Horror is for Grrrls

            Almost two weeks ago now, some friends and I went to an exhibition at the Met Breuer called Like Life. The theme was sculpture of the human form, spanning an extraordinary time frame and organized thematically rather than chronologically. It’s taken me a while to write about the exhibit, in part because it made such an impression and left me with so much to think about. It was going to be difficult to describe it to you as a series of sentences, rather than a series of questions. Secondly, because the exhibition has recently closed, you will not be able to verify what I tell you about this work. Instead, you will just have to believe me. Believe first, that there are unbelievable things in this exhibit, things you would anticipate more in one of the many sculpture-themed horror films than in the actual halls of a museum. A bust of the artist’s face made of his own blood. The skeleton of a famous philosopher within an i...

Growing up, on nights of idle channel flipping, Batman was king. Not only was it on with stunning regularity, it had something for all the family viewers: nostalgia factor and good-looking actors for mom and dad, Tim Burton cool factor for their wannabe-goth daughter. Plus, my dad and his brother have been said to resemble Michael Keaton and Jack Nicholson respectively, so we imagined family rivalry as our hero and villain fought over Gotham’s soul and the attentions of blonde, dull Vicki Vale. On my first round of VHS collecting, I happened upon a copy. Its combination of too-dark-to-see lighting fiascos, Prince soundtrack, and nostalgia made it a necessary purchase. So Lily and I settled down for my first ever from-beginning-to-end viewing (having only seen bits and pieces in the aforementioned channel flipping). As of writing this introduction, we’re about a third of the way through, and already I have a lot of thoughts. The set-up to the film is a lot duller than I remembered,...

Today, to get this whole blogging thing started, I thought I'd share with you one of my favorite things and one of my personal heroes: Bat Pussy! Bat Pussy makes her first and only film appearance in a mysterious pornograph of the same name, in which she is played by a gifted yet unknown actress. The set-up, in brief: Buddy and Sam, a married couple who, to put it kindly, spit in the face of porn’s rigid conception of beauty, are trying to have sex. Mostly, they insult each other, which doesn’t even seem to be a kink or anything since they’re both pretty visibly turned off.* None of this matters since it’s all just a set-up for Bat Pussy to burst onto the scene in all of her glory. We first meet her hanging out in what seems to be a small industrial building or something, labeled as Bat Pussy’s lair with a handmade sign. Very DIY, our Bat Pussy. Offended by, and I quote, the “dirty motherfuckers fucking in her holy Gotham City,” she hops on her Space Hopper (empha...