Burn Hollywood Burn. Bauer. GScene magazine. September 2013

Burn Hollywood Burn


When asked about ‘Realism’ in the movies, the writer Dorothy Parker famously replied “The only ‘ism’ Hollywood believes in is ‘Plagiarism’”

Hiding all things Queer in Hollywood has gone on since the first moving images were recorded. By the time the 1933 Greta Garbo ‘Queen Christina’ movie about a lesbian monarch was released, there was anything but a whiff of dykery to be seen. This was even a full year before they would legally have to put the queer reins on with the hysterically titled 1934 ‘Legion of Decency’ code. Eventually, a plethora of other ‘issues’ were needed to mask Queer themes to keep them away from the ‘easily offended’. The problem became how to get around the ‘Homo problem’ and still maintain a high level of drama and persecution.

In the movie Crossfire, they turned all the queer-bashing and murder from the book into anti-Semitism. Same thing, apparently. Same with ‘The Lost Weekend’ when Ray Milland morphed from a man wrestling with his sexual identity, into that of a raging alcoholic - well, if the glove fits… Thank goodness we live in more evolved times.

Isn’t it great that we now have movies like ‘Milk’ and ‘Brokeback Mountain’ to finally weigh up those old queer scores? Isn’t it groovy that the mainstream has finally embraced Queer culture? And how swell it is when films like ‘Malcolm X’ fore-front issues of contemporary black identity and remind the world that the struggle is far from over. And that ‘Shindlers’ List’ is actually an eternal reminder of what happens when the hatred of a single race acquires a political platform?

I actually think that all these films should be part of an enforced global school curriculum to keep all the haters and revisionists at bay. Unless there is ever going to be a Gay Nation of Islam remake of Malcolm X, that is.

And I’m not saying that boardroom Hollywood is homophobic. Not xenophobic, sexist, racist, anti-Muslim either. But Hollywood has never been the pioneer of the underdog. The saying goes that there is no ‘Pink’ dollar’ in Hollywood, and no ‘Black’ dollar either. In Hollywood there is only THE dollar, and whoever walks in the door with it gets to stay. And when there is no money honey, there is no Hollywood selling someone’s idea of freedom. And so Hollywood falls.

Since the Internet has taken hold, Hollywood has become nothing more than a slow money grab - just take a look at the garbage it churns out today. The only bonus being that, since Hollywood no longer controls distribution, (hurrah to Netflix) other narratives are free to spread. Great for us, sad for the executives who now have to find someone else to fleece.

In the current post-capitalist period, Hollywood has even more to get it just ‘right’ - the right combination of sex, violence, ambiguity etc. so that they can get the maximum audience into the cinema seats. The real prize is getting an audience where grandpa takes grandson to the cinema – meaning that the product can be sold to everyone in between. But increasingly, if any films don’t fill these quadrants, i.e. have ‘minority subjects’ like Queers in them - then they just don’t get financed. Unless Matt Damon agrees to star, that is. This is why there’s so much shite at your local Multiplex and why Lucas and Spielberg have been freaking out stating that; if a few more $200 million movies fold, then it’ll be the end of $200 million dollar movies. Bring it on, I say.

But it’s not only about the Dorothy Parker plagiarism issues and stealing of ideas - it’s also the ‘normalizing’ of those ideas where the damage really lies. Let’s face it if Hollywood could get away with turning Nelson Mandela white, they’d book Leonardo DiCaprio in advance.

Even in its demise, Hollywood is still viewed as being all about good ideas and a platform for the people whose voices have been suppressed. Realistically any real trace of this went away with the blacklist. And I’m not being hypothetical here.  In addition, a colleagues serialized novel, ‘The man who,’ has been withdrawn from this magazine for ongoing legal reasons. This ‘gay’ story written ten years ago (and lifted five years later) has become the latest chapter of heterosexualised Hollywood. Yes, the gay sperm donor and all the complications surrounding him all those years ago, has now become not only straight but indeed anal – if only to get more bums on seats. (Make your own decision whether you prefer the ‘homosexual’ book or the ‘heterosexual’ film later this year). But either way thank god it will be one of the last Hollywood movies you’ll probably ever see. Besides the slated remake of ‘Lassie’ which goes into production next year, that is.

When I say that Hollywood has lost control of their distribution model to the internet, read it as everyone else’s ‘artistic freedom’. It means any of us can make a movie that has a chance of becoming a hit. And there are enough sassy, queer, off-Hollywood films in production - Michael Urie’s ‘Such Good People’ springs to mind - to keep us all going. So, as the studios struggle to keep up the heterosexual front end, the queers are doing what we know best – using the back door. For those at the top, it’s well and truly over because there’s finally a drive from the ‘bottom up’ and sometimes, as we all know, that hurts like hell. So, let’s welcome the new underdog movies that are surfacing, offering us all a different ‘Queer.’

To read the magazine version click the link below:

BURN HOLLYWOOD BURN. BAUER. GSCENE MAGAZINE. SEPTEMBER 2013

Queer Surveillance. Bauer. GScene Magazine. August 2013

Queer Surveillance.


So the truth is finally out - we’re all being watched. Some time ago I covered online identities including shagsites like Grindr, but the very notion of this most recent internet profiling is making me feel a bit queezy. Either way, I can’t help thinking that all this Ed Snowden stuff is really just the tip of the slippery iceberg.

All this surveillance makes me wonder how they are ever going to get us to behave ourselves. We’re all free and well out of our closets and we all know our rights. And we’re not doing anything illegal, are we? What we do in bed is (now) our own business as long as it doesn’t constitute any form of involuntary force over another. Correct? And we can also perve away across the internet - because we see this as free information- and delude ourselves that we are still operating within the law.  Even if we don’t know what the law is.

Most people I talk to about my concerns tell me they have nothing to hide, ‘Whoever they are, they can’t spy on everything we get up to online. Can they?’

There are also those of us who say ‘they can look at whatever they want – I’m not hiding anything or breaking any laws…’ This is where we come unstuck.

It was Michel Foucault who came up with the idea of surveillance which he based on old fashioned prisons called Panopticons. In the centre of these prisons was an observation tower with slit windows where the guards would sit. In a circle around these were the prison cells with railings on both sides so the guards could see through each cell at every prisoner. But here was the trick - the prisoners couldn’t tell if they were being observed or not because they couldn’t see through the slits in the tower at the guards. What the prisoners did, because they didn’t know if they were being watched, was regulate their own behavior. In other words, they started to ‘behave’ themselves.

This meant the job was done – and cheaply too because sometimes the central turrets had no guards inside but the prisoners didn’t know that and so they behaved themselves.

This is becoming the same way with the internet but they can’t afford to police us anymore so they profile us instead – building up a contrived image of who we are via every activity we make on the internet, text, phone, Facebook, Grindr…

So do we have to ‘Behave’ ourselves because they may be looking? It’s actually gone beyond that. We have to regulate our behavior now because Ed Snowden informed us that they can go back at any point and put together a case based on hearsay from our own digital history. And we will not be able to defend this because they will carry all the so-called ‘evidence’.

Whenever you complain about a politician shafting the economy or Murdoch using wealth to cover everything up, just remember that information is also designed to make you lose all faith in any system of order. So that if it were all to break down, in that good old colonial way, the powers that be will stomp in with a new moral treaty in hand in order to ‘protect’ us from ourselves. 

Profiling is not only about ‘Targeting’ advertising at you via your online searches. They now know your all your sexual peccadillos by what porn you view – even how long it take for you to orgasm as a result - Is that personal enough for you?

As for ‘having nothing to hide’, your personal information may seem innocuous now, but think about some idiot invested with power at GCHQ compiling their tailored choice of profile based on carefully selected ‘real events’ from your online life. What about that time you and a mate stumbled on the ‘How to make a nail bomb’ website when you were drunk or having a disagreement. Or that time when you typed ‘Sexy boys’ into Google search when you really should have tapped in ‘Sexy men’.

All of this - as well as what you bought at the Tesco Metro yesterday - and your most recent STD information, is currently on a chip the size of your little toenail at a storage facility in Fuckhampton, Pennsylvania.  And it’s not what you are doing now in your temporarily emancipated lives but what can be held against you from your digital past if someone decides you’ve suddenly stepped out of line. And they wont be favorable either. Even if you believe yourself to have a moral compass, they can shift the polarity of your identity to make you appear to be Josef Fritzl if they so desire.

What will happen is that we will enter a closet far colder than the one we’ve just broken out of. Of course we’ll all be equal - but we’ll all be stuck in there together.

Relax - none of this is actually real. It’s only a profile of you that does not exist yet and will only ever really be a fragmented case in a virtual court of law. 

Click on link below for published version:

Queer surveillance. Bauer. Gscene Magazine.August 2013

The New Neo Nazis. Charlie Bauer PhD. GScene magazine. July 2013

The New Neo Nazis.


Ok, I admit it. I have more than one problem with the English Defense league.

One is that they’re a rebranding of the old tired racist groups that pop up now and again throughout time under another moniker. But these days, things are taking a more dangerous turn. You also know that I’ve bleated on for some time about thinly veiled homophobia and political issues on same sex marriage. But boy, have I been busy recently.  

You probably also know that fundamentally I’m against any sort of ‘branded’ imagining of who the gayers are - particularly the 2.2. children / Prius driving version, which are nearly always untrue. At least they are with the prickly scumbags I hang around with. Apart from the marketing and money opportunities attached to this imagery, it’s also there because the straight world needs a normalized image to mask the ‘ikky’ things we do to each other in bed. This sanitized version of what we apparently are, has become known as Homo-normativity - the presentation of some marketing idiots version of the new homo version of some far-off domestic life.

It’s been sold to heterosexual people for decades and I’ve yet to meet anyone who has stemmed, emotionally intact, from this polished, faux happy model. The family snapshots in my own head never resemble a Littlewoods catalogue. We have to admit that we all know it’s a fallacy and there is no 100% happy-ever-after version of domesticity in any form, gay, straight, trans, inter, monogo,

We also have to remind ourselves that the global, same-sex marriage debate is not just about this. Any legislation in place at the moment is about freedom and the human right to legally chose whichever partner you want. Of course, when it’s all finally legal THEN you will have the ability to go Ikea mad, buy cars together and have joint mortgages and the like. You can even invite same-sex married couples around for dinner and exclude the sad, singleton ex-friends you no longer have anything in common with. You’ll be able to have ‘couples’ drinks parties. Then, when you finally have children, by whatever means, you can narrow your social scene down to just the other same-sex children owners and rant about how anyone who has no children has no idea how hard life is. And when one of the couples split up and someone becomes a single parent, you can then cross them off the social calendar because they have nothing left to offer than their miserable daily stories of their struggle to bring up a child single-handed. Yes, you too will have these and more choices to live a ‘normal’ life. Same sex marriage is a big ‘up’ for the global normal.

But this homoginisation (sic, lol, rofl with a DILF) has a dangerous undercurrent.

On the global dawning of same-sex marriage becoming legal, the EDL proudly state that they now also have gay members. They also state that they now have black members too. Who are they against? Hang on a minute – I was crap at subtraction at school, but it doesn’t take a statistician to see what’s going on here…

I was unfortunate to have lived through the rein of terror by the predecessor or the EDL – The National Front. Back then we joined The Anti-Nazi league and had rallies and huge festivals where The Clash sometimes played. The NF was similar to the EDL in that they were very disorganized and fragmented and crush them we did. But at least with the National Front, you knew where you stood. They were against everyone who was not white and heterosexual. The unspoken requirement of a low IQ was an (obviously unwritten) necessity. Even the police were deemed to have racist elements in those dark times - elements that were eventually weeded out in the post Stephen Lawrence ‘institutional racism’ scandal. We’re not perfect today, but as a society we’re in a better place than those god-awful days, and nobody can use the strong-arm tactics of the NF (seemingly with the law on their side), anymore. This was progression.

Nowadays, the Global uber-right has to suppress their desire to stamp on peoples heads and approach everything in a very different and more inclusive manner. Since the Macpherson report (Stephen Lawrence) and the soon to be Gay marriage rulings, they now need to appeal to the very people they once oppressed and publically tortured. They need to caress the darker side of their own pigeon-holing of the gay and black communities to give the impression of inclusive support of a hateful end.

Inclusivity within the gay community, after the fight for same sex marriage, could begin to fracture as the laws are passed and everyone settles down into their newly emancipated lives. Then, our minority status will no longer be challenged and if we’re not careful, we’ll become so ‘normalized’ that we’ll forget what an equality fight actually is - and the EDL take hold and demonise the only minority left on their hit-list. And if you don’t know who that is by now, you’re already halfway into believing their poison rhetoric and already becoming ‘Normal’.

Click the link below for the published version:
The new neo nazis

Parlez-vous Gay? Bauer. Gscene magazine. June 2013

Parlez-vous Gay?

There’s a ‘Les Mis’-type revolutionary warmth that occasionally blows across the channel, reminding us that we are still a constitutional monarchy and not a republic like our French neighbors. Images of students and idealistic youths waving banners from rooftops have always reminded us of the continental power of idealism. And even when that idealism shifts into the occasional fracas, we are reminded of how far the ‘youths’ will go on the elders’ behalf, in order to instigate some long overdue changes. 

Images of fresh-faced youths have been used as a marketing tool ever since the School of Athens to remind us of latent power. The Nazis’ blond haired blue-eyed, tight chested, bulging thighed model was a perfect and beautiful mirror to the monstrous, ugly, paunched, middle aged instigators of the Third Reich that came in the form of Hitler and pal Joey Goebbels. After all, everybody knows a great diversion tactic. 

But that vital, youthful face is always open to be exploited for evil means. Universally they represent ‘hope’ - they’re the ones who have more time to see out the so-called ideals of their elders. Except that they never do. The Hippies didn’t and neither did the Hitler Youth (except for that turncoat last Pope). And in the same way, neither has the French organisation La Manif Pour Tous (Demonstration For All), the most recent youth cattle-prodding exercise by the French right- wing, who are against same-sex marriage. Not gays. Just same-sex marriage. 

What we are seeing this time around is a softer, more wholesome Kristallnacht. A peaceful, apparently non-political gust of righteousness sweeping through the French political landscape. But hang on a minute - I'm not suggesting for one moment that France would ever be capable of separatism and genocide - it's a western developed nation for lords sake. It's bound by the Geneva Convention, no less.


“La Manif Pour Tous (the most recent youth cattle-prodding exercise by the French right wing)... is against same-sex marriage. Not gays. Just same-sex marriage” 

Modern linguistics were also developed in France, that is, the Philosophy of Language, your meaning, or someone else’s control behind the words. Think of ‘nationalism’ as being proud of your country and ‘socialism’, as a fairness for all against rampant capitalism. Put them together and what do you have? ‘National socialism’ – socialism for the good to the nation? No, because the term national socialism was piggybacked by ‘Nazism’ – a term that defies its very description. These inversions are important because they trick people into believing something different, usually the opposite. 

It’s that subtle reversal, or the spaces in-between the language, that’s the trick. Now think of the American Pro Life movement, which is a movement against a woman’s right to choose abortion. The natural opposite, if you are for a woman’s right, turns you into something altogether different. That’s right – you’re Anti Life. So, whoever gets there first claims the term and controls the meaning.

Let’s take a look at the language that this French organisation uses. 

The Demonstration For All is not for all. By the same token, any direct action against this provocative group will be seen as ‘non-family loving’, violent opponents will be seen as the ‘queer thugs’. They also state that they are a ‘spontaneous’ movement yet are ‘entrenched deeply in the republic’. That they are ‘non combative.’ It’s a ‘non-partisan’ and ‘non-denominational’, ‘deeply peaceful’ movement which is vigorously opposed to homophobia. Excuse me? I didn’t quite get that?
They are also for ‘sustainable humanity’ (they mean ‘natural’ child birthing methods here) which therefore turns homos against ‘sustainable’ humanity. Hang on, I’m beginning to sound like a Gestapo officer and I haven’t even left Café Nero... 

Here’s a peek at their manifesto:
Principle 1: Serve a clear purpose. Marriage equality and same-sex parenting is muddy and these parents are confused – they don’t understand the ‘love’ part. Kids of different sex couples also become confused because they don’t know what the ‘love’ thing is either.
2: To have an objective of sending ‘clear and strong’ messages to the elected and the citizens. These messages express the refusal to accept marriages of persons of the same-sex, adoption for all and the implementation of the theory of ‘gender’. Just to recap here – they are supposed to be opposed to homophobia and queer baiting of any form.
3: Respect the individual. Never endangering the lives of others, to observe a great respect for political opponents (whether reciprocal or not) and to distinguish people from their functions and mandates. Sounds good to me.
4: Respect the Common Good (ie gay parents are disrespecting the ‘common good’)
5: Keep popular support (As opposed to any gay ‘underground’ becoming ‘mainstream’)
6: The Demonstration For All is a popular and spontaneous movement. Through this opposition to marriage for all, this movement is a catalyst for the expression of the French people. The actions cannot impede or block the French people. (Not French gay people, however) They must also gather as much support as possible. (Does this all sound dodgy yet?)
So far there are cells of this movement in Australia, French Guyana, French speaking New Caledonia and London. 

Maybe drop them a line and show your support of the good, natural and righteous people of the world. Let them know who the real libertarians are. You decide who you think is operating on a premise of equality and fairness, and please let them know. I’m sure they’d love to hear because - as they list on their website, these are their sole ‘virtues’. Just think of the opposite of that statement and you become, by definition, non-virtuous without even leaving the sofa.

Parlez-vous gay? Gscene article. June 2013

The real cost of walking down the gay aisle

"Taboo busting" (?) review in Guru Magazine.

Review of the Brighton Science Festival.

Is film finally fucked? Beige Magazine article. April 2013.

Is film finally fucked? Beige Magazine article. April 2013.

Is film, finally fucked?