citations: challengers (2024), wikipedia (various articles), friend at court 2022 handbook of rules and regulations, gq interview.

(insp)

columba livia

i want to watch a movie

^ movieheads will surely understand this ^

here is my piece for Roll The Spider-Verse, a Spider-Verse x Dimension 20 zine run by @eamesie for @d20zinejam 2023 !! this zine was a joy to be a part of, i’m so glad to have contributed to it!!

link to the Roll the Spider-Verse zine here: https://itch.io/queue/c/3531617/d20zinejam2023?position=10

link to the d20 zine jam 2023 bundle: https://itch.io/b/1982/dimension-20-zinejam-2023

the bundle is pay what you want, with all proceeds going to the entertainment community fund in support of the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strike!

Spider-Pib! My piece for the Roll the Spider-Verse zine, run by @eamesie and @orimarvales, part of the @d20zinejam 2023! I was inspired by Pib’s spider fang daggers and the hinting of Anansi the trickster spider. I also liked the idea of the Neverafter universe having a paper cutout style!

Check out the pay-what-you-want zinejam charity bundle here! The proceeds go to the entertainment community fund in solidarity with the SAG/WGA strikes!

Bocce Players

Kevin Specht

30 x 30

Acrylic on canvas

this is my artist rendition of puddles when she's been napping and i accidentally wake her up

been decorating my life with various A Crown of Candy fanmerch to lure Dimension 20 fans to me 😋😍

holy shit. sam these are so so cool where do all proceeds go??? and how much longer will leftover sales be open??

Folk Tales Quilt (1984) Designed and executed by Linda Straw English, born 1939, England, Leicester

Hello! I’m assuming that you’re talking about this post, but let me know if you weren’t talking about gay propaganda!

The thing about Top Gun 1986 is that it was both successful at increasing naval recruitment rates (moderately; an 8% bump) and is also widely recognized as an iconic piece of gay cinema. These things are in opposition to each other; queer readings of Top Gun 1986 are generally subversive in the context of the film’s intent (though obviously Tony Scott himself knew what was up, as did certain cast members, like Kilmer and Rossovich.) Studio executives and producers like Jerry Bruckheimer—who worked on both films, were a different story:

Top Gun 1986 was a movie filmed specifically and uncomplicatedly to make men and the navy in general look heterosexy for an audience, which of course ended up meaning that it was extremely homoerotic. The thing is that a lot of the homoeroticism in TG1986 falls under a category we can refer to as the "homoerotic male gaze;" basically, when men are presented to the camera as erotic objects, it subverts the general binary expectations we've developed regarding the male gaze in cinema, something that's more common in some ways today, but was somewhat new in the 80s. It's the difference between men in film whose erotic power lies in the relationships he has with women and men whose erotic power lies in their ability to seduce the audience, basically. In TG1986 there are very few women, every major character is within the same cohort, and there's very little plot; there aren't any significant emotional relationships except those between male peers. Combined with the aesthetic sensibilities of a director whose career had been mostly advertisement work and a script that was not originally written with a single heterosexual love scene (Charlie and Mav's was added in reshoots), it's a powder keg of homoerotic tension with no vent (excuse my mixed metaphors). It's the perfect storm of moviemaking that's desperately and unmistakably erotic and intensely misogynistic, rendering it joyfully and obliviously gay.

ALL THIS TO SAY that where Top Gun 1986 was riding a wave of new action cinema and military fervor in an era where being gay was illegal, Top Gun Maverick is operating in a wildly different industry. Gay audiences are a marketing demographic, and appearing socially progressive—while retaining plausible deniability—is a recruitment tool. TGM isn't a meandering feature length advertisement for the military; it's a blockbuster legacy sequel to one of the most influential films of the 80s and has a standard structure, essentially a heist film. No part of TGM is unaware of the cultural and cinematic legacy of TG1986! It's the most intensely self aware and nostalgic sequel I've seen in ages, and it's also many times more sanitized than its predecessor. There's no unaware homoeroticism (there's also just very little eroticism, homo or otherwise.)

When Ice and Mav have their heart to heart, they end it with a pointed reference to their first interaction ("You figured it out yet? Who's the best pilot." || "Who's the better pilot; you or me?") It's a touching moment! It's also right after Ice speaking fondly about the way he's personally pardoned Maverick's military transgressions over and over for more than two decades ("That's why I fought for you. That's why you're still here.") It's deliberate! Even just as a display of friendship, it's a bit horrifying. With the added weight of its cultural context as an exchange between guys who were ass out doing muscle poses while trading charged insults and biting (?) at each other in the first movie, it's nothing less than weaponized yaoi. (Note also that Kilmer is deeply aware of his character's cultural footprint, even referring to him as the first gay character he'd played on screen.) I'm being facetious here, obviously, but there's genuinely no way to bring Ice and Mav back together as characters without subtextually acknowledging that they've been widely seen as symbols of homoerotic cinema for decades. They also sort of close out the duality of acceptable male homoeroticism onscreen by embracing in the face of both victory (first movie) and death (second), the two circumstances under which men are allowed to hold each other. Ultimately, their conversation is in service of the mission and the wider themes of the film, both things the first movie didn't really have. Interactions in film always carry intent, and this one was manyfold. It just also so happens that they're carrying history as well as that intent, and that history eases the delivery of what could be seen as nepotism and corruption—it becomes sweet rather than troubling when Mav says that "the only reason I’m here is you."

I'd be remiss if I didn't mention Hangman and Rooster, but I also don't think there's much to say. They're sort of just like if Ice and Mav never entered a locker room together. It's not even queerbaiting, it's just scraps of male affection that are amplified by the movie's utter lack of sexuality. I'm not against a movie that's not sexual. TGM introduced a familial relationship that drives the emotional core of the film really well, and that's fine! It's just that there's nothing subversive about taking these two characters and interpreting a side of them that's not even vaguely alluded to in the film. Sex can't be separated from Top Gun 1986, so readings of it as a gay movie happen within the reality of the text itself. That's just not the case with its sequel; there's no heterosexuality to subvert, because there's no sexuality to begin with. The closest we get is the beach scene, which is a heartwarming scene about teamwork and also the power of sun-kissed oiled up abs. That's fine! It works well! It's just not shot in the same way as the volleyball scene, which director Tony Scott himself said he approached as soft porn. I'm not saying that scenes in movies should be shot like soft porn. I'm just stating the facts. Queer readings of Hangman and Rooster are purely additive, and they're perfectly acceptable. Nobody is presenting them to the audience as sex symbols. The author doesn't have to die, because the author's long since vacated the premises. I'll also say explicitly that the lack of textual sexuality also makes any queer interpretation less inflammatory, because the implication that a film has accidentally implied gay sex in it is much more controversial than accidentally implied gay billiards.

Talking about the imperialism in TGM would be either a much longer or much shorter post. It would be like talking about the flour in bread. There's a lot to talk about but it might be a little obvious and/or boring, so unless you've got something transcendent, it might not be worth it. All I'll say, because this post is way too long already, is that the movie itself is deeply invested in justifying the necessity of the US military. It's also about grief, loss, and the godlike public image of Tom Cruise. Anything that furthers the agenda of the movie promotes the messages within it. It just so happens that Ice and Mav's closeness furthers that agenda, and doesn't subvert the intent of the film.

Hope this cleared some things up! I (clearly) love to talk about this stuff, so feel free to follow up!

goncharov <333

Top Secret! (1984)

the sun mourns in vain for the white-throated rail: a comic about disability and the unwanted able-bodied grief for past selves.

(click below for the image description!)

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