Based Safety vs. Cringe Propaganda #47

This week in based and cringe...

THOUGHTS

Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy. – H.L. Mencken

The pathetic and humiliating response by the online right towards the alleged pedophilia implicit in a recent photographic marketing campaign by Balenciaga is the apotheosis of a trend that I, and my homies and others, have been pointing towards over the last 10 months: there is a certain sector of the online right that is fulfilling the same role that the dreaded SJWs once did (or, still do.)

When I first saw the ads, a series of perhaps tacky if mostly inoffensive photographs of children carrying teddy bears adorned in bondage gear, I had to laugh. I’ve spent a lifetime devouring the art of Sade, Sotos, Balthus, and various others that never shied away from including children in their troubling fantasias. “Am I honestly supposed to be offended by these ads?” I thought. But of course, for low IQ rightoids, I am little more than a “demon enabler” for even pointing towards the laughable hysteria of this whole thing.

Of course, some of these types have indulged their more conspiracist paranoia in their excavations of the alleged pedo conspiracies at play. They point to one of the public photos of the campaign, in which there’s a page of the Supreme Court case United States v. Williams, which prohibited the pandering of child pornography shown in the image. OK. Yeah, I get it. But knowing the work of Balenciaga creative director Demna Gvasalia rather well — knowing that he’s a marketing genius, weirdly knowledgable about memes and internet ideology, and fundamentally a left libtard with an over-the-top hatred of former Soviet governments due to his traumatic childhood fleeing a war torn Georgia — I find it likely that Demna was fully aware of the conspiracies that the inclusion of the document would engender. In effect, the right is allowing themselves to be portrayed as the screeching SJWs of the present. Demna set the trap and they sniffed at the fucking cheese and got trapped inside of it. You hate to see it!

Even funnier: rightoids like the moronic MMA fighter Jake Shields have taken the conspiracy further by implicating the stylist Lotta Volkova. First of all, Volkova isn’t even directly employed by Balenciaga. While she was Demna’s most instrumental collaborator when the former started his industry changing fashion collective Vetements in 2015 and helped define the aesthetic of Balenciaga’s new direction when the designer took over in 2017, she has since moved on to work with a slew of other brands and has become one of the industry’s most celebrated stylists. Furthermore, the photos that Shields uses as proof of Volkova’s “pedo signaling” are nothing more than edgelord mood board images and, to be frank, not nearly as disgusting as some of the images that I have on my desktop that I work into my collage and video work. Finally, Volkova is a hot Eastern European woman and, according to my rock solid (well, maybe not “ROCK” solid but I know people, OK?) sources, has been openly contemptuous of the West’s involvement in the Ukraine war fiasco. So, not only is the right sounding paranoiac and insane, they are also possibly vilifying one of the few fashion industry talents who might actually be sympathetic to our view point. WHAT A CLUSTER FUCK!

For all its efforts to define an “intellectual right wing” over the last few years, with all its cries for free speech, it seems that the American right is all too happy to indulge the moral puritan streak that made it repugnant to vast swathes of the electorate back in the ‘90s, when Jesse Helms was attempting to get the NEA shut down over Robert Mapplethorpe’s depictions of anal fisting, and what have you. It’s a shame. I want the left to lose. I want their stranglehold over our institutions to loosen. But I have a hard time supporting the removal of one kind of libtard puritan for another. We need Trump, but I fear they won’t let us have him. And after that, what will be left?

BASED SAFETY

In what is surely one of Jack’s greatest coups yet, The Perfume Nationalist hosts none other than Mike White, creator of the absolute best and most provocative show on television right now in The White Lotus. The second season of the show has upped the ante on the transgressive content embedded into the simple structure of the series — wealthy people on vacation — and has already introduced some of the most iconic characters in recent television memory (White is the best casting showrunner alive.) Particularly adorable is when Mike tells Jack that his agent warned him that he’d be canceled for appearing on the podcast and that he is OK with that: “Early retirement? I’ll take it.” Performance artist and noise musician John Duncan, best known for his infamous “Blind Date"‘ performance (in an earlier version of this piece I mistakenly referred to “Blind Date” as “Seed Bed”, the Vito Acconci performance in which the artist masturbated in the attic of a gallery while attendees listened, how could I possibly smoke weed at 1 AM, write and mistake jackin off for corpse Fuckin? I’ve lost a step FUCK) in which he, yes, had sex with a corpse, appears on the Easy Listening podcast to talk about his career for the second time. While Duncan is easily written off by some as a provocateur, I’ve always found his work to be an incredibly rich excavation of the alienation that pervades the modern mind. I have looked forward to the return of Lars Von Trier’s ‘90s hospital set horror comedy series The Kingdom for years now. And, it’s here! The series can be screened every Sunday with new episodes published by Mubi. The original series found Von Trier very much in dialog with what David Lynch achieved with Twin Peaks, and it’s likely that the Danish film artist was inspired by Twin Peaks: The Return whilst making The Kingdom: Exodus. Celebrating the return of the series, Bloody Disgusting gives a digital tour to the haunted hospitals of the world.

Italian filmmaker Luca Guadagnino, who made the best horror film in recent memory with his Suspiria remake, returns to the big screen this year with cannibal teenage romance film Bones and All, discusses the new film and his broader career here with fashion designer JW Anderson. “I believe there are people around the world that have this condition where they are driven by the urge every now and then to eat other people,” says the filmmaker on falling in love with the film’s script. I watched and fell in love with Tár, Todd Field’s first feature film since 2006’s Little Children, over the weekend. Field and the film’s sure to win an Oscar star Cate Blanchette discuss the film here with Indiewire. It’s a fascinating read, and not just for the interesting insights it lends the film. But also because Indiewire and its libtard writers do not or will not comprehend the reactionary implications of that film and its virulent rage against cancel culture and a society that diminishes greatness when we fail to adhere to certain codes of conduct in our personal lives. It was nice seeing artist Jordan Wolfson’s evil robot Female Figure once again at the Brandt Foundation in New York, and the artist talks to the performance artist Anne Imhoff about it and other recent work for Interview Magazine. I find Imhoff’s work and its Antifa posturing to be annoying. I find Jordan, to be honest, a little annoying on a behavioral level. But I dig his work.

I very much enjoy this strange essay poem on the hyper-object by writer Evan Isoline: “A structural collapse and an ejection of the form and mass associated with the object out of the environing space precede the event.” Trippy. Political theorist and writer Nicholas Hausdorf has a very interesting piece on the constitution of a ruling elite in today’s society, and attempts to theorize a “counter-elite” that might be able to organize the classes into achieving a political dissent. Not sure that I buy it but it’s an interesting argument. For the fuck of it, here’s another terrific Dennis Cooper blog – this one on Jacques Rivette.

For those that missed it, I cover the success of the sickening gore-horror film Terrifier 2 for Compact Mag, seeing in it the possibility for the death of the “A24 Horror.” I also have a piece in the new issue of Numéro Berlin where I discuss marriage, declining birth rates, and the apocalyptic thinking of millennials and younger in the West. My text is juxtaposed with paintings by the artist Pieter Schoolwerth.

Finally, let’s pour one out for Raf Simons. The Belgian designer announces that his eponymous brand, the most radical and influential menswear designer IN HISTORY, is over. This is sad news for fashion fags, of course, but it also likely means that Miuccia Prada is preparing to retire. Raf then could emerge as the sole creative director of Prada very soon. Perhaps the hardest job one could ask for in fashion, succeeding the legendary Miuccia Prada, and he’s just about the only designer that could pull it off. Praise to Raf.

CRINGE PROPAGANDA

Dean Kissick writes the definitive “What is Dimes Square?” piece and says…. I don’t know, I’m so sick of thinking about Dimes Square as an idea and not just a place where I get drunk with my friends because there are bars there. Please, no more. Sorry Dean, but I can’t think about this anyfuckingmore! Shannon Abloh, wife of the late Virgil, promises that she has a “50-year plan” honoring her late husband. 50 years of honoring a hack who had no vision beyond ripping off Raf’s designs from three years ago. Fucking great. Can’t wait! I wasn’t going to address Kanye’s teaming up with the has-been grifters of the alt-right Nick Fuentes and Milo (though I have a soft spot for Milo – quoting Shakespeare and triggering libs, I’ll take it!) because it’s just so pathetic and because Anna and Dasha already covered it. I mean, the fact that the most impactful artist of the 21st Century is reduced to getting grifted by a rogue’s gallery of political has-beens says, well, quite a lot philosophically ABOUT the 21st Century. But whoever advised Kanye to speak with Tim Pool (probably Fuentes, right?) is an idiot and should be fired. Good thing Kanye still has instincts for spotting a trap interview. Too bad he didn’t have this foresight before bringing Fuentes to meet Trump and giving the press weeks of “Trump meets with a wignat” headlines, but I digress.

Blood Incantation represents just about everything I hate about American “Pitchfork metal” and watching these losers nerd out on records at Amoeba here demonstrates why. E-Flux is doing the work of Western intelligence again, here promoting the activism of Iranian feminists. That’s all well and fine, I guess, but I’m sick of these academics’ hypocrisies. How can they hold so many contradictory viewpoints at once? How can they argue about the evils of Western imperialism but then shame Middle Eastern countries for their failures to adhere to feminism, one of the most central tenets of Western liberalism!? Just shut the fuck up already! E-Flux also republishes the piece by Debord about the ecological decimation brought about by endless capital growth, yadda yadda, but also points out Debord insightful commentary on the manipulation of science used by liberal ideologues. These guys supported the lockdowns, however. And it seems they don’t have any trouble at all dealing with those contradictions swarming their brains.

If you’re the type who enjoys your anti-capitalist art funded by the most odious sectors of the ruling class, boy will you enjoy Julian Rosefedlt’s utterly unsubtle installation at the Park Avenue Armory! Ruth Whippman has trouble unconditionally loving her children, erm… OK? Finally, the geniuses at The Intercept are oh-so-concerned about “leftwing voices” that lost their Twitter accounts over the weekend, using the anecdote as evidence of Elon’s hypocrisy on freedom of speech. What they fail to mention is that these accounts were deleted as part of an anti-pedophilia sweep. I’ll assume they don’t want to talk about the weird link between Antifa and pedophilia and that’s OK. We don’t need to talk about it.

Very happy that snake oil selling Charlatan and “fitness influencer” Liver King is being outed as the fraud that he is. Any fans of this fucking dimwit that bought into his “ancestral tenet” or whatever bodybuilding routine are absolute retards. Our ancestors did not look like the Liver King! I have nothing against steroids. I enjoy them, in fact. But there is nothing more repulsive to me than guys shooting HGH and D-Bol by the truckload only to pretend that they are honing their bodies through the eating of disgusting blood meat alone. NO! NO MORE!

I’m headed to Miami this week for Art Basel. Full press access and everything. I know, right? Later!

ILLUSTRATIONS:
1. Balenciaga “pedo” ad
2. The White Lotus season 2
3. Raf Simons “Riot Riot Riot” collection
4. Kanye and Milo