When she leaves, she leaves a ghost
My poem "Nostalgia/Νέκυια" has been accepted by Not One of Us. It is a dispossessed Odyssey poem, full of the dead. I continue to feel painfully displaced from my life. At least I get art out of it?
(This suffering genius shtick is bunk.)
I got to sleep later than I had wanted, but then I stayed that way until nearly three in the afternoon, which I feel was the correct outcome. I dreamed of watching nonexistent BBC science fiction, post-apocalyptic and kinescoped. The series was called After and I had to double-check with the internet that it didn't exist when I woke up. (It doesn't. It would have been in Nigel Kneale's filmography.) I blame talking to![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
thisbluespirit right before bed.
Have some more links.
1. Courtesy of eshusplayground: Tarik Davis, "Stakes Is High Part 4: Welcome To Fight Night." Anti-racist organizing through the metaphor of vampire movies.
2. Courtesy ofhandful_ofdust: Jessica Ritchey, "You're Doing Women No Favors With Your Mocking 'Ugh, Only Straight White Men Like This' Takes." I meant to link it several days ago, because its central thesis just keeps on being relevant:
One of the most exhausting aspects of our current cultural moment are the "ugh, only straight white men like this" takes that completely erase the voices of female critics, critics of color and fans who don't fit neatly into binaries of who "should" like/dislike something. It's part of a larger and much more pernicious problem—mistaking pop-culture consumption for moral worth as opposed to, you know, how we carry ourselves every day; how we treat other people; and how we support (or don't) the causes that matter to us. Instead, we equate what someone watches on Netflix as the mark of a good/bad person. Or that you're not part of the problem if you performatively state how you're not gonna see a certain movie with a certain problematic star/director/producer/screenwriter.
This completely side-steps the hard, slow, messy work of progress, and endows our entertainment with a nutritional value that it may not have. Obviously, there are political elements to pop culture — primarily, who gets their stories taken seriously and who selects the tone, cast, script and direction of those stories. But consumption of pop culture can't be considered a political end in-and-of itself. Nor can avoiding the work of problematic (even awful) people act as the equivalent of dismantling the beliefs and abuses that allowed them to harm others in the first place.
Not to mention, the erasure of voices that don't fit neatly into who "should" like a particular show/movie/song is a political act, too—one that flies in the face of the performative feminism that thinks only men like Vertigo. Assuming women only like certain kinds of films is as limiting as saying our voices about film don't matter. It denies us the right to be heard as critics, writers and commentators, and further excludes us from the cultural canon since we apparently can't be bothered to watch something you don't like. That makes gallantly stepping in to say we have no interest in a major work by a major director insulting. Finally, it's cowardice. That is, there's plenty wrong with not being brave enough to plainly state that you dislike Vertigo and placing the blame instead on the safest, easiest punching bag (in this case, men).
3. This poem got my attention yesterday: Megan Falley, "Ode to Red Lipstick."
My plans for the evening are primarily laundry. Boober-like, this actually feels relaxing.
(This suffering genius shtick is bunk.)
I got to sleep later than I had wanted, but then I stayed that way until nearly three in the afternoon, which I feel was the correct outcome. I dreamed of watching nonexistent BBC science fiction, post-apocalyptic and kinescoped. The series was called After and I had to double-check with the internet that it didn't exist when I woke up. (It doesn't. It would have been in Nigel Kneale's filmography.) I blame talking to
thisbluespirit right before bed.Have some more links.
1. Courtesy of eshusplayground: Tarik Davis, "Stakes Is High Part 4: Welcome To Fight Night." Anti-racist organizing through the metaphor of vampire movies.
2. Courtesy of
handful_ofdust: Jessica Ritchey, "You're Doing Women No Favors With Your Mocking 'Ugh, Only Straight White Men Like This' Takes." I meant to link it several days ago, because its central thesis just keeps on being relevant:One of the most exhausting aspects of our current cultural moment are the "ugh, only straight white men like this" takes that completely erase the voices of female critics, critics of color and fans who don't fit neatly into binaries of who "should" like/dislike something. It's part of a larger and much more pernicious problem—mistaking pop-culture consumption for moral worth as opposed to, you know, how we carry ourselves every day; how we treat other people; and how we support (or don't) the causes that matter to us. Instead, we equate what someone watches on Netflix as the mark of a good/bad person. Or that you're not part of the problem if you performatively state how you're not gonna see a certain movie with a certain problematic star/director/producer/screenwriter.
This completely side-steps the hard, slow, messy work of progress, and endows our entertainment with a nutritional value that it may not have. Obviously, there are political elements to pop culture — primarily, who gets their stories taken seriously and who selects the tone, cast, script and direction of those stories. But consumption of pop culture can't be considered a political end in-and-of itself. Nor can avoiding the work of problematic (even awful) people act as the equivalent of dismantling the beliefs and abuses that allowed them to harm others in the first place.
Not to mention, the erasure of voices that don't fit neatly into who "should" like a particular show/movie/song is a political act, too—one that flies in the face of the performative feminism that thinks only men like Vertigo. Assuming women only like certain kinds of films is as limiting as saying our voices about film don't matter. It denies us the right to be heard as critics, writers and commentators, and further excludes us from the cultural canon since we apparently can't be bothered to watch something you don't like. That makes gallantly stepping in to say we have no interest in a major work by a major director insulting. Finally, it's cowardice. That is, there's plenty wrong with not being brave enough to plainly state that you dislike Vertigo and placing the blame instead on the safest, easiest punching bag (in this case, men).
3. This poem got my attention yesterday: Megan Falley, "Ode to Red Lipstick."
My plans for the evening are primarily laundry. Boober-like, this actually feels relaxing.
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Thank you!
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Please! It needs saying, and from the more directions the better.
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And yes, great article about performative moralising and film, with a neat killer line at the end. I've literally had people1 tell me I "must have a cock" because I talk enthusiastically about horror films and fiction, so very much felt this sentence:
Assuming women only like certain kinds of films is as limiting as saying our voices about film don’t matter.
1. Well, A Man. Inevitably.
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Is there a reason for this, or is it just one of the ideas that reifies itself through nothing more than "well, everybody knows"? When I started reading horror, I'm pretty sure I started with Shirley Jackson and Tanith Lee.
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I must have phrased the question wrong: I was wondering where the idea of horror as a male genre—or a genre only men enjoy—comes from. You're giving perfectly cromulent reasons to think of it as women's lit.
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Thank you on both fronts!
I "must have a cock" because I talk enthusiastically about horror films and fiction
*resounding raspberry*
The line about "assuming women only like certain kinds of films" is one of my two favorites in the piece. The other, although less epigrammatic, is the one about owning what you like or don't like without rationalizing it with social justice—as though the importance of art is the moral purity its consumption can confer on you, which I wish people would just stop assuming. Do you want Plato's Republic? That's how you get Plato's Republic! With no art!
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That's great!
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I wish After actually existed.
"Ode to Red Lipstick" is great, especially the last stanza.
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Thank you!
I wish After actually existed.
I would totally watch post-apocalyptic Nigel Kneale. I think maybe The Road (1963) is partly that, but I also think it's lost.
"Ode to Red Lipstick" is great, especially the last stanza.
I'm glad! It gathered for me as it went along.
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Well, there is the original Survivors but it's not very SF beyond the concept itself.
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Is it good despite not being very sf? (I've heard of the show; never seen it.)
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Yes. It's very good. It's also very uneven and has a lot of faults (and this one writer who gets v distubring about repopulating the planet), but it's worth 10 of the 2008 one, which was more SF, because it asks the hard questions and tries to answer them (however much I may disagree with a few of its answers)! Basically, how do you survive an apocalyptic event like that, can you go on surviving, and would you really want to? What parts of civilsation do you want to leave in the past and which bits do you want to try and restore, if you can? How do people deal with it?
(The 2008 one fixed several of the faults, but then failed by evading the all the above questions altogether in favour of some SF conspiracy in the background - and I can say this because I watched that one first and only came to the original much later. If the two got in a scrap, the 1975 one would win by kicking, clawing and biting the 2008 one to death. It's not well-behaved, but it's by far the more memorable of the two!)
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It does come with the caveat that there will be something (probably lots of somethings and many of the men) you'll want to shout at it for before the end even more than is usual for elderly TV, but I have a lot of respect for its head-on tackling of the apocalyptic fall out - and I do love Carolyn Seymour's Abby Grant, and also Jenny and Ruth. (I'm retrospectively pissed off now that they cast Freema Agyeman as Jenny in the 2008 and then killed her in the first ep just to go SURPRISE! at the 70s fans, because Jenny is the key character in the end, and that would have been perfect. I might have forgiven it everything else!)
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That's just amazing in a different way!
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I had to look up what you were talking about, but I am now officially interested in this serial.
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Sold.
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Thanks for linking the lipstick poem. That was fantastic.
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Thank you!
Thanks for linking the lipstick poem. That was fantastic.
You're welcome. You see why it got my attention.
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The series was called After and I had to double-check with the internet that it didn't exist when I woke up. (It doesn't. It would have been in Nigel Kneale's filmography.) I blame talking to [personal profile] lost_spook right before bed.
You can only blame me for 100% certain if it had James Maxwell in it. David Collings is indicative, but not proof. ;-p
2. is very much the permanent "current fandom, what's wrong with you" essay I have in my head, only much better written.
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Thank you! And thank you.
You can only blame me for 100% certain if it had James Maxwell in it. David Collings is indicative, but not proof.
I can't remember! It may not have starred anyone who exists outside of my dreams.
2. is very much the permanent "current fandom, what's wrong with you" essay I have in my head, only much better written.
Please feel free to share it, if so. It makes cogent points and I wish more people heeded them.
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Aww. Essays in my head are just feverish, exhausting symptoms of my frustration getting out of hand, mainly, though. It's good to see other people writing better ones for me!
I can't remember! It may not have starred anyone who exists outside of my dreams.
In that case, I can hardly be held responsible. ;-)
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The most that can be said is that I was genuinely suffering for reasons you know of but that doesn't excuse poetical malaise!
That poem hits hard- as it should.
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I am glad you are now suffering less. From what I've seen, it has not hurt the poetry.
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And might lead to lead to losses in revenue, I'd think. When "Austenland" came out, all the hype about it (reviewers who should know better, talk shows, etc) said to get together all the female friends and leave men behind, because only groups of women could possibly enjoy it. In our showing (Lexington Flick, that was, on a Saturday afternoon), many men were in the audience, having a good time. What the heck were the marketers thinking?
During WWII, fingernail polish was extraordinarily hard to get because the military production line used the chemicals therein, but I believe that both the US and UK ration and production people specifically stated that lipstick contributed positively to morale, so its manufacture and sale was not constrained. I guess therefore it isn't surprising that the Brits brought it along.
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Agreed! You feel like financial self-interest should trump lazy sexism. Shape up, capitalism.
I did not know that about fingernail polish vs. lipstick.
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Thank you!