OK folks, here we go with the first of the full Time Out of Mind episodes. This one features Sir Arthur C. Clarke. It runs for about 25 minutes.
For those coming new to this, the series was first broadcast in 1979, following a UK Worldcon in Brighton at which a lot of footage was shot. These videos are digitized from VCR recordings kindly supplied by British fan, Arnold Aiken.
If all goes well (meaning that no one objects) I’ll post the other three later this week.
Here is a clip from episode 3 of Time Out of Mind, the 1979 BBC2 series about science fiction. It features Michael Moorcock, with a little bit of supportive nodding from M. John Harrison, complaining about what a bunch of conservative old fuddy-duddies the science fiction community is made up of.
The amusing thing from my point of view is that I was reading Moorcock and Harrison as an excited teenager, so I see them as an older generation. And yet I have already been consigned to the bin of “evil old white man”, so goodness only knows what they are now. Heck, Moorcock lives in Texas, which probably makes him an ur-conservative.
By the way, Fred Pohl is interviewed during the program, and is quite gracious about the whole thing.
Following up from yesterday’s clip of Sir Arthur, here’s a clip from episode 2 of Time Out of Mind, featuring John Brunner. In it Brunner explains why he has taken to writing near-future SF (books like Stand on Zanzibar, Shockwave Rider and The Sheep Look Up) instead of the space opera he was writing early in his career.
In another part of the show Brunner talks about Stand on Zanzibar and notes that in it he predicted a world population of 7 billion. We are now past that. The book is set in 2010, and we are past that too.
I’ve talked before about the BBC2 series, Time Out Of Mind, which was made in 1979 and featured several science fiction writers. I’m lucky enough to have digitized video recordings of the programmes (thank you, Arnold Akien!). The final episode, filmed at the 1979 Worldcon in Brighton, has been made available on YouTube and has not yet attracted the attention of any lawyers, so I’m thinking of doing the same with the rest.
While I’m getting the material uploaded, here is a teaser from the first episode in the series. It features Sir Arthur C. Clarke and in the clip he is holding a press conference in a hotel room. Look out for a young journalist there with his camera. You may recognize him, despite the fact that he’s not wearing his now-customary black clothing.
Update: Neil says it can’t be him because he wasn’t there. So know I want to know who it is, and why he has stolen Neil’s hair.
When I was on my way to Brighton last week I was made aware of a new trans-related film project that sounds very interesting and positive. Here’s the story behind it.
Jack (Jaakko Jaskari), a Finnish filmmaker, was in the Philippines where he met and fell in love with a local girl called Char (Charlese Saballe). But Char was no ordinary girl, she was a Chair of STRAP, a Philippine trans advocacy group. Jack and Char hope to move to Finland and get married, but they also want to share their story with the world in a short series of documentary films. Those will doubtless cover Char’s work in trans advocacy in the Philippines. And if the project goes well, they hope to make more films in other areas of trans advocacy.
Eventually they will be looking for people to contribute financially to the project, but right now they are looking for people who can join a team and devote time and effort to helping make the project happen. It’s not something I can do — I am way too busy, and Fox & Lewis said pretty much the same thing — but possibly some of you folks would be interested in helping out. You can learn more here.
And here’s a short video about the project featuring our hero and heroine.
The good folks at Shout Out Radio ran some more of my Trans Pride coverage on their show last night. Yesterday, in London, Fox & Lewis were at at Channel 4 for the launch of the Patchwork Project, a series of 25 films about trans people. They were kind enough to talk to be about the project last Saturday, and your can hear that interview here.
Here’s a short video that the guys put out as a trailer for the project. It includes a brief section with Nicole Gibson, the trans model whose interview I ran on Women’s Outlook on Wednesday.
The boys have also put up a brief video shot during Trans Pride. There’s a brief shot of my back at the beginning, but the rest of it is safely Cheryl-free.
Trans Pride has also been covered by The Latest, a Brighton-based community TV company. Their coverage is on YouTube and embedable so I can share it with you here. You may want to close your eyes for the first few seconds as there’s a brief section of the march in which I can be seen messing with a microphone. The horror is over after about 10 seconds.
The local ITV channel covered Trans Pride for their evening news broadcast. They’ve made the video available online, but sadly no embedable, so to watch it you’ll need to go here.
You’ll be relieved to hear that I’m not visible at any time during the film.
I’ve passed some of my audio over to Shout Out. There should be something very newsworthy on this Thursday’s show, and we’ll be doing some in depth coverage on Aug. 14th.
In 1992 the European Court of Human Rights declared that the ability to change gender markers on official documents was a right that all European citizens should enjoy. More than 20 years later, trans people in many countries still struggle to obtain that right. One of the EU countries with the worst records on trans rights is Ireland. Thankfully things are slowly beginning to change, and much of that is due to the hard work of Irish trans activists. Last week TV3, an Irish TV channel, aired a documentary about three trans people (one of them an American immigrant), made in collaboration with TENI (Transgender Equality Network Ireland). It is very good. There are apparently some restrictions on viewing it in North America, but people from most parts of the world should be able to view it at the TV3 website. Here’s hoping this program encourages the Irish government to finally bring their long-delayed gender recognition legislation before parliament.
In a statement made from a hidden volcano base in the South Pacific, the Secret Trans Cabal has denied that it purchased a controlling share in CNN in order to have Piers Morgan’s show on the TV channel axed.
At a press conference in New York the tearful Morgan (14) had alleged that wealthy trans activists, angry about his treatment of Janet Mock, had bought up shares in the media company and bullied the board of CNN into dropping his show with terrorist threats, including the possible use of girl cooties against male board members.
Morgan (who was born a boy and is rumored to have remained one) angrily denied suggestions that he did not have the balls to go up against the MSNBC show hosted by lesbian anchor, Rachel Maddow. “Whether or not I have undergone puberty has no bearing on my ability to do my job,†said Morgan after several minutes sucking on a baby’s dummy to compose himself. “My private life should be allowed to remain private. It’s not fair that I should be treated in the same way that I treat my guests.â€
Morgan also denied that his show had been cancelled because CNN was embarrassed by revelations that he had once been the editor of British tabloid newspaper. “I’m not ashamed of my past,†sobbed Morgan. “I did what I had to do because I needed the money. People have no idea how much lobster and bolly lunches cost these days. They should have more sympathy for oppressed minority groups such as me.â€
In a separate statement the Secret Trans Cabal also denied 17 counts of having Julie Bindel dis-invited from feminist conferences.
Last week you may have seen quite a lot of angry tweetage about Piers Morgan’s disrespectful ambushing of Janet Mock on his chat show. Morgan will doubtless claim that prurient sensationalism is the only way that trans issues can be covered in the media (because, ewwwwwww!, right?). Well he’s wrong, and here to prove the point is Marc Lamont Hill doing a magnificent job of getting the best out of his guest and educating his audience.
Do watch it all the way through. There’s a bit at the end that will cause Piers Morgan to blow his tiny little mind.
Oh, and to all those white trans activists in the States who are going after Janet and Laverne Cox, kindly STFU. Janet and Laverne are the best thing that has happened to trans advocacy in a long time. You’d think that we, of all people, could manage a little intersectionality, but there’s always someone more interested in their own position than getting the job done.
At this time of year people ask me to write year in review articles. One that I do regularly is for Aqueduct Press. Naturally the one I have done for them has something of a feminist emphasis. You can read it here.
Other such articles may appear over the next week or two.
Last night Channel 4 screened an archaeology documentary claiming to have found the true location of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. Although Greek sources say that the Gardens were in Babylon, and were built by Nebuchadnezzar, no trace of them has ever been found, either on the ground or in documents left by the very efficient Babylonian state bureaucracy.
The program suggests that the gardens were in fact elsewhere in the area covered by the historical Babylonian empire. Specifically they were at Nineveh, the ancient capital of Assyria, and they were built by Sennacherib, one of the greatest Assyrian kings. Evidence is provided in the form of an actual canal network built to supply water to the city, and a carving in the British Museum that appears to show an ornate garden. There is also a cuneiform inscription stating that Sennacherib built a large and ornate garden adjoining his palace.
As a Mesopotamian history geek, this is very exciting to me. But just as exciting is that once again we’ve got a highly publicized broadcast TV program fronted by a lady academic who appears well past the age at which women are usually chuckled off TV for not being pretty enough. So congratulations Stephanie Dalley on a great piece of historical detective work, and on overcoming British TV’s notorious age and gender biases.
Of course this is all to the greater glory of Ishtar, and one in the eye for the perfidious Babylonians. Huzzah!
UK readers should be able to watch the program here. Those of you in the rest of the world will probably find the video blocked, but there is a long article about the discovery in The Independent which contains a lot more scholarship than the TV producer felt comfortable with including. There is also a book, which I am definitely buying.
There was quite a bit of excited chatter online over the weekend about the various Doctor Who specials. Most of them are clearly Dramatic Presentations, but I noticed some confusion over An Adventure in Space and Time. It is very obviously a drama, but it isn’t actually science fiction (well, unless you count the brief appearance of … Spoilers! … sorry), it is just about science fiction.
So where does it belong? Well, there is precedent. In 1996 Apollo 13 received a nomination in BDP. That is also a dramatization of real events, and those real events an actual space mission, not a TV program about a time traveler. My view is that An Adventure in Space and Time can quite happily follow that example.
Of course in 1996 there was only one BDP category. We have an additional question to answer: which length? I’ve seen An Adventure in Space and Time advertised as 90 minutes, which is right on the borderline. When I recorded it, it came out as 88 minutes. Technically that would put it into Short Form, but it is well within the wiggle room allowed for a work to be nominated in either category. The Hugo Administrators will presumably move it into whichever category proves more popular with the voters.
Well, local TV anyway. Brighton, you see, has a local TV channel, and one of the programmes on it is QTube, an LGBT magazine. When I was at the Queer in Brighton conference in September they had a camera there and filmed some of the proceedings, including a short interview with me.
The show opens with a segment about Fox & Lewis’s My Genderation project, interviewing Fox and one of their subjects, Alice. That’s well worth watching. The material from the conference is on after that. You get a lot of views of the back of my head, and proof positive why I should only ever be allowed to do radio. All I can say is that I have watched it, and it didn’t damage the screen of my computer. However, if you wish to close your eyes while I am on I would blame you in the slightest.
My thanks to Torsten for doing the best he could with the subject matter to hand.
I’ve just seen another excellent piece of coverage of trans issues. It features both Laverne Cox and Janet Mock live in the studio, having an intelligent and respectful discussion with the presenter and two cis male guests. It is about half an hour long, but here it is if you want to watch. The topic under a discussion is the case of a prominent hip-hop DJ called Mister Cee who has resigned from his job after being filmed having sex with a prostitute who is genderqueer in some way. Because, apparently, while people in hip-hop can do all sorts of things involving violence, drugs, straight sex and so on, being involved with genderqueer folks is completely unacceptable and harmful to kids who might be listening.
There is one point I need to make about this discussion. I’m not trying to blame or call out Laverne & Janet here; I know how hard it is get get all of your points across in a live discussion, but it does need to be said for clarity. Mr. Cee has confessed to having a sexual attraction for men dressed as women. That’s OK. There are plenty of men who dress as women with whom he can have fun. We don’t know how the sex worker he contracted with identifies. That person has, probably wisely, declined to talk to the media. However, “man dressed as a woman” and “trans woman” are not equivalent identities. If someone has sex with a trans woman, and objectifies her as a “man dressed as a woman”, that’s abuse, because it violates her identity.
Laverne and Janet are absolutely spot on in saying that there needs to be space for men who attracted to trans women to be able to do so without shame. That space has to exist for men like Mr. Cee, for men who are attracted to people who are genderqueer, and for straight men who are attracted to trans women as women.
It is not just us, either. If a man dates a woman who is disabled, who is large-bodied, who is of a different ethnic group to him, or anyone who doesn’t conform to current cultural norms of “beauty”, he risks being accused of being a fetishist, because it is assumed that no “normal” man would be attracted to such a person. The world would be a much nicer and safer place if it was OK for men to be attracted to women, regardless of their background and appearance.
The other thing that struck me about this coverage, and the previous interview with Laverne that I linked to the other day, is how good the coverage of trans issues is in US media aimed at people of color. I can add that last week I exchanged a number of tweets with a reporter from Al Jazeera who was researching a program on trans issues. I haven’t been able to see it, but from the respectful way he interacted with me and other trans people online I have high hopes that it went well. In addition, of course, I was able to do a whole half hour on trans issues last week on Ujima, a radio station aimed at an Afro-Caribbean community in the UK.
In stark contrast, coverage of trans issues on mainstream TV and radio (by which I mean cis white people’s TV and radio) remains poor. Programs like My Transsexual Summer have done a lot of good raising awareness, but they still tend to be strongly voyeuristic. If that HuffPost show had been on the BBC it would have been deemed necessary to have some religious fundamentalist commentator on the show, and that person would have proceeded to insult Laverne and Janet in disgusting terms. Or if such a person was not available, the presenter would have had to mouth those insults himself as a “of course some people say…” comment. All of this would have been defended by appeal to the need for “balance”.
What is that tag line from Fox News again? Oh yes, “fair and balanced”.
There is no balance for trans people in most radio and TV. Indeed, it seems that there isn’t a single “light entertainment” program that can be made that doesn’t have to denigrate trans people at some point during its run. If we complain, we’ll be told that we have no sense of humor, and that because no cis folk complained the number of complaints was vanishingly small so clearly any offense was all in our minds.
And yet, as soon as serious news coverage is required, this need for “balance” turns up.
I’m guessing that the reason trans folk are getting such respectful treatment in media aimed at people of color (other than Laverne and Janet being totally awesome people) is that the folk running those media outlets have had the “balance” thing done to them, and know it for the hogwash it is.
Sometimes people from minority cultural groups deserve an opportunity to talk about themselves and their issues quietly and respectfully. It is not always necessary to have someone from the majority cultural group on with them to put them down.
Kevin has been telling me for a long time that the later series of Sailor Moon were extravagantly queer. I was impressed. Little did I know that he was under-selling them. If you want to know more, and what American television did to strip out all of the queer content, go here.
Last night’s episode of Shout Out is now available online. It includes Nathan and I talking about #TransDocFail, and a news report about a group of gay Doctor Who fans. That all starts around half way through, but there’s more mention of #TransDocFail and Julie Burchill earlier in the show. You can listen here. (If you come to this link more than a year after I posted it, you’ll need to scroll down to the January 17th episode.)
I could have done a lot better on the show. There were some key points I didn’t manage to get across. Practice. I need practice. But it is good to have these things out there.
Twitter has been full of sad tweets about Gerry Anderson. Neil Gaiman, somewhat less somberly, wondered if he’d be allowed to sing the Fireball XL5 theme at Amanda’s next gig. For those of you who don’t know what he means, here it is.
I do so love that song.
I’m very sad to hear that Gerry Anderson has passed away. The BBC announcement is here. In Gerry’s honor, I present a brief gallery of some of my childhood role models.
Doctor Venus
Atlanta Shore
Lady Penelope Creighton-Ward