This Week's Writing 2/1/25
trans strategies for survival, MAGA terror, songs of 1985, and more.
The cat is upside down, but the writing goes on! Here’s what I published this week.
Politics
Trans people in Illinois prepare for the Trump years. (Prism)
The MAGA terror has begun. (Public Notice)
After tragedy, Trump offers only hate. (Public Notice)
Fascism is a moral failing, not just an intellectual one. (EIH)
Cultural Criticism
On De Palma’s Sisters and failing to be Hitchcock, but in a good way. (Splice Today)
The best and worst songs of 1985, and why it does maybe matter. (EIH)
On Ricardo Rowan Phillips, poetry, and control. (EIH)
Billy Gibbons still scuzzy, still blues, still rocking. (Chicago Reader)
Poetry
The Emperor’s New Clothes
Your write-up on SISTERS is an interesting take on Brian DePalma and how he is, and more importantly isn't, Alfred Hitchcock. I think a lot of why Hitchcock neatly wrapped everything up in a patriarchal heteronormative bow was due to the MPAA Production Code, which he'd worked in for so long that he'd internalized it—even his most extreme film (and his last good one), FRENZY, mainly used the freedom of not having to work within the Code to show blood and boobs, while the film's plot itself was every bit as traditional as his Thirties British work.
DePalma came up as the Code was collapsing under its own hypocritical weight, and Hollywood realized they were losing their audience to movies their Seal of Approval hadn't blessed, while their own work was consistently tanking with critics and at the box office. DePalma started directing during the late 1960s, which was Hitchcock's worst period creatively as a director—even his successful movies fumbled between trying to follow where younger directors were going (THE BIRDS, MARNIE), and going backwards to The Late Late Show Hollywood plot contrivances he knew didn't work any more (TORN CURTAIN, TOPAZ) but was stuck with because that's what the studio wanted from him. (TORN CURTAIN in particular, with a major scene playing out in front of blatantly-obvious cyclorama of war-torn Berlin, demonstrated how little interest he had in going back to studio filmmaking.)
DePalma's first major studio movie was OBSESSION, which is his most overtly Hitchcock-like. Even it's "happy ending" leaves some serious questions in its wake, besides "WTF was that accent John Lithgow was doing?":
● Is anybody coming after Cliff Robertson's Mike for killing his duplicitous business partner?
● Did Mike actually have sex with his daughter?
● If the ransom money Mike was carrying turned out to be fake, how was Lithgow's LeSalle paying off Geneviève Bujold Sandra?
● No, really—DID MIKE REALLY TRULY HAVE SEX WITH HIS OWN DAUGHTER???? 🙀
Love the poem.
I’m afraid for the trans kids I know- who are looking at having their meds taken away. This seems like cruel and unusual punishment for the crime of being young and different. Suicide rates will go up. Even Oregon looking at compliance with this bullshit.