Thax Douglas

Judy Garland raised vulnerability to an art form.

And she paid the price. Most people won't show their vulnerability in public because they are afraid they'll be destroyed by it, and Judy was destroyed. And anybody who can admit to themselves or others--in the fifties or today--that they are homosexual is opening the door to the endless stream of salesmen pushing self-doubt, torment, and the cold urge to return to the inorganic fighting with the burning will to live in the face of all obstacles.

We can't take our eyes off her during her TV appearances, especially her poorly watched 1964 series on CBS, as she constantly fights off these hot and cold demons as they pinch and pull at her face and limbs during each performance. Famously, it was Judy's funeral that sparked the Stonewall Riot in New York in 1969, initiating the gay contribution to the civil rights movement. Since she fought the good fight against these organic and inorganic demons every second of her life, she was the perfect Joan of Arc symbol for such a movement. And today she is still important as an example to a thinking homosexual who is assaulted by a monolithic queer-as-folk culture as much as by religious conservatism. There is a crazy human being inside of us who refuses to be categorized and won't be denied.

And if, as I fear, there will be a worldwide anti-homosexual holocaust or whatever the politically correct word is, what each of us will see on our mind's silver screen will be our inner Judy desperately seeking approval from and shuddering in disgust at the great mob or god outside of us that is persecuting us, and who we wish to melt into a great globe of love with, or maybe not.

Known for introducing rock bands with a personalized poem, Thax Douglas is also the author of the collection, "Tragic Faggot Syndrome."

(2004-06-23)

Also by Thax Douglas

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