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
The Big Beautiful Branding of the Art World’s Strike
Good job, Art World! Friday, January 30, 2026, will go down in history as the moment when the Trump administration changed! No more ICE! No more Border Patrol! No more raids! (Unless it’s the ones the galleries contemplated calling on the street vendors.) No more public executions! No more Stephen Miller! Why? Because the galleries … Continue reading
4 Movies for Wackos that I’ve Loved Recently: A New Love in Tokyo, 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, Deranged, and Room Temperature
Being buried under precarious, emergency-surgery-threatening heaps and heaps of snow, ice, and slush is the perfect opportunity for obsessive movie-watching. Not schlepping around to galleries, climbing over the road gritty, dog-and-human shit-covered ice mountains that collect at the edge of every sidewalk in New York, to gaze disappointingly at mostly bland art (Not to mention … Continue reading
A Place for Everything and Everything in Its Place: “The Testament of Ann Lee” Made Me Believe
The Testament of Ann Lee is the only movie I can recall watching in the theater recently without someone barking out a disruptive, ironic laugh. And before any anti-laughers scoff in humorless scorn at those who can’t understand cinema without the distancing mechanism of camp, that chuckler is usually me. Yet, the lack of chortling … Continue reading
From GloRilla to Throbbing Gristle, Xiu Xiu Worship Musical Role Models on “Xiu Mutha Fuckin’ Xiu: Vol. 1”
Lick on my clit! Make this pussy cream! Do this motherfucker how you do them Russian creams… These deliriously depraved opening lines, whispered close to my ear by Xiu Xiu’s Jamie Stewart over halfway through their new cover album, Xiu Mutha Fuckin’ Xiu: Vol. 1, released today by Polyvinyl Records, made me stop short mid-run. … Continue reading
The Disorienting and Demented World of Ed Wood
“Without obsession, life is nothing.” Sure, it was our Queer Confucius John Waters who supposedly uttered this maxim, but this guiding artistic sentiment perhaps applies even more accurately to Waters’ “gutter film” predecessor, the notorious Ed Wood Jr. In his illuminating recent book Ed Wood: Made in Hollywood USA (via OR Books), Will Sloan interrogates … Continue reading
Possession or Lesbian Awakening?: Maya Gunhilda’s “God Save Malvina”
“Malvina is the first mistake, Malvina is the worst mistake I’ve ever made.” Are you a fan of Sapphic coming-of-age stories…drenched in horror and told entirely from the perspective of the queer protagonist’s hyper-religious mother? Well, if you are, then look no further! Maya Gunhilda’s 2025 disgustingly delightful horror short, God Save Malvina, follows protagonist … Continue reading
Filthy Dreams’ Muzak Wish List Music Playlist
Hark! Who goes there! Is that you, ghost of Christmas shopping mall past? Stepping out of the fluorescent glow of a shopping mall department store, Filthy Dreams’ Muzak Wish List Music Playlist has at long last crashed into the season like a Macy’s shopping bag full of discounted sweaters and gift wrap. Who says nostalgia … Continue reading
Divas Down!: Christopher Gambino’s Mise-En-Crime-Scène “The Christmas Show” at Below Grand
I wish I hadn’t purposefully visited Christopher Gambino’s window installation, The Christmas Show at Below Grand. Not because I wish I could erase it from my mind, but I dream of stumbling upon this festive furniture crime scene by happenstance. A momentary look to my right while walking down Orchard Street. A glance at a … Continue reading
Olivia Nuzzi’s “American Canto” Is a Brilliant Camp Masterpiece
Olivia Nuzzi’s much-maligned memoir American Canto opens with a phone call and a cockroach rave. Stomping down Fifth Avenue in front of the Met, Nuzzi argues with croaky-voiced bear-crime-scene-stager and whale-beheader Robert F. Kennedy Jr…I mean, The Politician…about whether their long-shot presidential candidate x political journalist affair is wrong (it is). Answering his invocation of … Continue reading
The Museum of Sex’s “Utopia” Makes Being in a Cult Look Fun
A dour-looking, ruddy-faced Quaker, who, after a heavenly bout of what was likely typhus in the same year that our founding daddies signed the Declaration of Independence, was resurrected as “a genderless servant of God.” A swivel-eyed polyamorous duo who bred unicorns (or really, did questionable surgeries on goats), one of which, named Lancelot, hit … Continue reading