October 4, 2008

A Crush? On HER? How ridiculous.



Let's just consider this blog to be one big Freudian slip.

To be frank, I'm too old to be having schoolgirl crushes on celebrities. I'm not telling how old I am, but suffice it to say, this is not the way a woman my age should be responding to people in the news (according to whose standard, I'm not quite sure yet. I may never figure it out; I'm fine with that.)

Denial -- yes, I'm talking about Freud's Verneinung -- is an equally unsuitable state of mind, though we do know that denial, like it's cousin repression, is necessary for us to act like civilized, albeit neurotic, people.

This puts the "out queer"/whatever-we're-calling-ourselves-this-month in an undesirable ethical position: how to be "'true' to the self", as required by our out-ness, when the self requires denial of certain truths to thrive?

It's troubling to admit to positive feelings for a character who induces -- indeed, generates -- such enormous negativity, and whose own ethical conduct is being publicly challenged as I write and you read.

It's also very liberating. Well, hopefully it is. Especially in light of the idea that we don't necessarily operate on a strict 1/0, on/off Boolean binary of attraction and repulsion. We can like how she looks (well, on her best days) and despise how she behaves.

The two can co-exist at the same time.