Meditations in an Emergency

And certainly, pace Mel, there‘s no theorizing about how the retarded (Gibson in Tim) prefigured his homoerotic buddying and leather resonance in Gallipoli and Mad Max, despite the possibility that any Hollywood or television representation of the mentally retarded is a strange transference of homosexuality. It’s a book with a chapter on Keanu Reeves, published more than two years after The Matrix was released, which, not referring to the film at all, can‘t consider that its enormous popularity and strong box-office draw occurred because it could deliver both of Keanu’s core fan groups -- those who like him with short hair and those who like him with long jet locks. No thought on the Keanu of The Last Time I Committed Suicide who, like Matt LeBlanc in many episodes of Friends, vies for the title of Bear Cub of the Year, transvaluing heft (years before Tony Soprano) in a period when most gay men‘s moral raison d’etre is to have a perfect six-pack, signifying being a viable participant in commodity culture, good health, and a deluded invulnerability (HIV negative).

I want the body, dear body, used as a site and non-site to express truths, the more unprovable the better. If you are actually masochistic enough to finish this book, you‘ll have no idea of the theoretical implications or truth of referring to someone, Keanu-like, as ”young, dumb and full of cum,“ but you will know the meaning of the second term, of which this is, sadly, the cumless example.#