Writer of dumb shit

Cordelia Cupp, world's best detective, who solves the unsolvable, gives up... because she prioritizes the reputation and livelihood of a man she respects and who respects and supports her in turn. Chief Dokes knows that continuing to pursue the case will mean the end of his career, but he says nothing... until she asks. She asks. She knows that there are consequences to her dogged pursuit of the truth, she asks about them, and despite the fact that Chief Dokes is willing to accept those consequences, she says "I'm not."

In a genre that is often characterized by detectives who keep pursuing the case to the ends of the earth - consequences and fallout be damned - I am desperately in love with this character who is blunt and clever and justifiably arrogant and still shows such compassion to those who support her to say "I will not ask this price of you, even if you're willing to pay it, because what you built your life around is more important than finding my answer."

Shine's whole trailer looks amazing, but I'm already so excited by/interested in this one shot of Apo's character, Trin.

The book that he's reading is the 1965 work Toward an Understanding of Homosexuality by Dr. Daniel Cappon.

Dr. Cappon was a professor of psychiatry who worked at the University of Toronto. Here's what the preface of his book says:

There are no homosexuals -- only people with homosexual problems. The idea of a third sex is as antiquated as the last century. No person with a homosexual problem, however extensive or deep, is merely an aberrant creature, a totally pathological specimen. Such a person remains, first and foremost, a person.

However, according to the a site covering the history of Lesbian and Gay liberation in Toronto (LGLC), many of Dr. Cappon's works also include the argument that homosexuality can be cured. For instance,

In 1968, during an address to the Ontario College of Family Physicians he stated that eighty percent of homosexuals who seek professional treatment are helped, and half of these are cured. In 1973, Cappon participated in a debate on homosexuality on CBC radio, where he warned that homosexuals were dangerous because they attracted others to homosexuality. In October 1973, Cappon wrote an article entitled 'The Homosexual Hoax: this aberration is not a right' and generated a great deal of negative response.

I've been reading Sanchai Chotirosseranee and Atit Pongpanit's amazing chapter on the "Thai Film Archive and Early Thai Queer Cinema" in The Routledge Companion to Asian Cinemas recently, which talks a lot about how the 60s were important time period in terms of queer history in Thailand.

In the 1950s, the Thai press began reporting extensively on cross-dressing kathoeys. Because of these new normalized forms of gender difference between masculine and feminine, there has been a notable rise in the creation of gender and sexual identity categories in the mid-1960s. These new categories...emerged in public discourse and become the basis of new homosexual and transgender identities and cultures’ formations in various Thai cities, particularly Bangkok. Jackson (2003) further points out that in the 1960s, Thai physicians and psychologists began to draw upon Western biomedical discourses to negatively address the issues of cross-dressing and homosexuality as “abnormal” and “deviant” (pg. 530)

In the trailer, Trin is asked by a student why foreign-educated intellectuals rely on Western theories to explain everyday life. Later, he's then shown reading a book that features Western ideas/medical discourses surrounding sexuality- the one by Dr. Cappon.

It's possible that these sections are disconnected, but I'm really excited by the idea that the series is going to grapple with topics related to sexuality, Western influence(s), and politics- perhaps separately, but perhaps maybe all together.

The former is a really empathetic, careful look into the hosting and SW industries that understands that many go into the business out of necessity and that being a host, or even a pr*stitute, is not an inherent taint on a person's character, rather a product of circumstance; thus, we should want for them to have better protections and the ability to live their lives to the best of their posibility. Additionally, some of them, just enjoy doing it for the money, and those, too, are portrayed as good people.

In the latter:

A companionship escort gets called a whore every five seconds (even though he never even did full-service SW)

He has rumors that spread around that he's a prostitute (and this is seen as a stain on his character)

He is portrayed as this implacable seductress by everyone he meets (even though he canonically has slept with a single guy)

He gets kicked out of his apartment because he hugged his best friend's boyfriend (even though he was drunk and roofied)

Of that hug, he is seen as the aggressor and the one who is primarily at fault for the hug (even though the other guy was hugging back before they both pulled away)

Said ex-best friend and this character's ex-boyfriend acts like he is nothing but a sugar baby and a burden (when he has no other options because his family is poor and has a history of domestic violence)

He is left with no other options except to live with his client, which is then taken as proof that he is a prostitute (even though he doesn't sleep with this client, and this client is rather nice for doing this, considering this character's ex-boyfriend once beat him up)