#lush rot

[llovelymoonn]

the green takes over, it will survive [existential dread]

lincoln michel lush rot \\ @botanical-inspiration source \\ @botanical-inspiration \\ @botanical-inspiration \\ _natureanimals \\ @botanical-inspiration​ \\ @botanical-inspiration​ \\ @botanical-inspiration​ \\ cryptonature \\ ?? \\ ?? 

kofi

[baredmirror]

In many respects, the South deserves its legacy of racism, intolerance, and backwardness. At the same time, it has always been easy for America to push all its racism, intolerance, and backwardness on the South. What percentage of TV or film characters spouting racial slurs do so in a Southern drawl? It’s comforting for Americans to see bigotry in art and entertainment confined to one ever-shrinking area. It allows us to admit our sins while simultaneously distancing ourselves from them. # Stuffing all of America’s sins in the South also increases the pressure in the kettle, twisting and intensifying them—at least in artistic representations—into ever more grotesque shapes. # Why is the Southern Gothic making a comeback on TV (currently the dominant cultural art form)? One part is pure economics: many Southern states are friendly to production crews. But I do not think it is a coincidence that so many horror and dystopian shows are set in the South. The long-standing Southern feeling of loss is spreading out—like the kudzu vines that have already made their way into Northern and Midwestern states—across America. You can see it in the primal whine of the Tea Party and in the fretting of academics. China is taking over, or India is, or Russia, or we are simply an Empire in decline with the rot spreading from the inside.

Lincoln Michel, “Lush Rot”

[baredmirror]

The contradictory nature of the grotesque seems appropriate for the South. Here is a region obsessed with traditional masculinity that names its sons Ashley, Carey, and Stacey. It is a region whose history is defined by struggles of race, class, and violence, alongside the glossing over of these facts in ‘polite conversation'—and yet its artists speak more openly and honestly about these issues than their peers. It is the birthplace of the GOP’s racist ‘Southern strategy,’ a land where confederate flags are ubiquitous and new anti-choice measures are introduced every year—and yet is home to a great wealth of black and female artists and writers, many of them working in the Southern Gothic tradition.

Lincoln Michel, “Lush Rot”

[baredmirror]

Gothic fiction’s secluded manors and dusty castles, surrounded by their misty moors, are quite different from the crowded towns and dirty shacks of much Southern Gothic work. If the Gothic was ethereal in England, it became earthy in the South. Where Emily Brontë writes of mythic lovers in candlelit parlors, William Faulkner writes of an impoverished family dragging their mother’s corpse through the countryside. While Van Helsing battles ancient unholy evil in a dusty castle, Lester Ballard drags murdered corpses through muddy Appalachian caves.

Lincoln Michel, “Lush Rot”