idiocy, etc) with the stack of unspoken rules that come with being in that club. All the ones that screamed in your ear about how NOT to sit, stand, speak, dress. Ugh. Hell, remember, I’m the kid who took Typing and Home Ec in high school, rather than the highly-sought after Auto Shop. But it’s not just about ducking from the heavy, suffocating, dull, half-dead box that is opened for the Adult Western Male to fit into, it is also about celebrating the non-rigid, the emotional, the intuitive, the fluid, the flamboyant, the colorful—the Feminine aspect of myself.

It is a given to most of us paying enough attention that there is a prevalent misogyny in our culture. Normalized to the extent that hostile and violent imagery against women is a regular presence and energy in our media. In posters, in jokes, in titles, in ideas. From the slightly dismissive to the outright derogatory to the blatantly vile and vicious. Our focus is often (and should be) on the women targeted by this hate, the women who suffer under this stream of threat and this actuality of violence. It should be focused on the actors and co-conspirators as well. Aside from those who take direct part in that hate or violence, another important piece of this is the effects of this misogyny upon the male in general. What misogyny does to the male identity and psyche and sense of peace and self-love. After all, the Female is not hated in a vacuum. So, too, is the Feminine, entire. And that cannot be walled off to one gender. This loathing, this hatred points back to what we know to be part of our natural being.

Men (as boys) are “asked” to join the oppression (under great threat of both social humiliation and physical violence and over and over, too) and to do this of course, we must snuff out/suppress the Feminine in ourselves. This is, of course, a great pain and loss to a human. And as this loss cannot be mourned by implied decree, this pain becomes a bitter, perverse mess that is blind to itself. And so men not only join the hate against women, but they then envy women for their freedom (to still be allowed) to be expressive, emotive, beautiful, affectionate, relaxed, vulnerable. And the loathing to self-loathing ties to envy ties to sorrow and loss and is given ground, and men are emotionally insane when modeled as instructed. And they act out this insanity even when they don’t know why. It is because they have too often been prevented from even knowing who they are to begin with.

I’ve never wanted to be a part of typical men, men groups, or Man Roles. That’s why people like Pedro Martinez to me, bedecked in color and flowing robe and smiles and ribbon, seem so much healthier to me than men buttoned into suits and then pews and pushing propositions. (On a mundane level, part of my being puzzled as a child growing up was also why the “boys” and “mens” sections had all the boring clothes! I could never figure that out.)

Part of undoing misogyny and sexism, and a huge part it seems to me, is men revealing to other men that we are sold an illusion. The “man” some (and a system entire) would have us be is an unnatural and dangerous one. It is a maimed beast; a muzzled, anguished, and hungry creature. Even the ideal is lonely and half-blind. The Myth of Man is a fanged, bereaved, lie. His is the shifting shape of oppression and self-denial with a wolfskin slung over one eye. It is a shroud. Even for those men who feel it makes them more so. For if a man cannot love the feminine aspect of himself, nor can he love a woman. And if he is hiding from that half of himself, he cannot fully see a woman. And if he would abdicate half his power, he is weak to the point of failing.

It is a spiritual thing, of course. Not even a social thing. For me, I’ve always seen my Artist priorities as rising above any imagined “Male” Role priority, and so I’ve long been comfortable with costume and decoration and wearing makeup and masks and just about any way of expressing whatever it is I feel needs to be celebrated or given shape in a moment. (More comfortable than in many typical settings!) And of course I’ve had to become comfortable (or be ostracized at times) for remaining expressive, intuitive, emotional, flamboyant/theatrical and given to many behaviors that violate the Male Code. And yet of course, there is still the work of untangling some of the corrosive and binding threads that our patriarchal/misogynistic culture has sewn into my form.

I love that the same (Zapotec) Indians who gave the world Emiliano Zapata gives us the Muxes! How perfect.

I like this too:

DUAL-GENDERED GODS

Native people in the Americas with ambiguous gender were often regarded as wise and talented, said Rosemary Joyce, a professor of anthropology at the University of California at Berkeley.

“They were seen as have having a kind of spiritual power that comes from being more like the ancestors who are mothers and fathers at once, and more like the divinities who may be dual gendered,” Joyce said.

Anthropologists have found evidence of mixed gender identities across Mesoamerica, from Mayan corn and moon gods that are both male and female and Aztec priests who ritually cross dressed.

The Spanish conquest in the 16th century and the Catholic Church snuffed out much of that tolerance.

——Mexican transvestite fiesta rocks indigenous town

Because Colonization (and Patriarchy, too) are about control. And thus, Prop H8. And thus stiff collars and the Western Modes of acceptable and authoritative dress. And thus stark unforgivable lines. And thus dichotomized stances and laws that no person lives under comfortably and organically, unless they crave unnatural and aggravating wires strapping them down to the earth, making up for all the strength they have abdicated and would have used to guide and know themselves otherwise….

IF GEORGE W BUSH hadn’t destroyed the notion with his lurid and violent brand of hypocrisy, Obama might be running on being a “Uniter and not a Divider.” Sometimes I call George W. Bush the Great Divider. He did nothing so well as entrench the divisions between poor and rich, elite and peasantry, Red and Blue, Us and Them. He is ALL about division. He just wants to think he’s a nice guy so…wait. We’re done ranting about Bush, I forgot. We’re happy happy in a Post-Racial World (wait, do I hear a Material Girl spoof in my head?)

But let me get on with it. Obama really is a uniter. He really does erase lines of separation. He does not live by those hard lines, or at least does not espouse them, nor behave as if he is guided by them. This “grayness” in both his ethnic makeup as well as his ideology is disturbing to many. We like our divisions, our containments, our separations. They are comforting. They let us know who is in the “Us” and who is of the “Them.” Of course taken too far these divisions and delineations lead us to…war.

I get the grayness. I am there. I’ve long been there. I feel I understand a bit of this. Perhaps it is because we both have lived between worlds. We are both “mutts” as Obama said, in a way. (Or maybe it’s not that entirely, but I bet it has a little to do with it.) And in this new Era Obama, everyone wants to get in on the mutt train. We all wanna be Post Racial. We wanna be like him, He Who Seeth No Race. We shiver away from the Dire and Dim Bush Days and hope to enter a sunny land of unpartisan-skin and we got us our Black Prez statuette on the dashboard to guide the way. But I don’t like how some of this discussion is muttying lines.

The press conference is already being called the “mutts like me” press conference. Some are praising his comfort in talking about race.

So yes, he was trying to be light-hearted about the dogs and inserted that little self-deprecating comment about his race to heighten the effect. After his prepared remarks, he appeared a bit on edge, perhaps a little nervous, during the question and answer session with reporters. He seemed to be laboring to hit the right tone – serious but not somber, concerned but confident – and his gaffe about Nancy Reagan seemed to be a product of jitters, more than anything else. But the inquiry about the dog and his daughters was an opening for him to shake it out, if you will.

And so he threw it out there, it was nothing, just three little words. Right?

I’ve heard mixed-race people use that term to describe themselves before, usually in the same ha-ha way Obama did. I’ve also heard it thrown around as an insult, a pejorative, a slur. I’ve felt the slap of that word across my face and it is not a word I can “reclaim.” My fear, however, is that Obama, as the first mixed-race president, will shape the way most Americans view people of mixed race for at least a generation. And will Obama calling himself a “mutt” – with humor, as if the word is nothing, nothing at all – make it socially acceptable for people to start calling me a mutt? My kids?

Because not only does the word have a history as a slur, but there are reasons that that word makes such an easy slur. It allows people to rhetorically reduce us to animals – people “bred” like dogs are bred. For all our “mutts are better!” talk (it is, as Obama knows, better to adopt a dog from a shelter, right? Rejected, but nonetheless in need of love), it still comes from a place where “purebreds” are better. It stinks of eugenics and generally just makes me queezy.

Mutts, like me, we may not be as desirable as purebreds but we can be lovable despite our unfortunate mix.

—Mutt Like Me, Kimchi Mamas

And then you dig into the comment threads on a page where the Kimchi Mamas (Burn Your Tongue!) blog was picked up, such as Political Intelligence (boston.com) and you begin to see how our bright shiny Post-Racial Nation is being embraced by some:

135. Oh, get over it. We are way to wrapped up in race in America.

I chuckled when Obama said that, that’s what I call my self, so what I am too.

The Black, White,Asian, Latino thing is getting soooo tiring, let’s start acting like the brothers and sisters that we really are. The constant racial harang is only a mechanism to divide and destroy.

Posted by Evelyn B November 10, 08 02:32 PM

So tiring, the “Black, White, Asian, Latino” thing.

I’m not sure what to do when I come across comments like this. I point it out because it is indicative of a growing trend, not because I have found the only comment that takes this stance.

It is far too tempting for many in this nation to want to get past all that “Tiring” stuff. I don’t blame you. I can’t tell you how tired I am of peering into mirrors or hoping I never hear a racist comment again, or crying over beaten or killed immigrants, or children in rooms without sun, or of fearing conversations that pop up because I don’t know how I’ll react when mi gente or mi familia or myself are insulted, or worse.

But how do I react? Do I point them to Kai’s landmark post on the idea of Political Correctness?

Or do I post something like this:

In case you cannot see or don’t have time, that’s a video on the killing of Marcelo Lucero, a man who has been living in the USA and working in the USA for 16 years. He is a migrant from Ecuador. He was working to support his family down south. He was not “way too wrapped up in race.” He was working and living a life. On one of those nights, he went out to catch a movie at a friend’s house but never made it past the driveway. He was killed by seven young men who were out with the express purpose of looking for “some Mexicans to fuck up.” Marcelo was not Mexican, but they fucked him up all right. They stabbed him in the heart. I can’t even type this out without crying again. (Don’t get me wrong. I’ll cry with one hand tight around a baseball bat, so if you want to come looking for Mexicans to Fuck Up in my part of town, keep it in mind.)

Others are rejoicing after hearing Obama’s “Mutt” reference, too. One man is “Hecky Powell,” who used to serve on the District 65 School Board in Evanston, Illinois. During a “discussion of how District 65 School Board statistically reports multiracial students” Powell used the term “Mutt.”

Critics took off on his mention of the remark [...] as insensitive of the feelings of African-Americans and multiracial children.

Powell eventually issued an apology. He drew more criticism later, however, when in answer to his critics, he added a “Mutt Special” to the menu at his restaurant, Hecky’s Barbecue. [...]

Ever since Barack Obama’s first press conference as president-elect, Evanston restaurateur Hecky Powell said calls have been pouring in. “It just feels like Obama gave me a pardon,” a not unhappy Powell said Tuesday. [...]

Guess what? He’s renaming the dish after perhaps the most successful self-described mutt in history, calling it the “Obama Mutt.”

—Obama’s ‘Mutt’ Remark A Pardon For Evanston Man

The title of that post is so telling. The idea that people who have been called out for using speech that hurts members of society not in the dominant demographic now are “pardoned” from any transgression against any person or persons by one joke from one man who happens to be President is lunacy. But it is a lunacy that will sell to the Colorblind crowd. Worse than simply being happy with his past boundary-steppin’ being pardoned, it seems Mr. Powell (and we know he is not alone) feels empowered to move forward with gusto and conviction.

But you’ll notice one thing. Mister Obama called himself a Mutt. He did not call another person a name. And yet Hecky Powell did. Children! Even disregarding the intelligent thoughts that Mama Kimchis put out there, there is a huge difference between calling yourself a name, and calling another person a name. (Ask Kramer about this one.)

To commenters like Evelyn B, whom I quoted above, who are so “tired” of the “Black, White, Asian, Latino” thing, I would ask, is it cool if a man calls you a “bitch”? Seriously. Plenty of women have reclaimed the term “Bitch” and there is even a “Bitch” magazine. Does not the success of that magazine pardon me? Anyway, it seems dog references are okay now. Right?

No—I’ll answer for you because I have access to writing this post and you do not. It is not okay. Even if the word “bitch” is in songs and on magazine covers and even if women call themselves it. It is still not okay for men to call you a Bitch. Even if many men are “tired” of that whole “feminist” thing. Because no, we cannot “start acting like the brothers and sisters that we really are” by ignoring our brothers and sisters’ voices when they say “that hurts me.” One magazine cover cannot give men permission to use a word on any woman they meet (who had no part in making that magazine), women who may have been hurt badly or seen others hurt in connection with the same hatred that birthed that slur and who may feel that word is simply another bone in the same violent beast that spits the word “Bitch.”

And one last thing. White folks: You don’t get to step over this whole sticky issue of race and power and oppression in this nation by claiming you, too, are a mutt. Not when your muttiness is composed of Russian, Scottish, German, and Irish. Not today, not now, not here. Because the lines have been drawn, and the power flows in certain directions and we benefit or suffer according to that power flow. And Obama is the type of multiracial person who is seen as brown or black. Period. Those who are of European mix do not get to step next to Obama and claim the same path. You don’t even get to claim my path, and mine is not his, either.

I was reading Womanist Musings yesterday, and a post called Why We Need To Talk About Whiteness and Privilege. In that post, she ends on the thought of those of us who are “bi-racial.” In that post, Renee recenters some of the discussion away from the White Lens and frames it in a way she feels is more useful. One that doesnt focus on the “Raced” parties (the Brown™ as I call us non-whites and non-white blends) but on Whiteness. And of course Whiteness does not like to see itself. Whiteness is the Universal Standard in this nation. Whiteness gets uncomfortable seeing itself, and would rather center itself and see all others from that viewpoint. Whiteness doesn’t mind talking about the poor folks in the ghetto or working in the fields, if it comes to that. But Whiteness does not want to talk about how it benefits from these situations. PortlyDyke, a commenter on Renee’s post, muses that she will soon begin conversations with white people “So, how often do you realize you are white?” as a way of pointing toward an empathy of what non-whites live.

Those white people/Euro people who want to hop on the Post-Racial Mutt-tastic bandwagon might consider this question. How often does your “muttness,” then, confuse you? How many hours do you spend a year looking at reflections and trying to see the separate “halves” of yourself? How often does your “Muttness” make you feel shame? Make you fear for your life? How often does the USA introduce the idea through so much media that you are gross and unworthy? Show images of your people that paint them as oversexed filthy criminals? Lock your people up in vastly disproportionate amounts, in detention centers? Hunt for you? How much does all this eat at you every day?

Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. We may howl at the same moon, and that is a beautiful thing. But we still running in different packs. And most of all, I aint ya pet.

Finally, Mister Obama? I know you have to be careful up there. I know this groundbreaking move you are doing requires you to be one hella skillful navigator of deadly currents all about you. Right Wing/Religious weirdos are now mainstreaming burning crosses and lots of people are pretty sore over losing the land their forefathers stole for them. I know part of us moving forward is, indeed, breaking down the idea of Otherness and I’m sure the Mutt joke came from that urge. Why not hand so many people at once an opportunity to feel joined in a struggle? Why not soften those lines of separation? It fits in with all you do, and seem to believe in. I can understand this.

Cuidado. In your attempts to soften and blur those lines, you can easily erase people and their struggles. I know you stand for change. But some change has to be earned. If not, it is not only not believable, but actually harmful.

IF WE WANT TO UNITE, it cannot be by overlooking differences that stab at people and stick in their throats and veins and bellies. This unity must come about by connecting ourselves through struggle; by working together to fight the iniquities that pit brown against black against gay against indigenous against secular against Trans against Asian against Disabled (and so on) and all so that one or two types of persons can ascend unfettered, to the top of the heap (of riches and power and bodies and lives and lost chances). We must band together and abdicate those hateful systems already in place (and there are more than I can link), and we must fight against those who would work to keep them in place.

Anything else is just a joke.

THIS MONTH MARKS THE FIRST ANNIVERSARY of Be Bold Be Red, an event held at the end of Octubre (the 30th, this year) to speak out against violence against women (and girls) of color, to show solidarity and support.

From Document the Silence:

Beloved Survivors, Warriors, Allies, Activists, Organizers, Artists, Healers, Visionaries, Sisters and Friends,

In October 2007 people all over the United States gathered physically and in spirit to speak out against violence against women of color. Some of us wore red all day and explained that we were reclaiming and reframing our bodies as a challenge to the widespread acceptance of violence against women of color. Some of us wrote powerful essays about why we were wearing red and posted them on the internet. Some of us gathered with bold and like-minded folks and took pictures, shared poetry and expressed solidarity.

Women of Color Wearing Red

This year, on the first anniversary of the Be Bold Be Red Campaign, we invite you to make your bold stance against the violence enacted on women and girls of color in our society visible. In D.C., Chicago, Durham, Atlanta and Detroit women of color will be gathering to renew our commitment to creating a world free from racialized and gendered violence, and this time, we’ll be using a new technology called CyberQuilting to connect all of these gatherings in real time.

To learn more about CyberQuilting, which is a women of color led project to stitch movements together using new web technologies and old traditions of love and nurturing, visit www.cyberquilt.wordpress.com.

This letter is an invitation for you and yours to participate in a gathering in your city on Thursday, October 30th that will be webcast to similar gatherings in other cities. We are calling on you because we recognize and appreciate the work that you and the organizations you work with are doing everyday to make this a more loving and less violent world for women and girls in oppressed communities.

Please join us on October 30th so that other warriors in this struggle can be strengthened and affirmed by the energy of our collective ferocity!

Also we are asking once again that people wear Red on October 30, 2008 and send us your pictures to beboldbered[A]gmail[D]com
As we receive them we will upload your pictures under “Red Pictures Today.”

Also, as well as to share your stories of Red on this website under “Why are you wearing Red on October 30, 2008.”

So, are you ready?!

—Be Bold Be Red Goes Viral Loco Visual

Also from Document the Silence:

Simple Ways to Participate on October 30, 2008

1. Wear Red (i.e. ribbons, clothing, clown noses, etc.);
2. Read “Out of Silence” Litany at 8:00 pm/central time;
3. Take Pictures and/or video and email them to beboldbered[A]gmail[D]com (After October 30, 2008, we want to “flood” the web with pictures and video of RED)

I REMEMBER MARVELING AT ALL THE WORMS who rise to the surface of the soil the morning after a long rain rhythmically drums upon the world’s skin. I remember curling my lip to gaze upon the sight of so many soggy, pink, snakelike bodies writhing in the bright light of the new day. And although I personally felt distaste at the sight, it cannot touch my feelings when compared to seeing the racist muck of society rise up as it sees one of White Supremacy’s nightmares fulfilled: a black man sitting in the Oval Office…and not as a guest or reporter or photographer.

Nor should I do such a disservice to worms with my unfair comparison.

A man told today how he was shot three times in a London street for wearing a Barack Obama T-shirt.

Dube Egwuatu was buying a mobile telephone top-up card in an off-licence when the gunman confronted him and glared at the top, which carries an image of the Democrat US presidential candidate underneath the legend ‘Believe’.

The man then launched into a tirade of racist slurs, shouting ‘I f***ing hate n*****s’ and urging 36-year-old Mr Egwuatu to leave the shop with him.

The man then left the shop but when Mr. Egwuatu re-emerged, the attacker was waiting for him in broad daylight with a threatening-looking dog and holding a gun behind his back.

Realising what had sparked the increasingly violent assault, the terrified Mr Egwuatu zipped up his jacket to cover the image of Mr Obama and walked to his car.

But the shaven-headed man, who was white, followed Mr Egwuatu and after pulling open the passenger door pointed the gun at him.

After pleading with the man to leave him alone, the married former street warden put the keys in the ignition and turned the engine on.

The attacker then fired the gas-powered ball-bearing pistol three times, hitting the civil servant in the face, hand and shoulder.

—Man shot three times in street by racist gunman – for wearing Barack Obama T-shirt

sombrero tip to superspade, african american political pundit, and baratunde

John McCain and Sarah Palin cannot pretend to be unaware of the world they are living in. They must factor in incidents like this when they put out ads that demonize and Other and cast fear and suspicion about a black man approaching power. To act as if they are so ignorant of society while still feeding the phantoms in this Haunted Land, they may as well be complicit in the pulling of that trigger.

It’s sort of like any group at the lower end of a power dynamic. It’s why I don’t really go after Malkin anymore. Someone commented recently if I was aware of her shtick and I know that means they’ve only been reading the new UMX, and weren’t around for El Grito. Yes, I am aware of Malkin and her situation and writings, and yes, they infuriate me and sadden me and gross me out and I’ve spent plenty of time saying so. So why’ve I left off? Simple. She is a woman, another hunted class in this culture and world. It’s sad that she buys her safety and freedom and power at the expense of the weaker now…it only continues the same cycle that planted such hate in her in the first place. But I will leave it up to others, to Asian Americans and mostly to women, to chase and condemn her. Because there is a resonance that rings out when a man turns his anger on a woman and I’ve since learned that and I don’t want to aggravate that or feed it.

If John McCain were wise enough to be President, he’d know how to apply this truth to campaigning against a black man. But he does not. Or he cares not. And thus, he is not.