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ARTS |
CULTURE |
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Mission Newsletter |
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VAGINAL CREME DAVIS vaginaldavis.com We extend our thanks to Vaginal Davis and to Aliza Schvarts and Prof. José Muñoz of the Tisch Dept. of Performance Studies for their assistance in the making of this event and our recording. Audio recordings
by Steven Koenig. It was that odd time for gay kids, caught between disco and punk. One never imagined that it would become a staple of weddings and bar mitzvahs, nor that punk style would be appropriated for sale at Macy's and Bloomingdale's, as Vaginal Davis alludes to in the final Q&A. Pocketed between the then-plentiful independent record stores in the East Village were small bookshops where one could get publications anarchist and or queer, punk and or de mode. Homozines such as Larry-Bob's Holy Titclamps! (now online at holytitclamps.com) featured interviews with queer writers and musical groups such as Pansy Division, and, as important, listings of other homocore magazines and DIY artifacts and organizations. It was there where I first discovered an ad for a series of VHS tapes by Vaginal Creme Davis, in her guise as Fertile Latoyah Jackson, and tucked my hidden dollar bills in an envelop and off it went to L.A. I loved her thumb-in-your-face attitude and absolute camp tackiness. Sloppy though much of it was, both in cam quality and content (although no worse than most of the now-standard online post-your-own videos, making use of what she calls "availablism," the do-it-yourself aesthetic), it was ours and it was out there. To this day I cherish the fierce cover photo from Thing magazine hanging on my wall, her face snarling and beautiful and laughing and not.
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* * WHAT, EXACTLY, IS THE BLACK FREAK? Berlin vs. LA, healthcare and eleventuplets, Black queer birthing, burgeoning blaxploitation and punk scene, Romantic squalor, trespass cinema scene, anti-corporate culture, and what is Black freakiness?
THE WHITE TO BE ANGRY Snow queens, dinge queens, seducing racist police officers, Moesha, Los Angeles race riots, Michael Jackson, repeat after me: Mandingo.
Dino De Laurentiis, freedom from slavery via sex work, the dangerous and the desirable, the local yokel slave market, Perry King, Rudy Ray Moore, and butt babies.
Freaks and Snoop Dogg, Rudy Ray Moore's Dolomite, D. W. Griffith's Birth Of A Nation, mutual influences of Black, feminist and gay cultures, namesake Angela Davis, Huey Newton, and the whimsy of the freak.
The religious freak, the Carter Family and Ethel Waters, and the itinerant preacherwoman the Right Reverend Saint Theresa Tate.
Cinema, Bruce LaBruce, NYU kids, Orifice Descending, girl male prostitutes, kai kai, barricuda femme tops and buttery butch bottoms, German penises, Pee On Me, The Dominettes, burlesque boys, and Vaginal Davis sings.
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