The Cultural Gutter

we've seen things you people wouldn't believe

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

Dave Lartigue On Orson Scott Card And Boycotting Comics

“Orson Scott Card isn’t being taken to task solely for his opinions, idiotic and thuggish as they are, but also for his actions. He sits on the board of the National Organization for Marriage, which lobbies and works against basic civil rights for gay people. He is not merely a tool spewing hatred and bile [...]

Is that a gun in your sweatpants?
Art, morality and The Superbowl

pop eyed triceratops2

I told my 3 year old that I’d find a bed for his google-eyed dinosaur. “I promise, sweetheart.” Then, after 45 minutes of ducking in and out of his room with him crying and the senile cat howling in the background while I tried to write an article, I threw the dinosaur across the living [...]

James Deen, A Star in Straight Porn That Women Like

Slate ponders a Good Living interview with James Deen, porn star, and “porn that women like–why does it make men so uncomfortable.”

“Sometimes It Doesn’t Get Better”

In discussing Astron-6′s horror movie, Father’s Day, Dave Pace notes that what seems to make viewers uncomfortable is not the violence but the nudity, the male nudity.  “What I don’t understand is the uncomfortable shifting around and the outright revulsion you will hear for the scenes where you just see regular naked men. I also [...]

The Gamer Girl Manifesto

Gamer Girls remind everyone, “Don’t be racist. Don’t be homophobic. Don’t be sexist. Follow that code and everybody will have a good time. And when someone breaks that code, CALL THEM OUT. Don’t just let it ride.” And the comments bear out why it has to be said again and again.

Orson Scott Card’s Hamlet

Oh my stars and garters, Orson Scott Card has rewritten Hamlet and called it, Hamlet’s Father. via @houseinrlyeh and @pornokitsch)

Bioware Says, “Get Over It.”

A straight male gamer accuses Bioware of ignoring straight male gamers by having queer romance options in Dragon Age II.  Bioware responds by talking about having options for everyone and straight male privilege. Seriously.

The Pitiful Death of Monsieur Mallah

mallah bashed 80.JPG

There’s a sickness in my stomach I’ve been carrying a while, an unpleasant acid feeling that bothers me when I’ve been reading or reading about comics lately. And I guess it’s time for me to cough it up and see what the hell is burning a hole inside.

Response to Harassment in the Geek World

Comic Con Anti-Harassment Project and further discussion of the post we posted from Bully. Also, the Open Source Women Back Each Other Up Project, here and here. (thanks, Elizabeth!)

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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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