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.
no subject
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.
no subject
no subject
no subject
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.
no subject
no subject
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.
no subject
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!
no subject
no subject
That's great!