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
Filthy Dreams’ Search for the Blue Fairy Playlist
“This homosexual dream of perfect metaphysical union is not so much a reflected heterosexual ideal as it is the compensation for having wept in the darkness.” (Thomas Yingling, Hart Crane and the Homosexual Text, quoted in Heather Love, Feeling Backward) Long, long ago, Leo Bersnai formulated a theory of the impossibility of queer desire: queer … Continue reading
Back To Nature: In Praise Of Ambiguity In “no body to talk to”
Nobody expects to be confronted by a cat’s butthole on the wall of a flower shop. But, that’s exactly the startling sight in a photograph by Res hung prominently in the hallway connecting the two sections of the lush greenery-filled flower shop at 89 Eldridge Street. The photograph Reaching (Butthole) features a cat’s ass on … Continue reading
The George Michael Buyers Club
Last week, The New York Times reported the oh-so-disappointing statistic that nobody is boinking in New York City’s glorious public parks anymore. The article cited the paltry statistics that the NYPD only wrote six tickets for “sex in park” last year, compared to 432 in 2007. Continue reading
Filthy Dreams GIF Review: “Magic Ben Big Boy” at Matthew Marks
If I could turn back time…whoa! What’s that? Oh, I’m just fantasizing about time traveling back to 1990s San Francisco, after being inspired by Magic Ben Big Boy, a current exhibition at Matthew Marks Gallery. A product of a specific time and place, the show centers around a recreation of Vincent Fecteau’s cat, eggs and … Continue reading
Look At Me! How Dare You! Close Your Eyes!: Going Camping with Queen Anne and “The Favourite”
“Did you just look at me? Did you?…LOOK AT ME! How DARE you?! Close your eyes!” This head-spinning hysterical interchange, delivered to the silent suffering of a young servant, marks the moment I fell in love with Queen Anne in The Favourite. Played with maniacal glee by Olivia Colman, Queen Anne, with her angular streaks … Continue reading
I want it, I got it, I want it, I got it: Queering Deaf Utopia
THANK YOU, NEXT Full disclosure: I am gleefully out of touch with pop music. In fact, I decided to swear it off forever when that whole autotune phenomenon made Cher unlistenable. When all those queens lifted up their index fingers and pranced towards the center of the dance floor as Cher’s autotuned voice … Continue reading
Gary Indiana’s “Vile Days” Makes Me Want To Continue Being An Art Critic
Gary Indiana’s art column in The Village Voice, which ran from 1985 to 1988, is unthinkable from today’s standards of art criticism. And this just isn’t because The Voice doesn’t exist anymore (or, actually, it does in the form of a zombie Twitter account blasting out old articles into the void). More than just the … Continue reading
The Discomfort in Comfort: Vulnerability in Elizabeth Jaeger’s New Portraits
It was, at first, slightly challenging to place artist Elizabeth Jaeger’s new show Hours at Jack Hanley Gallery into the context of her larger body of work. Jaeger’s work, consisting of primarily sculpture and ceramics (with some video pieces here and there), has taken some turns since she came onto the scene. When dealing with … Continue reading
Filthy Dreams’s Velvet Buzzsaw Threeway
ALERT! On Friday, December 16, 2022, one of the co-authors of this article, Efrem Zelony-Mindell, was arrested and charged by the FBI for the attempted enticement of one minor boy in Manhattan, New York, and possession and distribution of child pornography. I mean, Jesus Christ. The case is so viscerally revolting that we can barely … Continue reading
Art / Plastic Sleaze / TV
Feeling Sleazy in Seedy Sin City: Traces of Old Times Square in “The Deuce” and Jane Dickson’s “All That is Solid Melts into Air”
Is Times Square real? No, I haven’t completely flipped my switch–I’m aware Times Square is locatable on a map. But, Times Square seems and has always seemed to exist somewhere between reality and fiction. Continue reading