THOUGHTS ON THE QUEEREST SXSW EVER And that distinction is not unintentional. I mean capital “Q” Queer. Look, any inclusionary thrust by an institution like SXSW toward tossing more letters in the alphabet soup is lauded by us, but we’re not talking simply LGBT, here. We mean queeeeeeeer. How so? Well, all that New Orleans bounce bidness, for instance. The bottom line (pun intended) act of bounce itself – you know, all that big booty up in your face, shakin’ like a pepper shaker – is so informed by hyper-(mostly hetero)sexual power dynamics. And to experience it in the context of a gorgeous gigantor drag diva like Katey Red, or turned on its head with high art, balletic poetry-in-motion of Vockah Redu & Cru, or smacked upside the jawline with the hot femme furor of Ms. Tee, etc., is to see the major queering of a cultural convention (namely male-overlorded rap, but we’ll own that pun, too). Okay, so aside from my bounce obsession, yet also somewhat on the queer tip, I’ve got to hat-tip my new buds Mark & Jill Landsman, L.A. film director (SXSW Lone Star States Award winner Thunder Soul) and his wife, doctor of Chinese medicine, respectively, with whom I had some very interesting and terrifically open-hearted convos regarding “coming out straight.” Interesting and very queer. Queer, indeed.
This article appears in March 26 • 2010.