Torquere (E-Journal - York University)

Savoy, Eric

English

Queer Apocalypse: Attila Richard Lukacs at the End

Johnston, Dawn

Communicating Queerness in the Communications Classroom

Gallant, Chanelle

Gillis, Loralee

Pussies Bite Back

Ellis, Jim

Readers wishing to review books should consult the list of Books Re-
ceived on the torquere website (http://www.arts.ualberta.ca/-torquere), 
and contact the Editor, John L. Plews, atjplews@ucalgary.ca 
Les lecteurs/lectrices interesse(e)s a recenser un ou plusieurs ouvrages 
sont prie( e )s de consulter la liste de Li vres re9us disponible sur le site de 
torquere (http://www.arts.ualberta.ca/-torquere), et de communiquer avec 
John L. Plews, Directeur, a l'adresse suivante: jplews@ucalgary.ca 
Thomas Waugh. The Fruit Machine: Twenty Years ofWritings 
on Queer Cinema. Durham and London: Duke University 
Press, 2000. xii + 312 pp. ISBN 
JIM ELLIS (University of Calgary) 
0 ne consequence of the distance the gay and lesbian community has traveled in the past thirty or forty years can be seen in the exaggerated historical divides between its 
various generations. This is to be expected in a movement that 
underwent frequent self-examination and self-invention, demanding 
(at times fairly harshly) that its adherents adjust themselves to the 
latest theoretical and political developments or be left behind by 
history. The most obvious instance of this call for self-invention was 
the shift from "gay and lesbian" to "queer," which, whatever else 
was at stake, was in part fueled by a desire to be free from a difficult 
and painful history. The result, of course, was a kind of anxious 
forgetting. 
Thomas Waugh's The Fruit Machine: Twenty Years ofWritings 
on Queer Cinema offers both evidence of this generational amnesia 
torquere: Journal of the Canadian Lesbian and Gay Studies Association I 
Revue de La Societe canadienne des etudes lesbiennes et gaies 
Vol. 3 (2001) © CLGSA I SCELG 
Book Reviews/Comptes rendus I 169 
(he often notes how his students simply don't understand what is at 
stake in films that were vital ten or twenty years earlier) and a series 
of writings that may help to overcome it. The book reproduces articles 
written by Waugh from 1977 to 1997 for a number of venues: the 
leftist film journal Jump Cut, the revolutionary Toronto gay and 
lesbian newspaper The Body Politic, various other gay and lesbian 
community publications, academic conferences and essay collections 
on queer cinema. What is probably most interesting and most valuable 
about these pieces is that they are not a retrospective look at key 
developments in the gay and lesbian movement, or the cinema that 
accompanied it, although Waugh does provide commentary at the 
beginning of each piece, often reflecting on how his views have 
changed. What we are offered instead is the perspective of someone 
who was vitally engaged in the movement, giving us a response to 
these films at the moment of their emergence. How did the first 
audiences react to the revolutionary documentary Word is Out? What 
did they see in it that they had never seen before? What was it like to 
watch Derek Jarman's Sebastiane with 700 gay men on opening night 
in Montreal in 1978, before anyone knew who Derek Jarman was? 
Younger readers are reminded that the world was not always thus, 
through essays that give us a privileged view on what it was like to 
be gay in the academy, or in a leftist film journal, or at a film festival 
in the 1970s and 80s. Equally importantly, we are reminded of 
important gay and lesbian films that most of us have forgotten, or 
never heard of in the first place. 
In the foreword to the volume, filmmaker John Greyson writes 
that reading these reviews makes him "embarrassingly nostalgic" 
(x) for the political engagement they display. Most readers are likely 
to have that nostalgia counterbalanced with a certain relief to be past 
the particular kind of ideological rigor that the movement once 
demanded. Waugh himself comments humorously on the "positive 
image Stalinism" ( 4) displayed in the early pieces, a mode of criticism 
that is understandable given Waugh's own leftist beliefs, and the 
venues in which he was publishing. The reviews are thus marked by 
a willingness, indeed eagerness, to call to task critics or filmmakers, 
gay or straight, friend or foe, on their various shortcomings. Most 
often these criticisms still seem justified (and occasionally show us 
how little has changed): leftist critics are chastised for their 
unconscious homophobia, Montgomery Clift's biographers for 
170 I Ellis 
reproducing stereotypes of the tragic gay artist, gay film makers for 
blithely reproducing middle-class values and ignoring lesbians and 
other oppressed groups. At other times the "ideological checklists 
that constituted so much of the film criticism of the day" (259) make 
the complaints now seem startlingly beside the point, as when he 
castigates fictional features, such as Ron Peck and Paul Hallam's 
film Nighthawks, for failing to address all of the items on the 
oppression list. Either way, the commentary is instructive. 
What now can be seen to have been missing in much of this era's 
criticism (and the comparison to socialist realism is telling) is a 
concern for aesthetics and especially for the politics of aesthetics. 
Remembering both the publication venues and the tenor of the times, 
this is not to be wondered at, but it does perhaps account for the 
celebration of directors and films that would rapidly fade into 
obscurity, and the inability to appreciate the early work of directors 
who would go on to greatness, such as Jarman or Almodovar. 
Hindsight is, of course, 20/20, and there are myriad reasons why 
films disappear or directors stop working (and bad films, it has to be 
said, can often begin to look good in the light of later work). 
Nonetheless what one misses in here, and what one is grateful that 
these reviews paved the way for, is criticism that can be more relaxed 
and more complex in its assessment of a particular film's merits, 
without at the same time losing sight of the larger political issues. 
We can certainly see those aesthetic concerns lurking in the 
background of many of these pieces, but given the brevity of the 
review genre, we are most often given narrative summaries and an 
indication of how well the film satisfies the particular representational 
demands of the moment. Nonetheless, it might have been 
illuminating, in either the introduction or an afterword, for Waugh to 
have offered to us a reflection on his own aesthetic sensibilities, and 
how they shaped or were shaped by his politics. Or, to take this in a 
slightly different direction, to have looked at how the political 
demands of the times shaped the aesthetics of these filmmakers. 
In light of the particular critical history on display here, it is no 
surprise that the latter-day Waugh seems most comfortable talking 
about censorship and the ethics of representation, and dealing with 
genres that have a certain claim on the real: photography, 
documentary, and pornography. The final essays i~ the volume take 
up these issues at length, discussing the history and the particular 
Book Reviews/Comptes rendus I 171 
innovations of gay and lesbian documentary, and detailing the long 
and difficult struggle to publish his illustrated history of homoerotic 
imagery, Hard to Imagine. As with the earlier pieces, these essays 
display a passionate engagement that is fortunately matched with a 
sense of humour. There is much to be grateful for in this volume, not 
just for its documentation of the battles that have been fought and the 
ones that remain, but for the revolutionary energy that produced these 
writings (and their subjects) in the first place. 
bill bissett. b leev abul char ak trs. Vancouver: Talonbooks, 2000.144pp. 
$16.95(Cdn) ISBN 0-88922-433-1 
Mark Cochrane. Change Room. Vancouver: Talonbooks, 2000. 144pp. 
$15.95(Cdn) ISBN 0-88922-432-3 
Daphne Marlatt. This Tremor Love Is. Vancouver: Talonbooks, 2001. 
112pp. $15.95(Cdn) ISBN 0-88922-450-1 
Erin Moure. Pillage Laud. Toronto: Moveable Type, 1999. 99pp. 
$25(Cdn) ISBN 0-9684908-0-8 
Erin Moure. Sheep's Vigil by a Fervent Person. Toronto: Anansi, 2001. 
131pp. $16.95(Cdn) ISBN 0-88784-660-2 
nathalie stephens. Somewhere Running. Vancouver: Advance Editions, 
2000. 96pp. $13.95(Cdn) ISBN 1-55152-089-3 
Rachel Zolf. Her absence, this wanderer. Ottawa: BuschekBooks, 1999. 
71pp. $14.95(Cdn) ISBN 0-9699904-8-0 
Charles Watts and Edward Byrne, eds. The Recovery of the Public World: 
Essays on Poetics in Honour of Robin Blaser. Vancouver: Talonbooks, 
1999. 464pp. $35(Cdn) ISBN 0-88922-388-2 
JoHN C. STOUT (McMaster University) 
C on temporary poetry- in Canada and elsewhere- affords the most interesting site for doing, and for studying, experimental writing. Among the many highly talented and original poets 
producing experimental work in this country, queer poets have made 
an especially outstanding contribution. In this review I want to focus . 
on seven recent books of poetry by queer writers, along with a volume 
of critical essays on radical poetics in honour of Robin Blaser. These 
eight texts- all first-rate, in my opinion- demonstrate the range and 
vitality of these new poetries. 


Thomas Waugh. The Fruit Machine: Twenty Years of Writings on Queer Cinema

190 I Johnston 
contains pieces on cinema and in one instance works on canvas. Les 
Wright's discussion of German gay coming-out film in the context 
of New German Cinema traces the development of this genre from 
"the primitive [von Praunheim], the classical [Fassbinder], the 
revisionist [Ripploh] and the parodic [Wortman]" (321). His line of 
argument is carefully reflected, clearly presented, and ultimately 
persuasive. Equally insightful and cogent is James W. Jones's 
discussion of Ripploh's Taxi zum Klo, in which he shows how the 
technique of "intercutting" is used to undermine the stereotypes 
associated with gay sexuality. Ute Lischke-McNab sees the beginning 
of a new acumen in German cinema and cinema attendance with 
Sonke Wortmann's Maybe ... Maybe Not. She ascribes this film's 
novelty and success to its comedic character, its nostalgic revival of 
'swing' music from the Weimar period, and Hollywood marketing 
strategies that include comic books, T-Shirts, posters, and soundtracks. 
Although the film exploits sentimentality and nostalgia to ensure a 
healthy profit margin, Lischke-McNab notes that its portrayal of 
gender fluidity and "'perversity' as an aesthetic impulse" are a 
significant example of queer discourse (412). 
Space does not permit that more than fleeting reference be made 
to other substantial contributions to this collection, such as Caryl 
Flinn's analysis of soundtrack and camp aesthetic in von Praunheim' s 
film Anita, or Martin Scherzinger and Neville Hoad's essay on the 
undoing of the hierarchy of major and minor chords in music (of 
greater interest to those with some background in music notation and 
theory). Taken as a whole, Queering the Canon contains a good deal 
of original, creative, and inspiring scholarship. 
Michael Riordan. Eating Fire: Family Life, on the Queer Side. 
Toronto: Between the Lines, 2001. 302pp. $22.95 ( Cdn) ISBN 
1-896357-45-8. 
DAwN JoHNSTON (UNIVERSITY OF CALGARY) 
T hree years ago, when I first picked up a copy of Michael Riordan's Out Our Way: Gay and Lesbian Life in the Country, I was on my way out of the publisher's fair at the Learned 
Book Reviews/Comptes rendus I 191 
Congress in Ottawa. It intrigued me: as a young lesbian from 
Newfoundland, living in Alberta, I was interested, to say the least, to· 
read someone else's experiences and interpretations of queer life in 
Canada's other spaces. I had read many excellent accounts of the 
gay ghettos and villages of Montreal, Toronto, and Vancouver, but 
the scholarly writings on smaller, less metropolitan queer Canada 
were few and far between. Riordan's book was a treat- informative, 
thorough, beautifully written, even entertaining. So it was with 
enthusiasm that I anticipated his new book, the just-released Eating 
Fire: Family Life, on the Queer Side. I was not disappointed: Eating 
Fire has proven to be an equally strong book, pushing the boundaries 
of oral history, ethnography, and academic writing, and challenging 
readers to examine their own limitations and biases when it comes to 
defining 'family.' 
Eating Fire, according to the author's preface, began four years 
ago with a friend's suggestion that Riordan write a book about the 
'success' of his own twenty-year relationship, within the particular 
context of a community whose reputation has not lent itself to long-
term couplings. 
From that first conversation about the particularities of queer 
relationships, Riordan began a more detailed questioning of non-
traditional family units. He spent eight months traveling across 
Canada, interviewing parents, children, couples, singles, threesomes, 
and groups about their experiences in building, being born into, or 
being thrown into queer families. Riordan skilfully weaves his 
participants stories together around themes common to these very 
diverse families, sometimes delivering an individual's story in one 
extended, thorough narrative, but more often introducing and 
revisiting a person or family repeatedly throughout the book. Though 
the book could arguably have been organized in a variety of ways, 
Riordan's organization is interesting- he divides the book into three 
major sections. "Fruitful couplings," which comprises roughly the 
first 80 pages of the book, looks at the various romantic, sexual, and 
domestic pairings of his many participants. The second (and longest) 
section, "Family Values," focuses on parents and children- straight 
parents of gay children, gay parents of straight children, transgendered 
parents and children, adopted children, adopted parents, and guardians 
and caregivers of various sorts. The third and final section, 
appropriately titled "Roles in the Hay" delves into the stories of the 
192 I Johnston 
much-less-traditional family structures that are, as Riordan points 
out, sometimes perceived as a threat even by their own queer 
communities. These stories are of intergenerational sex, 
transgendered marriages, leather threesomes, and sex for money. As 
Riordan describes them, these are the "bad queers ... who continue 
to have sex with too many people, or people of the wrong age, or in 
places the authorities considered insufficiently private. Or they would 
be too effeminate, or too butch, or they wouldn't have enough money, 
or they would be too old, or the wrong race, or they would dress 
badly" (204). Their stories are among the most fascinating in the 
book, reflected in Riordan's tendency to pay much more detailed 
attention to them. 
Evident just in the description above, one of the foremost strengths 
of Eating Fire is the incredible diversity of the group of participants 
that Riordan gathered. In this sense, he has overcome one of the 
usual difficulties inherent in the snowball-sample method- very often, 
when participants are contacted by word of mouth, they are a relatively 
homogenous group. As Riordan says in his preface: 
To find stories, I asked a few well-connected folks to suggest 
potential contacts. Those contacts led to others, and they to 
others; this is family on a grand scale ... This isn't a survey 
or a comprehensive study. I missed whole provinces, whole 
races, and many people in unique relationships that I'd like 
to have met. (viii) 
What he fails to reveal in this list of 'lacks' in his book is the 
surprising breadth of people who he did contact. The families are 
racially, ethnically, and religiously diverse, individuals interviewed 
range from toddlers to octogenarians, and their sexual and domestic 
partnerships span the very traditional through to the wildly 
unconventional. Despite his own claims to the contrary, Riordan has 
met with remarkable success in presenting a far more colorful picture 
of queer family life- and queer communities -in Canada than most 
authors ever achieve. 
Another characteristic of Riordan's writing that sets him apart 
from many other ethnographers and oral historians is his very balanced 
self-awareness and presence in the book. The book begins with a 
story about Riordan's own relationship with his partner; similarly, 
the last story in the book is his. And without a doubt, his thematic 
arrangement of stories, his choices for inclusion, and his occasional 
Book Reviews/Comptes rendus I 193 
commentaries and observations are deliberate. In simply choosing 
which stories - and how much of them - to present, he moulds and 
manipulates his material to tell stories that will inform and inspire 
his readers. His occasional comments - of surprise at the lack of 
legal entanglements in one child's nine-parent family, of envy for 
some of the warm and supportive family units he encounters, or of 
rage for a 'justice' system that has been so unjust to sexual minorities 
- remind us of his constant presence in the stories he tells. He even 
interjects with periodic acknowledgments of his own biases, saying: 
Certainly, queers can do appalling things, like abusing other 
people, or supporting right-wing political parties that do it 
for them. But that's not because they're queer- it's because 
our hard-won equality includes the right to be as greedy, 
brutish, and narrow-minded as anyone else . . . As the last 
sentence might suggest, I'm a little inclined to be 
judgmental." (205) 
Those moments of 'judgement' are rare, but appropriate to his 
work. The book would be invariably weakened by a total lack ofthe 
author's voice. Riordan's voice is audible, but it is careful; his 
presence strong, yet subtle, and an excellent conduit for the stories of 
his participants. 
While many books about gays and lesbians struggle - and often 
fail- to acknowledge and examine the intersections between sexuality 
and all of our other identity markers, Riordan's book valiantly engages 
in that struggle. Marginalized sexual orientation is the common bond 
of these stories, but the uniqueness comes from the cross-points with 
race, dis/ability, age, gender identity, class, HIV status, monogamy, 
and values. Eating Fire is a book about the intersections, about the 
messiness and leakiness and blurriness of the lines that form the box 
we each know as "family." 


Michael Riordan. Eating Fire: Family Life, on the Queer Side

Millward, Liz

Paquin, Sarah

"You're Freer If There's Nobody Around": "Gay Women's" Space in Small-Town Ontario

fissure, djinn

Falkner, Silke R.

Ballroom Birthday Bash 
DJJNN FISSURE AND S!LKE R. fALKNER 
djinnjissure has a B.Sc . and LL.B. , had her own law practice , has 
written a novel, worked as the sole staff member of an NGO, and 
created a web site on abuse at www.hotpeachpages.net that has 
become a major world resource. She is currently preparing to launch 
a web design company. Silke R. Falkner is Associate Professor of 
German at the University of Saskatchewan. Her research focuses 
mainly on Early Modernity and issues relating to identity. 
djinn: Even I 0 months ago, if someone had told me I'd want a ballroom dance for my next birthday party, I'd have thought they were crazy. I couldn't waltz, let alone fox-trot, samba, or 
tango. Sure, I'd always harbored a secret wish to ballroom dance, 
and even pretended that someday I'd actually get around to taking 
lessons, but there was invariably that major barrier that seemed insur-
mountable- I'm a woman, and I wanted to learn the ' man's' part. 
Yet another limitation inflicted on me by the straight world. I carried 
on dancing 'freestyle.' 
Silke: In 1998, I had the opportunity to visit a Lesbian Tango Bar in 
Berlin - sensual music, bodies, movements in an all-women 
environment. Not knowing how to tango, I could only sit and watch, 
but tharwas pleasant enough. And that wasn't the only time in my 
life where not knowing standard dancing became an issue. I grew 
up in Hamburg where the rumored annual "Lesbenball" attracts 
women who don formal attire and know the steps. But I don't live 
in Berlin or Hamburg, or even Montreal any more, where I know 
lesbians also don't have to look too far to learn ballroom dancing. 
No, I live in Saskatoon where the one gay bar has its entrance in a 
back alley. Sure, there's a ballroom dancing club with over 1,300 
members and numerous classes for various levels and styles, but it's 
torquere: Journal of the Canadian Lesbian and Gay Studies Association I 
Revue de Ia Societe canadienne des etudes lesbiennes et gaies 
Vol. 4-5 (2002-2003) © CLGSA I SCELG 
Ballroom Birthday Bash I 181 
for straight couples. What are lesbians to do when the instructor says 
"men over here and women over there"? 
djinn: So there we were, both of us wanting to learn, but apparently 
stymied. Then we heard that a woman in Saskatoon had once taught 
a ballroom dancing class for gays and lesbians. So we came up with 
the idea of getting a bunch of people together who wanted to learn, 
finding out who that teacher was, and offering her a ready-made 
group willing to pay her. I'd like to report that our plan worked 
perfectly, so that those of you in the hinterlands of Canada secretly 
aching to learn ballroom dancing (and I know you're out there) could 
take heart and try the same approach. But we never actually got a 
chance to implement our idea. Instead, believe it or not, at the very 
next community dance that same instructor passed out business cards 
announcing an upcoming ballroom dance class for gays and lesbians. 
Silke: Of course we signed up for the class right away, and we've 
taken three or four more since. Each class consisted of four two-
hour long sessions on consecutive Sundays, plus a potluck supper at 
the instructor's house after the last session. The instructor was 
concerned there wouldn't be enough people in the first class to make 
it worth her while, so we promoted it to everyone we knew. One of 
the couples we knew wasn't all that excited about the idea initially, 
but for some reason they finally agreed to try it out. Immediately 
after the very first lesson, they were both totally enthusiastic, to the 
point where the four of us have gotten together almost every 
Wednesday night for the last eight months in order to practice 
between classes. 
djinn: There were an awful lot of unexpected bonuses. I thought it 
was just going to be about learning something new, but it was fun, 
too. It was great quality couple time with Silke away from the kids, 
our social circle expanded to the point where I wonder if we even 
had any friends B.B. (Before Ballroom), and the enjoyment I get 
out of going to a community dance has increased immensely. We 
dance almost every dance now, I actually pay attention to every song 
that is played, and I even make requests. I don't just dance with Silke 
anymore either- I like teaching the basic samba and rumba steps 
to complete strangers, and they seem very happy to learn. 
182 I fissure & Falkner 
Silke: Now, whenever we hear any music anywhere, we always ask 
ourselves, "What could we dance to that?" It's surprising how many 
'pop tunes' one could polka to. 
djinn: It hasn't all been smooth sailing, though. Right off the bat, 
we had to agree who would be the 'Lead' and who would follow. 
My refusal to be the 'Follow' under any circumstances should have 
meant it was a nonissue, but for some reason Silke wanted rational, 
logical reasons included in the decision-making process. I think I 
came up with some good rationalizations, but even months later, 
somehow I still feel obligated to justify the outcome. 
Silke: Tell me again why I can't be the 'Lead.' 
djinn: Silke even had a special dance skirt made and I've bought a 
pair of dance shoes. We get a real kick out of dressing up for commun-
ity dances, as if we were at a competition. We both wear the same 
color and we lean toward the theatrical in matching the theme of each 
dance- red for Valentine's, green for St. Patrick's Day, formal for 
New Year's, and so on. We always generate a lot of attention. 
Silke: And now that I've invested in a whole new wardrobe, femmy 
and all, and have taken on a dancing persona as a 'Follow,' we're 
determined to continue with lessons. Unfortunately, the teacher we've 
had so far isn't able to offer more than beginners' classes because of 
numbers, so we decided we'djust have to get our courage up to join 
the intermediate level at the aforesaid 'hetero' ballroom dancing club. 
djinn: Joining a straight group wouldn't only mean that we'd be 
dancing together as a lesbian couple in front of a whole lot of straight 
people. Dance instruction theory strongly advocates experience with 
multiple partners, so we can expect that the instructor will regularly 
ask us to change partners. 
Silke: djinn doesn't think the straight men will hesitate at all to dance 
with me, but whether I'll want to dance with them is another issue. 
djinn: And I have the reverse problem. I have no hesitation about 
dancing with straight women, but will they be comfortable with me 
Ballroom Birthday Bash I 183 
as a Lead? Thankfully our 'Wednesday Nite' dance buddies decided 
to sign up too, so we know at least we'll have them to switch with if 
no one else. 
Silke: And more good news: apparently this year, for the first time, 
the posters advertising the 'straight' ballroom dancing club say 
"Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Friendly" at the bottom, 
and apparently the registration forms ask whether you are a Lead or 
a Follow, instead of man or woman. It looks like it won't be as hard 
breaking new ground as we thought. 
djinn: As for my recent birthday, I had the best birthday party I can 
remember. (And no, I'm not too old yet to remember any of the 
others.) We cleaned out the garage, decorated it with garlands of 
lights, had a half barrel of beer and coolers on ice and a table groaning 
with food, and we waltzed, jived, rumbaed, sam baed, tangoed, and 
two-stepped the night away with two other lesbians, two-
transgendered women, and two gay guys. Between us we knew 30 
different dance steps. What a blast! 
Silke: We' re thinking of applying for a dance-hall licence for our 
< garage. 


Ballroom Birthday Bash

Rosenberg, Sharon

Memorializing Queers I Queering Remembrances: Encounters with Loss and the Problematics of Identity

Stein, Marc

Crossing the Border to Memory: In Search of Clive Michael Boutilier (1933-2003)

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