5 September Micro Recs
1 movie I love, 1 I hate; Taylor, Sabrina; & a perfume rec
Blink Twice
I wanted to write about Zoë Kravitz’s directorial debut here because A. I loved it. And B. I haven’t seen a ton of coverage on this despite it’s wide release. Perhaps this is because we live in a moment where movie coverage largely consists of whatever publicity tour scandal is going on (I’m sure you’ve heard about It Ends With Us). That said — part of what fascinates me about this movie is that it’s a tell all that tells so much Kravitz can’t even call it that. According to Kravitz, Blink Twice (originally titled Pussy Island) is “100% based on true events.” Without spoiling too much, the true events Kravitz’s alludes to relate to a private island run by a tech billionaire who is roofying Hollywood adjacent women with a snake venom that is basically Rohypnol. In addition to being a really excellently written thriller, this film’s commentary on memory is fascinating and somewhat reminiscent of Edith Wharton’s Twilight Sleep, a novel that asks questions like: If you don’t remember it, did it traumatize you? Is it ethical to remind a person of trauma they may want to forget? How have pharmaceuticals aided in the patriarchal project of forgetting violence against women? Perhaps most laudable, and unlike most psychological suspense from the last decade, Blink Twice has a final scene you definitely don’t need to Ask Google to interpret for you.
Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice (spoilers)
Tim Burton’s long-awaited sequel to 1988’s Beetlejuice is the philosophical opposite of Blink Twice. Burton’s revival of Lydia Deetz, an iconic goth girl cinema heroine of whose ilk we did not see much in the eighties or nineties, finds the formerly brave and competent teenager a traumatized adult who can’t make good decisions for herself or her daughter. If you thought that Lydia had overcome Beetlejuice and been unscathed by his sexual advances in the first movie, you’d be wrong. No, Burton’s adult Lydia lives in paranoia, complete with PTSD nightmares about the unboundaried bioexorcist impregnating her teenage daughter. Basically, you could replace Beetlejuice with Harvey Weinstein and Lydia with X number of Hollywood starlets and you’d have the same story. Except it’s supposed to be funny? At best, Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice is deeply tone deaf and in a state of amnesia regarding the last decade in sexual politics. What I find most upsetting about this is that Burton has diminished one of the few “strong female” characters to come out the eighties. I wanted to emulate Lydia’s ability to be both brave and weird as a teenager, so it’s actually very sad to me that Burton has revised the character in such a demeaning manner.
Anna Dorn Perfume & Pain
This book is so fun, funny, sexy and stylish. It’s a sort of autofictive story of a writer drying out from a drug cocktail she calls “the Patricia Highsmith” in an L.A. bungalow after being semi-cancelled. A modern take on the ‘50s lesbian pulp novel with a strong intertext of The Price of Salt provides Dorn a fascinating platform to explore the nuances of modern lesbian relationships and interrogate media representation and assumptions about lesbianism. Also — if you’d like to be immersed in the niche perfume world, Perfume and Pain had a few fragrance recs that were new even to me (and I consider my self a fragrance obsessive. Insert nails emoji.) My Camp Rec this month is the perfume, Bandit, mentioned in Perfume and Pain. Here’s the company’s description: In 1944, Robert Piguet created a daring couture collection, which was based on a “Bad Boy” concept. Just at the end of the second World War, Piguet’s shows featured models sporting villain masks and brandishing toy revolvers and swords. The scent accompanying this air of avant-garde mischief was Bandit, a composition created by perfume icon, Germaine Cellier, renowned for her bold and distinctive creations.
has a piece I highly recommend by Dorn on perfume and her novel.Taylor Swift’s Endorsement
I’m happy Taylor did this because it prompted more than 337,000 people to register to vote via her Instagram story link. But I’m sad there’s anybody at all in this country who needs a celebrity to them how to vote. It is fundamentally absurd to rely on a mega billionaire like Swift to tell you how to vote in accordance with you own best interests, of which she has no personal connection to in her daily life. Not to mention — it was giving a celebrity (instead of a person experienced in political life) power that has gotten us into this mess to begin with. I was really heartened to discuss this with my Poetics (Taylor’s Version) class at the University of Iowa. Overall, students between the ages of 18 and 22 felt pretty much the same way: they’re fans of Swift because, like them, she’s smart, opinionated, and already knows how to vote.
Sabrina Carpenter Short n’Sweet
I spend a lot of time thinking about how Sabrina Carpenter’s comedy works. Last month, I wrote about the way her songs “shift from lyrics about romance to lyrics that humorously undercut it’s possibility.” Jokes clearly allow the ultra heteronormative pop star (“I guess the Lord forgot my gay awakenin’.”) to attract, address, and subvert the way pop songs normally treat romantic relationships. However, there’s occasionally a deeper, sadder tone on Short n’Sweet in songs like “Lie To Girls,” which gives the briefest recap of inherited internalized misogyny I’ve ever read in a pop song:
You don't even have to try
Turn you into a good guy
You don't have to lift a finger
It's lucky for you I'm just like
My mother (And my sisters)
All my (All my friends)
The girl outside the strip club getting her tarot cards read
Like Carpenter’s outros and her trademark interjections — the “One touch and I brand newed it for ya. (So stupid)” on “Espresso” or “How quickly can you take you clothes off? Pop quiz. (So stupid. That one’s not gonna make it. Most of these aren’t gonna make it)” on “Nonsense” — there’s a meta awareness about the absurdity of some of her themes. Carpenter’s appeal isn’t her cartoonishness, but the fact that she seems have animated herself.
