this is just what living in Seattle is like.
It's easy to see this film as misogynist if you find yourself seduced by the calm Dafoe takes as he exerts control over Gainsbourg. I also sort of thought Gainsbourg's behavior in the apartment was normal until I saw this today: while away from family and in a processing phase over the course of months
People who say "Antichrist" is misogynistic don't know how to read subtext (see also: "The Baby…
The fuzzy, amber tones and quirky characters barely conceal the lonesomeness at its core; as they conceal the nature of the relationship from its male protagonist. Notably, colder and darker colors signal the sad truth, and generally occur when the female protagonist is alone. Thus, while I might personally prefer either abandoning this token concealment (Bergman, Bresson) or intensifying it (Visconti, Ozu), it serves a necessary purpose in that it puts us in only slightly a better position, as we…
Continuing this stretch of (re)watches of relevant films after certain revelations about my childhood. Upon first watch, I was in a position extremely analogous to Hideko reading, albeit among hypocritical and prudish petit-bourgeois; I could recognize the film's quality, but was not in a position to enjoy it (see also: the popular, motivated misreading of this film by prudes as purely negative regarding sexuality but confused by a supposedly 'corrupted', voyeuristic director; the work is considerably more complex than such…
A remarkably effective, well-executed, tasteful piece of proto-fascist, transmisogynist, cop propaganda. And no, the "Bill is not a true transsexual" thing doesn't save it; that cover-your-ass move, by implicitly affirming the medicalized hierarchy of transsexuality (True Trans vs evil deceiver, a taxonomy most familiar nowadays in Blanchard's "straight, very passive" HSTS vs "fetishist" AGP dichotomy), only makes it worse. Claims otherwise are deeply insulting: don't piss on my leg and tell me it's raining.
To get personal, I have a…
