Jadzia Dax

Actress Terry Farrell on stage at the October 2009 London Expo. She played the role of the Trill Starfleet science officer Jadzia Dax on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine for 6 straight years from 1993 to 1998 and then as Regina Kostas in the TV sitcom Becker from 1998 to 2002. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Jadzia Dax is a central character in the science fiction television series Star Trek: Deep Space Nine played by actor Terry Farrell.

An essentially slug-like Trill, Dax has lived several past lives in different humanoid hosts of both genders and currently resides in a female body.

Trill hosts voluntarily join with a symbiont, but once joined, both Trill and symbiont become biologically interdependent.¹

Dax is noteworthy in the Star Trek universe and in pop culture because s/he is inherently neither male nor female and openly bisexual in his/her current female form.

The Star Trek franchise has always championed human rights, addressing issues like racism, cultural imperialism, ageism and sexism, and the Jadzia Dax character seems to be Deep Space Nine’s way of challenging those who maintain that same-sex attractions are unnatural or ungodly.

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¹ Trill – Xenobiology Database » http://www.geocities.com/Area51/nebula/4156/infirmary/xeno/trill.html

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Ethics

Burning of Sodomites for Homosexuality (Photo credit: Jesus In Love)

Ethics is a branch of knowledge and philosophical inquiry concerned with moral ideals, choices and the good or bad actions which may or may not follow from those choices.

Ethics may focus on personal, social and spiritual issues, separately but often in relation to one another.

Within world religions, ethical decrees might seem fixed within a given faith tradition. But various schools of interpretation usually coexist, usually with some degree of tension—e.g. the Protestant acceptance of female and in some instances homosexual ministers vs. the Catholic rule of an exclusively male priesthood and homosexual acts being specified in the catechism as “intrinsically disordered.”¹

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¹ See http://www.scborromeo.org/ccc/para/2357.htm

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Sir Elton John

Elton John live, 1975 (via Wikipedia) by tony morelli at http://flickr.com/photos/43328299@N00/1352803363

Sir Elton John (1947- ) is a British pop music star.

Elton John’s original name was Reginald Kenneth Dwight. Born in Pinner, Middlesex, Reginald played songs by ear on the piano at the age of 4 and took formal training at the Royal Academy of Music when 11.

As Elton John, his collaboration with lyricist Bernie Taupin flowered in the 1970′s with chart toppers like ‘Your Song’, ‘Rocket Man’, ‘Daniel’, ‘Honky Cat’, ‘Bennie and the Jets,’ ‘Goodbye Yellow Brick Road’ and ‘Don’t Let the Sun Go Down On Me.’

With a keen interest in Rugby, Elton at one time owned a British Football Club, eventually selling his shares to become its Life President.

He apparently began life as a shy person. Most biographers say his glamorous 1970′s stage image compensated for his inherent sensitivity. Others suggest he was hiding behind various – at that time outlandish – costumes and wigs while fighting an inner battle with drug addiction.

Likely both factors came into play. Elton apparently came close to suicide, at which time the journeyman musician Long John Baldry convinced him to quit drugs (‘Someone Saved My Life Tonight’).

After achieving international stardom, Elton publicly admitted to being bisexual, an admission that hurt his career for a while. But despite scathing comments from the press, he kept making albums. These didn’t do quite as well commercially until a comeback in 1992 with the album The One.

His remake of ‘Candle in the Wind’, performed with revised lyrics at Princess Diana‘s funeral, was the largest selling single in history one month after its release (The original 1973 song was about Marilyn Monroe).

He continues in the spotlight as an artist and icon for gay liberation, particularly since his much publicized same sex marriage to a long-time companion. Like Mick Jagger and Paul McCartney, he was knighted by the Queen of England in 1998 for  “services to music and charitable services.” However, he’s shown marked distaste for organized religion.

More recently, Sir Elton John seems comfortable not having his new singles on the top 10 charts. He says his approach to making cds is more about an album concept instead of going for a hit. In other words, a slow burn instead of fireworks.

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Tramp Souls

A Haunted Trail by Joshua Debner

Tramp Souls

Deceased persons believed to be clinging to the material world, often to some particular locality and possibly holding a grudge against someone whom they believed wronged them in life.

Alternately, tramp souls are regarded as the victims of an accidental death who don’t understand why or haven’t accepted the fact that they’ve passed.

Tramp souls are said to be responsible for hauntings, obsessions and possessions.

An unofficial branch of Catholic thinking expressed by author Michael Brown (Prayer of the Warrior) attributes to homosexuality the psychological influence of tramp souls. According to Brown, a deceased woman’s spirit influences a man’s sexual preference or a male spirit influences a woman’s.

From this belief the opposite-sex spiritual influence apparently permeates the personality and the living individual comes to identify with it over time. » Demons, Obsession, Possession, Transmigration

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Zeus

Athens, Greece Zeus Temple 2007

Originally uploaded by Titanas

Zeus The son of the Titan Cronus and Titaness Rhea, Zeus is the chief of the second generation Greek gods, usually arrayed with thunderbolts and an eagle.

By the time of Homer he came to be the most powerful deity in the Greek pantheon, his main role role being the overseer of cosmic justice. As such, he protects property, receives prayers and sacrifices, and punishes transgressors.

Because he was so big, he ironically had a relative few polis festivals (i.e. city festivals) in his honor. Polis festivals were generally reserved for lesser deities presiding over a particular city, such as Athena or Apollo.

Zeus had numerous offspring with several different goddesses, the most famous being Aphrodite.

He apparently had amorous relations with his young male cup-bearer, Ganymedes.

The mythologer Robert Graves says

The Zeus-Ganymedes myth gained immense popularity in Greece and Rome because it afforded religious justification for grown man’s passionate love for a boy.

The Greek Myths, Combined edition, London: Penguin, 1992, p. 117.

According to NeoPlatonist thought, Zeus isn’t at the top of the all-time divinity charts. Instead, the NeoPlatonists lowered his status from his previous rank of King.

Zeus’ Roman equivalent is Jupiter.

» Aesculapius, Aliens and Extraterrestrials (ETs), Apollo, Ares, Artemis, Athena, Castor and Pollux, Demeter, Dionysus, Dyaus, Fates, God, Hera, Hercules, Hermes, Hesiod, Jupiter, Muses, Odin, Olympians, Orphic Mysteries, Persephone, Poseidon, Romeo and Juliet, Shapeshifter, Titans, Tyche

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Advertising

Advertising Although the primary objective of commercial advertising is to sell goods and services, this is accomplished in a complex manner.

Social theorists directly or indirectly influenced by Karl Marx usually say that advertising creates a false or illusory relationship between the consumer and the producer.

Freudian-based sociological analyses suggest that when buying, the consumer enters into a fantasy relationship with a corporate producer. The producer substitutes for a lost or desired father figure (i.e. a trusted provider of material goods) or mother figure (i.e. a source of physiological and emotional security).

Other sociologists note that ads often link products, such as autos, to attractive women or men, as if to imply that buying ensures a glamorous, sexually satisfied life-style.

Neo-Marxist theorists maintain that media ads actually contain more meaningful information than media news because ads better depict the cultural biases of a particular era. News, they say, tends to obscure social realities.

This obfuscation of reality in the news is said to occur through:

1. Selectivity – stories that make the headlines are deemed good for ratings and therefore good for profits
2. Modes of reporting – editing and language styles tend to color a story while seeming not to
3. Placement of stories – stories deemed less important and less commercially viable appear at the back of newspapers or somewhere in the middle of the evening news

Meanwhile some say that ads not only reveal but also contribute to and reinforce prevailing cultural biases.

Postmodern thinkers argue that certain types of ads draw on – or conjure up – a mythic past when times apparently were rosy (i.e. the good old days of ‘Mom’s apple pie’ and well-defined ‘family values’). Warm and secure memories, even if based on a kind of fiction, are apparently recaptured by purchasing the advertised product.

Postmoderns also suggest that a new moral synthesis is created by combining real and imaginary images from the past with contemporary motifs. That is, ads help to define a new moral code. An example here might be found in the name of the product “Quick Quaker Oats,” where the positive connotations associated with the word Quaker (i.e. old-style integrity, reliability and intelligence) are combined with those of Quick (i.e. fast-paced modern society).

But rarely does advertising enter into areas still considered taboo or deviant by the so-called moral majority. Gay and lesbian couples are seldom portrayed in advertising (although more recently the idea of casual lesbian sex is being hinted at), just as couples of different color were at one time excluded from ads.

Meanwhile, an aesthetic view of advertising evaluates ads in terms of their artistic value–for instance, people pay at the box office to see films such as The Best Ads From Around The World. And perhaps some of the best new art today comes from graphic artists under contract by government or commercial bodies.

Jungians and spiritual innovators might evaluate ads partly in terms of their archetypal and even synchronistic connection to the psychological, social and spiritual world of the potential buyer.

But amidst all this theorizing we’d do well to keep in mind that business groups or government bodies, the actual driving forces behind the ad, respectively want to sell goods and services or promote some idea deemed important.

Indeed, it seems that the deeply ingrained cynicism of some sociologists seems to so quickly disappear when the critical lens turns on their own discipline. » Athleticism, Barthes (Roland), Baudrillard (Jean), Foucault (Michel)

Image Credit:

• “Am I the only one who is totally pissed off with advertising like this?” by codepo8 at http://www.flickr.com/photos/codepo8/1113640837/ Creative Commons License.

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by posting a comment

Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Buffy the Vampire Slayer American film (1992) regarded as a “B-movie” and a successful TV series (1997-2003) that gained a kind of cult following.

Both were created by Joss Whedon.

In the TV version of Buffy, the lesbian character Willow originally uses witchcraft for the good but becomes consumed by a quest for magical power and eventually allows evil to dominate her.

Although many religious fundamentalists might deplore such an apparently ‘evil’ program, the TV series closes with Willow regaining her humility (and humanity) by allowing love to enter into her life again.

The TV Buffy was hailed by some professors of Cultural Studies as the ‘new thing,’ some of whom went into great lengths analyzing its every detail. This enthusiasm was arguably more than just bored academics being titillated by nubiles, same-sex relationships and eerie violence. The TV show was, indeed, innovative and the characters archetypal.

» Archetypes, Fundamentalism, Projection, Vampire, Witch

Image Information:

• Image is based on a Rider-Waite Tarot card licensed by the US Games Company. This image was made by Don Leon 16:13, 1 November 2006 and is said to be in the public domain. If this information is in error please contact us and we’ll remove the image immediately. Moreover, this image and the Tarot card it’s based on are only thematically and not directly (i.e. legally) related to the film or TV series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

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Burroughs, William S.

Burroughs, William S. (1914-1997) Innovative author who kept company with Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac.

He once said:

Language is a virus…[words]…become images when written down, but images of words repeated in the mind and not of the image of the thing itself. » Source

Burrows was a gay ex-junkie who shot to stardom with his book, Naked Lunch, written over three years in a Moroccan hotel room. The protagonist Bill Lee, a heroine addict, travels from New York to Tangiers and then into the Interzone.

There he confronts a hallucinogenic, hellish urban fantasy land where the individual is forced to grapple with the dark and frightening forces of totalitarianism.

According to one account, the manuscript was disjointed and probably would never have been published had not Ginsberg and a few other beatniks saved it from a flooded hotel room floor.

Originally printed in Paris in 1959, it reached the U.S.A. in 1962. There, a well-publicized 1966 obscenity trial over Naked Lunch is usually seen as marking the end of literary censorship in that country. Burrows won the case.

In retrospect, one has to wonder if Burrows was foreseeing the internet and virtual reality with his idea of the Interzone. Others, however, say the Interzone is a metaphor for a borderless city.

Legend has it that Burroughs accidentally killed his wife in 1951, for which he was charged in Mexico with “criminal imprudence.”

Image Source:

• Cropped from original “burroughs1983″ by Chuck Patch, Creative Commons licence at flickr.com » http://flickr.com/photos/65484951@N00/91976954

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Ginsberg, Allen

Ginsberg, Allen

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