Spirit Transcripts @cluelessinthecity - Tumblr Blog

magpie-reads

Short Story Recommendations

These all fuck me up to a varying degree of emotions

Crime

Philomel Cottage - Agatha Christie

Lamb to the Slaughter - Roald Dahl

Death and the Compass - Jorge Luis Borges

Horror

The Landlady - Roald Dahl

A Walk in the Dark - Arthur C Clarke

The Wife’s Story - Ursula K Le Guin

The Veldt - Ray Bradbury

The Hanging Stranger - Philip K Dick

The Colour out of Space - H P Lovecraft

The Spider - Hanns Heinz Ewers

Sad

The Life You Save May Be Your Own - Flannery O’Connor

A Small, Good Thing - Raymond Carver

Cathedral - Raymond Carver

The Haunted Boy - Carson McCullers

The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas - Ursula K. Le Guin

The Chef - Andy Weir

The Martyr - Ngugi Wa Thiong’o

Jambula Tree - Monica Arak de Nyeko

The Rats Do Sleep At Night - Wolfgang Borchert

Sci-Fi

Love is the Plan the Plan is Death - James Tiptree Jr

The Last Question - Isaac Asimov

The Nine Billion Names of God - Arthur C Clarke

The Star - Arthur C Clarke

Reunion - Arthur C Clarke

The Commuter - Philip K Dick

Exhibit Piece - Philip K Dick

To Serve Man - Damon Knight

Brothers Beyond the Void - Paul W Fairman

What the Fuck?!

The Lottery - Shirley Jackson

A Collapse of Horses - Brian Evenson

Some of Us Had Been Threatening Our Friend Colby - Donald Barthelme

Hopeful Monsters - Hiromi Goto

The Box Social - James Reaney

He-y come on ou-t - shinichi hoshi

The Garden of Forking Paths - Jorge Luis Borges

Stories of Your Life and Others - Ted Chiang (just the entire collection bro)

Other

Broken Routine - Jeffrey Archer

A Man Who Had No Eyes - Mackinlay Kantor

Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been - Joyce Carol Oates

The Lady, or the Tiger - Frank R Stockton

The Continuity of Parks - Julio Cortázar

The Dinner Party - Mona Gardner

A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings - Gabriel García Márquez

On Exactitude in Science - Jorge Luis Borges

kocalls

fforsythiaaa

Once when I was in undergrad, someone described something as “problematic” in class and our professor was like, “That’s cool, but ‘problematic’ doesn’t really mean anything. It means that the thing you’re describing has a problem, and in and of itself that’s not bad. Art, especially, should always have problems, or else it’s not interesting and not art, either. It sounds like you’re trying to say that this is bad, but you don’t want to say ‘bad.’ Is that right?”

So from then on whenever one of us called something problematic, he would make us talk it out until we could name the “bad” thing we were hinting at. In this particular class, 7/10 it was some type of oppression, and the remainder was like, “I’m uncomfortable because this is very new/confusing/pushing boundaries that made me feel safe.”

Once we stopped calling things “problematic” and stopping at that, class got way more interesting and... we all had to say, like, “that’s racist” or “that’s misogynistic” or “ew capitalism gross” out loud, which a lot of us had never done in a classroom before. Or we had to be like, “Uhhh... I’m not sure what’s so bad?” and confront our own beliefs and that was maybe even more useful.

Anyway. Whenever I see the word problematic, I can’t help but think of this professor being like, “Good starting point, now let’s get specific.” I think when we have to commit to saying “that’s ___” it requires a lot more careful thought about the truth and impact and complexities of whatever we’re claiming. Sometimes there really is some bullshit afoot, and also sometimes it’s art, and it should be full of problems, because that’s what art is.

free-my-mindd

2utora

stamenpistil

Fennel’s Wuthering Heights carries on that old imperial habit of touching a wonderful thing it does not understand and salivating with animal larceny impulse. This is the part that feels rancid to me: not merely that the adaptation fundamentally, egregiously misunderstands the novel, but that it misunderstands it in the precise shape of empire.

Take the outsider. Whiten the outsider. Take the violence. Aestheticize the violence. Corsets. Flower crowns. Latex. Softcore pornography in ribbons. Plunging necklines. Take the mud the dirt the miremuck of disgraced colonial history. Make it editorial. Make it swing flaccidly towards camp, yes mama boots the house down. Take the class rage. Sell it as background atmosphere, thoughtful addendum, glorious footnote of gold. Take the gaping racial wound. Disappear it. Call its absence “modern.” Then stand there, powdered and well-funded, asking why everyone is being so dramatic about the missing body.

stamenpistil

Fennel’s Wuthering Heights carries on that old imperial habit of touching a wonderful thing it does not understand and salivating with animal larceny impulse. This is the part that feels rancid to me: not merely that the adaptation fundamentally, egregiously misunderstands the novel, but that it misunderstands it in the precise shape of empire.

Take the outsider. Whiten the outsider. Take the violence. Aestheticize the violence. Corsets. Flower crowns. Latex. Softcore pornography in ribbons. Plunging necklines. Take the mud the dirt the miremuck of disgraced colonial history. Make it editorial. Make it swing flaccidly towards camp, yes mama boots the house down. Take the class rage. Sell it as background atmosphere, thoughtful addendum, glorious footnote of gold. Take the gaping racial wound. Disappear it. Call its absence “modern.” Then stand there, powdered and well-funded, asking why everyone is being so dramatic about the missing body.

lunamonchtuna

— Susan Sontag, from As Consciousness Is Harnessed to Flesh: Journals and Notebooks 1964-1980 (via lunamonchtuna)

eatpussypraylove

When I was a little kid I was obsessed with crouching tiger hidden dragon and watched it like once a week on dvd. Then I didn’t watch it for 20 years and seeing it on the big screen today I was just struck that it’s ultimately a really feminist movie that doesn’t try to be feminist but just happens to be about women and their choices. Obviously was very intentional but you know what I mean. Ang Lee was incredible for that