#i read a guys article

[justnoodlefishthings]

The way people demonize seagulls is actually unreal. Almost all of their natural habitat has been destroyed (almost all coastal areas have been developed, destroying natural sand dune ecosystems) and they're doing their best to adapt. They're literally just trying to survive. You're in their home. The vitriol some people have for these gorgeous sea birds just because they're not shy about snatching food if you're not cautious is insane

[akajustmerry]

READ THE FULL ARTICLE HERE

‘Killers Of The Flower Moon’ Can’t Escape Its Own White Gaze by Merryana Salem / Killers Of The Flower Moon (2023). Dir. Martin Scorsese

[lunapegasus]

[foolsocracy]

What could he have meant by this

[steveyockey]

While some of both Davis and Crawford’s work could arguably be described as camp (for the former, King Vidor’s Beyond the Forest; for the latter, later-era films such as Strait-Jacket and aspects of the wondrous Nicholas Ray film Johnny Guitar), that their entire careers and places within film history are defined as such does a disservice to their artistry. But they aren’t alone in representing what has become a troubling trend when it comes to women’s work. As camp entered the mainstream lexicon, especially after Susan Sontag’s landmark 1964 essay, “Notes on ‘Camp,’” the term has been increasingly tied to work featuring women who disregard societal norms. Camp is often improperly and broadly applied to pop culture that features highly emotional, bold, complex, cold, and so-called “unlikable” female characters. I’ve seen films and TV shows such as the witty masterwork All About Eve; the beguiling Mulholland Drive; the stylized yet heartwarming Jane the Virgin; Todd Haynes’s Patricia Highsmith adaptation Carol; the blistering biopic Jackie; the deliciously malevolent horror film Black Swan; Joss Whedon’s exploration of girlhood and horror, Buffy the Vampire Slayer; the landmark documentary Grey Gardens (which inspired the 2009 HBO film starring Jessica Lange and Drew Barrymore); and even icons such as Beyoncé and Rihanna be described as camp. Look at any list of the best camp films and you’ll see an overwhelming number of works that feature women and don’t actually fit the label. Usually, What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, the film whose behind-the-scenes story provides Murphy’s launching pad for Feud, will be at the top of the list.

While camp need not be a pejorative, that hasn’t stopped it from being widely used as such. In effect, being labeled as camp can turn the boldest works about the interior lives of complex women into a curiosity, a joke, a punch line. The ease with which camp is applied to female-led films and shows of this ilk demonstrates that for all the (still-paltry) gains Hollywood has made for women in the decades since Davis and Crawford worked, our culture is still uncomfortable respecting women’s stories.

That major Hollywood icons such as Marlene Dietrich, Bette Davis, Joan Crawford (and, more recently, Natalie Portman, thanks to Jackie) have been roped into this lineage isn’t surprising. Society doesn’t know what to do with women of this ilk without discrediting their very womanhood. Take artist and filmmaker Bruce LaBruce’s offensive description of Mae West in an essay on camp: “[She] played with androgyny to the degree that her final performance — her autopsy — was necessary to prove her biological femaleness.” In his 2013 essay “Why Is Camp So Obsessed with Women?”, J. Bryan Lowder expands on Sontag’s most well-known line: “It’s not a lamp, but a ‘lamp’; not a woman, but a ‘woman.’ To perceive Camp in objects and persons is to understand Being-as-Playing-a-Role.” Lowder writes, “‘Woman,’ the concept within the quotation marks, is not the same thing, at all, as a real woman; the former is a mythology, a style, a set of conventions, taboos, and references, while the latter is a shifting, changeable, and ultimately indefinable living being. Of course, there may be some overlap.” But if all gender is a performance, where does the “real” woman begin? And why does the presence of camp hold more importance than the actual work and voices of actresses such as Crawford, who have come to be defined by it?

At times, camp can feel like a suffocating label. Its proponents often misconstrue the fact that recreating oneself as a character is not merely an aesthetic for women, but rather, for many, a matter of survival. Living in a culture that profoundly scorns ambition, autonomy, and independence in women, girls learn quickly the narrow parameters of femininity available to them. When they transcend these parameters, life can get even more difficult. Women often pick up and drop various forms of presentation in order to move through the world more easily. Performance as a woman — in terms of how one speaks, walks, talks, acts — can be a means of controlling one’s own narrative. Camp often limits this part of the discussion, focusing instead on the sheer thrill of watching larger-than-life female characters cut and snark their way across the screen. How these works speak to women, past and present, becomes a tertiary concern at best, and the work loses a bit of its importance in the process; it either comes to be regarded as niche or, if it still has mainstream prominence, as abject spectacle. In turn, the conversations around these works become less about the women at their centers and more about how those women are presented.

Much of Baby Jane’s camp legacy comes down to how more recent audiences have interpreted Davis’s performance. She’s ferocious, frightening, and grotesque. But framing Davis’s performance as camp, as Murphy does, doesn’t take into account how dramatically acting has shifted over the course of film history. In some ways, camp has become a label used when modern audiences don’t quite understand older styles of acting. Modern actors privilege the remote, the cold, the detached. The more scenery-chewing performances that make the labor of acting visible — such as the transformative work that Jake Gyllenhaal did in Nightcrawler, or most of Christian Bale’s career — is typically the domain of men. (Or, at least, it’s only men who can get away with it without being called campy.) As Shonni Enelow writes in a marvelous piece for Film Comment, “[Jennifer] Lawrence’s characters in Winter’s Bone and The Hunger Games don’t arrive at emotional release or revelation; rather than fight to express themselves, her characters fight not to. We can see the same kind of emotional retrenchment and wariness in a number of performances by the most popular young actors of the last several years.” Davis’s work as an actor was the antithesis of that; she painted in bold colors. Even her quietest moments brim with an intensity that cannot be denied.

[sickfreaksirkay]

Sir Kay, Seneschal of King Arthur's Court, Harold J. Herman / Illustration from the Mabinogion / The Quest for Olwen, trans. Gwyn Thomas and Kevin Crossley-Holland / The Story of Merlin, trans. Rupert T. Pickens / Illustration from The Quest for Olwen, Margaret Jones / Wace's Roman de Brut, trans. Eugene Mason / The Mabinogion, trans. Lady Charlotte Guest

a collection of sir kay and sir bedivere: companions/lovers/worse, for @queer-ragnelle's may day parade

[svnflowermoon]

y'all go from being feminists to tearing these women down within seconds oh my god it's 2024 can we please stop viciously tearing one woman down to bring another up i don't care what side you take but saying vile shit about either woman and their music is disgusting, please grow up

[bettyshoweduptotheparty]

Whether or not anyone from Taylor’s team actually spoke to CNN about the NYT article, let’s all be reminded that:

* Nobody speculated on Taylor’s sexuality. The author points out various ways in which Taylor flags queerness in her art and that suggests to queer people that she may be one of us. That’s not a speculation, that’s fact.

* The article is also largely about closeting in the entertainment industry. And that’s still very common (also fact) whether you like it or not.

* This beautifully written and heartfelt article makes a point for the kind of world that queer people deserve to live in. If you call that ‘inappropriate’ I think that says a lot…

And maybe most importantly: IF SHE WAS AN ALLY SHE WOULD NOT BE OFFENDED TO BE ASSUMED QUEER! Being gay is not offensive and if you think otherwise, that’s homophobia.

At no point does the author dig into her muses or speculate on who she might be dating. That’s a level of journalistic professionalism that a lot of lesser publications could learn from.

Anna Marks (if that is your name) you are a brilliant writer and journalist, and I hope you do not take any criticism from old white men on CNN!

[tanjir0se]

You know what the Giyuu bath scene Aniplex was too much of a coward to give us really needed? A gay awakening. So sayeth the lord (me in my google docs)

[colorsinautumn]

.

[bingokill]

[salvadorbonaparte]

"this academic paper is complicated and I don't get it so it's poorly written" "actually it's for an expert audience so it has to be difficult"

Reading comprehension and critical thinking means understanding that both can be true sometimes at the same time. And sometimes it's just the individual writing style of a specific author that's absolutely incomprehensible too. You gotta figure out which it is each time. I do think there should be more lay abstracts though.

[ibroughtyoumybullets-ningy]

pov discovering the forbidden nwos news buried in a famitsu interview on level-5's website and reading about how the story is almost done except for the ending

[felixpretzel]

I don't want to mess up the careers of established authors and historians by bringing up 25 year old forum posts, but I'd love to do a write up about the childish mud slinging that was going on on late 90s/early aughts Titanic forums

[rollercoasterwords]

hate when i get taken in by the hype over some video essay du jour & decide 2 watch thinking it’s gonna be some kind of compelling or insightful commentary abt x subject & then it’s just 85% summarizing information + 15% the blandest most uninspired milquetoast possible takeaway of everything the video’s just summarized. many such cases….

[sickfreaksirkay]

balin and balan for @caer-gai’s arthuriana august: "blood or no"

The Quest of Balin and the Mark of Cain, David C. Fowler / illustration by H. J. Ford / Tennyson's Balin and Balan / The Tragedy of Balin: Malory's Use of the Balin Story in the "Morte Darthur", Ralph Norris / Malory's Le Morte D'Arthur / illustration by W. H. Margetson / illustration by Walter F. Enright