Happy Pride, Losers

Happy Pride, Team.

What’s up, sluts?????? Another year of deciding to not identify as pansexual because I think the flag is ugly! Which isn’t a win because I think the bisexual flag is really ugly!! What the fuck!!!!!!!!!! Kicked off June reading biphobic posts online (there’s already so many!). I may be dumb, but the dipshits posting this dreck are fucking stupid and are going to die stupid. As for me? The thing that keeps me going is looking forward to mango season. And when mango season ends, it’s looking forward to persimmon season. Rinse and repeat, I’m still here, much to the chagrin of biphobic idiot freaks. Choke on it, dummies!

Here’s what’s on the docket

The Berry Pickers - Amanda Peters

Bittersweet ending. I teared up. A story about an indigenous girl being stolen from her family by a white couple. It uses a very real problem plaguing indigenous communities (young people are taken away, women and children are kidnapped and murdered, men are disproportionately criminalized) to represent the generations-long acts of genocide against indigenous people, the residential schools, the criminalization of language and sacred practices, the theft of land and the white entitlement to ownership and stewardship over all of it. A white woman is unable to have children of her own, so finds no sin in her act of snatching a child away from her family. Her selfishness traumatizes and shatters an entire family, for which she feels no remorse as the child she stole is burdened with the task of reclaiming her identity. I was very afraid she would never find her family again, it’s a tough story. One of those “what little time we have together is a blessing that is fought for” kind of stories.

The Ministry of Time - Kaliane Bradley

Fun! All roads lead back to HMS Terror, apparently. One of the first books I read after ending my reading dry spell was I’m Glad My Mom Died and The Terror. The Terror is a true blue tome. I read it because I had gotten so hopped up on watching the show it was adapted into. So here I am, cracking open this speculative fiction and thinking, “Hang on, I recognized this bitch” because our protagonist’s charge is one Graham Gore, noted missing person from that doomed arctic voyage. There was a vague melancholy and feeling of doom in the book that reminded me of how it felt to read Never Let Me Go for the first time. There is a sex scene that caught me by surprise, I don’t know when all the books started fucking, but it’s still very romantic.

First-Time Caller - B.K. Borison

Cute. Read it because I wanted to reads something cute. And cute it was! Does count as smut, I believe, so proceed with caution if you’re not into that.

Anna May Wong: From Laundryman’s Daughter to Hollywood Legend - Graham Russell Gao Hodges

Love a biography! Love learning about this woman! She was truly a woman of the world, travelling the globe and joining the circles of international artists and literati alike. She may have been queer, who’s to truly say. Her life was, for better or worse, an illuminating case study in racism and xenophobia in the United States. She always had to apply for a special visa so she could be allowed back into the US, despite having been born there, despite being famous. Reading it while the Chinese Exclusion Act is getting a facelift by the current administration was eerie. A loving biography that provides a very thorough historical context.

Passing Through a Prairie Country - Dennis E. Staples

I think this counts as weird fiction. Reality blurs between the living and the dead in a casino. I cared about all the characters, which was great! I love a book that makes me really worried about the well-being of fictional people.

Superman for All Seasons - Jeph Loeb, art by Tim Sale

Tim Sale’s art style is so freaking weird when it’s in the harsh light of day! Those faces and bodies belong in the shadows! Fun story told through the perspectives of the people who surround Superman. I enjoyed it, but the character of Jenny Vaughn/Toxin reminded me of the reason why a lot of women avoid comics. She was a character born out of misogyny– a woman reduced to an adoring, sacrificial vessel in a revealing outfit. She’s a nothing creature whose only purpose is to be beautiful as she’s shoved in a fridge.

The Witches of Bellinas - J. Nicole Jones

Great idea, weak pay off. Cults and magical realism is fun, the Midsommar element of a decaying relationship travelling to an idyllic and isolated community in a half-hearted attempt to resuscitate an affection that was never there rather than find the courage to just break up is a delightful trope, but in the end, no real danger existed. The death alluded to was not under sinister circumstances, the main character’s hinted imprisonment is in fact self-enforced. I was let down.

A Merry Little Meet Cute - Sierra Simone, Julie Murphy

Smut with a plus sized love interest! It’s silly, it’s goofy, it’s horny. It reads like a boy band fan fic, and that’s a compliment.

One Last Stop - Casey McQuiston

Actually I just finished this. Very cute! Crushes and yearning and public transportation, my favorite things. Some of the humor feels strangely dated, like when tv writers try to write how teenagers talk and land on a strange approximation of memespeak. All characters are interesting, one character (the mother) I think is supposed to be sympathetic but I just couldn’t leap the hurdle of grace for her. Happy ending!

Hollywood Bablyon - Kenneth Anger

I love gossip :)

Pixel Flesh: How Toxic Beauty Culture Harms Women - Ellen Atlanta

I’m more reading this to get resources for more specific aspects of internet culture and how the body exists within it. It has a very personal angle to it, so at times it feels more like a memoir rather than an investigation.

Presumed Intimacy: Parasocial Interaction in Media, Society and Celebrity Culture - Chris Rojek

Finally checked it out from the library to supplement my growing archival folder of the current Nathan Fielder’s babygirlification arc. Particularly interested in the analysis of parasociality in a book that predates the pandemic (published 2016), which was an accelerant to celebrity culture and the parameters of parasociality.

White Tears / Brown Scars: How White Feminism Betrays Women of Color - Ruby Hamad

Fully expecting this to be an uncomfortable read, which is exactly the point of reading books like this.

The Rehearsal

To those familiar with Fielder, season two of The Rehearsal was a very natural escalation of his criminality. Hope he becomes an astronaut next.

His much debated placement on the autism spectrum lends to a very affirming closing argument: “No one is allowed in the cockpit if there is something wrong with them. So if you’re here, you must be fine.” Whether a person is autistic or not, if they have the skillset to do a good job, their diagnoses should hold zero sway over their employability. What matters is they are taken care of and feel safe to ask for help when they need it.

There’s something profoundly postmodern about this season’s influence on the real world, in this pilot reaction article, one pilot says: “On Reddit and other websites, I’ve seen folks posting about watching their pilots speaking in the airport. Nathan mentioned that they don’t do that, but now they are speaking at the airport. A couple of pilots have even said things like, ‘Make sure to be out in the terminal in front of the customers, speaking with the first officer or captain like we’re friends, so they feel more at ease.’” This is already being documented online, I’ve come across multiple TikToks filming pilots jovially chatting with each other, something that could be genuine or performative, but does have the intended effect: the audience is put at ease. Fielder is directly credited. There is an account whose intentions I can’t quite discern run by a flight attendant who discreetly films her interactions with the pilot and co-pilot in the cockpit. She asks them their opinions on the show, she asks them if they’ve ever been banned from dating apps, it’s hard to tell if she’s operating in earnest or if she’s operating like a soundbite farming man-on-the-street interview account. Regardless, the comment sections are flooded with psych analyses of the pilots, determining the co-pilot to be nervous and afraid to speak his mind just like Fielder said! and the pilot is a domineering personality that has no interest in criticism oh my god it’s just like the show! I’m not really thrilled by this sort of trend riding content, it’s something that is popular on the wave currently but will soon become played out and the clout will not outweigh the lack of professionalism. If this person really is a flight attendant, this is really not a great thing to be doing and posting. Whatever. A great season. Highly recommend.

Ed Wood

A movie that I only ever knew to be beloved by delightfully oddball transwomen and boys in film school who seem to know deep down they are doomed to obscurity. I finally saw it and thought it was gorgeous. Incredible restraint from a director who has Flanderized into an over excited puppy pissing all over the kitchen floor because it heard the word “treat.”

Altered States

Ultimately I liked it, but I did have two qualms. I’ll copy in what I wrote on my letterboxd (lmao):

Friendship

I liked it, it was like watching a movie about the reason why an I Think You Should Leave sketch is happening. Sketch premise: a party celebrating a man’s wife being rescued from the sewers and also her hot firefighter ex is there. How could this ever come to pass? Well, there’s a feature length reason and it co-stars Paul Rudd, who does make a sandwich in this film but by the grace of god a steel lid blocks his hands so we do not see what fucked up shit he does with the condiments.

Bring Her Back

Hey, I cried three times! A masterclass in tension and using sound to make the visuals all the more horrible to endure, loved it. Upsetting and empathetic, I absolutely loved it. Young actors exploding with talent and charisma! There’s a theme I’m noticing cropping up in Philippou films where the people who love the hardest get hurt the most severely. And it’s not in a punitive way, it’s not a cynical message to put a leash on your love, but instead something heroic. They loved so hard, threw themselves into harm’s way to save the ones they love, and they are sacrificed for it. But the sacrifice isn’t in vain. It’s unfair when someone you care about is harmed or passes away, but that’s the reality of loving: you will lose them one day. Sally Hawkins makes an incredible del Toro-esque monster, her grief warping her into a stomach turning grotesque. If Sally Hawkins, the most darling little lady, can play the worst thing I’ve ever seen, then we can let Richard Brake (Barbarian, Mandy) play an affable sweetiepie with only pure love in his heart. I saw this and Friendship for free courtesy of my AAA24 membership, here’s a link to join if you’re interested (full disclosure I do get a kickback: I earn a free month on my subscription per referral link used

Members get discounts on all items in the A24 shop, free movie tickets to A24 films, access to the A24 close friends account on IG, and for some reason each month members earn $5 dollars to use as they please. I’m at $25 right now.

A Bit Fruity: The Antisemitism Panic

A critical analysis of how protections against antisemitism have been used to further Zionist agendas that ultimately harm Jewish people and open the door to harming all marginalized groups with impunity. One of the persons involved in this report, [redacted], explains the role of Evangelical Christianity in all of this and how the goals of Evangelist Christians are deeply anti-Semitic. I’ve tried to explain the Evangelist apocalypse fantasy to people before and I couldn’t do it as succinctly as [redacted] does in this (I can’t talk about Evangelists without descending into a trembling rage, which makes talking about them really really fucking hard). Prepare to be horrified!

User Mag: The Case Against Logging Off

“A public that is disengaged and fragmented is far easier to control.” Something I’ve talked about before is the community value of social media. As the TikTok ban closed in earlier this year, I wrote that it was never about data or national security. The platform had proved itself a resource for information that had previously been, by design, opaque and difficult to navigate for average citizens. It had become a tool for community building and organizing. Marginalized communities had a platform and an audience, clarity was provided for navigating disability care and the healthcare system, and the laws related to both. Indigenous languages are revitalized by accounts dedicated to preserving a vital part of their heritage that would otherwise dwindle to nothing, effectively slowing the cultural genocide being carried out to this day. No social media site is perfect, certainly not TikTok, absolutely not even this one, but the strength of the platform lay in the fact that it made it so much harder for the narrative and by extension the populace to be controlled by those in power. The only national security the ban would enforce is the nationalist norms that that run on oppression and suppression. The ban was nothing more than book burning for the digital age. Proof positive that the internet is not an indulgence. Taylor Lorenz explores the nuances of this and the laws being proposed as well as enforced to influence this and speaks with writer and researcher Aidan Walker about how narratives are being put in place to frame the internet as “nothing more than an addictive distraction rather than a crucial battleground.” Since time is a flat circle, all discussion of social media and the internet as a tool by some and a worthless distraction by others reminds me of the phenomena of the radio and the rise of Nazism. The radio, something for information and entertainment, was at first a privileged item only for those that could afford it. But the nascent fascist party recognized it as an efficient tool for access to the masses, producing cheaper models for greater public accessibility in order to influence public opinion at a rate faster than the establishment could counteract. I wonder if there was a “just shut it off” mentality then? Don’t feed the trolls, don’t indulge these airwaves, if you ignore it it will wither and fade. A timeless folly. There is a pattern of new forms of broadcasting being introduced and a surge in right wing/fascist ideology following close behind (this pattern also occurs with pandemics, a conversation for another time). Once a form of broadcast is made accessible to all, it is treated as a frivolous piece of nonsense, a waste of time that rots the brain. This attitude smacks of classism: when it is available only to the wealthy elites, there isno derision. It is a feat of technology and a marvel. As if the elites are of better moral stuff, their palates refined and honed to only the most cerebral and enriching of experiences. It’s once the rest of us get to use it, it turns cheap and tawdry; boob tubes and ghetto blasters, slop and distraction. The internet is no different. In fact, the internet is so alike to its media forefathers it is beyond astounding and just plain horrifying that the same “tactics” are being employed. A studious denial of its value to the people in the name of protecting the establishment despite decades of evidence that protecting the establishment only leads to erosion and eradication of a healthy and functioning society. I white knuckle through conversations with people who whole-heartedly believe the internet and social media are worthless brain rotting distractions, I have no idea how to tactfully grab them by the shoulders and scream “YOU HAVE EATEN COPIOUS AMOUNTS OF PROPAGANDA AND NEED YOUR STOMACH PUMPED IMMEDIATELY.” But I suppose I can recommend this report.

earthquake by Jisoo!!!!!!!

Starry Eyed Surprise by Paul Oakenfold

Swinging Hawaii by Kitty, Daisy & Lewis

Bam Bam by Sister Nancy

Angie La La by Nora Dean

Fahion by Aili

Thoni Na Caki by New Gatanga Sound

Venus Hour (Peanut Butter Wolf remix) by Automatic

I’ve got a little folder of screenshots and downloaded TikToks for recording the babygirl-ification of Nathan Fielder. I’m sort of seeing a similar trajectory as with John Mulaney and the tumblr crowd in how Fielder is being consumed by (broadly) young and female audiences online. Personally, the less I know about his interiority, the better. I do not mean this in a “I hope I don’t learn something unsavory about him” way, I mean it in a “his entire schtick relies on you not actually knowing who this guy is,” way. I resent knowing his birthday. Watching The Rehearsal with the knowledge he’s a Taurus pissed me the fuck off because unfortunately! The public-facing Nathan Fielder is a 1:1 stereotype of a Taurus Man(™) and that is annoying to have rattling in the background.

As for the babygirlification stinking a little like the swooning gifsets of New Kid In Town, well! The way the internet has changed fandom means anyone who has been in the public pre-lockdown exists in a Schrodinger’s box of risk. There are years of accessible existence predating the now-taken-for-granted practice of obfuscating everything even remotely sensitive about yourself to avoid some passionate stranger unearthing and broadcasting it. Doesn’t even require that deep of a dive into Fielder’s body of work to find him doing an intentionally shocking and racist accent. The context around it does cushion the blow: his comedy and practice is a [vicious, scathing, hardcore, something] shove against “politeness” muzzling people from speaking up when they are uncomfortable and allowing bad (and potentially dangerous) behavior to continue unchecked. Unfortunately, context and nuance are a very scarce resource in current media literacy. Even the episode of Nathan For You, “The Hero,” (a dry run for The Rehearsal’s Fielder Method Acting) could instigate discourse about coercion and manipulation in intimate relationships. I say “discourse” with extreme cynicism and zero goodwill. Discourse on social media is by design pointless and only a volleying of increasingly evocative statements and appeals to emotionality, it sucks! As it stands, it’s possible the Fielder fervor is just simple virality that will wash away in the tides of the next hot thing. But I’m watching to see if it will spiral out until people learn the dark truth that Nathan Fielder is a fallible human being and worse yet: a comedian.

I’ve been putting off reading this, one of you do it and give me the CliffsNotes, thanks:

The Cut - “Nathan Fielder’s Strange Sex Appeal” Angelina Chapin

Here are five things from last month that I liked a lot in no particular order.

Okay, Team. That’s all for now. Talk soon (threat)!