Welcome to Filthy Dreams
Well hello there! Welcome to Filthy Dreams, a blog that analyzes culture through a queer lens. Rather than jumping right into new content, we thought it best to introduce ourselves and our aesthetics with our Trash Manifesto
Latest Entries
Kim Gordon’s “The Collective” Is Breathing Down My Neck (And I Like It)
I’ve only visited Los Angeles once despite frequently returning to its sprawling noir imagery in some of my most beloved films and music. Yet, none of these—not even our Lady of Southern California, Lana Del Rey, or the master of its surreal seedy underbelly, David Lynch—has ever truly articulated my experience of contemporary Los Angeles. … Continue reading
Is Mary Boone a Bloodsucker?: PTSD Flashbacks Induced by a New Vampire Weekend Song
Millennial band Vampire Weekend’s song “Mary Boone,” the eighth track off their recently released album Only God Was Above Us, has me reveling in nostalgia for and reliving the trauma of the ‘80s in New York. It’s surprising, considering that band members Ezra Koenig, Chris Baio, and Chris Tomson were only born in the mid-‘80s. … Continue reading
I Wanted to Hate Bianca Bosker’s “Get the Picture”
Volunteering to have your face sat on in public is all it takes to earn my respect. Apparently, anyway. The act of being smothered by a highly sought-after “ass influencer” at a gallery performance was the exact moment when I had to hand it to writer Bianca Bosker: she has dedication. In her art world … Continue reading
Birth Scenes in Body Horror Movies Have Nothing on Clarity Haynes’s “Portals” at New Discretions
A minuscule flushed hand with five chubby fingers sticks out of a slick reddened birth canal as if waving from a seeping open wound. A rubber-gloved palm grabs the neck of a splotchy greenish-purple head, its rubbery face smushed and eyes slammed shut with yellow viscous fluid running from its nose. Another grumpy face, this … Continue reading
Burning Love (And Evidence): “Love Lies Bleeding” Is a Lesbian True Romance
Little wet gelatinous orbs of yellow egg yolks, slopping over one another on the top of a trash heap, have never looked so erotic as in a memorable montage in Rose Glass’s Love Lies Bleeding, dutifully separated from their whites for a healthier breakfast by Kristen Stewart’s reserved, choppy mulleted gym manager Lou for her … Continue reading
Wild Gods: Adam Steiner’s “Darker with the Dawn: Nick Cave’s Songs of Love and Death” and “Silhouettes and Shadows: The Secret History of David Bowie’s Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps)”
“Once upon a time, a wild god zoomed…” Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds’ new song “Wild God” may be one of the more confounding in their forty-year run. Of course, there is no shortage of perplexing songs in the band’s extensive catalogue from the backbreaking labor of “Well of Misery” to the soupy stringed … Continue reading
Unseen World: Katelyn Eichwald Keeps the Mystery Alive in “Talisman” at Fortnight Institute
Until dashing into Katelyn Eichwald’s solo show Talisman at Fortnight Institute to avoid standing in a downpour like an asshole outside of the opening of La MaMa Galleria’s Every Woman Biennial, I would have firmly declared myself anti-poetry in galleries (apart from readings or performances, of course). The poetry creep has been a long time … Continue reading
“As the World Burns: Queer Photography and Nightlife in Boston” Keeps Dancing and Breaking out the Booze Through the Archives
A monstrous gaudy powder-white Christmas wreath, adorned with silver balls and a gigantic red bow, towers over a full bar. The ginormous wreath is flanked by metallic cut-out stars, floating down from the heavens, caught by a single string pinned to the ceiling. Partially hidden behind the pine needles like an upstaged choir are the … Continue reading
There Was More than the Pungent Smell of Blood and Sugar: A Conversation with Sara O’Keeffe and Christopher Udemezue
Artist and RAGGA NYC founder, Christopher Udemezue aka Christina, has been in the studio connecting the dots between history, romance, the macabre, and community for some time in his work. Our last coverage of his practice was an introduction to his RAGGA NYC collective show, RAGGA NYC: All the threatened and delicious things joining one … Continue reading
Macabre Camp & Memory Pictures: Jonathan Glazer’s “The Zone of Interest” and Ceija Stojka’s “We Lived in Secrecy (A Roma Memory)”
Laced with easy ironies, Jonathan Glazer’s The Zone of Interest forgoes subtlety in its rendering of the mundane monstrosities of Nazi concentration camp administrators through one distinctly complacent family. Aided by the minimalism of Mica Levi’s shrieking and belching score, cottagecore bliss is juxtaposed against an aural backdrop of carnage where occasional gunshots and screams … Continue reading