Silence is safe.

Reactions to "Tongues Untied" by Marlon Riggs:

What Silence is. He ends with saying that Silence is a double edged sword that cuts both ways. This is an issue that comes up in history all of the time. Silence Gives Consent. If you don't act out, you will continue to be walked over. Cultural history is full of instances full of frustration at the wronged masses not joining their voices together in revolt. I don't think these masses are given enough credit.

The snap diva sequence reminded me of one of the vignettes in George C. Wolfe's The Colored Museum, entitled "The Gospel according to Miss Roj."
Not as good as Carleton's performance last year, but it'll do:


I had a small revelation while watching Tongues Untied. I had often been curious why I was so comfortable with the visual display of gay male sex. Shows like (forgive me) "Queer as Folk" or movies like "Brokeback Mountain" contain very stimulating sex scenes that I am almost more comfortable with than heterosexual and lesbian sex scenes. What occurred to me during "Tonuges Untied," was that a possible reason for me liking gay male sex scenes was that they did not make me jealous. Unlike intimate scenes involving women, I did not feel excluded. Perhaps I only noticed this now being double-excluded for being being white as well as female. I use "excluded" here not in a emotional sense rather in a physical sense. I realize that most gay people are "boring," and the sex scenes I have been exposed to are generally unrealistic. But the rational still holds true to some extent. This is also a large part of why straight men like lesbian porn so much, there's no guy on screen for them to get jealous of.