“Evil floats, weightlessly across the landscape of Los Angeles in Nicolas Winding Refn’s new film, The Neon Demon, co-scripted with TV writer Mary Laws and British dramatist Polly Stenham. It is a reverie of such sheer satanic rapture that Refn could be on danger of taking Bret Easton Elis’ crown as the Aleister Crowley of the 21st century.”
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I was fairly horrified by the film ‘A Promising Young Woman’, especially the murder at the end.
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I’d never read Flannery O’Connor until lockdown. I’d seen her listed as one of the outstanding writers of the twentieth century, specifically in terms of her short stories. I had time on my hands, so I bought her collected works.
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The first disturbing event of first-year university was the day I went to meet a childhood friend of mine when he was discharged from the insane asylum.
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2.
When Lisa Wilkinson explained on ‘The Project’ television program that Eurydice Dixon was murdered by a man who was the pointy end of a patriarchal culture which is driven to murder women as it sexualises them, I was outraged.
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1.
The patriarchy is like Satan, the Easter Bunny and Santa Claus. Sure, there’s some kind of cause and effect involved, but the figure itself is bought into being by those wanting to explain more subtle and complex phenomena, but are happy to settle for an easy answer with a face on it.
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“You think,” [Jacques] persisted, “That my life is shameful because my encounters are. And they are. But you should ask yourself why they are.”
“Why are they – shameful?”
“Because there is no affection in them, and no joy. It’s like putting an electric plug in a dead socket. Touch, but no contact. All touch, but no contact and no light.”
“I asked him, ‘Why?”
“That you must ask yourself,” he told me, “And perhaps one day this morning will not be ashes in your mouth.”
– James Baldwin, Giovanni’s Room,
P. 49
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There’s a friend of mine, a very successful artist, who I admire very much. I met him twenty years ago when we were working together in a dirty nightclub in South Melbourne; he was collecting glasses and I was bouncing. We both aspired to art, and he hit critical pay-dirt much earlier than I (who am I fooling – I still haven’t got there).
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Caveat:
This has been written to disturb you.
Invitation:
Summon your personal incarnation of this figure into your mind’s eye and look through it like a lens while you’re reading this.
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4.
“I called Lolita a love story and the professor cut me off, saying, ‘Calling this novel a love story indicates an unconscionable misreading on your part.’
She wouldn’t even let me finish what I was trying to say. Ever since then, I haven’t dared bring it up in any of my classes.”
p.291,
My Dark Vanessa.
Theme Park at its Darkest 