NOOTS- May 2024

Posted:

By Juniper May 2, 2024

Friendly Reminders: 

  • We are opening for the Summer on May 13th 10 am
  • Check the returns box for returns and donations as you head into OOTS for your shift 
  • The cataloging project is complete feel free to reshelve returned books! 
  • Log all interactions yes even when its just folks coming in to borrow a pen or get directions to the bathroom we remember to log the interaction in the right category as listed on the side of the spreadsheet 
  • Help yourself to the tea and snacks on the shelf by the desk 
  • Have you taken 15 minutes to rest and breathe today? Give your body a break and do something that makes you happy! 

What’s NOOTS? 

  • We are officially a nonprofit that will hopefully allow us access to grants
  • We will be moving to the Malaspina Printmakers Society’s studio space on Granville Island 
  • A meeting will be held on Zoom where there will be more details on all of this on May 7th at 5:30 pm 
  • The Summer schedule draft is out! Please fill in your first and second shift choices by May 6th 
  • There will be one more new volunteer orientation held in the OOTS space on Friday May 3rd from 2-3 so if you know anyone who may be interested in joining up let them know. If that doesn’t work please feel free to reach out to me on discord or the OOTS email to set up a make up date 
  • Our illustrious social media manager Eowyn will be posting digital book talkers on our social media written by the volunteers of OOTS if there is a book, or DVD or game or anything you love in our collection please submit a max 150 word blurb to the social media chat on discord 
  • Anonymous Feedback and Suggestion form for OOTS let us know what we need to be doing better! https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSe2LB4qoxskjDnm9LC0_fx8h9yeL32v1utRot2M7sMOeA-0wQ/viewform 

Queer Creator Spotlight: 

In honor of May being the official ‘Better Sleep’ month, I would like to put Mark Patton, star of one of the queerest horror films ever made A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge (1985). Mark was born in 1959, grew up in Riverside, Missouri before moving to New York to begin his acting career. He landed his first stage role in Come Back to the Five and Dime Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean in 1982 and went on to star in the film version in the same year in flashbacks as a trans character pre-transition. Working on the film Mark Patton got to act alongside such icons as Cher. 

Patton had been living as an openly queer actor in New York with his partner for several years before he was cast in the awaited sequel to A Nightmare on Elm Street an independent film by the up and coming New Line Cinema that had come up the previous year in 1984. Wes Craven’s Nighmare promised to redefine the slasher genre after his previous genre defining work on films like The Last House on the Left (1972) and The Hills Have Eyes (1977). The first film introduced the world to a killer who stalked his pray through their dreams, in the sequel he would attempt to break into the real world by possessing his victim. Freddy’s Revenge was notable in the slasher genre in that it stared a male protagonist who would be menaced and seduced by the knife handed killer who was swiftly becoming an icon of horror cinema. This made Patton’s character, Jesse an early example of the ‘final boy’ a male version of the final girl an archetype coined in Carol J. Clover’s 1992 book Men, Women and Chainsaws to describe the girl who survives to the end of the slasher movie. The final boy given the trope’s usually feminine protagonist has often been read as queer by the merit of genderbending alone without going into the gender politics of the genre in more detail. The queer subtext in this dynamic alongside the BDSM aesthetics and relationship between Jesse and his dishy male classmate Grady played by Robert Russler who would continue his role as queercoded best friend the next year in Vamp alongside Grace Jones. 

The cast and crew of the film largely denied any intentions towards queerness in the creation of the film. Audiences however picked up on the subtext easily and given the homophobia of the time heaped vitriol on the film and its star. Writer David Chaskin blamed Patton for ‘gaying’ up the picture ruining his acting career. 

In 1999 Patton was diagnosed with AIDS and after a close call moved to Mexico where he met his husband and Hector Morales Mondragon. The pair currently run an art store in Puerto Vallarta. 

Since then the film has been embraced by a queer audience who celebrate the film as a story about a queer teen struggling with internalized homophobia in the form of a dastardly dream demon and Patton’s stellar performance. In recent years Chaskin has admitted that he knew what kind of story he was writing and has publicly apologized to Patton for what he put him through (I haven’t forgiven him though). Since the resurgence of Freddy’s Revenge’s queer fandom he has returned to the spotlight for conventions and documentaries such as Never Sleep Again: The Elm Street Legacy (2010) and Scream Queen: My Nightmare on Elm Street (2019) a documentary covering his experience in doing the film and its aftermath narrated by Cecil Baldwin, the voice of Nightvale. Patton has donated most of the proceeds from these events to queer causes such as the Trevor Project. Patton has returned briefly to horror in the 2016 film Family Possessions, Amityville: Evil Never Dies (2017) and Swallowed (2022). 

The Gay Agenda: 

Queer Story Recommendation: 

In honor of the coming Spring I’m recommending the under-seen queer folk tale Penda’s Fen a film from 1974 based on a play by the same name written by David Rudkin and directed by Alan Clarke.  Penda’s Fen was first aired as an episode of the Play For Today program on the BBC. The film follows Stephen (played by Spencer Banks) a boy about to graduate from his Anglican high school situated in the rolling hills of the English countryside. Despite his fierce dedication to the Christian nationalism of his upbringing Stephen is outcast by his peers and teachers. At this turning point in his life Stephen questions the dogmatic views he has been taught in light of revelations concerning his heritage and certain thoughts about the milk delivery boy. 

Penda’s Fen is a film about coming of age not just in leaving high school but in learning to question the ideas we are taught by those who hold power in our society. It is a story that throws the Christian fascism, colonialism and homophobia of the British countryside of the 1970s into stark relief with a hopeful ending that will have any recovering evangelical queer in tears (speaking from personal experience). Stephen’s journey from an insufferably bigoted little snotrag to a person who has accepted and embraced his inner complexity is beautifully realized. The film is rife with weird imagery, dreamlike sequences and odd monologues typical of the folk horror genre which was experiencing a resurgence in European filmmaking particularly in the 1970s making it a deliciously queer entry in a subgenre concerned with questioning the politics of the present through the resurgence of the past. And its free to watch on Youtube! Go watch it! Go watch it right now you have no excuse! It’s so good and no one’s seen it and that’s a damn travesty! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ghu0ITA8aSE

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