I find it hard to mourn the loss of sex symbols on screen when people like me rarely had any - from multiple angles. The straights have never been okay, and this honestly strikes me as more of a...
I find it hard to mourn the loss of sex symbols on screen when people like me rarely had any - from multiple angles. The straights have never been okay, and this honestly strikes me as more of a lateral move than anything. I'll take my fanfiction, webcomics, and thoughtfully-produced $10-to-own queer porn films any day.
I honestly don't understand how one could argue there have never been queer sex symbols unless you time warped here from the early 60s. They may not have been out, but in most cases it was barely...
I honestly don't understand how one could argue there have never been queer sex symbols unless you time warped here from the early 60s. They may not have been out, but in most cases it was barely even subtextual. Especially throughout the 80s.
The context is just not the same. Every coy gesture towards queer sexuality is a slap in the face - perhaps revolutionary for the time, and appreciated as is in the right context, but not the same...
The context is just not the same. Every coy gesture towards queer sexuality is a slap in the face - perhaps revolutionary for the time, and appreciated as is in the right context, but not the same as James Bond or his ilk. A reminder that we've had to hide for so long, and will have to hide again. Where was this concern for all those years?
Frankly, reading this kind of pissed me off. It started with their terrible design; two of the fonts they use on the page - including the one used for body text - are broken in a way that makes it...
Frankly, reading this kind of pissed me off.
It started with their terrible design; two of the fonts they use on the page - including the one used for body text - are broken in a way that makes it too distracting to read. Reader mode didn't work on it either, so I had to manually edit the DOM to remove references to their broken font just to read it.
And then when I started reading the essay, I honestly thought the author was just a little too detached from reality. Even when talking about dreams it seemed like they weren't accurately describing what dreams are like. I wouldn't describe any of my dreams as "cinematic", and while I have had many dreams where I was a differrrent person or even dreamed from the third person my dreams are not always entirely visual in nature; sometimes I am interacting with concepts or metaphors that go beyond what can be seen. But who knows? Maybe that's me being out of touch with reality this time.
It seems strange to me that the author is so preoccupied with sex. Am I misunderstanding their points or are they basically saying that fantasy is dead because there is less sex in mainstream movies? I have to assume I'm misunderstanding them because it just seems insane to say that sex is the only kind of fantasy there is.
This essay is just full of a whole mountain of assumptions and positions the author asks you to blindly agree to, and I simply can't do that.
Yeah, I wouldn't care if Reader Mode had worked... but it doesn't so the complaint is totally valid. It's almost entirely unreadable in its current state, IMO.
Yeah, I wouldn't care if Reader Mode had worked... but it doesn't so the complaint is totally valid. It's almost entirely unreadable in its current state, IMO.
Firefox, Chrome, and Edge are all rendering the font in a really strange way for me as well, making it very hard to read: https://i.imgur.com/cUDFy3F.png Reader Mode in Firefox also says "Failed...
Firefox, Chrome, and Edge are all rendering the font in a really strange way for me as well, making it very hard to read: https://i.imgur.com/cUDFy3F.png
Reader Mode in Firefox also says "Failed to load article from page" when I try to use it. But unlike you, even when I edited the CSS to remove the folioMed font-family (which I assumed was the culprit) the arial font rendered in the same screwed up way.
I don't think it's actually a font issue since arial was rendering just as screwed up for me, and it usually renders fine for me everywhere else. So I have no idea what's causing the issue on this...
I don't think it's actually a font issue since arial was rendering just as screwed up for me, and it usually renders fine for me everywhere else. So I have no idea what's causing the issue on this particular site.
The site is absolutely riddled with javascript (62 scripts), so I wouldn't be surprised if one of those isn't playing nice with something in Windows, or something else on my end. But the damn site...
The site is absolutely riddled with javascript (62 scripts), so I wouldn't be surprised if one of those isn't playing nice with something in Windows, or something else on my end. But the damn site won't even load with the javascript disabled because of its use of Ajax, and there is no way I'm going to disable them one by one to find out which is causing the problem. I've already spent way more time trying to figure this out than I wanted to.
Didn't expect to like the article much because I think I prefer a lot about the current norm and I expected writing on this to be obnoxiously defensive of the older norm, but it wasn't that and...
Didn't expect to like the article much because I think I prefer a lot about the current norm and I expected writing on this to be obnoxiously defensive of the older norm, but it wasn't that and the article does an interesting job at describing the change of the norms.
I went to see the new James Bond film with my dad. The Bond films are dadly; they were cobbled together out of a strong daddish energy. The fantasies of ten million frustrated men across the business parks and development sites of England. James Bond is a middle-aged man who likes classic cars and terrible jokes and getting pedantic with his drink order – but Bond, of course, is childless. He has absolutely no responsibilities, beyond a vague attachment to Queen and country. He can fuck or kill whoever he likes – sometimes both – without effort or consequence. The last image of dumb male potency, a Gilgamesh who never learns he might die.
[...] Once, it was taken for granted that every narrative was basically libidinal; [...]
I think the classic masculine fantasy was so much more accepted in the past that it was treated as among the most important things in life, that it often was better to allow people to pursue this fantasy and achieve it even at the expense of some others not doing so, but now with a greater awareness of women's issues, people are more rightly skeptical of the leeway it was given, and the push-back from the worst defenders of the fantasy caused it to become pretty unfashionable when not done in a sufficiently self-aware way, and our style of media bounced gradually but far because of it.
Once upon a time, the silver screen held projections of our deepest desires. But now, even our handsomest sex symbols have lost their deadly edge, drained of their power by pocket-sized screens and eroticism on demand.
. . .
Maybe it’s a good thing that we’re no longer indulging this kind of sociopathic male fantasy. This is where the film’s advocates and the embittered dads actually agree: if Bond has changed, it’s because leaving a trail of murdered women wherever you go is now widely acknowledged as unwoke. But if this is a political decision, why is the same thing happening to every kind of cinematic wish-fulfilment? How come superheroes no longer spend their screen time playing around with fantastic powers, but mope around in psychological abasement instead? When was the last time you saw an actual romantic comedy? And what else are we losing, when dreams disappear?
It’s difficult to really see the collapse of fantasy, but some things are unmistakeable. For instance: visual culture simply no longer wants anything to do with sex. Once, it was taken for granted that every narrative was basically libidinal; desire was the stuff of fiction. When it was forbidden to directly represent sex onscreen, it simply permeated everything else; even landscapes became a kind of pornography. Now you can show anything you want, and nobody wants much of anything. Barely one percent of major Hollywood films contain any kind of sex scene. The technical term is aphanisis: not the repression of desire, which lets it brood and fester away in the unconscious, but its disappearance. As soon as you drag this thing into full view, it simply melts away. As the writer RS Benedict put it, “everyone is beautiful and no one is horny”.
I find it hard to mourn the loss of sex symbols on screen when people like me rarely had any - from multiple angles. The straights have never been okay, and this honestly strikes me as more of a lateral move than anything. I'll take my fanfiction, webcomics, and thoughtfully-produced $10-to-own queer porn films any day.
I honestly don't understand how one could argue there have never been queer sex symbols unless you time warped here from the early 60s. They may not have been out, but in most cases it was barely even subtextual. Especially throughout the 80s.
The context is just not the same. Every coy gesture towards queer sexuality is a slap in the face - perhaps revolutionary for the time, and appreciated as is in the right context, but not the same as James Bond or his ilk. A reminder that we've had to hide for so long, and will have to hide again. Where was this concern for all those years?
Frankly, reading this kind of pissed me off.
It started with their terrible design; two of the fonts they use on the page - including the one used for body text - are broken in a way that makes it too distracting to read. Reader mode didn't work on it either, so I had to manually edit the DOM to remove references to their broken font just to read it.
And then when I started reading the essay, I honestly thought the author was just a little too detached from reality. Even when talking about dreams it seemed like they weren't accurately describing what dreams are like. I wouldn't describe any of my dreams as "cinematic", and while I have had many dreams where I was a differrrent person or even dreamed from the third person my dreams are not always entirely visual in nature; sometimes I am interacting with concepts or metaphors that go beyond what can be seen. But who knows? Maybe that's me being out of touch with reality this time.
It seems strange to me that the author is so preoccupied with sex. Am I misunderstanding their points or are they basically saying that fantasy is dead because there is less sex in mainstream movies? I have to assume I'm misunderstanding them because it just seems insane to say that sex is the only kind of fantasy there is.
This essay is just full of a whole mountain of assumptions and positions the author asks you to blindly agree to, and I simply can't do that.
Yeah, I wouldn't care if Reader Mode had worked... but it doesn't so the complaint is totally valid. It's almost entirely unreadable in its current state, IMO.
What browser are you using? I tried it in Chrome and Safari with ad blockers on and I'm not seeing an issue.
I used Firefox, Chromium, and Edge. All of them rendered the fonts the same way.
Firefox, Chrome, and Edge are all rendering the font in a really strange way for me as well, making it very hard to read: https://i.imgur.com/cUDFy3F.png
Reader Mode in Firefox also says "Failed to load article from page" when I try to use it. But unlike you, even when I edited the CSS to remove the folioMed font-family (which I assumed was the culprit) the arial font rendered in the same screwed up way.
cc: @NaraVara
Very weird. It looks normal to me. Maybe the default font library in the Mac has the right font?
I don't think it's actually a font issue since arial was rendering just as screwed up for me, and it usually renders fine for me everywhere else. So I have no idea what's causing the issue on this particular site.
The site is absolutely riddled with javascript (62 scripts), so I wouldn't be surprised if one of those isn't playing nice with something in Windows, or something else on my end. But the damn site won't even load with the javascript disabled because of its use of Ajax, and there is no way I'm going to disable them one by one to find out which is causing the problem. I've already spent way more time trying to figure this out than I wanted to.
Didn't expect to like the article much because I think I prefer a lot about the current norm and I expected writing on this to be obnoxiously defensive of the older norm, but it wasn't that and the article does an interesting job at describing the change of the norms.
I think the classic masculine fantasy was so much more accepted in the past that it was treated as among the most important things in life, that it often was better to allow people to pursue this fantasy and achieve it even at the expense of some others not doing so, but now with a greater awareness of women's issues, people are more rightly skeptical of the leeway it was given, and the push-back from the worst defenders of the fantasy caused it to become pretty unfashionable when not done in a sufficiently self-aware way, and our style of media bounced gradually but far because of it.
. . .
This definitely made me think of the RS Benedict article, which I think is very worth a read. You can find it here.