The Pride and the Prejudice

Posted by Tanos on Sun 27 Aug 06, 11:39 PM

Tags: events, manchester

Yesterday, lili, popi and I went to watch the annual Pride Parade through the centre of Manchester. Every year it seems to get bigger and thousands of people turn out to see it. Afterwards we went to see "The Notorious Bettie Page". Both parade and film turned out to involve themes of the celebration of sexual minorities, and other people's attempts to suppress them.

The best aspect of the Pride Parade is that thousands of "ordinary" Manchester people and families go to watch it. As well as clubs and bars from the Village, and various voluntary organisations, there's also significant showings from the public services (this year led by fifty or so police officers of GMP's gay and lesbian assocation), and floats from a few enlightened banks and stores like Selfridges. That's the kind of "cross section of society" publicity which does a minority no end of good in front of the general public.

With it being commonplace to see gay and lesbian people on "Big Brother" etc, it feels like that's a battle that's pretty much been won.

And this year's opposition to the parade, in the form of a sorry turnout of six (count 'em!) National Front supporters being protected by a wall of twenty or so police, really just underlines that. If there is any threat, I don't think it comes from that direction now, and it's probably significant that their banners focussed on religious objections to homosexuality: with reference to sin, poster-paint flames of hell and the slogan "God made Adam and Eve" (ie "... not Adam and Steve" as religious nuts in the US apparently add.) That's where any risk is now.

Anyway, the NF were treated as a joke, showered with confetti, pouted at, told "yes, we're all going to hell: get over it!", and generally laughed at. lili's photograph sums it up, with two guys who were walking behind the Bears' float in front of the NF's "Adam and Eve" banner.

After the parade, we headed off to see the "Notorious Bettie Page" at the Cornerhouse Cinema. You can find plenty of reviews by following the film's link to IMDb, but we certainly enjoyed it and it provides a whistle-stop (91 mins) account of the 1950s "golden age" of bondage and fetish pornography, seen through it's most famous models' eyes. There's pointers to more information about Bettie Page in the Encyclopervia.

Some serious artistic license is taken though - in reality, the Englishman John Willie refused to work in Irving Klaw's New York studio, even though he's shown having an ongoing working relationship with Klaw. However, this condensation is really a benefit, since the contrast between the wideboy publisher Klaw (who's fundamentally vanilla but broadminded), and the Fetish/SM visionary Willie (who started off in Sydney, working up a mailing list which eventually allowed him to put together his groundbreaking "Bizarre" magazine in New York) is all the more striking.

As are the parallels between modern BDSM pornographers (like PD in New York) and people like John Willie: both use a new medium (the web or picture magazines), to bring together a circle of practicioners and models, and develop new ideas.

And both faced censorship and persecution from the government of the United States: in Klaw's case it was senate hearings and the attention of the US Postmaster General for sending material through the post. (Even Robert Kennedy joined in, as Attorney General, but we don't see that in the film); and in PD etc's case, it's the Bush administration with onerous record keeping requirements and sabre-rattling about obscenity prosecutions.

But we are still ahead - just - as you're able to read this, aren't you? And with visits to Torture Garden being discussed by the winner of Big Brother, maybe we're not that far behind the rest of the parade?

Edited Tue 30 Jun 09, 10:07 PM by Tanos