Hay guys did you hear the NEWS?

[hannah]

Manohla Dargis really is the best. I love her almost as much as I love Virginia Heffernan. No, perhaps I love them equally. I mean:

Smart as Tater Tots and just as differentiated, Rob and his ragtag crew behave like people who have never watched a monster movie or the genre-savvy “Scream” flicks or even an episode of “Lost” (Hello, Mr. Abrams!), much less experienced the real horrors of Sept. 11.

[Thermofusion]

She's a pretty fly bitch. She also penned the only believable good review of Southland Tales I've seen; a review which offhandedly makes a interesting point about sprawl vs. precision when it comes to artistic expression.

[hannah]

She's a pretty fly bitch. She also penned the only believable good review of Southland Tales I've seen; a review which offhandedly makes a interesting point about sprawl vs. precision when it comes to artistic expression.

Well, I think J. Hoberman's review is believable, and makes the same point:

Southland Tales is obsessed but not overweening, free-associational yet confident. After seeing it in Cannes, I wrote that "there hasn't been anything comparable in American movies since Mulholland Drive"—a movie that Kelly references nearly as often as Kiss Me Deadly and The Manchurian Candidate. In its willful, self-involved eccentricity, Southland Tales is really something else. Kelly's movie may not be entirely coherent, but that's because there's so much it wants to say.

The two are best read together, and then maybe tempered with Reverse Shot's relentless vitriol:

Richard Kelly’s pretentious, dunderheaded sci-fi bonanza Southland Tales bombed, and rightly so, but if a vocal group of critical supporters gets its way, we won’t be hearing the last of it—it’ll be rescued, positively reevaluated for zeitgeist-humping “irreverence” and eventually placed in the qualitatively underwhelming but somehow influential cult pantheon. So maybe this needs to be nipped in the bud right now: Southland Tales is laughably inept, and making a case for it smacks of reverse snobbishness. Instead of the fawning hyperbole slavishly piled on Important high art, what we have with the Southland lobby is powerful wishful thinking converting creative diarrhea into a misunderstood work of genius.

Heh. It's like chasing asparagus pee with antifreeze.

[Andrew_TSKS]

thread continued here.

[auto-da-fey]

I realize this thread is cashed, but I just wanted to make one more comment before moving on.

Look, I always have the right not to get invovled in the sex lives of others. I think this is perfectly incontestable. In no regard should I be forced to particpate, even as an observer, in the private lives of others. Expecting me to do so is to unduly impose upon me.
People suffer from the erosion of public space if that space gets to be the domain of a particular subculture. This would be true no matter what the subculture is; it might be particularly salient when the one involved is a sexual, but I'll leave that aside for now. The public space becomes closed to those members of the public who do not participate in the activities the subculture, in the same way normal public life was closed to the early gay communities, and the closing of which they riled against. The members of the public who do not participate are excluded from those spaces, it is no longer theirs as it increasingly gets taken over by the subculture, and they suffer accordingly. This is an improper imposition on the part of the subculture!

First, I am baffled as to how observing something renders you a participant in regard to sex, but not in regard to anything else. I know you want to skirt over the "particular salience" of sex here, but I really can't find much basis for making it exceptional. More importantly, the analogy about excluding people from space is absolutely unfounded. Public life was closed to queer people in decades gone by threat of violence or arrest; gay-claimed space is "closed" to straight people by straight aversion to queerness, and that alone. It's also rarely as monopolized as straight space--like I mentioned in regard to porn shops, much queer space (historically, think parks, restrooms, sex shops, etc.) multitasks and caters to diverse interests simultaneously. Even today, if you go to, say, Elysian Park in Los Angeles, you can see guys cruising, but you can also see families out for a picnic. They seem to be sharing space just fine.

There's a lot of very serious stuff going on in the breakdown of the private/public distinction, and by invaiding public spaces you're contributing to the problem. If you feel that non-members of the subculture are not effected by the invasion of their public space by behaviours catering to a culture they don't have access or commitment to, then you're kidding yourself.

The only reason you would invade public space in the first place is because no other space is available to you, and I find your arguments to the contrary unconvincing. Anonymous sex is just such a rejection of vanilla hetero sexuality whether you're fucking in a park in a parlour, is no less an affirmation nor horny nor gay if its done behind closed doors, is just as much a celebration when I don't accidently walk in on it. It's not the publicness of it where the action is, it's in the sex! Making use of an accessible social space. The problem for me comes in that in this case that social space invades and erodes the public space, which is a good supposed to be available to all. Even if everybody else makes a mockery of the public space, that's no reason for you to add to the problems.

This argument seems to rest on an edifice of hetero privilege that takes distinctions between public and private for granted. Keep in mind, in the U.S. such a distinction was not legally recognized for those engaging in sodomy until the mindblowingly late date of 2003 (in the Lawrence v. Texas case)--one more reason the gay liberationist endorseent of anonymous public sex carried so much more political meaning than you seem willing to acknowledge, as it reclaimed once-oppressive conditions, not by "coding in oppressive conditions" but by recoding understandings of sexuality (and space) in a way that subverted the existing conditions.

[Good Intentions]

This argument seems to rest on an edifice of hetero privilege that takes distinctions between public and private for granted.

This makes me angry. I'm not trying to drive away the gays! And honestly, if I'm advocating sex clubs, how could I be? And how is having a recognition of private space inherently hetero-normative? It simply isn't. What you've got is the uneven application of considerations of privacy, which I condemn, and the closing off of public space, which I've argued against throughout. There's no reason to assume that I am encouraging people to go around gay-bashing!

A public space means that it is accessible to all members of the public. I know that queers have for the longest time suffered a raw deal in this regard, and what I'm proposing is what I see to be the most effective way of bringing about an established and accepted queer culture. What a public space isn't is a place for everybody to air their dirty laundry. Maybe you disagree, but this is the commonsensical notion of what public spaces mean, and unless you can come up with a very good reason for why we should abandon it, it's the one I and most everybody else is going to use.

[Thermofusion]

I'll chime in. 

Cruising in public parks = fine.  Heteros and gays holding hands in public parks = fine.  Heteros 'n' Gays a-kissin' = fine.  Makin' out = sure! 

But I do not under any circumstance want to walk through a park in the broad daylight with my preschool-aged niece or nephew and see hardcore straight-up fucking...be it guy-girl, guy-guy, old person-young person, pigeon-boy, girl-banana, etc.  And I think that's a crude, overly general summation of the valid point Good Intentions is making about public space. 

On the other hand, the city I used to live in had lots of issues with gay public sex in one particular park and I think the only reason it got sensationalized in the media and by the locals was because it involved cocks-in-ass.  And I understand that cruising is a part of gay sexual culture.  So I ALSO understand what auto-da-fey is saying, and I could see how enforcement of obscenity laws regarding public sex could be interpreted as a reactionary attack on homosexuality.  Which has the parodoxical effect of encouraging more cruising and more public park sex because such enforcement further marginalizes homosexuality into the netherlands of culture. 

BUT STILL.  Again, my first point: I don't want to be out with my niece or nephew in a public park and happen across anyone fucking...hetero or gay.  Maybe that makes me as prude as a pilgrim, but, jesus...public space is public space.

[auto-da-fey]

It probably does bear mention that "public sex" is generally conceived of and transpires as sex in bathrooms, bushes, etc., not on sidewalks or on park benches, if that's relevant, making the passive "happening across" of it at least somewhat less likely. I hadn't planned to post right now and don't have time for a substantive one, but just thought I'd throw that out there, and more importantly, clarify one more thing:

This argument seems to rest on an edifice of hetero privilege that takes distinctions between public and private for granted.

This makes me angry. I'm not trying to drive away the gays! And honestly, if I'm advocating sex clubs, how could I be? And how is having a recognition of private space inherently hetero-normative? It simply isn't. What you've got is the uneven application of considerations of privacy, which I condemn, and the closing off of public space, which I've argued against throughout. There's no reason to assume that I am encouraging people to go around gay-bashing!

Come on, I obviously don't think you're a gay basher. But the historical fact is, in the U.S. at least, "private" space simply has not existed for queer people. In many states, fucking in the ostensible privacy of your home remained a criminal act until 2003. What this means to me is that the public/private distinctions so often taken unproblematically for granted are, in fact, at the very least complicit in heteronormative modes of thinking that efface the experience of the queer people for whom they so clearly have not historically applied (as opposed to simply being unevenly applied). I don't think I can make my case any plainer than that.

[Good Intentions]

What this means to me is that the public/private distinctions so often taken unproblematically for granted are, in fact, at the very least complicit in heteronormative modes of thinking

This doesn't follow.

[sqr]

Also fuck Lafayette

Lafayette totally rules. Small town full of kids who like to get drunk and silly. Plus, TV Ghost are from there and are definitely one of the best bands going. The Mans are great too.

[jebreject]

I'm not saying anything about the people or bands from there. Lafayette was very, very good to us (even though the turnout at the show wasn't all the great); the people I met there were really great, and I have no doubt that there are a number or awesome bands from Lafayette. Doesn't stop the place from being a horrible.

[dieblucasdie]

I'm sure there are lots of cool people in Lafayette and they should all leave Lafayette.

[jebreject]

EXACTLY

[Nick Ink]

Nice headline in the London Evening Standard :

http://thesurrealist.co.uk/standard.php

[Antero]

Nice headline in the London Evening Standard :

http://thesurrealist.co.uk/standard.php

"CHRISTMAS WASPS 'WILL HAUNT BROWN'"

[Andrew_TSKS]

just to make sure everyone knows...

thread continued here.

[sqr]

Doesn't stop the place from being a horrible.

What makes a town good? I tend to judge town by the people and the music. Good people, good music, good town. Using that standard it's as good as Milwaukee, when you take into account the per capita difference, it means it's far superior not only to Milwaukee, but to almost anywhere. 

[Andrew_TSKS]

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[coldforge]

Fascist.

[jebreject]

In appearance he is very powerful but in reality he is nothing to be afraid of; he is a paper tiger. Outwardly a tiger, he is made of paper, unable to withstand the wind and the rain. I believe the rule of Andrew is nothing but a paper tiger.

[coldforge]

THIS THREAD KILLS FASCISTS

[guanajuato]

some of y'll who are always up in that shit, on when to start a new thread, should get little volunteer buttons.