Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life (2004)

KERRY JAMES MARSHALL 

USA, b. 1955

Keeping the Culture, 2011

Color linoleum cut and screenprint on Arches 445x711 mm | 17 1/2x28 inches

Tsukioka Yoshitoshi aka Yoshitoshi Tsukioka aka 月岡 芳年 aka Taiso Yoshitoshi aka 大蘇 芳年 (Japanese, 1839-1892, b. Edo, Japan) - Komori No Godan (Bats), c. 1880-1883, Woodblock Prints: Ink, Color on Paper

I’m a big fan of “Hellraiser” movies. But one night I was walking down an empty street, and Pinhead, one of the cenobites characters in the movies, appeared to me. I thank Saint Michael the Archangel because, although he tried to catch me, I managed to escape. I don’t know if it was a product of my imagination or real but this experience scared me a lot.

Carlos Dominguez Nuevo Leon, Mexico

it’s interesting learning which homophobic ideas are confusing and unfamiliar to the next generation. for example, every once in a while i’ll see a post going around expressing tittering surprise at someone’s claim that gay men have hundreds of sexual partners in their lifetimes. while these posts often have a snappy comeback attached, they send a shiver down my spine because i remember when those claims were common, when you’d see them on the news or read them in your study bible. and they were deployed with a specific purpose — to convince you not just that gay men were disgusting and pathological, but that they deserved to die from AIDS. i saw another post laughing at the outlandish idea that gay men eroticize and worship death, but that too was a standard line, part and parcel of this propaganda with the goal of dehumanizing gay men as they died by the thousands with little intervention from mainstream society.

which is not to say that not knowing this is your fault, or that i don’t understand. i’ll never forget sitting in a classroom with my high school gsa, all five of us, watching a documentary on depictions of gay and bi people in media (off the straight and narrow [pdf transcript] — a worthwhile watch if your school library has it) when the narrator mentioned “the stereotype of the gay psycho killer.” we burst into giggles — how ridiculous! — then turned to our gay faculty advisors and saw their pale, pained faces as they told us “no, really. that was real” and we realized that what we’d been laughing at was the stuff of their lives.

it’s moving and inspiring to see a new generation of kids growing up without encountering these ideas. it’s a good thing. but at the same time, we have to pass on the knowledge of this pain, so we’re not caught unawares when those who hate us come back with the oldest tricks in the book.

Various Sonic yo-yo’s, from the Japanese guide from ‘Sonic Jam’.