The Cultural Gutter

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"We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars." -- Oscar Wilde

The Social Relevance of Jackassery

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Jackass isn’t as stupid as it seems on the surface. I mean, there’s no question it’s jackassery and that’s the main draw, but it’s also a really interesting cultural project.

DANGEROUS BECAUSE IT HAS A PHILOSOPHY

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In Videodrome, shortly before the arrival of the least sexy waiter in the history of cinema (no link for this, you’ll just have to go rent the movie), Max Renn (James Woods, no hyperlink needed) and Masha (Lynne Gorman, IMDb listing not interesting enough to link to) share the following exchange on the nature of [...]

Love For Sale

Untruths about Romance books.

It is an untruth universally acknowledged that a woman in possession of a romance novel must be in want of A) wits, B) a social life, or C) both. I read romance, and frankly don’t care what other people think that says about me. In fact, I think the bias itself says some pretty interesting [...]

In the Sewer with the Alligators

Hey everybody, let

I’m tired of the two-camera, hour-long drama. I’m tired of the Oscar-oriented mainstream film. I’m tired of “literary fiction,” you know, respectable middlebrow art. I don’t enjoy everyday reality heightened with swelling strings. I’m tired of realism’s conventions; so I’ve been turning to comics, pulp fiction, cartoons and genre film.

Even When They’re Wrong, They’re Right

What is science fiction good for? One answer: to speculate on what the future might be like. But I would argue that the game of science fiction is only sometimes about predicting the future. Sure it’s fun to invent flying cars and moonbases, but as even these two examples show, the predictive track record of [...]

Gutter Thoughts

I have to admit, I’m not much of a cultural theorist. My grasp of our cultural gutter is about as sophisticated as a falling anvil — and it’s nowhere near as funny. Which isn’t to suggest I haven’t myself reclined in the gutter and slurped up its spillings like the rest of us… but to [...]

Vive Le Gutter!

For a long time, I’ve always felt a little weird about the third question people ask me at parties. “What do you do?” “I’m a novelist.” “Oh! Really! Have you had anything published?” “Yep, I have three books out there.” “What kind of writing is it that you do?” “Well…it’s kind of science-fiction influenced stuff.” [...]

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  • Of Note Elsewhere

    The Black Girl Nerds Podcast discusses Black girls and women in the Heavy Metal industry with author and journalist Laina Dawes and Ursula “She-Wolf” Parson from Hear Evil News.

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    The Hollywood Reporter interviews director Takashi Miike about his new film, Shield of Straw: ” In Japan now, films are very safe. When I was young and went to old cinemas, they had a distinctive feel, an adult smell about them. As you got in your seat and the lights went down, there was a feeling of excitement: What if the film is scarier than I thought it’s going to be? You’re taken into that world. Nowadays, you can sit in the theater and know it’s going to be safe. That’s good for business, but not for filmmaking.”

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    The Atlantic profiles Spectral Motion, creators of monsters, “effects, and other mechanical grotesqueries that have since become household nightmares, if not names.”

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    A novelist takes revenge on writers he doesn’t like via wikipedia. Slate has the story. “Qworty’s edits undermine our trust in this great project. Qworty’s edits prove that Wikipedia’s content can be shaped by people settling grudges and acting out of spite and envy. Qworty alone, by his own account, has made 13,000 edits to Wikipedia. And Qworty, as the record will show, is not to be trusted.”

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    Diane Dooley writes about Mars’ need for women and ways to subvert it.

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    “[T]he mainstreaming of Jane Eyre as a vanilla romance, or even as an exploration of a woman’s pure, uncompromising, and uncomplicated (and religious! and feminist!) integrity, says all kinds of things about our inability to speak honestly about violence and sex.” More on Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, consent, sex and submission, here. (via K.A. Laity)

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