#carla freccero

[twyrrinren]

misha collins is not the first person to come out as heterosexual

[my-deer-friend]

Do you ever read a paper that not only shreds apart all your preconceptions but also opens your third eye, and then punches you squarely in it?

Anyway.

Ghosts demand. [...] To assume the perspective of the ghost – or to include haunting in a conceptualization of history’s effects – foregrounds the imperative issuing from the other in the labor of the historian. [...] The ghost’s demand engenders a certain responsibility. Spectrality is, thus, also a way of thinking ethics in relation to the project of historiography. [...] The goal of spectral thinking is thus not to immure, but to allow to return, to be visited by a demand, a demand to mourn and a demand to organize. Mourning is, in an important way, the work of history.

Carla Freccero, “Queer Spectrality: Haunting the Past,” in The Blackwell Companion to Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer Studies, eds. Haggerty and McGarry. 2007. 196.

[denimbex1986]

'***** AN ASTONISHING GHOST STORY OF INFINITE BEAUTY, SADNESS AND WISDOM

WHEN we consider the notion of a ghost story, we likely think of them as works of horror, stories designed to send shivers up our spines and keep us awake at night. These have become the dominant form of such stories, often riffing on the notion of unfinished business as a drive to cause distress and demand retribution. As I've gotten older though, and as comes with age, I've begun to accumulate a collection of my own ghosts, and come to realise that this definition of a ghost story is frustratingly closed-minded. If we remove the supernatural from the equation, or the Judaeo-Christian notion of a life after death, what does a ghost story become? Rather than being about the dead, it becomes about the living, about the notion of something having passed on (whether that be through the death of a person, the death of a relationship, or some larger cultural or social passing), and the unfinished business sits within those left behind - words unsaid, promised unkept, possibilities that have faded away with the quiet delicacy of a sunbeam. In her book 'Queer/Early/Modern', Professor Carla Freccero describes how this "spectral being and doing open us up to porous, permeable pasts and futures - suffused with affect and its ethical implications - that enable us to mourn and also to hope." In these kinds of ghost stories, ones like 'Call Me By Your Name', 'Aftersun', 'The Souvenir', 'Petite Maman', even 'The Fabelmans', the unfinished business is our own, and the haunting offers the opportunity to resolve what we long to make peace with.

For a queer person, these hauntings extend beyond just those people and relationships that have passed, but also the sense of self. It's not a far stretch to describe the pre-coming out or pretransition queer self as a kind of ghost, a deeply haunted child persona of a self that no longer exists, the memory of whom leaves a lasting imprint. In 'All Of Us Strangers', the latest film from beloved British filmmaker Andrew Haigh ('Weekend', '45 Years'), that ghost is made manifest for writer Adam (Andrew Scott, TV's 'Fleabag'). He looks into the window of his childhood home and sees a boy staring back at him. It may or may not be an image of his younger self, the ghost of him as a child, but the memory of his younger self sits heavily in that moment. Not only does he (possibly) see a spectral image of the boy he was, but a reflection of the man he has become and the gulf of time and experience in between. In every way, 'All of Us Strangers' is a ghost story, a carefully considered tone poem of a man in the act of communing with the losses that have shaped him. Rather than aiming to send shivers up your spine, it instead carefully, gently shatters your heart.

Living in a mostly-empty new apartment building in London, Adam is attempting to write a screenplay about his parents, both of whom died in a car accident when he was 11. He finds himself drawn back to the town he grew up in and the house they lived... only to find both his Mum (Claire Foy, 'First Man') and Dad (Jamie Bell, 'Billy Elliot') living there once again, appearing just as they did in the days before they died. They warmly invite him in, offer him a cup of tea and ask him about everything they've missed in his life, reopening memories Adam has long locked away.

At the same time, he also finds himself connecting with and becoming intimate with Harry (Paul Mescal, 'Aftersun'), the only other person living in the apartment building, a younger man who brings his own sense of loss and confusion. As Adam continues to explore these two new relationships, visiting his parents and sharing space with Harry, parts of himself he had long suppressed begin to emerge and old wounds are finally allowed to heal.

It's hard to know how to talk about 'All Of Us Strangers' in the context of a formal review - the experience of it feels too raw, too personal, too potent - except perhaps to say that seeing this film was one of the most profoundly moving, deeply affecting experiences I've had in a cinema in many years. Unlike the sudden rush of realisation that came at the end of 'Aftersun', I felt my heart coming apart bit by bit within the first 15 minutes of this film, first as its premise became clear and then as the consequences of that premise began to play out. My hands in my lap began to grip each other harder, my eyes began pouring with tears, my body began to tense. At points, I was so overwhelmed that I could barely breathe, gasping for air, holding back sobs, the sounds of my sorrow mixing in with the sounds of sorrow from others all around me. We dream of such an experience, for a film to open something within us and allow a torrent of truthful emotion to rush forward. I won't go as far as to say that everyone who sees this film will feel similar; that would be foolish. For me, 'All Of Us Strangers' achieved what only great art is capable of - offering a catharsis the spectator hopes for and leading them to a catharsis they didn't know they needed.

The film is loosely based on the 1987 Japanese novel 'Strangers', written by Taichi Yamada, though with his adaptation, Haigh has recontextualised the premise to a gay man living in London rather than a heterosexual man living in Japan. This allows him to draw on his own experiences, and as intimate as all of Haigh's work has been, 'All Of Us Strangers' has that quality of specificity that comes with the central artist revealing something about themselves. It shimmers with an emotional honesty that's equal parts moving and confronting. He also foregoes the more supernatural elements of the novel, never feeling the need to explain how Adam is able to see and speak with his parents or how the interior of his family home has resurrected itself. This works entirely in the film's favour, making it clear from the beginning that questions of logic do not apply here. We are occupying a space of the impossible, of the metaphorical, where the effect of this haunting is more important than its practicalities. It all happens so gently, so incidentally - a beckoning from across a field, a door opening, a warm hug as if this meeting were long expected. Haigh isn't interested in histrionics or banal lines of question. Like all his work, he's far more invested in emotional truth, and what the premise at the heart of 'All Of Us Strangers' offers is the opportunity to reach an even greater level of emotional truth than a traditional drama could offer, where what has long haunted Adam is able to come to light, and words can be spoken that never could have been before.

Back in the home he once occupied as an 11-year-old, Adam feels incongruous, out of place, taking up more space than he feels he should. Visually as well as emotionally, we feel how much time has passed, how different a man he has become than the one these four walls had expected him to be. He is no longer 11, but back in the embrace of his parents and his childhood home, he finds himself needing to be that age once again, to sit in that memory in order to understand it and grappling with how its sudden end has shaped him. This becomes the central drama of these visits with Mum and Dad, unpacking the conversations that he would have had if they had lived - about his career, about where he lives and, more importantly, about who he loves. If this is all really happening, if Adam really is sitting across the kitchen table from his Mum or in the lounge with his Dad, both much younger than he is now, then the chance to have these long longed-for conversations is a kind of miracle. If this isn't happening though, if this is simply Adam imagining how he might have these conversations if he could as he delves into an imaginative writing space, then the effect is just as overwhelming and even more heartbreaking. He is communing with the dead, sharing his true self with them, hoping against hope that they will accept him, dreaming of the words he needs them to say and fearing the words they might say instead. A pair of scenes see Adam confronting the most fundamental queer experience, and each is so emotionally thunderous that you can hardly bear it, the way they batter at your heart. We've seen these conversations so many times in so many queer films, but never like this, never suffused with so much longing and loss and hope.

Sitting in the dark, watching them play out across that white screen through movements of shadow and colour and light, I felt the memory of those conversations in my own life, felt the weight of how they shaped me and, more so, feel the presence of those I never got to tell. I remember when I was 22, a very dear uncle suddenly died, and I still have no idea whether he ever knew I was gay. It weighed on my mind all the way through his funeral, how I suddenly wished I could tell him and have him know me wholly before he suddenly wasn't there anymore. In 'All Of Us Strangers', Adam finds himself with the chance to do just that, to reach towards that catharsis. Maybe it isn't that Adam is haunted by the ghost of his pre-coming out self. Maybe he is still caught as a ghost, in purgatory, unable to untether himself from those years, and now, with his parents sitting across from him, he may be able to leave this ghostly self behind.

Adam is stuck in stasis, a self-imposed loneliness in his small yet orderly apartment in this large yet empty building. He is alone, not because he has been rejected or outcast, but because it is safer, and as time has gone on, that loneliness has become an armour. We sense this immediately when we meet Adam at the start of the film and watch his routine habits around his flat. We also sense immediately, when Harry unexpectedly knocks at this door, that this other man, much more gregarious and much younger, carries a similar loneliness. By virtue of circumstance, Harry's isolation is much more embryonic. As we learn, his estrangement from his family isn't a consequence of rejection but an act of self-preservation. He feels he is a stranger in his family, and that it is better to simply remove himself from that community than feel, as Rose puts it in 'Titanic', like he's standing in a crowded room, screaming at the top of his lungs, with nobody looking up. That feeling of not belonging, of feeling adjacent to life rather than integrated into it, is a theme that runs through all of Haigh's work. Queer people have been conditioned to feel like incongruous puzzle pieces, not always actively rejected but still hard for their straight friends and family to fully understand. We sit outside of the heteronormative framework that governs so much of our society, and sometimes it it easier to walk away than feel perpetually out of place.

This comes at a cost though, something that Adam has learned to suppress and that Harry, too young and lacking the tangible keystones that Adam possesses such as the HIV/AIDS crisis, does not have the language or skills to deal with. Their relationship is a slow, careful negotiation, Harry offering his hand gently but desperately, longing for connection, and Adam pushing through the plaster he has wrapped around himself for protection. They find themselves in the walls of Adam's apartment, in exploring each others' bodies like a torch in the dark, in moments of intimacy where words carry an ocean of meaning. If the scenes between Adam and his parents are the major events of 'All Of Us Strangers', the moments between Adam and Harry are our moments of breath, our chance to take stock in what has been shifting, not just in Adam but in us as well. The consequences of that self-imposed isolation with come to pass, but not before they find the possibility in connection and intimacy.

While so much of the action in 'All Of Us Strangers' is built around intimate conversations, at no point does it ever feel static. Each moment of revelation feels tectonic, each as overwhelming as the last, each moving with the certainty of something needing to break. This fantasy cannot last, Adam cannot live forever in the moment before he lost his parents. These little moments of catharsis are simply the preparations for the ultimate catharsis, like the initial tremors of a volcano before it finally erupts. As Adam's reality begins to slip and his grasp on himself starts to fail, we see the risk that comes with communing with our ghosts. It is one thing to sit for a moment in our past, but it's another to be caught living in it, existing in it. True catharsis, the true resolution of our unfinished business, only comes when something finally passes on. When that inevitable moment comes in 'All Of Us Strangers', so much more complex and so much bigger than you ever expect it to be, it does so with such aching quiet, such deep and unrestrained sadness, and such infinite, compassionate wisdom. I sat there in my seat and sobbed, feeling the pain of every heartbreaking goodbye I've ever been through, every devastating goodbye I wished I could have said but never did. And more than anything, feeling the sense of responsibility as, like Adam, the one left behind, the one holding those experiences delicately in the palms of your hands, whispering to them and nurturing them in the infinite.

To step back from the emotional and the personal in my response, I have nothing but praise for the many parts that make up this exquisite film. Haigh's screenplay is beautifully sparse and breathtakingly honest, his direction delicate and uncompromising. Jamie Ramsey's cinematography is a dreamlike symphony of colour and reflection, moving so easily from the smooth artificiality of Adam's apartment to the nostalgic glow of his family home. Jonathan Alberts' editing moves so carefully, knowing when a moment needs the space of time and yet allowing for confusion and chaos when the film needs it. With the four central performances, no amount of praise could possibly be enough. Paul Mescal is so achingly beautiful from the moment he appears, so much so that neither we nor the camera can take our eyes from him or not fall helplessly in love with him. Jamie Bell, quietly one of the greatest actors of his generation, gives maybe his finest performance since 'Billy Elliot', an astonishing portrait of fatherly love and tenderness. The same can be said of Claire Foy, breathtaking in her ability to navigate the heart of Adam's pain with great honesty and enormous tenderness. And Andrew Scott delivers the performance that will define his career, so imbued with loss and longing and need and fear and love. He breaks your heart over and over again, and each time feels all the more vital. Haigh could not have assembled a better cast if he tried.

In the week since seeing 'All Of Us Strangers', it hasn't left me. I can feel it sitting in my bones, just behind my eyes, nestled in my heart. I long for these moments, when everything falls away and you feel like the whole world is holding its breath, coming to a stop as this film plays before your eyes. Like the best ghost stories, it haunts you long after it is over, and like the greatest ghost stories, it never leaves you. Carla Freccero writes that "the past is present in the form of a haunting", and in this film, that notion becomes all too palpable. In its delicate wisdom, a wisdom it imparts as it gently takes your heart and soul apart piece by piece, the past is always present, its hand resting on your shoulder or on your forearm, whether that be as a memory or, as Adam sees or imagines, through an impossible moment of resurrection. We carry those ghosts with us with every step, and part of the journey forward, away from those heartbreaking goodbyes, is learning to carry them with us. Andrew Haigh has found, through his poetic grasp of the language of cinema, his pursuit of emotional honesty and his carefully-framed queer lens, a way to express the inexpressible in a manner that is wholly unforgettable. 'All Of Us Strangers' is a miracle, maybe even a masterpiece, a statement on love to last the ages, perhaps the best film of the year.'

[jacobwren]

In a 1963 Warner Brothers cartoon featuring Ralph E. Wolf and Sam Sheepdog – originally created by Chuck Jones (in 1953) then remade by ex-Jones animators Phil Monroe and Richard Thompson – a wolf and a sheepdog share a companionable dailiness and friendship involving coffee together in the morning and a return home arm in arm at the end of the day. In between, of course, they assume their roles as enemies: the sheepdog guards the flock, while the wolf devises numerous stratagems to steal the sheep, foiled at every turn by a seemingly dopey yet powerful and alert guard dog. The cartoon, with its reference to the workaday world, cleverly points to the human cultural roles within which dog and wolf are forced to play out their opposed roles and marks as capital the framework for their opposition. There is an invisible boss and a system within which they must perform: someone – presumably human – owns the flock, and both are employed in its maintenance and devastation. The cartoon is knowing and innovative in that it remarks on the “insiderness” to human culture of the wolf – he is supposed to try to try to steal the sheep, although, in this fort-da of mastery and triumph over trauma, he will never succeed. Instead, his actions confirm and reconfirm the superior agency of the human creation: the sheepdog. Not matter how much the thief tries to bring down the empire, he is foiled. Part of the critique this cartoon offers is to assert that the economic system of private property and primitive accumulation requires an enemy.

Carla Freccero, Wolf, or Homo Homini Lupus

[qqueenofhades]

Thanks for writing DVLA, it was wonderful. I haven’t gotten that absorbed in something in a while, and I read it twice while on a camping trip this weekend. And then spent a lot of time just staring out the window being sad about the Crusades and just these two beautiful queer disasters in general. (A HUNDRED YEARS OF PINING. I LOVED IT). (1/6)

It was everything I wanted, so satisfying, and the thread of Crusades and faith conflicts and the stupid complicated ways humans find to hurt each other was really masterfully woven through. I learned so much; I had a basic idea of the Crusades but you filled everything in and made it come alive. And you got across so well that people across history are just people. (2/6) 

Maryam was my favourite, I would read anything with more of her in it as well. The Constantinople section and the way it ended just ripped my heart out. (PHIL.) I was so glad Hippolyta and Rebecca got out safe. But the end to such a lovely sunlit chapter of life was heartwrenching. (3/6) 

It means a lot to me, as someone trying to confront her own faith’s and her ancestors’awful actions in the past, to have someone present religious conflict the way you do. Part motivations like conquest and glory and riches, part motivated by faith, and very much something that I or anyone else could fall into just as easily as people in the past did. (4/6) 

I graduated three years ago with a minor in history and have done absolutely nothing with it - I was burned out for ages on even reading anything, and I haven’t read anything academically rigorous in so long. This felt like a perfect reintroduction to history, and it made me want to do research and read history again, for the first time in years. (5/6) 

I’m noting the resources you’ve recommended to some other folks about medieval queerness and the Crusades, but I was wondering if you also had any recommendations for reading about Julian of Norwich specifically, or queerness in female medieval religious spaces in general? Thank you so much, I’ve followed your blog for a long time and always love reading your posts. (6/6) 

Ahh, thanks so much. Once again, I must bow to someone’s superlative tumblr ninjitsu skills both in knowing the number of asks it will take ahead of time and preventing the blue hellsite from eating any of them.

I’ve had so many people say these absolutely lovely things to me about DVLA -- about the history, the religion, the journey, the story, the reactions they had to these themes, how they felt inspired by it -- and I really am truly humbled by it. I think it speaks to the way all of us felt some kind of ownership or reflection or empowerment in Joe and Nicky’s story and the way it unfolds both on screen in the TOG film and our own conceptions and reactions and engagement with it. It’s just one of the best ships I can think of in terms of that, and I’m worried that anything I say will end up sounding trite, but I really do mean that.

As a historian, I am obviously delighted to hear that it made you want to return to or re-engage with the subject in some way, as well as to use it to help think through the religious themes for yourself. Because as I said in my answer to how to deal with the history in a hypothetical Joe/Nicky prequel movie, we can’t just have the easy luxury of being like “oh all the crusaders were clearly religious zealots and we would never be like that and never do anything like that.” Because a) we already do that, and b) it prevents us from assessing ourselves and our own behaviour and our own troubling patterns and habits if we just arrogantly assume that all the people in the past were stupider and/or less enlightened than we were and clearly We Won’t Make Those Mistakes. So we have to see ourselves in them in some way, and to understand they still did those things, they still destroyed a lot of beautiful things in their world for ultimately no good reason at all. We’re doing the same thing, we justify it to ourselves in different ways, and the goals and the stakes are a lot larger in a globalized world, and anything that sets up medieval people (or really any people in the past, but the medieval era is the stick that gets used the most often) as so unlike us and so inferior to us is just genuinely dangerous. So yes. I’m sure you know my feelings on that topic.

Maryam, Rebecca, and Hippolyta have all gotten a lot of love, which I think is great, and it seems to be the consensus that chapter 4 ruined everyone’s lives. This is understandable, since I’ve mentioned the fact that despite the pain, I think it’s possibly my favourite, and I am glad that everyone had the totally normal emotions over the sack of Constantinople that I also had while writing it. Because yes! It is a tragedy the likes of which was still a Thing in the year 2004, the 800th anniversary, when the pope felt moved to apologize for it! The scale of what it destroyed and took away and the way it influenced history afterward (as Joe is thinking at the start of chapter 6) is just MASSIVE, and... yes.

As for reading recs (and again, it delights me that you want to dip your toe back into reading academic history), I don’t have anything about Julian of Norwich specifically (though there’s a LOT about her out there, especially right now, so I’m sure you can nose about and see what turns up). But as for queerness in female medieval religious spaces (with some bonus medieval queer ladies in general):

Sahar Amer, Crossing Borders: Love between Women in Medieval French and Arabic Literatures (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008)

Judith Bennett, ‘ “Lesbian-Like” and the Social History of Lesbianisms,’ Journal of the History of Sexuality, 9 (2000), 9–22.

Marie-Jo Bonnet, ‘Sappho: Or the Importance of Culture in the Language of Love: Tribade, Lesbienne, Homosexuelle’, in Queerly Phrased: Language, Gender, and Sexuality, ed. by Anna Livia and Kira Hall (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 147–66.

Bernadette Brooten, Love Between Women: Early Christian Responses to Female Homoeroticism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996)

Mary Anne Campbell, ‘Redefining Holy Maidenhood: Virginity and Lesbianism in Late Medieval England’, Medieval Feminist Forum, 13 (1992) 14-15.

Carol Lansing, ‘Donna con donna? A 1295 Inquest into Female Sodomy’, Studies in Medieval and Renaissance History, 3 (2005) 109-122.

Kathy Lavezzo, ‘Sobs and Sighs Between Women: The Homoerotics of Compassion in The Book of Margery Kempe.’, in Premodern Sexualities, ed. by Louise Fradenburg and Carla Freccero (New York: Routledge, 1996), pp. 175-198.

E. Ann Matter, ‘My Sister, My Spouse: Woman-Identified Women in Medieval Christianity’, in Weaving the Visions, ed. by Judith Plaskow and Carol P. Christ (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1989), pp. 51–62.

Jacqueline Murray, ‘Twice Marginal and Twice Invisible: Lesbians in the Middle Ages’, in Handbook of Medieval Sexuality, ed. by Vern L. Bullough and James A. Brundage (New York: Garland, 1996), pp. 191–222.

Nancy Sorkin Rabinowitz, Among Women: From the Homosocial to the Homoerotic in the Ancient World. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2002

Susan Schibanoff, ‘Hildegard of Bingen and Richardis of Stade: The Discourse of Desire’, in Same Sex: Love and Desire Among Women in the Middle Ages, ed. by Francesca Canadé Sautman and Pamela Sheingorn (New York: Palgrave, 2001), pp. 49-83.

Have fun!!

[sea-changed]

the second quarter of 2019 in books

27. Portrait of a Woman in Silk: Hidden Histories of the British Atlantic World, Zara Anishanslin 28. A Seditious Affair, K.J. Charles [reread. obvs.] 29. Queer/Early/Modern, Carla Freccero 30, A Lady’s Desire, Lily Maxton [the worst of the f/f cliches, trite and badly written] 31. Imre: A Memorandum, Edward Prime-Stevenson 32. Patient Zero and the Making of the AIDS Epidemic, Richard McKay 33. Tin Man, Sarah Winman 34. A Gentleman’s Position, K.J. Charles [the plot structure only gets weirder upon rereading] 35. Pages for You, Sylvia Brownrigg [academia f/f, obviously appealing, though it ended up leaving me somewhat flat] 36. Darius the Great is Not Okay, Adib Khorram 37. Wanted, a Gentleman, K.J. Charles [reread, but I wasn’t counting novellas last year. Remains a delight.] 38. Proper English, K.J. Charles [alas, disappointing. would love KJC to start writing pairings with interesting interpersonal drama again. also, the sex was boring.] 39. An Unnatural Vice, K.J. Charles [a dnf the first time around, better than I remembered, though as far second-installment opposite-attract pairings go it obviously can’t compete] 40. Release, Patrick Ness [YA books that don’t read as patronizing are so rare, so kudos on that] 41. The Great Believers, Rebecca Makkai [the farther from this I get the less I like it, though the reading itself was compelling] 42. Washington Black, Esi Edugyan 43. Broadway: A History of New York City in Thirteen Miles, Fran Leadon 44. The Line of Beauty, Alan Hollinghurst [I don’t get Hollinghurst, though the man can write an absolutely devastating one-liner] 45. Artful, Ali Smith 46. O Pioneers!, Willa Cather 47. American Histories, John Edgar Wideman 48. American Eden: David Hosack, Botany, and Medicine in the Garden of the Early Republic, Victoria Johnson 49. Murmur, Will Eaves 50. How to Be Both, Ali Smith [I want to like Ali Smith more than I actually do, but this did have its moments] 51. The Faraway Nearby, Rebecca Solnit [possibly my favorite of 2019 so far. Solnit’s prose is hypnotizing] 52. The Age of Innocence, Edith Wharton [reread] 53. Mystery and Manners, Flannery O’Connor 54. Lie With Me, Philippe Besson (trans. Molly Ringwald) 55. Interior States, Meghan O’Gieblyn [disappointingly pedestrian] 56. The Argonauts, Maggie Nelson 57. Astray, Emma Donoghue [can I use the comment “disappointingly pedestrian” twice in one book list?]

[ebp-brain]

queer ghosts

“In my theorizing of temporality I explore forms of desirous, embodied being that are out of sync with the ordinary linear measurements of everyday life, that engage heterogeneous temporalities or that precipitate out of time altogether—forms of being that I shall argue are queer by virtue of their particular engagements with time. These forms of being show, in fact, that time itself is wondrous, marvelous, full of queer potential.” 

- Carolyn Dinshaw, How Soon is Now?

“The past is in the present in the form of a haunting. This is what, among other things, doing a queer kind of history means, since it involves an openness to the possibility of being haunted, even inhabited, by ghosts.”

- Carla Freccero, Queer / Early / Modern

[glinformati-blog]

I Retroscena di Blogo: Freccero vuole Carla Bruni a The Voice, ma lei vuole The Voice ? - GLI INFORMATI

[morenafanti]

Le presentazioni sono divertenti - tre

Le presentazioni sono divertenti – tre

… Segue da qui

E, dopo Castenaso, via subito a Imola! Là, al bar Ai giardini, ci aspettava Carla Casazza, scrittrice ed editor. Carla aveva proposto la presentazione e avrebbe condotto la serata. Io sono arrivata molto infreddolita – la temperatura era calata e io, essendo uscita di pomeriggio, non ero attrezzata. Così mi sono dimenticata di fare qualche foto. Non sono venute molte persone – ma è…

[couchchronicles]

Femininity and Queerness as Resistance in the Home - Hanson and Freccero

In her book, Helen Hanson writes on the female Gothic heroine, what that typically entails, what kind of agency they might possess from within the tropes and in breaking outside them, and how they might function in terms of identification beyond the textual realm. Importantly for evolving Gothic sensibilities, castles and ruined estates eventually gave way to the old house, which maintained the deathly, creaking sensibilities of older Gothic and moved cultural anxieties more clearly into the site of the contemporary family. In the same turn, this gave way to shifts in sexual and domestic organization for women, which was spearheaded by women writers moving into the literary field, giving way for a female self-conscious perspective to grow. The Gothic heroine, therefore, can often be seen as one moving into the active role of adventure and navigating the pressures of old sensibilities while creating the means for change and the new. Noting the promiscuity of genres the Gothic heroine resides in film, Hanson points out some of the gendered specificity of her use in both more progressive and conservative impulses. In other words, the Gothic heroine can often be used to track evolving gender roles across various subcultural spaces-- and different perspectives about it. 

Positioning queerness as itself promiscuous, Carla Freccero moves the discussion on queerness, the Gothic, and femininity one step further. In asking the question, what does it mean to move, to act, or to think in a queer way, Freccero examines both the pleasures and pains of being mobilized by an ethical and open imagination for a different future. She portrays the present as a sort of perpetual and noticeable haunting by the past. This leads me to imagine a queer or Gothic heroine as weighed down by the ghosts of the past who act as a force pulling to conserve a movement of their time, and these characters must on some level move by the dragging of the old form in attempting to move against it but with a twist of the new. This is, of course, why progress is incremental. The weight of the past keeps certain movements in check that can only be marginally adjusted in resistance. Some of the pain, therefore, is knowing that there is a way to move altogether differently if the force were to subside but being unable to implement a vision or affect practically in the present. 

Both of these are depicted materially in the mise-en-scene of Crimson Peak by the literal dragging of the ghosts upon the floorboards of the house. They don’t literally repel our Gothic heroine away, but they try to instill a queer disposition towards the old home as a heritage of terror rather than of warmth. It’s the same way many of our political dispositions depend on how we feel oriented versus how we’ve been shown we should be oriented in terms of attraction and repulsion towards subjects, objects, and concepts of the world. On the other hand, the physical forces come from her husband and his sister in the end, who will grab at her body or sneak poison inside her. In these instances, our Gothic heroine must literally move by the way she is being directed but attempt to repel against it in hopes that her forces of resistance will be enough to break for at least a split second.

[tcolmstead-horror-su20]

Haunted Monstrous Desire in “Crimson Peak”

Despite being the product of a (somewhat) progressive writer-director, produced in the 2010's, Guillermo Del Torro's Crimson Peak (2015) capitalizes on many of the fears around the "Death of the Family," which surfaced in the latter half of the 20th century. The film's hauntings circulate around familial trauma including matricide and incest, which are depicted as the most deplorable actions a human can undertake. The revelation, in the film's climax that Lucille (Jessica Chastain) and Edward Sharpe (Tom Hiddleston) have killed their mother and Edward's numerous wives is only overshadowed by the later revelation that they are an incestuous couple whose crimes are motivated by hiding their secret affair. It is this revelation that prompts the protagonist, Edith Cushing (Mia Wasikowska), exclaim "You're monsters!"

Cushing's, and by extension the spectator's, disgust plays into the anxieties around the so-called "death of the family," which are discussed by Reid (1995) as having emerged into American cultural discourse in the 1970's and continuing through the 1990's. "...Handwringing and expressions of alarm over the decline or death of The Family have always been a tactic for reinscribing and protetcting the so-called normative humanity of (straight) upper-middle-class whites through stigmatizing social others for lack of 'family,'" he writes. In the case of Crimson Peak, the stigmatized others are deviant children, Lucille and Edward, whose incestuous desire is shown to be causally linked to the multiple murders they have been committed. Their stigmatized love is even symbolically linked to the decay of the family home, Allerdale Hall, which they barely attempt to maintain despite frequently describing it as "all we have left." Their insistance on maintianing their palatial home, as well as the appearance of non-romantic siblinghood, demonstrates the necessity of presenting a normative ideal of domesticity in order to maintain their high social stannding. This facade of domesticity is one of the symbolic objectives of a culture war Reid identifies during the late 20th century, which prioritizes monogamy, sentimental intimacy, and childhood innocence all of which are thrown into question by the Sharpe's nefarious affair.

But are Edward and Lucille the root of the monstrosity in Crimson Peak? In a few bits of dialogue we receive glimpses of their unnamed father, who Edward accuses of wasting the family fortune by traveling the world and cavorting with the wealthy while his family were left to symbolically and literally rot back in Allerdale Hall. However, this globe-trotting behavior which Edward so detests is precisely what we see him doing at the start of the film as he seduces Edith. And though we repeatedly see the ghost of the murdered matriarch, we never get any visible confirmation of Mr. Sharpe's existence. The root of the Sharpe's domestic trauma, then, appears to be the absence of a father rather than the ineptitude of their mother. Edward's bizarre re-enactment of his father's neglect could be considered a kind of returning or haunting, which would bring the film in line with Carla Frecerro's construction of Queer Spectrality. For Freccero, openness to the haunting and consent is key: "The object's return and its demand being what might be said to emerge when one is willing to be haunted...Further, the mutual recognition, entanglement, and disentanglement entailed by this event suggests a more complex relationship between difference and resemblance, alterity and identity (or 'sameness') than (heteronormative) discourses of identity normally allow." Edward's willingness, desire even, to leave his sister and sleep with Edith or even to bring Edith into a kind of polyamorous affair with Lucille may in fact represent his own haunting. The ghost of the father haunts the son, filling him with polyamorous desires which may in fact be more monstrous than incest.

[thebeafeminist]

The Wolf

In reading “Wolf”  By Carla Freccero, I felt enlightened and engaged, reacting positively to what much of what the author describes in her article. I agree with her observations of the “wolf” and the connections she draws to modern-day pop culture. Through her comparison she uses the lead character in the movie, “The Woodsman” to shed light on the similarity between men and the wolf: “...the wolf is both the seductive heterosexual projection onto an object of the girl’s budding sexuality…” (p. 99). In “The Woodsman” the wolf becomes this character that is a “father-lover”, but also has a rapacious seductive character threatening the young girl’s innocence. This analysis of “The Woodsman’ brought me to realize how guilty, powerful men of today preying on young girls are also given the same picture and characterization as the wolf. Many men such as Jeffery Epstein, Prince Andrew, and R. Kelly are now seen as the evil men lusting after young girls and their innocence. It was interesting to see how the relationship between man and wolf has existed throughout time and how even though the wolf is predominantly depicted as the villain.   

Aggressive wolves in nature have truly suffered through man’s ignorant and fearful culling.   also appreciated how these characteristics were presented as overlapping, and how Freccero wrote about the dynamics of king and sovereign in relation to humans and animals. Also of the note was that the piece included and referenced the feminine relationship in this dynamic. She analyzes the Shakira song “She Wolf” in which a “sexually rapacious and predatory savagery is experienced by the woman as a form of liberation from the excessive docility required of her by her workaday life and boyfriend” (Fraccero, p. 101). 

The more I progressed with the piece, the more aware I became of how these ideas actually represent a real phenomenon: the wolf is living and breathing with us in nature, art, literature, pop culture and history of all cultures ancient and modern. The big bad wolf to me is the men in the news who carry horrible sex allegations and benefit from corruption to remain unpunished.

[yourmomisastrongwoman]

Le loup

While reading Homo Homini Lupis written by Carla Freccero I began to think, and then suddenly, I was overwhelmed by my incoming thoughts and questions zooming in and out of my head. Freccero’s text illustrates the role that the wolf plays in our society and how our culture grapples with our obvious frustration with the creature. This mammal, belonging to the Canidae family, is a beautiful symbol of strength and power; however, humans have been struggling to figure out how to co-exist with this creature for centuries. What I find most interesting is the fact that humans have spent so much time projecting human emotions onto this animal, that we view it - almost - as being an equal. Us humans have become so threatened by the presence of this animal because of their knowledge and their sophisticated ability to adapt to man (man vs nature dichotomy). When thinking about the relationship, the thing that I feel effectively describes how we deal with the animal is as if there was a bully picking up a fight with a kid who is, very much capable of fighting, yet obviously will be no match to the stronger opponent. In this case humans are the bully, and the wolf is the weaker opponent. We’ve become obsessed within this relationship of proving our dominance over this creature, just like man asserts his dominance over nature.  We choose to demonize the wolf because of the intimidation that we feel. Why do we feel such a specific type of stress with this one creature that is an embodiment of strength? Why do we choose the wolf over a bear, or, Lion? Is it because the wolf is more attainable? More common amongst the locations that humans frequent? There are plenty of other creatures that have the same amount of physical power, if not more. Our fear of the wolf is an anxiety that has been engrained within humans for such a long time. It is ultimately an insecurity that man has created simply to hold our dominance over nature. 

[nakhavanfys]

Wolf, or Homo Homini Lupus

Carla Freccero’s love for animals and literature create a vast variety of questions we should ask our history and society, questions that can be thought of when specifically reading her article, “Wolf, or Homo Homini Lupus.” In this article, Frecerro focuses on the relationship through the years between man and wolf. From the representations, symbolism, hybrids, and more, we as readers are exposed to theories in this article that asks of us to look closer and examine what needs to be unpacked from fables as old as time.

For generations, we were presented with the idea that wolves and humans are opposites and, in fact, enemies. But the reality is that we share many of the same qualities, from our sociality to actions of infanticide, many connections can be made. Yet, often, we are made to be separated; one group cheered for (humans) and the other feared as well as hunted for being in opposition. What is problematic about this tension-filled relationship is the fact that wolves often symbolize a marginalized group or “other” in stories. As kids, we are bred to believe that “wolves” of our world are out to get us, so we need to get them before they get us. This poses a problem for those who don’t recognize these sneaky associations made by writers.

By constantly reminding ourselves that we share many characteristics with the “wolves,” whether that be literal wolves or the representation of those who are othered in our society, we no longer perpetuate the incessant need to be the ones on top and to fear those different than who you see in the mirror.

[italianaradio]

Detto Fatto ‘scarica’ Guillermo Mariotto: ecco chi prenderà il posto di Giovanni Ciacci accanto a Bianca Guaccero

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Detto Fatto ‘scarica’ Guillermo Mariotto: ecco chi prenderà il posto di Giovanni Ciacci accanto a Bianca Guaccero

Chi sperava di vedere Guillermo Mariotto nella prossima edizione di Detto Fatto resterà deluso. Secondo indiscrezioni di stampa, la trattativa con lo stilista venezuelano si è arenata e non ha portato a un accordo. A prendere il posto di Giovanni Ciacci potrebbe essere una donna piuttosto nota. Ma le novità sul programma di Bianca Guaccero non finiscono qui. Ecco cosa ci aspetta dal prossimo autunno. Guillermo Mariotto non sarà a Detto Fatto Dopo l’addio di Ciacci, la produzione del programma pomeridiano di Rai 2 si è messa alla ricerca di un degno sostituto. Serve una persona esperta di moda, con verve, che sappia non solo parlare delle ultime tendenze e dare consigli ma che riesca anche ad arrivare al cuore del pubblico. LEGGI ANCHE: — ‘Ho vissuto l’inferno’, Guillermo Mariotto senza peli sulla lingua svela cosa è successo Tra i nomi circolati per la nuova edizione di Detto Fatto anche quello di Guillermo Mariotto, giudice di Ballando con le Stelle. La sua competenza non è messa in discussione, avendo vestito personaggi famosi come Raffaella Carrà e Beyoncè. Pare però che il dialogo con lo stilista venezuelano, che nei giorni scorsi è stato ospite a Non Disturbare, non abbia dato buon esito. Chi ci sarà al posto di Ciacci? Secondo quanto riporta Spy, la produzione di Detto Fatto non avrebbe accettato le richieste di Guillermo Mariotto giudicate troppo esose per un programma a basso costo e col budget ridotto. Basti pensare che il giudice di Ballando con le Stelle pare avrebbe voluto uno studio tutto per sé a Roma mentre il programma va in onda da Milano. Stando alle indiscrezioni del settimanale, il sostituto di Giovanni Ciacci potrebbe essere una donna. Carla Gozzi, volto noto di Real Time, sarebbe pronta a sbarcare su Rai 2. A sceglierla, sarebbe stata la stessa Bianca Guaccero in persona. Per la prossima edizione del programma al via dal 16 settembre, ci saranno diverse novità che non riguardano solo il cast. Sulla trasmissione si è abbattuta la spending review di Carlo Freccero, che ne ha tagliato la durata: lo show non inizierà più alle 14 ma alle 14.45. Motivo? Lo spazio sarà occupato dalle repliche del nuovo cooking show di Carlo Cracco. La Guaccero, inoltre non andrà in onda di venerdì: prima del weekend sarà trasmessa una puntata del meglio della settimana. The post Detto Fatto ‘scarica’ Guillermo Mariotto: ecco chi prenderà il posto di Giovanni Ciacci accanto a Bianca Guaccero appeared first on Funweek.

[alterology]

From the dogmen of antiquity to the Presa, the conjoined figure of man and dog expresses what Jacques Derrida calls carno-phallogocentrism, a 'carnivorous virility' that is, for him the dominant schema of subjectivity as it is constituted in the Western philosophical tradition.

Carla Freccero, Social Text: Interspecies, 178