Trash is my politics, Trash is my life!

I’m Emily Colucci and I, like John Waters, love everything bad about America. Is this some sort of Trash Lovers Anonymous meeting? Maybe. In reality, perhaps that’s what Filthy Dreams has always been!

Of course, the trash aesthetic is one of the main pillars of this website, dearest readers, as we repeatedly attempt to define and refine our understanding of what it is and how it has infected the world around us with its slime. Well, today, I’m corrupting the minds of the youth of America…or really Sarah Lawrence College…by delivering a lecture on the topic. For what exactly I’m going to say, you’ll have to be there–or wish you were! Or search through our archives here and figure out which articles I snatched for this purpose! Or better yet, invite me to horrify YOUR storied institution!

But, as a small token and because I couldn’t figure out a way to write a lecture WITHOUT creating a playlist, I’m sharing my corresponding Trash Aesthetic Playlist. So take a listen and run around town like Divine in Pink Flamingos, rip your shirt off like Hulk Hogan at the RNC, hot-glue-gun ratty and stained stuffed animals into an artwork like Mike Kelley, or figure out your own way to pay tribute to the grotesque, the grim, the garish, the sleazy, the sordid, the lurid, the wild, the putrid, the vulgar, the disgusting, the too-much, the excessive, the artificial, the tasteless, the in bad taste, the tawdry, and yes, the trashy!