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chiseler · 3 years

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Gnostic Boardwalk

Canonical stature is a fragile and contingent thing, which is why powerful institutions seek to shore up the various canons of art with rankings and plaudits. We’ll play along by asserting that one of our favorite “B” movies was originally screened by Henri Langlois at the Cinematheque française with Georges Franju in attendance. Night Tide (1961) was an unlikely contender for this particular honor—shot guerrilla style on an estimated $35,000 budget, and intended, by its distributors at least, for a wider, less demanding audience seeking mostly air-conditioned escapism.

With its hinky cast—nonfictional witch, Marjorie Cameron; erstwhile muse to surrealist filmmaker Jean Cocteau, the undersung Babette who usually appears en travesti; and lecherous, booze-addled, fresh-faced Hollywood castoff Dennis Hopper—Night Tide invades the drive-in. A tarot reading at the film’s heart gives Marjorie Eaton her time to shine, traipsing into nickel-and-dime divination from her former life as a painter of Navajo religious ceremonies. Linda Lawson might have issued from an etching by Odilon Redon, with her raven locks and spiritual eyes, our resident sideshow mermaid. Not surprisingly and despite such gentle segues, the film itself traveled a rocky road from festivals to paying venues.

Night Tide had spent three years languishing in the can when distributor Roger Corman smuggled the unlikely masterwork into public consciousness, another of his now legendary mitzvahs to art. And the sleazy-sounding double bills that resulted also unleashed an aberrant wonder: the movie’s compact leading man, a force previously held captive by the studio system—looking, here, like some homunculus refugee from the Fifties USA. Dennis Hopper, in his first starring role, would later recall that it represented his first “aesthetic impact” on film since his earlier appearances in more mainstream productions such as Rebel Without a Cause and Giant had denied him meaningful outlets for collaboration.

It’s the presence of its featured players—certainly not their star power—that lends the film its haunting and enduring legacy, and elevates the term “cult classic” to its rightful place in the pantheon of cinema. But we argue that Night Tide remains outside these exclusive parameters—upholding an elsewhere-ness that defies commercial, if not strictly canonical, logic. Curtis Harrington’s first feature film escapes taxonomy, typology or genre—gets away—fueling itself on acts of solidarity instead. If Hopper contributes his dreamy aura, then Corman rescues the seemingly doomed project by re-negotiating the terms of a defaulted loan to the film lab company that was preventing the film’s initial release. His generous risk birthed a movie monument that would add Harrington’s name to a growing collection of talent midwifed by the visionary schlockmeister responsible for nursing the auteurs of post-war American cinema. And here we enter a production history as gossamery as Night Tide itself.

Unlike his counterparts entrenched within the studio system, Harrington was an artist – i.e. a Hollywood anachronism, with aristocratic graces and a viewfinder trained on the unseen. We see Harrington as Georges Méliès reborn with a queer eye, casting precisely the same showman’s metaphysics that spawned cinema onto nature. By the time moving pictures were invented, artists were moving away from a bloodless representational ethos and excavating more primordial sources for inspiration. The early stirrings of what surrealist impresario André Breton would later proclaim: “Beauty will be CONVULSIVE or it will not be at all.”

Harrington owned a pair of Judy Garland’s emerald slippers, and according to horror queen/cult icon Barbara Steele, also amassed an eclectic array of human specimens: “Marlene Dietrich, Gore Vidal, Russian alchemists, holistic healers from Normandy, witches from Wales, mimes from Paris, directors from everywhere, writers from everywhere and beautiful men from everywhere.” On a hastily constructed Malibu boardwalk, Hopper would be in his milieu among the eccentric denizens of California’s artistic underground—most notably, Harrington himself, a feral Victorian mountebank of a director who slept among mummified bats, practiced Satanic rites, and hosted elaborate and squalid dinner parties. One could almost picture the mostly television director in his twilight years as Roman Castavet of Rosemary’s Baby; a spellbinding raconteur with a carny’s flair for embellishment and enticement. Enthralled by the dark gnosticism of Edgar Allan Poe that had started when the aspiring 16-year-old auteur mounted a nine-minute long production of The Fall of the House of Usher (1942), Harrington would embark on a checkered film career that combined his occult passions with the quotidian demands of securing steady employment. Night Tide, a humble matinee feature whose esoteric underpinnings would spawn subsequent generations of admirers, united the competing forces of art and commerce that Harrington would struggle with throughout his career. Like Méliès, Harrington pointed his kinetic device towards the more preternatural aspects of early motion pictures to seek out the ‘divine spark’ that Gnostics attribute to transcendence, and the necessary element to achieve that immortal leap into the unknown. What hidden meanings and unspeakable acts Poe had seized upon in his writing were brought infernally to life with a mechanical sleight-of-hand. It was finally time for crepuscular light, beamed through silver salts to illuminate otherworldly and other-thinking subjects.

Curtis Harrington

By the time Harrington had embarked on his feature film debut, a more muscular celluloid mythology based on America’s proven exceptionalism was in full force, taking on a brutalist monotone cast in keeping with the steely-eyed, square-jawed men at the helm of a nascent super-power, consigning its more feminine preoccupations to the dusty vaults where celluloid is devoured by its own nitrate. Harrington would resurrect the convulsive aspects of his chosen vocation and embed them deep within the monochrome canvas he’d been allotted for his first venture into feature filmmaking, and combine them with the more rational aspects of so-called realism. In the romantic re-telling of a familiar myth, Harrington was remaining true to gnostic roots and the distinctly poetic language used to express its cosmological features.

In Night Tide, Harrington would map the metaphysical terrain that held up Usher’s cursed edifice as a blueprint for his own work that similarly explored the intertwined duality of the natural and the supernatural. The visible cracks that reveal a fatal structural weakness and a loss of sanity in both Roderick Usher and his doomed estate are evident in Night Tide’s conflicted heroine compelled to choose between her own foretold death underwater, or a worse fate for those who fall in love with her earthly human form.

A young sailor (Dennis Hopper) strolling the boardwalks of Malibu while on shore leave offers the viewer an opening glimpse into the film’s metaphysical wormhole, and a not so subtle hint of the director’s queer eye, stalking his virginal prey in the viewfinder. A beachfront entertainment venue is, after all, where one would casually encounter soothsayers and murderers, sea witches and perverts, as the guileless Johnny does, seemingly oblivious to the surrealist elements of his surroundings as he makes his way on land.

Harrington’s carnival-themed underworld is both imaginatively and convincingly presented as a quaint slice of post-war America, effortlessly dovetailing with his intended drive-in audience’s expectations of grind house with a dash of glamor—not to mention his own avant-garde leanings, which remain firmly intact despite Night Tide’s outwardly conventional construction and narrative.

Harrington is able to present this juxtaposition of kitsch Americana and the queer arcana of his occult fascinations. Indeed, Night Tide’s lamb-to-the-slaughter protagonist could have wandered off the set of Fireworks, Kenneth Anger’s 1947 homoerotic short film about a 17-year-old’s sadomasochistic fantasies involving gang rape by leathernecks.

Anger would later sum up his earliest existing film as “A dissatisfied dreamer awakes, goes out in the night seeking a ‘light’ and is drawn through the needle’s eye. A dream of a dream, he returns to bed less empty than before.” Harrington (a frequent collaborator of Anger in his youth) seems to have re-worked Fireworks, or at least its underlying queer aesthetic into a commercially viable feature film that explores his own life long occult fascinations.

Both Anger and his former protégé would view the invocation of evil as a necessary step towards the attainment of a higher level of consciousness. Harrington coaxed a more familiar story from the myths and archetypes that informed his unworldly views for a wider audience; a move that would be later interpreted by sundry cohorts as selling out. Still, Night Tide shares a thematic kinship with Anger’s more obtusely artistic output as acknowledged by the surviving occultist, who confirmed this unholy covenant at Harrington’s funeral by kissing his dead friend on the lips as he laid in his open coffin.

The hokey innocence of Dennis Hopper as Johnny Drake in his tight, white sailor suit casts a homoerotic hue on the impulses that compel him to navigate a treacherous dreamscape to satisfy a carnal longing, just as Anger’s dissatisfied dreamer obeys the implicit commands of an unspeakable other to seek out forbidden pleasures.

As he makes his way on land, the solitary, adventure-seeking Johnny will be lured into a waiting photo booth, his features slightly menacing behind its flimsy curtain, and brightly smiling a second later as the flash illuminates them. Johnny has entered a realm where intersecting worlds collide, delineating light from shadow, consciousness from unconsciousness. The young sailor’s maiden voyage into the uncharted waters of his subconscious is made evident in the contrasting interplay captured by the camera, where predator and prey overlap in darkness. Here, too, we get a prescient preview of the deranged psychopath Hopper would subsequently personify in later roles, most significantly as the oxygen deprived Frank of Blue Velvet—a man who seems to be drowning out of water. But here, Hopper convincingly (and touchingly) portrays a wide-eyed naïf, still unsteady on his sea legs as he negotiates dry land.

As a variation of Anger’s lucid dreamer in Fireworks (and later Jeffrey of Blue Velvet) Johnny will have abandoned himself quite literally (as his departing shadow on a carnival pavilion suggests, before its host blithely follows) to his own suppressed sexual urges; a force that eventually compels him towards denouement.

Moments later, inside the Blue Grotto where a flute-led jazz combo is in progress, Johnny spots a beautiful young woman (Linda Lawson) seated directly across from him. Her restrained and almost involuntary physical response to the music mimic his own, offering the first indication of a gender ‘other’ residing in Johnny; an entombed apparition cleaved from the sub-conscious and projected into his line of vision. Roderick and Madeline Usher loom large in Harrington’s screenplay and Usher’s trans themes lurk invisibly in the subtext. Harrington is arguably heir apparent to Poe’s vacated throne, pursuing similar clue-laden paths and exploring the dual nature of human and the primordial creature just beneath the surface poised to devour its host.

The near literal strains of seductive Pan pipes buoyed by the ‘voodoo’ percussion sets the stage for Harrington’s reworking of the ancient legend of sea-based seductresses and the sailors they lure to their graves.

Marjorie Cameron (or ‘Cameron’ as she is referred to in the opening credits) makes a startling entrance into The Blue Grotto as an elder of a lost tribe of mermaids seeking the return of an errant ‘mermaid’ to her rightful place in the sea. Cameron, a controversial fixture in L.A.’s bohemian circles and one-time Scarlet Women in the mold of Aleister Crowley’s profane muses, would later appear in Anger’s The Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome, and as the subject of Harrington’s short documentary The Wormwood Star (1956).

The inclusion of a bonafide witch, along with a host of less apparent occult/avant-garde figures, is further evidence of Night Tide’s true aspirations and its filmmaker’s subversive intent to sneak an art-house film into the drive-in, and introduce its audiences to the heretical doctrine that had spawned a new generation of occult visionaries influenced by Edgar Allan Poe. Decades later, David Lynch would carry that proverbial torch, further illuminating the writhing, creature-infested realm underlying innocence.

Johnny approaches the young woman who rebuffs his attempts at conversation, seemingly entranced by the music, but allows him to sit, anyway. Soon they are startled by the presence of a striking middle-aged woman (‘Cameron’) who speaks to Johnny’s companion Mora in a strange tongue. Mora insists that she has never met the woman before, nor understands her, but makes a fearful dash from the club as Johnny follows her, eventually gaining her trust and an invitation the following day for breakfast.

Mora lives in a garret atop the carousal pavilion at the boardwalk carnival where she works in one of the side show attractions as a “mermaid.” Arriving early for their arranged breakfast, her eager suitor strikes up a conversation with the man who runs the Merry-Go-Round with his granddaughter, Ellen (Luanna Anders). Their trepidation at the prospecting Johnny becoming intimately acquainted with their beautiful tenant is apparent to all except Johnny himself, who is even more oblivious to Ellen’s wholesome and less striking charms. Even her name evokes the flat earth, soul-crushing sensibilities of home and hearth. Ellen Sands is earthbound Virgo eclipsed by an ascendent Pisces. (Anders would have to subordinate her own sex appeal to play this mostly thankless “good girl” role. She would be unrecognizable a few years later as a more brazenly erotic presence in Easy Rider, helping to define the Vietnam war counterculture era.)

As Johnny ascends the narrow staircase leading to Mora’s sunlit, nautical-themed apartment, he almost collides with a punter making a visibly embarrassed retreat from the upper floor of the carousel pavilion. Is Johnny unknowingly entering into a realm of vice and could Mora herself be a source of corruption? Her virtue is further called into question when she not so subtly asks Johnny if he has ever eaten sea urchin, comparing it to “pomegranate” lest her guest fails to register the innuendo that is as glaring as the raw kipper on his breakfast plate. Johnny admits that he has never eaten the slippery delicacy but “would like to try.” Moments later, Mora’s hand in close-up is stroking the quivering neck of a seagull she has lured over with a freshly caught fish, sealing their carnal bond.

Their subsequent courtship will be marred by an ongoing police investigation into the mysterious deaths of Mora’s former boyfriends, and her insistence that she is being pursued by a sea witch, seeking the errant mermaid’s return to her own dying tribe. Her mysterious stalker will make another unwelcome entrance after her first appearance in the Blue Grotto—this time at an outdoor shindig where the free-spirited young woman reluctantly obliges the gathered locals who urge her to dance. The sight of ‘Cameron’ observing her in the distance causes the frenzied, seemingly spellbound dancer to collapse, setting off a chain of events that will force Johnny to further question her motives and his own sanity.

Mora’s near death encounter through dance is an homage of sorts to another early Harrington collaborator and occult practitioner. Experimental filmmaker Maya Deren had authored several essays on the ecstatic religious elements of dance and possession, and later went on to document her experiences in Haiti taking part in ‘Voudon’ rituals that would be the basis of a book and a posthumously released documentary both titled Divine Horsemen: The Living Gods of Haiti. Note the Caribbean drummers whose ‘unnatural’ presence, in stark contrast to the more typical Malibu beach party celebrants, hint at the influence of black magic impelling the convulsive, near heart-stopping movements that eventually overtake her ‘exotic’ interpretive dance.

The opening sequence of Divine Horsemen includes a woodblock mermaid figure superimposed over a ‘Voudon’ dancer. The significance of this particular motif was likely known to Harrington, a devotee of this early pioneer of experimental American cinema. Deren herself appeared as a mermaid-like figure washed ashore in At Land (1947) who pursues a series of fragmented ‘selves’ across a wild, desolate coastline. Lawson with her untamed black hair and bare feet could be a body double of Deren’s elemental entity traversing unfamiliar physical terrain to find a way back to herself.

Mora’s insistence that she is being shadowed by a malevolent force directly connected to her mysterious birth on a Greek Island and curious upbringing as a sideshow attraction compel Johnny to investigate her paranoid claims, hoping to allay her fears with a logical explanation for them. The sea witch (or now figment of his imagination) will guide the sleuthing sailor into a desolate, mostly Mexican neighborhood where her departing figure will strand him—right at the doorstep of the jovial former sea captain who employs Mora in his tent show as a captive, “living, breathing mermaid.”

The British officer turned carnie barker is in a snoring stupor when Johnny first encounters him, snapping unconsciously into action to give a rote spiel on the wonders that await inside his tent. Muir balances Mudock’s feigned buffoonery with a slightly sinister edge. When Johnny arrives at his doorstep to find out more about the ongoing police investigation into her previous boyfriend’s deaths, the captain’s effusive hospitality takes on a decidedly darker tone when he guides his visitor to his liquor/curio cabinet where a severed hand in formaldehyde, “a little Arabian souvenir,” is cunningly placed where Johnny’s will see it. The spooky appendage serves as a reminder to Mora’s latest suitor of the punishments in store for a thief.

Captain Murdock’s Venice beach hacienda is yet another one of Night Tide’s deviant jolts: a fully fleshed out character in itself that speaks of its well-travelled tenant’s exotic and forbidden appetites. The dark, symbol-inscribed temple Johnny has entered at 777 Baabek Lane could be a brick-and-mortar portal into this mythic, mermaid-populated dimension that Johnny’s booze-soaked host thunderously defends as real.

Before falling into another involuntary slumber, Murdock will try to convince Johnny that while he and Mora merely stage a sideshow illusion, “Things happen in this world”—or, more to the point, Mora’s belief that she is a sea creature is grounded in fact.

Murdock’s business card that Johnny handily has in his pocket while tailing his dramatically kohl-eyed mark is oddly inscribed with an address more likely to be an ancient Phoenician temple of human sacrifice (Baalbek) than a Venice Beach bungalow. A lingering camera close-up offers another tantalizing, occult-themed puzzle piece—or perhaps a deliberate Kabbalah inspired MacGuffin. The significance of numbers as the underlying components for uniting the nebulous and intangible contents of the mind with the more inert, gravity bound matter, existing outside it, as the ancient Hebrews believed, wouldn’t have been lost on Night Tide’s mystically-minded helmer. Mora’s explicitly expressed disdain for Johnny’s view of the world as a rationally ordered, measurable entity that could be mathematically explained, reinforces Harrington’s world view, his love of Poe, and those French Symbolist artists who interpreted him.

In Odilon Redon’s Germination (1879), a wan, baleful, free-floating arabesque of heads of indeterminate gender suggests either a linear, ascending involution, or a terrifying descent from an unlit celestial void into a bottomless pit of an all-too-human, devolving identity. Redon’s disembodied heads gradually take on more human characteristics, culminating into a black-haloed portrait in profile. The cosmos of Redon’s etching is governed by an unexplained, inexplicable moral sentience, which absorbs the power of conventional light. Thus black is responsible for building its essential form, while glimmers of white, hovering above and below, prove ever elusive; registering as somehow elsewhere, beyond the otherwise tenebrous unity of the picture plane.

Night Tide has its own unsettling dimensions, of course, this black-and-white boardwalk where astral, egalitarian bums want to tip-toe; and, somehow, practically all of them do. Not a movie but an ever-becoming place, crammed into low-budget cosmogenesis unto eternity. We won’t discuss the ending here, since it hasn’t happened yet.

by The Lumière Sisters

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fangirlovestuff · 4 years

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Romantics- Chris Evans x reader

a/n- Hey lovely people! i know i haven’t posted in... *checks calender* two weeks?!? yeah, life has been kinda hectic for me lately, but here’s this little headcanon while i get back in the groove. hope you’re all doing well, enjoy!<3

so we all know and love the notion that chris is a very romantic man

he likes pulling all the stops on special occasions

taking you out for fancy dinners as much as he can

buying you flowers whenever he can

once, for your birthday, he left the set of the movie he was on just to see you

you had told him you were bummed he couldn’t be there but it’s okay and you completely understood

but his stubborn ass convinced his director and hauled himself on a 7-hour flight just to get home at 10 pm on your birthday with a bunch of balloons and a huge smile on his face

needless to say you were giddy to see him

and your celebrations definitely made up for his absence for most of the day

another time for valentine’s day he attempted to bake a heart-shaped cake

it didn’t really go according to plan

it didn’t look like a cake nor a heart because chris got distracted (hey, you didn’t know there was a cake in the oven!)

well, it’s the thought that counts

you love being wooed by chris

he always knows how to make you feel special and loved

but you also love to return the favor at any chance you can

a hopeless romantic yourself, you loved to show chris your love for him any chance you could

you always!! came to greet him at the airport when he came back from a set

even if it was like 3 am, you made sure to be there to drive him home after his flight

the amount of cheesy airport reunions is unreal

you jumped into his arms and peppered his face with kisses

“I missed you”

his voice was still a little groggy from his awful sleep on the flight, but his smile was shining like the sun

“I missed you too. now let’s go home”

chris isn’t the greatest cook, so you usually do the cooking around the house

but on special occasions you like to really go all out

on his birthday, you asked his mom Lisa for the recipes of his favorite childhood foods, and cake obviously

Scott took him out of the house for a few hours while you prepared everything and when they came back chris came in to see you and the table packed full of delicious food (courtesy of Lisa’s recipes of course, you weren’t that much of a good cook)

“happy birthday!!!”

he definitely got emotional when he saw everything you prepared for him

other times you’d both have the small, quotidian ways to show your love

if chris saw a few spiteful comments that day you assured him of how much you and countless others admired him and how awesome he was

before every single event, you told him he looked amazing and that he’s gonna crush it

“sweetheart, you’re biased”

“that doesn’t mean i’m wrong chris”

chris bought you chocolates a lot because he knew how fond you are of them, especially if you’re having a rough day

he gives the best massages

buying chris sports jerseys

also small ones for dodger

you both make an effort to learn about each other’s interests and hobbies

chris tried to teach you football sometime

it basically ended in you tackling him onto the ground and straddling his waist

“that’s not how you play football?”

you tried and failed to play innocent

he raised his eyebrow and you shrugged

“guess football isn’t really my thing”

you help chris update his social media

one time you’re petting dodger on the couch and just cooing at him while he licks at your face

“who’s the best dog? yeah, that’s right, you are!”

you hear footsteps and feel chris’ presence behind you

“you know what? you’re a baby dodger, just like your dad”

you turned around smirking to find chris, phone in hand, recording you playing with dodger

“I didn’t know you were recording,” you laughed

an hour later you’re sitting on the couch and you get a twitter notification from chris

it’s the video, captioned “I get no kisses in this house”

you laugh and go find chris in the kitchen

“I’m gonna regret teaching you how to do that, right?”

you kiss his cheek

“besides, you get tons of kisses. actually, some would argue you get even better than that,” you wink and pull away

he pulls you in by the waist before you get further away

“really? like what?” he smirks

...anyways, you and chris have a similar outlook on romance which makes you a great couple

you both acknowledge that your relationship can’t be rainbows and unicorns all the time

and you both put a lot of efforts into sorting your differences, which definitely occur every once in a while

but at the end of the day, you were both romantics

so for the most part, you were just focused on the important thing - being in love

did some of your friends make fun of you for basically acting like a couple of teenagers in love? yes

did you care? no

you made each other the happiest you’ve ever been, and that’s all that matters

that definitely got outta hand... the original concept was just romantic things you and chris do for each other but then it just escalated into a full on relationship headcanon oops

anyway,,, hope you enjoyed!!

Chris Taglist: @swatson06 @horny-nd-bored @shannon124 @perfectlyharolds @phoebe-21-99 @wintersoldierslut @iceebabies @wanessalopesueiros @sleepingpapermouse @steverogerswasalwaysworthy @holtzkinnon @angelicl-y @stydia-4-ever @thatoneperson5000 @fangirlfree @kaitcordx25 @bequeening @steve-barry-damon-logan @itscrazycherryblossomcollection @hollandxmarvel @darkwitchfromthesouth

if you wanna join / be removed from the taglist, comment/message me! this is a taglist for Chris and his characters. much love <3

#chris evans x reader #chris evans #chris evans fluff #chris evans headcanon #chris evans imagine

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96thdayofrage · 4 years

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The practice was an excuse for many white mothers to avoid breastfeeding with hopes of maintaining their stature and avoiding the “messy” part of motherhood.

The act was perceived as a self-demeaning and women who were seen breastfeeding were often thought of as uncultured, poor and often shunned. The practice became very popular when doctors of the time did all they could to prove that breastfeeding was an unhealthy act for women. It is believed that doctors were paid huge sums of money to write such reports. The children of slaves grew healthy while many white families lost their children to ill health.

This made many westerners force slave mothers to breastfeed their white children so that they could develop better and survive the early months of childhood. By the 18th century, the trend had become very popular.

Once a slave mother had a child, she was quickly assigned to a white mistress and forced to breastfeed her white baby instead of her own. Young and healthy slave women were also forced to breastfeed white babies after doctors discovered that the continuous sucking of a sexually active female breast could result in lactation. While they breastfed white babies at the expense of theirs, slave mothers tried to keep their children alive by feeding them with concoctions they believed will be good substitutes for milk. They also gave cow milk and dirty water which were not suitable for babies health.

This resulted in high deaths of babies of slaved throughout the slave trade. At the peak of the forced wet nursing, slave traders often kidnapped newborn babies from their slave mothers. The pain in the breasts left these women with no choice but to breastfeed other babies who were often white. Some reluctant slaves were beaten and often milked like cows to feed white babies.

Slave mothers often kept the white babies in their homes until the child’s family felt it was time to take them back. Since the living conditions of the slaves were not the best, several white babies died. Speculating that slave mothers were killing the babies out of spite, they were later forced to move in with the family where they could be monitored.

In a talk entitled “‘She could spare one ample breast for the profit of her owner’: White Mothers and Enslaved Wet Nurses’ Invisible Labor in American Slave Markets,” Jones-Rogers argued that studying enslaved wet nurses reveals white women’s complicity in expanding slavery in the south and demonstrates how white mothers were at the forefront of these market transactions. White southern women had created a “niche sector of the slave market” dedicated to providing them with the specific maternal labor that they sought from bondswomen.

Jones-Rogers emphasized that we cannot forget about the reproductive and maternal violence white women perpetrated against black bondswomen. Indeed, the commodification of slave mothers provides an important example of the disturbing “quotidian” horrors of slavery.

Jones-Rogers’ research has much significance in the field of nineteenth-century U.S. history, particularly because so little attention has been paid to non-masculinized enslaved labor. The few nineteenth-century historians who have discussed enslaved wet nurses, like Walter Johnson in River of Dark Dreams, downplay the extent to which white women capitalized on black breast milk.

The reason for this, Jones-Rogers’ contends, is because historians have focused their research on elite southern white women, while ignoring the ways in which non-elite white women used black wet nurses. By studying wet nurse advertisements in southern newspapers, Jones-Rogers’ uncovered a disturbing story of white women’s reliance on and exploitation of black women.

These advertisements, along with other primary source documentation, reveal much about the reproductive violence inflicted upon black women by their white counterparts. They show, among other things, how white women timed their pregnancies with that of their black wet nurses, and how they forced black mothers to dedicate the majority of their milk to white children, rather than their own children.

When black wet nurses became “unproductive,” that is, could no longer produce milk, they were replaced by white mothers who deemed them to be defective. White women did this rather than improve nutritional conditions for black wet nurses.

Because white women managed black wet nurses’ labor, they were the ones who determined the market for black wet nurses. Using a lexicon derived from the greater slave market, white women graded black wet nurses based on whether they were “likely” (meaning “likely to work out”), their skill level, whether the white children they nursed in the past ended up healthy, and whether or not their milk was “fresh.”

Freshness was determined by the age of the enslaved wet nurses’ infant. The older their infant, the less valuable her milk. Enslaved wet nurses whose infant died soon after childbirth were extremely valuable. White women appreciated the lack of the extra “encumbrance,” knowing full well that more time and resources would be spent on their own children.

Becoming a wet nurse had a number of detrimental emotional effects on black women, beyond those created by more traditional forms of slave labor. For one, it separated them from established kinship networks. It also made it more difficult for them to bond with their children, who were often separated from them for prolonged periods so that they could focus on servicing white children instead.

The extent to which white women had commodified black wet nurses’ labor can be seen in how they reacted to this emotional distress. Instead of trying to improve conditions for enslaved wet nurses, white women typically used their wet nurses’ despair as an excuse to sell them, noting in advertisements to other prospective buyers that this particular wet nurse was prone to “the sulks” or “madness,” lessening her value.

Black mothers were used daily for their bodily resources, with no regard for their personal well-being, often leading to their mental and physical decline. It is only with research like Jones-Rogers’ that we can truly begin to understand the depraved nature of the south’s “peculiar institution.”

Before the mammy stereotype was born during the post-civil war revisionist period, every plantation had a mammy. As described by historian Kimberly Wallace Sanders, “more often [mammy] served as a generic name for slave women who served as a wet nurse or baby nurse for white children.” This was in large part to the trend of medical experts of the day discouraging mothers from breastfeeding. Outsourcing breastfeeding was not a new phenomenon during the pre-antebellum, as it had been occurring since the biblical times. Still, it is no less shocking that black women were good enough to give bodily fluids to white babies, but not good enough to be treated as human beings.

While black women were forced to give life to babies they did not birth, their own children sometimes went hungry. Per Sanders, “A lot of slave babies died during slavery because they weren’t breastfed. They were fed concoctions of dirty water and cows milk.” As any doctor will tell you, breastfeeding often creates a bond between the mother and child, and slave wet nurses were not immune to feeling affection for their white parasites, and vice versa. Said one European visitor to a plantation in the Carolinas: “Richard always grieves when Quasheen is whipped, because she suckled him.” Wet nursing did not end after slavery, and many southern white women continued to employ black wet nurses until the practice fell out of fashion in the twentieth century.

Like their slave ancestors, “free” wet nurses were often kept from their children in addition to being forced to do other household chores, but with a severely unfair wage instead of no pay at all.

In the present, only 59% of black women breastfeed, compared to 79% of white women. Certified nurse and midwife Stephanie Devane-Johnson interviewed black women and found that some reject breast feeding because of the exploited wet nurses of slavery. I am left to wonder if the infrequency of breastfeeding among black women has to do with the high infant mortality rate in our community.

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vipclifford · 5 years

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post break up kisses with cal please?🥺

“I think we should break up.”

The breeze suddenly became colder, giving you an icy slap in the face as you processed Calum’s words. The sound of cars honking and passerbys suddenly faded away, your eyes focusing on nothing but his serious, albeit sad expression. It’s not like you hadn’t seen it coming. Each day it became more and more apparent to the two of you that you simply weren’t meant for the other.

He was a rockstar, with an unconventional lifestyle and a constant search for adrenaline. You were just you.

“It’s not that I don’t love you,” he started, hands reaching out to grab yours and pull you closer, softly rubbing your knuckles with his thumbs. “I mean – fuck – God knows how much I love you. But baby, we want different things. We both know you want that in the future you’re going to want a normal life. No cameras, no articles, no fame. Just a regular, quotidian life with your perfect kids or whatever you want to have. And I can’t give that to you, baby. I'm not the man for you. And as much as it pains me to say it, I think deep down you were starting to realise that too.”

You nodded at his words, giving his hands a tight squeeze as you ignored the piercing lump in your throat.

“I think we should break up too,” you murmured sadly, dropping your head down to gaze at your feet. You knew that if you looked at Calum any longer you wouldn’t be able to hold back the tears anymore.

Calum let go of one of your hands to bring it up to cup your cheek, gently lifting your head up to face him. You subconsciously leaned into his touch, a sad smile tugging at his lips in realisation. He studied your features for the last time, before slowly leaning in to press his lips against yours.

Time seemed to stop as you snaked your arms around his torso to pull Calum’s body closer to your own. Your lips moved slowly against each other, the two of you savouring the moment, wishing to make it last. As though you were both afraid that if you stopped kissing the other would simply disappear. Cease to exist. You melted into lips, softly kissing him for the last time. And then he pulled away.

He didn’t pull away completely, just enough to stop himself from leaning back in and taking back the words he was already starting to regret. He pressed his forehead against yours, eyes closed, as he hugged your body close to his chest.

“I love you,” he whispered, not ready to break the moment just yet, “so much.”

“I love you too.”

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xoruffitup · 6 years

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Burn This First Preview: 3/15 Show Report

OKAY it’s 3 AM and I’m writing this on my phone so the format might be weird, but I have SO MANY thoughts and feels from tonight I’ve got to let the tidal wave out!!

First off - Yes, he looked gorgeous at stage door and he was so kind trying to sign for everyone he could! (The line was longggg.) I GOT HIS AUTOGRAPH AND THANKED HIM FOR SUCH A MOVING PERFORMANCE AND HE SAID “OH THANK YOU VERY MUCH” AND LOOKED UP AT ME WITH HIS GORGEOUS EYES AND GORGEOUS FACE AND THERE IS A PIC OF THIS MOMENT THAT WILL FOREVER LIVE IN MY HEART:

This is my new OTP, folks: Adam/The back of my head!

I attempted to ask for a pic but was hesitant and security had already half pulled him away so he was like “I don’t know if I’ll have time” sounding so nervous about getting to the whole line. BABY <333

Aksjsknsm I can’t believe I was this close to him - It hasn’t fully set in and omg I better just keep writing before it does set in and I lose my shit completely!

Play Highlights! (This list is Plot-Spoiler free.)

Alas, sadly there is not that much nakedness. He takes his pants off in Act 1 but has underwear and a long shirt on. The BEST is when he comes on wearing one of Keri/Anna’s kimono-style purple silk robes in Act 2 - I nearly DIED and cannot believe I saw that with my own eyes!! When he first steps onstage the robe’s open and he’s only wearing underwear so you get a nice chest glimpse, but then he sadly ties it. (Then proceeds to hilariously struggle with getting one of his arms through the complicated sleeves.) Oh, and did I mention the robe was paired with knee-high socks?

Adam is HYSTERICAL. He doesn’t come on stage for about the first twenty minutes, but when he did, it took all of 5 minutes for the audience to be in the palm of his hand, laughing at every other word he said. His delivery of all of Pale’s curse-laden, barely-logical rants and complaints is just masterful in comedic timing and effect. He’s a literal hurricane when he enters the show, flooding the stage with this frenetic, chaotic energy so intense he’s practically vibrating. He keeps everything at break neck pace, through 0-100 highs and lows where he’s bitching about parking one second, then animal-wail crying the next.

His character’s not likeable. Really, this is a testament and praise to Adam’s acting. After his first couple minutes on stage, there were stretches when I literally forgot it was him. When I was so taken in and then repulsed by this character in turns, his acting prowess overcame even my instinct to love him and everything he does on sight. I’m about to get deeper into the weeds on his character in the next section, but suffice it to say Adam’s performance is stellar and completely, convincingly transformative.

How heated does it get? The only intimate scene that happens in front of the audience includes some slow kissing, a bit down Keri/Anna’s neck, and wandering hands. The rest is implied off stage.

The play is set in the 80s, so while Keri looks KILLER in every single outfit, Adam’s suits are all big and baggy as was the style then and they’re not exactly flattering. His costume look is just a bit weird, not nearly as smolderingly hot as how they styled him in the promo pics. But even with that said.... The scene where they’re both close on the couch, talking softly before kissing happens? I would have still gone for him too. ;_;

The rest of this report is going to dive into and attempt to untangle some of the deeper elements and themes of the play. Stop reading here if you’re avoiding spoilers!

To my perspective, this wasn’t really a play about a smoldering, ill-advised love affair. Yes, that’s the main event, but this play is about so much more.

Anna and Pale are star-crossed lovers. No, not in the Disney or destined interpretation - I mean the proper, tragic meaning. Whatever is between them should not exist. Whatever is between them threatens and harms them both. Whatever is between them is not long for this world, and doesn’t belong in it.

But why doesn’t it belong? Sure, there are the technical, superficial reasons: Anna has a boyfriend; Pale is married with kids (though technically separated); They are polar opposite people - Sharing no visible common interests and with temperaments that couldn’t be more opposite.

What is the one thing stronger than all of that, which first brings them together? Their grief; Their shared (yet deeply personal and divergently different) senses of grief; The solace and understanding they can only find for that grief with each other. The loss they’ve both experienced is life-changing, and has no place to fit into or even exist at all in their normal lives.

And so, they hurtle into an affair that also has no place existing in their normal lives. By the end of the play, they both assert “I don’t want this.” To a certain degree, it’s the truth. It’s unlikely either of them would have willfully chosen to pursue the other, had they met under different circumstances. They would likely never have opened or even tapped at the floodgates of their attraction, unless they had both gravitated towards this dark, abnormal part of life outside the realm of everyday lives, jobs, rational behavior, and decisions.

To me, this play was really about confronting that abnormal, primal, and sometimes unfathomable level of being that exists below the everyday. Pale has a memorable remark about all the little lies people live with and show to the world each day. Sometimes - when it is cut open and its value or sense thrown into question by some great tragedy such as a loss like this - you lose touch with that everyday life and the person you think you are within that everyday world. It becomes painfully juxtaposed and shrunk tiny, in the face of something all-encompassing and all-powerful, like grief. It becomes exposed as paper thin; Everything within it questionable and perhaps useless.

There is something of the profound in an emotion like grief. When it’s shared with someone, it’s no wonder that that also unlocks some profound connection. Anna and Pale don’t like each other as people, and they certainly take no enjoyment in the grief that brought them together. Yet, the relationship that blooms from it contains a compulsion and truth neither of them can deny. Even though they “don’t want this” (the rational, everyday side of their minds talking), they both admit they’ve never felt anything like it before, and they keep finding themselves drawn together. They don’t want to want each other - It’s painful and frightening for both of them, and yet their attraction wraps them both just as completely as their grief.

Anna’s boyfriend Burton is the epitome of the everyday. He earns a lot of money, he’s a well-dressed gentleman. He’s a writer, and fancies he can capture and portray the entire spectrum of human emotion. Even “great love,” as he fumblingly attempts to describe towards the play’s beginning. Yet all his talk is vapid and empty; As is his relationship with Anna. Theirs is one of the everyday, rational variety. It belongs with the small lies we live with and put on and speak and perform each day - To keep our lives square and tidy and comprehensible.

Then - There’s the chaotic, unpredictable, bordering violent being of Pale. He is every sincere, larger-than-life emotion and base instinct most people tamp down and deny voice to. He represents the terrible, uncontrollable, threatening Truth of everyday masks, dark desires, and empty identities of performativity.

Their attraction is not something Anna can bear to look in the face. She throws Pale out and ends the relationship because that deeper truth of true emotion unlocked by her grief cannot coexist with her reality. Her ability to continue dancing, to continue the everyday life she’s trying so hard to believe in and trust the purpose of - It cannot contain Pale. He represents and unlocks profound, unknown feeling that casts the waking world as a shadow.

And yet for all that discomfort, she has an artistic breakthrough after the affair with Pale. She is inspired to finally choreograph Robbie’s final send-off piece. And with Anna, Pale unlocked a part of himself that was calm, gentle, and soothed - A version of himself totally incongruous with his own reality and the identity he wears. Both of them are changed through their journey together through the Profound. It is a deeply uncomfortable, destabilizing place that neither of them wish to remain in. And yet its power is undeniable; Its impact unforgettable. The very experience of it is something they seek comfort for and can only find from each other.

Is it better to tell little lies each day so the world will make sense? So you can understand exactly who’s looking back at you in the mirror, and the quotidian will shade your perception of the invisible and unfathomable depths of human experience? So everything will remain neat and in control?

Or - Does it give meaning to abandon control? To surrender to grief and undesired passion, for the sake of a reality that is uncompromisingly, viscerally, heartbreakingly genuine? The harsh, infinite light all the rest of life seems to be constructed to blot from our eyes?

I really hope that as more people see the play, people will start posting their interpretations as well! I would love some good analysis dialogues! In the meantime, I will now slide right back into flaily, trash fangirl mode.... Thank you for reading all this, if you got this far! Go see this marvelous, haunting play if you’re able!!

All the love to my fangirl besties!!! @reylonly Thanks for making it an amazing night! :’)))

#Adam Driver #Burn This #Broadway #Keri Russell #driverdaily

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listing-to-port · 6 years

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Happy birthday to this, again (part two)

Listing to port is THREE today so, as is traditional, here is a list of the posts from that past year, in two parts, of which this is the second. Once again facilitated by the R interface to the tumblr api. Previously on listing to port: year one part one; year one part two; year two part one; year two part two; year three part one.

On human mechanisms: Wakings; Nine things we have not done yet; On rewards; Ten things that the young folk are doing these days; Mothers; Eight activation energy problems; Ten rules of thumb; Some commonly-abbreviated names; Six other senses; Eight gender reveals; Fears; Eleven love letters; Personality traits; Nine eligible bachelors; Ten dubious schoolmates; Sleeplands; Ten sudden enthusiasms; Nine sense-memories transfigured for the modern spirit; Things I have sometimes mistaken for knowing what I’m talking about; Ten people who were at the buffet but left before the inevitable disaster; Nine feelings, repurposed; Ten more love languages; Nine replies from the diary; Nine blood oaths; Notions; Surprising intersections of personal obsessions; Eight prisons; Nine pointless battles; Hasty decisions; Eight reasons why the nursery is closed.

On myths and magic and stories: Seven reasons the giants have left this Earth and dwell in peace amongst the stars; Nine characters who have not yet found their trope; Six Shakespeare adaptations; Nine more muses; Eight rejected adventures; The presidential libraries of the old gods; Ten wizards at the door; The safer of the fairy fruits; Nine river spirits; Nine unseen alphabets; On that night; Nine reasons dragons hoard; Seven acts of sympathetic magic; Eight tiny dragons; Modern demons; Small myths; Seven sons; Seven castaways; Ten dryads; Seven vampires; Ten great reveals; Nine magic systems; Seven tales of nautical peril; Eight bookwyrms; What kind of monster does this? A case-by-case analysis; Eight fairy tails; Seven early ghost stories; Nine calls to kingship; Eight happy endings for birds; Waves; Eight inconvenient weres; Nine hybrid beasts; Omens from the flight of birds; Seven escalations in peril; Nine merthings; Eight unicorns; Eight fairy facts.

On puzzles, conundrums and games: Nine failed riddles; Nine Winter Olympic sports; The culprit; a list; Eight reasons why the chicken crossed the road; Eight ways to solve crime; Seven long balls; Eight solutions to various problems; Nine reasons why that baby never wore the shoes; Mazes; Ten answers; Investigators; Ten keys to uninteresting mysteries.

On technology and things arising from technology: Nine internet debating positions; Eight mystical programming languages; Six ways out of the bot factory; Crimes of the virtual world; Nine privacy policies; Seven sonic weapons; Seven safety announcements; Eight signs that you are in a simulation; Nine secret lairs; Ten renewable energy sources; Seven future bugs; Eight mystical files; Seven things that will be gamified; Nine stories of the death of websites; Bugs.

On the natural world: Thirty pieces of silver; Seven things heard through grapevines; Nine promises pulled from the bark of a tree; Nine dawns; Deserts; Storms; Nine ways to get lost in the wilderness; Seven Springs; Seven moods of the sea; Falling water; Things in the heart of the rose; Types of bird; Things that have been melting; Seven British birds; Seven woods; Eight heavy plants crossing; Shorelines; Places the rain may carry you to; Seven archipelagoes; Clouds; Nine ways to the sea; Metals; Ten types of sunlight; Ten ways that birds find their way home; Trees; Autumns; Seven peaceful meadows; Nine ways that bees disrespect the laws of physics; Seven forests to get lost in; Nine habitats; Reasons why two or more trees may be standing together; Some other things that were beneath the volcano; Tree honorifics; Nine visits from Winters; Fields; Nine mountain passes; Nine unusual Winter weathers; Nine secrets of the uttermost depths.

On things (general): Advanced skills for modern generalists; Seven things that are small and drifting; Eight things that were what they were; Things that rock; Unknown things; Things it is bad to step on in the dark; Things in the margins; Ten things that go bump in the night; Nine dead things rising; Ten spirits of unremarkable things; Eight things that have been replaced with things that are approximately the same size; Things in the air; Things that have been swallowed by the sea.

On time and space: Space missions; Quotidian futures; Six incorrect theories proposed by aliens; Seven geometries of time; Fortunes; Seven true promises of eternity; Seven not-quite-dystopias; Timelines; Seven books that have yet to be written; Nine landscapes of the old world; What she says and what she means, women are from Venus edition; Seven solar systems; Seven things happening to the stars; Twelve great new jobs available to humanity after the arrival of the alpha centurans; Eight rovers; Twelve convenient apocalypses; Seven very specific dystopias; Ten ghosts of Winter nights to come; Futures; Nine tremendously welcoming planets that you should visit; Nine things to check should you find an empty world; Eight tales of the death of stars; Eight first steps on Mars; Products available seventy million years from now in the case that humans fill the marketing niche for the dominant species of the time that tyrannosaurus rex now fills for humans; Ten myths of the far future.

On transportation and infrastructure: Seven dread infrastructures; Ten roads less travelled; Places that the aeroplane went; Descents; Journeys; Seven views from an unfamiliar train; Seven mean streets; Int. the airport, night: scenes; Eight roads to ruin; Ten trains and the places they go; Waymarks; Nine cartographers; Six live cables; Eight marketplaces, and what may be bought there; Ten signal fires; Eight reviews of the facilities; Buildings in the distant mountains; Maps; Ten ways to stop people crossing the edge of the map; Twelve lovely villages out on the old moor that are absolutely worth a visit; Seven pumpkin modes of transportation; Nine submariners; Fifteen faces that have launched things; Hinterlands; Twelve train stations; Seven roadside attractions.

Poems and suchlike: Let us have less Winter; Six complete poems; A villanelle; On queues.

Short stories and suchlike: Miranda come at last to dust; The interlibrary loan; On light’s many lovers and your mayfly lives; The originals; Ten things the city takes; Sunday chain #30; Sunday chain #31.

#lists #writing #birthdays #three #listing to port

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thesinglesjukebox · 6 years

Video

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JULIA HOLTER - I SHALL LOVE 2 [7.17] And we shall reciproc8.

Joshua Minsoo Kim: Nearly a decade ago, Julia Holter released an album of quotidian but surprisingly intimate field recordings, one of which was an interpretation of a score by Michael Pisarov--vthe greatest composer of the 21st century, and someone who Holter studied under while attending CalArts. While she has collaborated with him on his records, Holter has never recorded music that felt obviously aligned with the post-Cagean philosophy and aesthetics of the Wandelweiser collective. She has, however, elucidated the importance of Pisaro's lessons and experimental music workshops in providing a space for "listening and focus." Holter described hber upcoming album, Aviary, as a reflection on "how one responds to [the cacophony they experience daily] as a person -- how one behaves, how one looks for love, for solace." This song accomplishes exactly that through language reminiscent of classical texts and a delivery that demands listeners to consider its utility. The song is simply prefaced: "That is all, that is all. There is nothing else." A matter-of-fact decree that renders the following statement as irrefutable truth: "I am in love." Appropriately, the song spends most of its runtime in a calming trance-like meditation. There's a thoughtfulness to the arrangement -- the soft bed of synth pads, the otherworldly vocoder harmony, the soothing string section -- and it helps to capture the subtle flutter and comforting security of finding a partner. The song eventually swells into a beautiful wall of noise that finds the titular line transforming in meaning and tone. "In all the humans there is something true/But do the angels say, do the angels say/I shall love?" she sings. What begins as an elevation of self beyond that of celestial beings becomes a therapeutic mantra of self-assurance -- not "I shall love?" but "I shall love." I'm drawn to Holter's music because her compositions and voice are always conduits for intentional listening. The result is deep contemplation, an invitation for listeners to see how the material used can lead to a better understanding of the material itself, or even one's self. More than simple platitudes, "I Shall Love 2" calls for people to truly understand that they deserve love, even if it requires constant reminding. She models how to do just that, but gives another piece of sound advice: "Who cares what people say." [7]

Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: Julia Holter's music often feels like it holds you at a distance, intentionally breaking from expectations and forms to artificialize its sound. On "I Shall Love 2," she takes a simple concept -- the overwhelming and universal nature of love -- and treats it in a way that almost feels like an alien's view of the concept, talking and singing through these questions and declarations of love as if it the first time she is handling them. But as the baroque-ish instrumentation of "I Shall Love 2" builds from a simple, almost-childlike ambient soundscape to a full, crashing chant of a song, Holter's inhuman facade begins to melt away, leaving the song feeling like a personal revelation of a sort. [7]

Kat Stevens: I've got a lot of admiration for Julia's queasy strings but, with one or two exceptions, I've always found her songs hard to love. "I Shall Love 2" doesn't have the immediate menace of "Horns Surrounding Me" or the feeling of stumbling around a maze where everyone is dressed as a Versailles courtier of "Feel You." What it does conjure up is this image: a woman has escaped to a secluded forest glade for some peace and quiet, when a bird sets alight on her shoulder to tweet a little. Fine, she says. You can stay. But then a steady stream of bunnies and baby deer and pixies arrive to bother her with flowers and schmaltz until the woman finally cracks, crams her hands over her ears and tells them all to either shut up or fuck off. I sympathise, Julia, but I ain't getting involved with your Bambi beef. [6]

Alfred Soto: As a sonic experience, "I Shall Love 2" is a trip: a string arrangement accumulating power, cello, backup vocals shouting from a mountain peak to the heavens. I wish Julia Holter had chosen a less discreet vocal approach in the first minute, but she knows her track has surprises. [7]

Tim de Reuse: Delightfully off-kilter, a little out of tune, unpredictable -- It's delighful to see an ocean of reverb put to use actually meshing together points of interest rather than filling space in its own right! A chant as direct like "I Shall Love" just wouldn't have worked under a totally clean delivery; here, the finale achieves cathartic impact through the sweeping force of an awkward clutter. [7]

Josh Love: Holter is a brilliant pop composer and it's great to have the focus be on her music again after she bravely went public last year with the abuse she suffered while dating former Real Estate guitarist Matthew Mondanile. Admittedly, it's hard not to hear elliptical lines like "I'm in love / What can I do...Who cares what people say?" without reflecting on Holter's personal traumas but in the end what buoys this song are its wonderfully unorthodox orchestral melodies and the Velvet Underground-esque sense of spiritual deliverance embedded in the closing refrain, "I shall love." [7]

Vikram Joseph: The magical realist dreamscapes of Julia Holter's songs are always compellingly strange. "I Shall Love 2" feels like waking up on a tropical shore, surrounded by fallen fruit and parakeets, but with the colour of the sky just odd enough to make you wonder if you might, in fact, still be dreaming. It's a fitting space for a love song, delivered without irony or trepidation; maybe this is what it's meant to feel like? Julia, dazed and blinded by the sun, wonders "what do the angels say?" and is answered by a celestial chorus; the song builds to a Deserter's Songs-ish climax of swirling, entwining vocal parts, strings and brass, strands of the entire galaxy uniting in imperfect synchrony to celebrate her newfound love. I mean, sorry Julia, there's no way this isn't a dream. [8]

Ramzi Awn: Listening to "I Shall Love 2" is a bit like discovering a new painting. Julia Holter pairs humor with sincerity in a dizzying arrangement that employs instruments as brushstrokes on a fresh canvas, ripe with possibility. Holter plays with the idea of voice as conductor, threading the different elements together with short, deliberate phrases and just the right timing. [7]

Edward Okulicz: After listening to this on a loop, I really enjoy the "that is all, that is all" spoken intro as an outro before the song repeats. In fact, I might just edit the audio to make that change. Otherwise, "I Shall Love 2" is so meticulously arranged that I feel like there's something wrong with me that it can't hold my attention the whole of its running time, but the layering of vocals and strings -- which are lovely but less involving by themselves at first -- in the second half is impressive. [6]

Ryo Miyauchi: Julia Holter's left looking pale upon facing the song's central epiphany, and what really pushes "I Shall Love 2" is her follow-up question: "what do I do?" It peels back how truly daunting it can be to get hit by the feeling when you least expect it, and how you're never prepared to respond to love's arrival. The creaking music, too, sighs and crashes on its knees as powerless as Holter. The final swirling of voices that declare her breakthrough to choose love despite its known terror, then, echoes with bravery. [7]

Cédric Le Merrer: They sound like falling in love, these thousand voices pulling and pushing chaotically towards the same direction. The stomach dwelling butterflies. The social pressure of a million amatonormative songs and films and friends. Your feelings going so much faster than your thoughts. Your will drowned out. Your self tractor beamed like a cow by a flying saucer. [8]

Rebecca A. Gowns: One layer isn't enough, but as the song builds, it becomes more and more satisfying, like piling on thin sheets of butter and baking it until it becomes a croissant. What seems thin and threadbare at the beginning becomes transcendent. (Again, like a fresh croissant.) [9]

[Read, comment and vote on The Singles Jukebox ]

#julia holter #music #new music #music writing #music review

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cucinacarmela-blog · 6 years

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Our Favorite Breakfast Cereals | Serious Eats

New Post has been published on https://cucinacarmela.com/our-favorite-breakfast-cereals-serious-eats/

Our Favorite Breakfast Cereals | Serious Eats

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[Photograph: Vicky Wasik]

Breakfast

Everything you need to make the most important meal of the day delicious.

There’s nothing inherently child-specific about a bowl of cold toasted grains soaked in milk, yet breakfast cereal seems to be inextricably associated with kids in the American imagination. Sure, it helps that most boxed cereals you’ll finding lining your supermarket aisles today come liberally infused with sugar (quite a turnabout for a food category that started with Seventh-Day Adventist health nuts, who would probably be pretty horrified if they could get a glimpse of the industry today), but there are other reasons.

You could begin, for instance, with the unchallenging flavors of corn and wheat combined with milk, making cereal an easy sell for the harried parents, usually moms, raising fussy eaters, who saw themselves reflected in generations of harried parents raising fussy eaters on TV. There’s the minimal preparation required, obviously, which made cereal the first meal many of us learned to fix for ourselves.

Add to that relentless marketing featuring every kind of kid bait you can think of—bright colors; unshakable jingles; talking animals (and cartoon chefs, and a leprechaun, and a captain of some never-seen navy); the promise of strength and coolness and superpowers; the insider-y nod to your membership in a special club that adults can’t infiltrate; and the lure of sugar sugar sugar—and it’s not hard to see how the cereals that accompanied us throughout our youth became a days-long conversation topic among the Serious Eats staff.

We’ve learned that few childhood cereals are cherished only on their own merits: The rituals that we created for eating them, the manic mascots that charmed us, and the cartoons that we ate them by on Saturdays were just as important. And we’ve learned that you can make nearly 50% of the SE staff happy by sitting them down in front of a bowl of Cinnamon Toast Crunch. Here are the cereals that we still dream of forming our own secret kids’ club around, even as grown-ups.

Alpha-Bits Cereal

After an unfortunate incident wherein three-year-old Stella was left alone with Rainbow Brite cereal long enough to eat an entire box, my parents tried to steer me away from cereals with artificial coloring. That still left me with a number of excellent options—Pops, Honey Nut Cheerios, Cinnamon Toast Crunch, et cetera—the best of which was Alpha-Bits Cereal. They taste about like Lucky Charms sans the Styrofoam marshmallow bits, which was fine by me, and I’d like to think my love for a frosted alphabet helped steer me toward the baker/writer life I lead now. A-B-C-Delicious! (This bonus commercial is before my time, but everyone deserves to hear MJ singing about Alpha-Bits, especially in a video that includes The Jackson 5 sitting down for cereal around a $14,000 Eero Saarinen dining room set. Yes, I did the math.) —Stella Parks, pastry wizard

Fruit & Fibre

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I knew and loved many a cereal when I was a kid—the candy-sweet nonsense, like Cookie Crisp and Lucky Charms, that my grandmother plied us with when we came for visits, as well as the more quotidian and practical choices of my parents, like Kix and Life. (Thinking back on it, I’m not even sure they bought Life that often, which speaks to its outsize importance in my mind. Life gets soggy faster than almost anything else, and it’s still the best damn cereal on the planet.) I was even #blessed enough to be able to enjoy a bowl of Cinnamon Toast Crunch fairly regularly in front of Muppet Babies.

But my most steadfast breakfast companion, probably starting when I was about eight and continuing into my teenage years, was Fruit & Fibre (now apparently styled “Fruit ‘n Fibre”). Yep, I latched on to a sensible mixture of wheat flakes, nuts, and dried fruit, named after a dietary necessity and marketed at retirees, and I suppose Mom and Dad were only too happy to oblige this particular whimsy.

Fruit & Fibre was known in the ’80s and ’90s for the tagline “Tastes so good, you forget the fiber!”—which, again, doesn’t scream “youthful image”—and a series of commercials that poked self-deprecating fun at the inexplicably British spelling, in which one character would insist that the correct pronunciation was “fruit and fee-bray.” I don’t specifically remember this one, starring Tim Conway, but it’s representative and charmingly laid-back. I have been a very old person on the inside for a very long time. —Miranda Kaplan, senior editor

Frosted Flakes

I grew up in a pretty healthy household, and that meant hell no to the sugary cereals. We had a lot of puffed-millet, cardboard-like stuff that tasted like nothing, though I do suppose it was a bit healthier (except when I put a lot of Splenda on it, which, now that I think about it, is totally gross). The only time we ever got sugary cereal was when my dad went grocery shopping, and his all-time favorite is Frosted Flakes. When that bright-blue Kellogg’s box made it onto our cereal shelf, I went totally crazy with it—it was a classic kid-who-never-has-sugar scenario.

Recently I had brunch at MiMi’s Diner in Prospect Heights, where, as a little amuse-bouche, they give you a blissful mixture of colorful sugary cereals in a little bowl—all those classics, like Cap’n Crunch and Fruit Loops. It is such a treat. I guess I can thank all that cardboard of my youth for helping me appreciate it. —Ariel Kanter, marketing director

Cookie Crisp

I still have cereal for breakfast (and sometimes dinner) every day. These days I’m more of a Cheerios or Grape-Nuts eater, but as a kid, I definitely got hooked on the more sugar-oriented cereals, and Cookie Crisp was among the many options I rotated through. A bowl full of tiny chocolate chip cookies. Did I need more of a reason to like it as an eight-year old? Though perhaps the pair of cartoon crooks (including a dog) that served as the brand’s mascot had something to do with it…that “CooooOOOOOkie Crisp” jingle is pretty solid. —Vicky Wasik, visual director

Grape-Nuts

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The thing I remember most about my childhood trips to the grocery store is setting up camp in front of the wall of multicolored cereal boxes, wheedling and pleading with my parents as they shook their heads and jabbed their fingers at the panel of nutrition facts.

I mostly blame the ensuing tears on the astonishing effectiveness of cereal commercials—especially the kind that featured greedy adults with Peter Pan syndrome, trying to steal cereal from children who, in this gritty, high-stakes universe, went to great lengths to save their most treasured possession: brightly hued, sugar-saturated breakfast candy. Sweetened cereals, they proclaimed, were a child’s birthright, and if you weren’t getting your fill, it was almost certainly because some grown-up—like, say, your mom or dad—was an evil asshole.

Which is why my favorite breakfast cereal was virtually any breakfast cereal I wasn’t eating. For the most part, our pantry was limited to Cheerios or generic “health” flakes, with rare appearances from Raisin Bran and, on a good day, a box of Honey Nut Cheerios. Within the confines of those prison walls, I found myself with a particular affinity for Grape-Nuts, which would sink into a dense heap beneath my milk and form a gritty cement onto which I could project visions of overflowing bowls of Fruit Loops, Golden Grahams, and Cocoa Pebbles. Now that I’m a marginally health-conscious adult, I genuinely enjoy a bowl of Grape-Nuts. But back in ’93, they drew me in with their masochistic appeal: a meal that captured the true extent of my hardship, deprivation, and suffering. —Niki Achitoff-Gray, executive managing editor

Honey Nut Cheerios

I’ll happily eat Honey Nut Cheerios at any time of day or night, for any meal. They make an excellent appetizer, salad, entrée, or dessert; each little O possesses the perfect balance of sweet and savory (but mostly sweet). And, of course, as a kid growing up in a mostly sugar-free household in Berkeley, California, I could never eat them at home, which meant I searched frantically through cupboards and drawers whenever I was at a friend’s house, looking for that big red-and-yellow cardboard box. When I found it, I was in heaven. I still don’t buy them for my own pantry, but if I ever see that signature box tucked behind the grown-up food in a friend’s kitchen, I finish it off. —Elazar Sontag, intern

Corn Pops

Growing up in New Delhi, India, in the late 1980s and early 1990s, we couldn’t buy cereal, and there weren’t any cereal ads on TV. There was no joy in our house, and no pleasure in our home. I did pine after Corn Pops quite a bit, since I got a taste of some at my American friends’ houses, even though the Pops cut up the inside of my mouth. And, apropos of nothing at all, the guy who played Jesse Pinkman in Breaking Bad was in a Corn Pops commercial. —Sho Spaeth, features editor

Kashi Heart to Heart

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I have a confession to make: I did not eat cereal until I was 15 years old. Not because I was above consuming cleverly marketed sugar bombs for breakfast (because I ate plenty of Eggos), but because I’m lactose-intolerant. This was a time before I could eat my cereal with almond milk, as I do now, so it just wasn’t an option for me. Then, during my sophomore year of high school, I had a very bright idea: dry cereal with raspberries and blackberries. The juiciness of 10 or 12 berries bursting in every two to three bites would surely mimic the milk-and-cookies effect of cereal with milk, right? So I picked out a box of Kashi Heart to Heart cereal in Honey and Oat flavor, and a container each of raspberries and blackberries, and crunched my way through that for the rest of high school. I remember the pieces sometimes being so rough and scratchy that I’d scrape the roof of my mouth on them, but the flavor was good enough, and it allowed me to finally eat my cereal. Now that I’m talking about it, I think I may actually be sparking a craving. But this time, I just might add a splash of almond milk—because I can. —Kristina Bornholtz, social media editor

Golden Grahams and Cinnamon Toast Crunch

Junk foods were rarely an option in my home, and that meant no sugary cereals either. I tasted Lucky Charms only a few times, and that was at a friend’s house after a sleepover. Golden Grahams and Cinnamon Toast Crunch were as sweet as my mom was willing to allow, and those two, to this day, are among my favorites, especially when combined in the same bowl. They go together so well, the nut-and-honey notes of Golden Grahams and the sugar-and-spice in Cinnamon Toast Crunch, and they both create, whether together or alone, some of the most delicious cereal milk in existence. I don’t think I can pick between them, nor should I have to—I was cereal-deprived enough as a kid as it was. (Also, shout-out to Quaker Cracklin’ Oat Bran, which was a decently sweet cereal on regular rotation at my home until health-conscious parents got worried about all the coconut oil in it. My, how times have changed.) —Daniel Gritzer, managing culinary director

…and More Cinnamon Toast Crunch

As a kid I’d spend all week daydreaming about Saturday, when I would wake up at the butt-crack of dawn to get my fill of cartoons and sugar. I was allowed to eat foods repped by colorful characters only on these early weekend mornings—likely because Pop-Tarts and Eggo waffles were the only things that gave my parents a day to sleep in. I wanted to maximize my sugar intake during these precious unsupervised moments, so my breakfast of choice was always Cinnamon Toast Crunch. I mean, it’s so overloaded with cinnamon sugar that the slogan was “The taste you can see.” I still don’t understand how this stuff passes as children’s breakfast food, but I’ll never forget those mornings spent doing lines of cinnamon sugar with Hey, Arnold! in the background. —Sohla El-Waylly, assistant culinary editor

Trix

“Silly rabbit, Trix are for kids!” will forever be ingrained in my brain. I loved that this cereal was so colorful. I’m pretty sure none of the flavors actually differed from one another, but I do remember that at one point the original balls were replaced by actual fruit-shaped pieces, to try to convince you that there was real lemon, grape, lime, raspberry, and blueberry flavor in there. —Vicky Wasik, visual director

Rice Krispies Treats Cereal

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A cereal I remember being better in theory than in actuality. I’m assuming this commercial’s UFO references were crafted to piggyback on the paranormal-activity obsession that ran rampant throughout the late ’80s and ’90s, if kids’ television of the era is anything to go by. (See: Goosebumps, The Secret World of Alex Mack, Ghostwriter, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles…okay, that one might be a stretch.) The combo of sugary cereal plus thrills definitely hit the right note for me, and seeing a box of Rice Krispies Treats Cereal in the supermarket incited equal parts excitement and chills-creeping, sensation-laden terror, conjuring up late Saturday mornings glued to the tube over a bowl of (essentially) starchy candy that was “part of a complete breakfast.” Whoever said the ’50s and ’60s represented the golden age of advertising was clearly never a wide-eyed, impressionable child cruising the cereal aisle, visions of RKTC commercials dancing in their head. —Marissa Chen, office manager

Frosted Mini-Wheats

There were many long pit stops on my cereal journey growing up. Earlier on, there were the sweeter, more sugary stops, like Cap’n Crunch, Cinnamon Toast Crunch, and Lucky Charms. At summer camp I would add extra sugar to my Frosted Flakes, purposefully stir the cereal so the extra sugar sank all the way down, and eat the sugary milk goop at the bottom of the bowl with the spoon. Later on I became ever-so-slightly healthier with Honey Nut Cheerios, a very long stint on Honey Bunches of Oats (still a favorite), and a brief and shameful period on Raisin Bran. My final destination—and probably my all-time favorite to this day—was Frosted Mini-Wheats. Every bite has exactly the same ratio of ingredients, which I appreciate: just the right amount of fibrous (healthy!) and sugary. The texture is perfect, assuming you have the know-how to let the cereal soak up just the right amount of milk so it’s not dry and crunchy, then eat it quickly before it gets soggy. A seasoned veteran such as I am may even split the bowl into two or three rounds of cereal addition, thus ensuring that no piece gets too saturated before your spoon reaches it. —Tim Aikens, front-end developer

Wheat Chex

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I ate more than my fair share of cereal when I was a kid, usually while sprawled out on the living room floor watching reruns of Saved by the Bell or DuckTales. I reserved the more sugary cereals (Cookie Crisp, Cinnamon Toast Crunch, Cap’n Crunch, and probably some that start with other letters of the alphabet) to be eaten as a dry snack and primarily ate “healthier” cereals, like Wheat Chex, with milk. I was never a big fan of cereal milk, so as I emptied the bowl, I would repeatedly add more and more cereal, until most of the milk had been absorbed. —Paul Cline, developer

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quotidian-oblivion · 3 years

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𝙷𝚒! 𝙸'𝚖 𝚀𝚞𝚘! (𝙰𝚖𝚘𝚗𝚐 𝚖𝚊𝚗𝚢 𝚘𝚝𝚑𝚎𝚛 𝚗𝚒𝚌𝚔𝚗𝚊𝚖𝚎𝚜, 𝚝𝚑𝚎𝚢'𝚛𝚎 𝚖𝚢 𝚙𝚎𝚗𝚗𝚒𝚎𝚜)

Rᴇsɪᴅᴇɴᴛ ᴛʀᴀᴜᴍᴀᴛɪᴢᴇᴅ ғᴀɴғɪᴄ ᴡʀɪᴛᴇʀ ᴀɴᴅ ᴏᴠᴇʀᴇɴᴛʜᴜsɪᴀsᴛɪᴄ ғᴏᴜɴᴅ ғᴀᴍɪʟʏ ᴛʀᴏᴘᴇ ʟᴏᴠᴇʀ

(ao3) (youtube)

I ᴅᴏɴ'ᴛ sʜɪᴘ.

Oʜ, ᴀɴᴅ I'ᴍ ℳ𝓊𝓈𝓁𝒾𝓂 (𝒮𝓊𝓃𝓃𝒾)

She/her

Cʜᴏᴄᴏʟᴀᴛᴇ ᴍɪʟᴋ ɪs ᴍʏ ᴄᴏᴍғᴏʀᴛ ᴅʀɪɴᴋ sᴏ ʟᴇᴀᴠɪɴɢ ᴀ "🧋" ᴏʀ "🍫🥛" ᴀɴʏᴡʜᴇʀᴇ ʜᴀs ᴍᴇ ᴇxᴛᴇɴᴅ ʏᴏᴜ ᴍʏ ғʀɪᴇɴᴅsʜɪᴘ.

Fᴇᴇʟ ғʀᴇᴇ ᴛᴏ ᴀsᴋ ᴍᴇ ᴀʙᴏᴜᴛ ᴀɴʏ ᴏғ ᴍʏ ғɪᴄs ᴏʀ WIPs! I ʟᴏᴠᴇ sʜᴀʀɪɴɢ ᴀɴᴅ, ᴄʜᴀɴᴄᴇs ᴀʀᴇ, I ᴡɪʟʟ ᴏᴠᴇʀsʜᴀʀᴇ ʙᴇᴄᴀᴜsᴇ I ᴅᴏ ɴᴏᴛ ᴘᴏssᴇss sᴇʟғ-ᴄᴏɴᴛʀᴏʟ. As ᴀ ғɪᴄ ᴡʀɪᴛᴇʀ ᴅᴏᴇs

Hᴏᴡᴇᴠᴇʀ, I ᴀᴍ ɴᴏᴛ ᴏᴘᴇɴ ᴛᴏ ᴀsᴋs ʀᴇʟᴀᴛᴇᴅ ᴀɴʏᴛʜɪɴɢ ᴛᴏ ᴅᴏ ᴡɪᴛʜ ᴍᴏɴᴇʏ, ʜᴀᴛᴇ, ᴀɴᴅ NSFW ᴄᴏɴᴛᴇɴᴛ.

𝙸 𝚊𝚕𝚜𝚘 𝚑𝚊𝚟𝚎 𝚊 found family on tumblr (<- 𝚕𝚒𝚗𝚔 𝚝𝚘 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚙𝚘𝚜𝚝 𝚠𝚒𝚝𝚑 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚏𝚊𝚖𝚒𝚕𝚢 𝚖𝚎𝚖𝚋𝚎𝚛𝚜)

ఌ︎ꨄ︎ఌ︎ꨄ︎ఌ︎ꨄ︎ఌ︎ꨄ︎ఌ︎ꨄ︎ఌ︎ꨄ︎ఌ︎ꨄ︎ఌ︎ꨄ︎ఌ︎ꨄ︎ఌ︎ꨄ︎ఌ︎ꨄ︎ఌ︎ꨄ︎ఌ︎

Check out my ao3: quotidian_void - Works | Archive of Our Own

❥︎ Blanket permission to tag me on any tumblr posts/tag games. I appreciate asks too!

❥︎ Blanket permission also to create any inspired works, podfics, translations from me, or any gift fics too. As long as you contact me first and credit my works.

❥︎ Blanket permission also to just. spew nonsense anywhere, because chances are, I'll join in with you.

❥︎ Please do not repost my works or my posts. Give credit where it's due.

❥︎ Please do not feed my work to any AI or have AI go anywhere near my work. I like to preserve my original creativity.

❥︎ Requests for Not All Good Things Come In Packages is open! You can request anytime!

✿︎✿︎✿︎✿︎✿︎✿︎✿︎✿︎✿︎✿︎✿︎✿︎✿︎✿︎✿︎✿︎✿︎✿︎✿︎✿︎✿︎✿︎✿︎✿︎✿︎

☻︎ Rules for requesting ☻︎:

You can request any pov, missing scene, extra scene, and idea under the comments of this work or any of my others, or better yet, my tumblr ask box cuz then I can sort through them easily.

I will TRY to write them all, but there’s no guarantee for that cuz it really depends on the prompt itself and my mental energy.

I’m not doing anything which is outside of platonic. I feel uncomfortable with sex and romance. So, yeah, that’s out of bounds.

If you do request something which was already requested or I can't do it for some reason or the other, I shall let you know.

I'm only accepting prompts from the fics that are present on my ao3 (regardless of which fandom).

If I'm not sure of something, I will ask you for further information either on the ask you requested, or in the comments section, or in tumblr messages.

I will take a while writing them, sorry.

You are very welcome to rant about a plot or theory or anything for a fic request.

Fluff prompts are welcome.

Angst prompts are very welcome.

Hurt/comfort prompts are very very welcome.

Crack is me. I am crack. (Meaning crack prompts are also very welcome)

The link to the actual work is up there attached to the title of the fic. 'Tis u͟n͟d͟e͟r͟l͟i͟n͟e͟d͟.

᯽ One last thing, I'm still getting used to being a regular fanfic writer + I'm a non-native English speaker so you may find some grammar mistakes. I'm improving every day though. ᯽

☢︎︎ My fics are purely for entertainment and are not meant to represent anything. They are also fiction. Please keep that in mind. ☢︎︎

ꕥ Have a good one! 💖🧋

༆༄༆༄༆༄༆༄༆༄༆༄༆༄༆༄༆༄༆༄༆༄༆༄༆

𝙼𝚢 𝚝𝚊𝚐𝚜: 𝕢𝕦𝕠𝕥𝕚𝕕𝕚𝕒𝕟 𝕔𝕠𝕟𝕧𝕠𝕤 - original posts, conversations with moots and other users 𝕢𝕦𝕠𝕥𝕚𝕕𝕚𝕒𝕟 𝕒𝕤𝕜𝕤 - asks i send, asks i answer (mutuals or anonymous askers have their nickname along with a '<3' after it) 𝕢𝕦𝕠𝕥𝕚𝕕𝕚𝕒𝕟 𝕨𝕣𝕚𝕥𝕖𝕤 - my original written pieces on tumblr 𝕢𝕦𝕠𝕥𝕚𝕕𝕚𝕒𝕟 𝕗𝕚𝕔𝕤 - information or links to my fanfics 𝕢𝕦𝕠𝕥𝕚𝕕𝕚𝕒𝕟 𝕣𝕖𝕒𝕕𝕤 - books recs :) 𝕢𝕦𝕠𝕥𝕚𝕕𝕚𝕒𝕟 𝕡𝕠𝕝𝕝𝕤 - my polls 𝕢𝕦𝕠𝕥𝕚𝕕𝕚𝕒𝕟'𝕤 𝕓𝕒𝕓𝕪 𝕡𝕠𝕤𝕥𝕤 - posts from the first time I got tumblr, before I abandoned the account for a year-ish and came back 𝕢𝕦𝕠 𝕕𝕚𝕕 𝕤𝕥𝕦𝕗𝕗 - stuff I made (art, edits, etc.) 𝕢𝕦𝕠'𝕤 𝕕𝕟𝕕 𝕤𝕖𝕤𝕙𝕖𝕤 - memorable and funny instances from my Dungeons and Dragons sessions after school with irl friends 𝕧𝕚𝕕𝕢𝕦𝕠𝕤 - my edits (the term's lovingly coined by iggy ^^) Quotidian solves - I just wanted to save my detective work leftover from the aussie anon drama :)

Some notable events with the family tumblrweed and mutuals: 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐜𝐚𝐫𝐩𝐞𝐭 𝐞𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐬𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐬 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐛𝐞𝐞𝐩 𝐬𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐬 𝐞𝐦𝐚𝐢𝐥 𝐡(𝐚)𝐮𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 The unmasking of the aussie anon (subtag: birbs interrogation, binary anon's reveal, the astonishing accusation of quotidian, the compelling conclusion to the saga, the second unmasking, mysterious anons, mysterious anons: the reveal) The looming shadow of detective cygnus

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jmuo-blog · 6 years

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New Post has been published on https://jmuo.com/our-favorite-breakfast-cereals-serious-eats/

Our Favorite Breakfast Cereals | Serious Eats

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[Photograph: Vicky Wasik]

Breakfast

Everything you need to make the most important meal of the day delicious.

Alpha-Bits Cereal

Fruit & Fibre

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Frosted Flakes

Cookie Crisp

Grape-Nuts

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Honey Nut Cheerios

Corn Pops

Kashi Heart to Heart

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Golden Grahams and Cinnamon Toast Crunch

…and More Cinnamon Toast Crunch

Trix

Rice Krispies Treats Cereal

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Frosted Mini-Wheats

Wheat Chex

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chiseler · 5 years

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Gnostic Boardwalk

Night Tide had spent three years languishing in the can when distributor Roger Corman smuggled the unlikely masterwork into public consciousness, another of his now legendary mitzvahs to art. And the sleazy-sounding double bills that resulted also unleashed an aberrant wonder: the movie’s compact leading man, a force previously held captive by the studio system—looking, here, like some homunculus refugee from the Fifties USA. Dennis Hopper, in his first starring role, would later recall that it represented his first "aesthetic impact" on film since his earlier appearances in more mainstream productions such as Rebel Without a Cause and Giant had denied him meaningful outlets for collaboration.

Unlike his counterparts entrenched within the studio system, Harrington was an artist -- i.e. a Hollywood anachronism, with aristocratic graces and a viewfinder trained on the unseen. We see Harrington as Georges Méliès reborn with a queer eye, casting precisely the same showman’s metaphysics that spawned cinema onto nature. By the time moving pictures were invented, artists were moving away from a bloodless representational ethos and excavating more primordial sources for inspiration. The early stirrings of what surrealist impresario André Breton would later proclaim: “Beauty will be CONVULSIVE or it will not be at all.”

Moments later, inside the Blue Grotto where a flute-led jazz combo is in progress, Johnny spots a beautiful young woman (Linda Lawson) seated directly across from him. Her restrained and almost involuntary physical response to the music mimic his own, offering the first indication of a gender 'other' residing in Johnny; an entombed apparition cleaved from the sub-conscious and projected into his line of vision. Roderick and Madeline Usher loom large in Harrington’s screenplay and Usher’s trans themes lurk invisibly in the subtext. Harrington is arguably heir apparent to Poe’s vacated throne, pursuing similar clue-laden paths and exploring the dual nature of human and the primordial creature just beneath the surface poised to devour its host.

by The Lumière Sisters

Special thanks to Danny Kasman and David Cairns

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