We're all for praxis, just not for going outside
Viewing posts by Shana Wolstein
A couple months ago I was sitting at a bar waiting for my LDR-partner to get into town. We’ve been using the opportunity of long-distance relationshipping to explore the areas between us via AirBnBs. Waiting for their arrival I asked some friends what I should write about while I waited (without getting out my computer, like seriously I pen to paper writing, nothing looked up… and this is my memory we’re talking about).One of my friends said that I should tell all the vanilla folk the real deal with the movie Secretary. It was a challenge to the kink of the movie, less than purposeful challenge to my memory, and little could they have known the levels of emotional resonance this movie continues to have for me. I surprised myself in how I my thoughts presented themselves on the page.
I remember the first time I watched “Secretary,” I didn’t quite believe anything like it could exist in real life. To be fair, I still don’t and I’ll get into that more later but I immediately related to the protagonist. The young awkward girl stuck in a seemingly neverending “transition period,” the desire to let someone else ...
So, I disappeared into that k-hole (does that make me sound old yet) that is Twin Peaks for awhile and apparently that stopped my writing full stop. Things I have watched since we last talked, you can just imagine Twin Peaks is gettting watched in the background the majority of the time:
Thanks to my handy dandy fibromyalgia I've been a bit slow to post and also, forgotten to mention a few things I've watched specifically so that I can mention them! All is not lost, I cleverly took notes on my phone that I forgot about and then remembered. My gift to you today? Lots of random notes. I know you love me.October 3:
Oct. 2nd
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920)
Watch this movie this Halloween. Watch this instead of watching Tim Burton, who was clearly inspired by the aesthetics of this horror meets Bauhaus meets all the reasons I adore 1920s fashions. Watch this instead of watching American Horror Story, it will scratch the itch for both the freakshow and asylum seasons without making you feel guilty. If a movie is about to have a completely white cast and an ableist view of mental health having the excuse of being made in pre-WW2 Germany is about as good of an excuse that you can get. Lacking the exploitative and “they should know better,” aspects of 2016 does a lot to excuse the negative but so the does the iconic visuals that you might not even know were iconic.
I don’t say iconic lightly, either. I would start posting screen shots from the film but I’m not sure I would stop until I had a book (or several books) worth of discussion of the direction, the acting, and the influence of this movie in visual rhetoric. Part of the reason I love watching silent movies is that film making had different ...
It’s October!
Every October for the past decade I have told myself that I would watch a Halloween or Horror movie a day for the month of October. This isn’t a particularly novel idea but as a lifelong Halloween lover I do feel a wee bit embarrassed about how many of the contemporary classics I haven’t seen, let alone the fact I haven’t ever completed this aforementioned goal. So, in classic writerly tradition, I’ll set forth a goal that (while about as likely as ever to succeed) I can hold myself vaguely accountable for by having put it down in text online.
I’ll admit it now, I rarely ever read comments on what I write because of current levels of interpersonal anxiety. I’d love recommendations, bonus points if it’s easily available, triple points if it’s already on my list, and brownie points for all the leading ladies of horror.
Have I Mentioned How Much I Love Bob’s Burgers?
I’ve been re-watching seasons 1-5 of Bob’s Burgers on Netflix as my steady background music lately and so its Halloween episodes were already at the top of my list. Nothing is criticism free but since I started watching it, its commitment ...
Hi, my name is Shana, and I'm a former Whedonite.
I won't repeat myself by going into detail about living with chronic pain and it's effects; so let's just move on to what I've decided to post today. I'm not just any writer, I'm a writer of poetry and I've been missing that form of communication lately. If I learned anything from my graduate school experience in a masters of fine arts program aka creative writing MFA, it's that while I may love poetry I don't expect others to appreciate it. My audience, when I'm writing, was never as distinct as to feel helpful. Instead, I left academia in part because I realized poetry had always been its own answer.
I remember the first time I hated my body. I was maybe nine years old in the second grade, and it was the height of Jenny Craig and the “before and after” picture method of advertising. I can still remember thinking: “someday I want to be an after picture.” I was a chubby kid but, seriously, why was that bad? From the vantage point of a couple decades later, I’m angry. I remember, around the same time period, first trying to talk to a doctor about my pain. We moved, I talked to other doctors, and they always told me to take a shower and stand under the hot water for awhile and I’d feel better. I wish I had kept track of how many times I was taught to ignore what my body was telling me. When I went to the doctor, they told me to lose weight and I’d talk about how difficult it was. I felt embarrassed, stupid, and frustrated that I couldn’t “stick with it” the way the doctors encouraged. Clearly I was depressed, and instead of treating me, they assigned blame to the fact that my mother was dying. It’s not that they were ...