“Now Orpheus, crawl, O shamefaced fugitive, crawl back under the crumbling broken wall of yourself, for you are not stars, sky-set in the shape of a lyre, but the dust of those who have been dismembered by Furies!” –Tennessee Williams “Orpheus Descending” In his ongoing Q&A newsletter The Red Hand Files last week (#20 if … Continue reading
“We are surrounded by everything you ever want,” purrs artist Andrew Logan, inviting viewers of homotopia.tv into the Glasshouse, his studio in London.[i] The Glasshouse resembles a Technicolor tumble through the looking glass if Alice sniffed poppers. His Pee-Wee’s Playhouse-esque studio is filled with giant eggs, regal tributes to Pegasus, and sculptures dedicated to outrageous … Continue reading
Recently, I realized I was abused as a child. No, I didn’t discover some satanic ritual trauma while going through repressed memory therapy. I visited La MaMa Galleria’s current exhibition Lost Merchandise of the Dreamlanders, which confronted me with an idyllic John Waters-infused childhood I never had–a childhood where I could play tea party with … Continue reading
This week, i-D Magazine’s Amelia Abraham published a think piece asking, “Whatever Happened To Camp–Does It Still Exist?” Believe me, Mary, just that question made me recoil in horror. How DARE they wonder if camp still exists?! Why, as we’ve frequently shouted into the abyss here on Filthy Dreams, it’s more important than ever! In … Continue reading
You can’t argue with the immediate shock of a video depicting a burning rainbow flag. Or, for that matter, a sign that reads “Never Trust A Gay Man” and “Every Gay Man Is A Disappointment,” which echoes a self-loathing but (at least I read) tongue-in-cheek sentiment aired by Milo Yiannopoulos on Real Time With Bill Maher … Continue reading
Home can reveal so much about a person. Yes, this is an obvious cliché, but an individual’s architectural and interior design sensibilities–not to mention their cornucopia of tacky knick-knacks scattered around their existence–speaks volumes. This truism relates perhaps even more to queer individuals. Since, at the very least, the Decadents at the turn of the … Continue reading
“Taste is style, and to know bad taste, of course, you have to have been taught the rules of the tyranny of good taste so you can yearn to break them,” says our preeminent filth elder John Waters. John knows a thing or two about good taste, but then so do we. By we, I … Continue reading
“If you don’t have a merry little Christmas, you might as well kill yourself. Every waking second should be spent in Christmas compulsion; career, love affairs, marriages and all the other clutter of daily life must take a back seat to this holiday of holidays,” writes John Waters in his psychotic Christmas classic Why I Love Christmas (130). Well, if it’s good enough for our preeminent filth elder John Waters, it’s good enough for us. Christmas is truly the best time of the year. Continue reading
Following yesterday’s first post of the shows we missed reviewing in 2016 due to being forced to work on other projects for cash before the windfall of the Arts Writers Grant, I’m returning to a show from much earlier this year–Mx Justin Vivian Bond’s My Model/My Self at Participant Inc. “Explain what? A role model?” exclaims … Continue reading
“The time has come to think about sex,” announces Gayle Rubin in the introduction to her seminal essay “Thinking Sex: Notes for a Radical Theory of the Politics of Sexuality” (143). Written in 1984–the year of Reagan’s reelection, Rubin’s pro-sex polemic came as a response to not only Reagan’s AIDS-denying conservatism, but also the pearl clutching, … Continue reading