Some books are bad. Not in a Mein Kampf sort of way, although there’s plenty of that about. In this case I mean the ‘if my parents catch me reading this trash, some non-specific unholiness will envelope my family and I’ll be ostracised from the community’ way.
In my early teens, these books were generally located on my Gran’s bookshelf.
Continue reading “Flowers In The Attic: Lies, Damn Lies & Lit Reviews”
r/Braincels, earlier today.
No one cared about Incels when they were just writing shit on the internet. We all care about Incels now because a man called Alek Minassian committed an atrocity in Toronto, someone looked at his internet history (which is basically the first thing journalists and writers do while normal people are still in shock) and found a Facebook shoutout referencing Elliot Rodger.
The net effect of this is to make us feel incredible anger towards a group of people that claims it only exists because ‘normal’ society has already excluded them.
For reference, Incel is a term reportedly coined by an individual called Alana “as a name for an online support forum for singles, basically a lonely hearts club”.
Continue reading “Chad & Stacy: The ‘Black Pill’ We’ve All Swallowed”
My tablets aren’t working.
A bold, self-conscious step into the fray that followed Johann Hari’s contention that the drugs don’t work? Or indeed the same into reports of research showing that they do?
Continue reading “Last night, she said, oh baby I feel so down.”
We’re having a conversation about sex at the moment. Not so much the great British tradition of ‘who’s doing it to who’ (although that continues unabated) but more how people arrive at the point of ‘doing it’ and others asserting their right to be in that conversation.
I could tell you all about it here, but Rachel Parris did such a good job on The Mash Report a few weeks ago, I’ll just leave it to her.
No one expects the #MeToo movement to rise and fall without criticism.
Nor should they.
JK Rowling broke her silence (and her website) yesterday afternoon by making a statement about the casting of Johnny Depp as Gellert Grindelwald in Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald.
I cut and pasted that description because I literally couldn’t be arsed to write it all out, but don’t take my laziness as an indicator of the importance I place on the matter, I just wanted to get straight to the point rather than faffing about with Gellerts and Grindelwalds. It’s hugely important.
Here’s why.
It’s been almost a month since the New York Times broke the story of Ashley Judd’s allegations against Harvey Weinstein. A month in which people have bravely stepped forward to break the silence and tell their own stories. A month of support and empowerment.
Do I have a responsibility not to self-harm because of the impact it will have on those around me?
Not exactly a party starter, is it? But it’s because this is a deeply uncomfortable question with significant and numerous ramifications that we don’t engage with it – we try not to think about it at all – despite the vital insights it might offer.
Creating images is Hollywood’s business, so perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised by the allegations raining down upon Harvey Weinstein in the same way Oscars used to.
But then the pictures they like best tend to be formed from bold colour palettes, semiotics, tropes and conventions to push us towards resolutions that, while not necessarily satisfactory, are at least coherent. If the stories they told were as convoluted, confusing and messy as those we experience in real life, no one would watch them.
Allegations that a very rich,very powerful Hollywood mogul behaved inappropriately with a number of women he worked with and paid some of them to keep quiet about it would have been revelatory ten years ago. Maybe even five.
Unless you’re a woman born before 1995. If that’s the case, the only revelation is that two female reporters were allowed to conduct an investigation into the matter which the New York Times broke yesterday.
Continue reading “Harvey Weinstein: Everybody Walk the Dinosaur”
Kelly Welles 