“You thieving treacherous little shit! To think that I actually liked you and let you touch my lady bits. I’m going to slice your face off with a cheese grater and then feed your testicles to my girlfriend!” No, this isn’t a quote from a lost John Waters film spoken with the perverse and pathological … Continue reading
Tag Archives: Camp
Filthy Dreams’ Fanatical Superlatives of 2020
*blows party horn* *shoots confetti cannon* Ahhh…Happy New Year, dearest Filthy Dreams readers! Get ready for that champagne hangover after battling the hoards of amateur drinkers on these final days of 2019! …or 2020. What year is it? Did we have a year? Or is this still some cold sweat alcohol-poisoning fever dream after choking … Continue reading
You’re Going To Be A Star! Big Star!: Filthy Dreams’ 10 Most-Read Essays of 2020
*jingle jangle jingle jangle* Oh why hello there, dearest Filthy Dreams fanatics! Do you hear what I hear? Are those bells? Are they tolling for us? Well, hell’s bells! I guess it’s time to start ringing in the New Year! Ah…2020. Do we even need a look back? I don’t know about you, but to … Continue reading
“Just Look At Yourself, You Little Fat Ass!”: Giving Hillbilly Elegy The Camp Respect It’s Entitled To
“Oh, fuck you! Those are heirlooms. My family heirlooms!” Wild-eyed and bunny-eared with her Appalachian drawl, Amy Adams’ Bev Vance delivers those lines with the pathos and conviction of a woman who just lost her cherished, long held inherited treasures, passed down from generation to generation of country folk. What are these heirlooms of which … Continue reading
“That’s Your Daughter?! When Did She Get So Hot?”: Our 20 Favorite Moments From Michael Cohen’s “Disloyal”
I love sleazy lawyers. Show me a poorly produced ambulance-chasing commercial filled with images of car crashes, explosions, and infernos with a sweaty man in a suit hollering about bringing down “THE HAMMER!” of justice and I’m over the moon. Maybe it has to do with growing up in Pittsburgh where memorizing a certain ad … Continue reading
Everything Will Be Human, or at Least Californian: A Conversation About “Sensoria” and “We Want It All”
The first few chapters of McKenzie Wark’s Sensoria: Thinkers for the Twenty-First Century, recently published by Verso Books, had us both thinking: why are we reading Wark’s book reports? Are we to do a book report on book reports? So instead of that exercise in grad(e) school nostalgia, we decided to have a meandering chat … Continue reading
Donald Trump And The Republican Party Have Weaponized Camp (And They’re Doing It Masterfully)
Have we lost camp forever to the Trump administration and the Republicans? I know what you’re thinking, surely that can’t be! Camp is ours– the outsiders, the marginalized, the queers, the weirdoes, the outcasts! That’s our aesthetic and they can’t have it! Well, I’ve got some bad news. There was no way to witness the … Continue reading
The Hysterical Agony And The Ecstasy Of “Supermarket Sweep”: A (Mostly) Photo Essay
Is there anything more beautiful than the dual glee and panic of a boxy silhouette of tapered jeans and blinding billowing Technicolor sweaters hurtling down a supermarket aisle as if shot from a cannon in search of a specially marked bottle of Tide? Is there anything more inspiring than a blur of Dep shellacked and … Continue reading
“Stonewall” Is A Putrid Pride Stinker That Should Never Be Forgotten
A brick appears in his hand as if by magic. This corn-fed white cis straight-passing Ken doll in a torn Gap T-shirt fresh off the bus from Indiana looks down, realizing that history has its eyes on him–not the gender-nonconforming street kids of color he just met and whose brick he just swiped. No, this … Continue reading
Madonna’s Disturbing Quarantine Instagram Presence Is The Most Transgressive Thing She’s Done Since “Erotica”
A long needle, syringes, gauze and other medical equipment lie strewn on a blood-splattered table. An X-ray of a hip joint. A photograph of an unidentifiable piece of flesh covered in bruises and needle pricks. These were the disturbing images that flickered by after I cautiously committed to watching Madonna’s Instagram stories earlier this week. … Continue reading