TOW #13 - 'Rebel with Many Causes' Keith Haring

Keith Haring is a graffiti/neo pop artist from Reading, Pennsylvania. Haring mostly painted in New York on unused advertising panels that were covered with black paper in a subway station. In 1988, Haring was diagnosed with AIDs. After that most of his artwork revolved around the disease and being a queer male, mainly in America.

            His piece, ‘Rebel with Many Causes’ depicts three male figures in the famous poses of speak no evil, see no evil, and hear no evil. The supposed ‘evil’ is the AIDs crisis that was going on in American. This piece is meant to criticize the people who would refuse to acknowledge the social issue. The criticism aimed mainly towards the government because at the time they weren’t really acknowledging the massive death count that the disease was creating. However, it’s also aimed at everyone else too. People were literally ignoring the fact that there was a deadly disease mainly because the biggest minority group affected was the queer community, specifically queer men. Since Haring himself was a queer man diagnosed with AIDs and he had lost a lot of close friends to the disease he felt like it was his duty to speak up about.

            I believe Haring effectively ridiculed America and the government and brought awareness to AIDs but I’m not that sure that he really pushed any of them to take act against the epidemic. I feel like his piece made people think about it more and possibly through that spread more awareness. However, I don’t think Haring achieved his second purpose of enacting change.

TOW #12 – Stop Killing off TV’s Lesbians by Nico Lang

Recently more people are starting to notice and become more angered by the lack of queer representation on TV. In response to this many TV networks are adding very few queer characters and claiming diversity. However, most of these characters are quickly killed or given a very bland or stereotypical storyline. A large majority of the characters being killed are queer women. Research shows that since 1976, 11% of TV shows has featured a queer character. Of that 11%, 65% have been decease queer women. Queer women already have a hard time getting representation due to fetishization of their relationships, but now when they finally do get representations they’re quickly killed before they can get any type of happy ending.

 In his article Nico Lang explores the ‘Dead Lesbian Syndrome’ currently being popularized on TV. He mentions many examples of queer female characters being killed by ‘accidents’.  Lang believes that DLS is due to the fact that most writers don’t know how to write LGBTQ storylines that don’t just revolve around their sexualities. He thinks that the writers decide to kill off the queer characters because once the character’s sexuality discovery or coming out plot line is completed they’re no long necessary. Throughout the article he continuously criticizes the media to achieve his purpose.

 His audience is firstly, the TV corporations that are killing queer women and queer women themselves. Lang’s purpose to the corporations is to not only bring light to the issue but to also address what DLS promotes. DLS tells queer women that they’ll never be able to have a happy ending, that either they or their partner will die before anything happens. This then relates to his purpose for queer women everywhere. To queer women Lang tries to tell them that this trope is wrong and unrealistic and that the women will get happy endings. As a young queer woman his words meant a lot to me. The first queer woman I ever saw on TV died a couple episodes into the show and because of that I grew up thinking that it wasn’t safe to be a queer woman. Lang’s words didn’t let me know that this trope wasn’t fake, I learned that on my own years ago but his words, I believe, will help other queer women who aren’t aware of the trope’s falsehood. 

TOW #11 - 'Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death' by Patrick Henry

            Towards the beginning of the American Revolution some colonists tried to redact the rebellion that was already underway. They did this by sending King Henry III the Olive Branch Petition, the petition was basically a small group of the colonists trying to get back in the King’s good graces. However, the King felt that it was too late for the colonists to redeem themselves and he claimed they were already in rebellion. Even though King Henry claimed this many colonists still felt that there was hope to stop a war with Britain from occurring. Patrick Henry, a lawyer and political, was not one of these colonists. He believed that war with Britain was just around the corner and that there was nothing the colonists could do to stop it. To address his beliefs, he gave a speech at the 2^nd Virginia Convention. This speech was called ‘Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death’.

            Originally most colonists still believed that there was a chance that Britain would forgive them for boycotting and having small rebellions. Due to their beliefs Henry first used facts to try and get the colonists to change their minds. He reminded them that Britain had not been responding very positively to their apologies and that they had already considered the colonist to be enemies and against Britain. He knew that none of them could refute known facts. Henry also used hypotheras to force his audience rethink their viewpoint on the argument.  He wanted them to see how flawed their opinion was. After Henry addressed the other colonists’ views he mentioned his own. He talked about how the Virginia colonists needed to start gathering arms, mentioning that Britain would be treating them like traitors and would not take mercy on them for not having weapons to defend themselves.

            Patrick Henry spoke directly to the President of the Virginia Convention, Peyton Randolph. Numerous times during his speech he address Randolph head on as ‘Mr. President’. Henry knew that in order to get all the other colonists on his side he needed to get the ‘leader’ of them all first. Once he got Randolph to agree with him all the other colonists would follow. Even though he directly told his views to Randolph his speech was also aimed towards every other Virginia colonist in attendance.