Pamela Leavey

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Day: July 15, 2014

Film Review: The Celluloid Closet

We tend to watch films without much thought about how politics effects film-making. The documentary The Celluloid Closet gives an insight into world of film-making, politics, censorship and equality.

The documentary film The Celluloid Closet is based on the groundbreaking 1981 book, The Celluloid Closet, by Vito Russo, about the history of the depiction of gays and lesbians in the movies. Through film clips, interviews and narration, The Celluloid Closet takes us on a captivating journey back in time to show the audience the various stereotyped roles gays and lesbians played in film and how Hollywood censorship played a part in film making.

Narrated by Lily Tomlin, in the opening scene of the movie, Tomlin tells the audience, “For 100 years, laugh at, pity or fear, Hollywood taught straight people what to think about gay people and what gay people should think about themselves.”  Film critic, Susie Bright said, of the roles played by gays and lesbians if you were gay, “you felt invisible.” Hollywood relied on stock characters to portray gays and lesbians in film and those characters never showed realism. (more…)

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Reflections: Water

Reflection at Maudslay ~ c. Pamela J. Leavey 2014
Reflection at Maudslay ~ c. Pamela J. Leavey 2014

There is a certain sense of inner peace that radiates from a still, reflective body of water and fills the soul with a stillness much like that of meditation. In the reflection one sees the wonders of nature mirrored back at itself, sans the ego of the human looking into the mirror. Water is among the most sacred of elements to the Great Mother Goddess, for water sustains all living things.

Sam Keen notes in Hymns to an Unknown God, “In Taoism, the way of water is the metaphor for wisdom.” Indeed, in water I see all that was, all that is and all that can be, and I am renewed by its cool existence and constant motion, that fills my soul with hope and happiness. To imagine the world without water, is to imagine a barren soul devoid of life.

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