Wednesday, October 7, 2009
{The Blue Banner}
Page 10
Campus
Events
Jonathan D. Katz:
Art, Eros and the
Sixties
Owen 302
Wednesday,
7 p.m.
Apple Day
Celebrations
Reed Plaza
Friday,
12 p.nn.
Comedian
Sheng Wang
Highsnnith
Friday,
9 p.m.
Jerusalem Women
Speak: “Three
Women, Three
Shared Faiths, One
Shared Vision”
Oct. 14,
7 p.m.
Snakes Alive!
Herpetologist
Tom Kessenich
Oct. 17
2 -4 p.m.
For more campus
activities, visit:
www.unca.edu/barker/
Queer rights activist speaks in Owen Hall
By Noor Ai-Sibai
Staff Writer
NAALSIBA@UNCA.EDU
“Gay” and “queer” - what’s the differ
ence?
Jonathan D. Katz, a queer rights activist
and founding member of the Harvey Milk
Institute in San Francisco, said the two
words represent very different mentalities.
“I’m very much interested in being a
part of a national conversation about sexu
ality,” Katz said.
The gay/queer dichotomy is the main
subject of Katz’s appearance at UNC
Asheville, tonight at 7 p.m in Owen Halt,
room 302.
The word “gay” comes from the 1960s
gay rights movement and establishes ho
mosexuality as a minority, while queer
ness is a refusal to classify people accord
ing to their sexuality, Katz said.
“To be queer is to reject the idea that the
natural and normal course of human eroti
cism is one direction only,” Katz said.
Katz cites Herbert Marcuse, a radical
1960s philosopher, as one of his main in
fluences.
“Queer rights must be defined as the
right not to have to think about your sexu
ality, not to be categorized, not to have to
defend, not to have to stop a second before
grabbing the hand of the person you love
in public and wonder whether it is danger
ous to do so,” Katz said.
Marcuse advocates Eros, a philosophy
centered on sensual pleasures, and argues
the Freudian theory that all conflicts stem
from repression of pleasure-seeking in
stincts.
Katz, who hasn’t been to Asheville since
he was a child, is visiting UNCA as a final
stop in the United States before going to
London to teach at the Cortauld Institute.
Katz, will also discuss what he refers
to as the polar or binary construction of
Photo courtesy of Jonathan Katz
Activist Jonathan Katz wili ad
dress queer rights issues in Ovren
Haii room 302 tonight at 7 p.m.
sexuality—gay on one side, straight on
the other.
Katz chose acadamia as an outlet for his
activism. Sitting in a jail cell in San Fran
cisco, he was told that “any idiot can end
up in jail,” but his skills as an academic
could not be passed up, according to Katz.
Katz began to work as a queer activist
academic, focusing his energy on educat
ing about gay and queer studies, including
the study of sexuality itself
“The most important part of educating
about queemess is the re-teaching of the
‘social script’ that creates and perpetuates
the gay/straight spectrum,” Katz said.
Katz was the founding director of
the Larry Kramer Initiative for Lesbian
and Gay Studies at Yale University, and
founding chair of the nation’s only gay
studies department at the City College of
San Francisco.
“What I’m hoping we can ultimately
give young people is a social script that
says ‘love somebody, just somebody,”’
Katz said.
He said modem gay activism has been
very successful in many respects, but
there are still obstacles.
“The biggest problem facing the cur
rent gay rights movement is a sense that
the big battles have been fought, as well as
perceived apathy on the part of those who
don’t identify with the gay rights cause,”
Katz said.
Katz also has one criticism of the cur
rent movement.
“This culture has changed fast, but it’s
changed unevenly. Cities, coastal areas,
certain regions are fully 50 years ahead,
but other parts of the country get left be
hind.”
Although multiple opinions on gay
rights’ shortcomings and advancements
are voiced heavily throughout the coun
try, most Americans are undecided when
it comes to their views on homosexuality,
he said.
“We’ve not been very good at reaching
those folks,” Katz said. “Gay marriage is a
hot-button issue that is viewed by many to
be the main gay rights cause. But it is not
the ‘be all and end all.’ It’s just one more
discriminatory category.”
Those other parts of the country include
the South, and lower socioeconomic com
munities. While activists accomplished
much in the last 40 years, Katz said the
enlightened culture in cities and universi
ties doesn’t exist outside of those centers.
“The goal of queer rights activists is to
take the message out of the academy and
into the streets,” Katz said. “We should
not judge people by the gender of the in
dividual they love, but by their capacity to
love in the first place.”
New Zombieland movie delivers scares and laughs
By Katherine Lancaster
Staff Writer
ICELANCAS@UNCA.EDU
The new horror-comedy Zombieland
takes place in present-day America, but
it’s not the America we’re used to seeing.
Zombies have taken
over the country, in
habiting every city and
state.
Jesse Eisenburg {Ad-
ventureland) plays Columbus, a geek who
has many phobias, including coulrophobia,
the fear of clowns. Columbus has set rules
for surviving in a world full of zombies,
from not using public bathrooms to always
wearing a seatbelt.
Along the way, Columbus meets Tal
lahassee (Woody Harrelson), a zombie
killer whose one mission in life is to find
a Twinkie, and sisters Wichita and Little
Rock.
At first, the characters prefer to do their
own thing, but they quickly realize they
must rely on each other to survive.
At the beginning of the film, Fleischer
creatively demonstrates and explains Co
lumbus’ many mles. When you first hear
his voice, Columbus explains the top four
rules he lives by, and with each rule, the
number and rule are clearly displayed in
bold, capitalized type at one comer of the
screen.
Fleischer maintains this idea throughout
the movie. When each mle is repeated or if
the audience is introduced to a new rule, it
is clearly displayed on the screen.
Though the film was about surviving
zombie invasion, the zombies weren’t the
main focus of the movie.
The relationship of the four characters
seemed to drive the film from beginning to
end.
The sister team initially does not trust
Columbus and Tallahassee, but as they
slowly let their guards down and let them
in, they discover humans have one thing
that zombies will never have: compassion.
The film is almost 1 hour and 30 minutes
long, and even though the plot isn’t a strong
point of the film, comedic timing from
main actors and a Bill Murray cameo make
up for the film’s weaknesses. Hilarious dia
logue and gory fun make Zombieland an
escape from the everyday world.