theuglyus

[theuglyus]

I’m not Suprised

Can we stop being surprised? 

For a moment, can we all agree to stop oohing and awing and freaking out over the fact that the rest of the world has decided to listen to us and recognize that men are assholes. Of course, Bill Cosby drugged her. Duh, Louis C.K. became a father and miraculously stopped groping women. What the fuck did you think when you sent a young woman to Harvey Weinstein - that he wouldn’t show her his penis? I

’m not surprised, and neither should you be. 

 America’s social media is getting so excited about the crumbling patriarchy – that a few bricks are finally starting to crumble down from the wall of Jericho. As if we didn’t know that behind each brick was a man is a terrible bulky sweater who swapped it out for a personal shopper and a leather jacket when word got out that he was being a creep. 

 Fuck – maybe it’s just me then. 

 When I was younger I was convinced I was going to be a rockstar. For each career day throughout elementary school you bet your ass that I whipped out my favorite shirt – a sparkly, quarter-sleeve, pink, black, and purple top. I teased my hair, I painted my nails black, my mom would let me wear blue eyeshadow. I looked awesome. I was the next Gwen Stefani, I was going to be Avril Lavigne. (This was the early 2000s, okay?)  

Persistent in my dream, my parents and teachers thought it would be ideal for me to start training professionally. Participating in the school play was not enough to curb my enthusiasm – which took the form of mouthing everyone else’s lines and singing more loudly (and better) than the rest of my class. 

 I perused path this until I was eighteen years old. I participated in all of the local towns’ community theater groups. I stayed at an intensive arts camp in upstate New York – where I was invited to study underneath a director. After high school, I auditioned for the dean of musical theater and briefly attended Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle. 

All of this is to say: I know what it means to be a visual commodity. I lived and breathed for a field that was training my physical body to be a conduit for whatever the directors and producers wanted it to be. I lost the means to express myself in any way but internally. My external self was not something I owned. I was not longer badass and beautiful like I was in the 3rd grade, singing Destiny’s Child on the monkey bars, rather than playing “marriage” in the trees like the rest of my female peers. 

While sexism exists in all spheres, there seems to be a particular brand of insidious harm that occurs in the arts and entertainment industry. Is this because as creative beings, many of us believe that boundaries – particularly physical ones – are negotiable? Furthermore, are these restrictions only set for women – in which the world wants us to be seen rather than act. 

Someone does not need to be in the entertainment business to experience this kind subjectification. All women. Yes, all women. Have that one memory. That one little niggling thought about that one thing that one guy said to you that one time. 

I was raised to identify my identifiers. No matter if my intent was not to perform for male reception, but for my enjoyment. I had to learn what my physical markers meant, and I learned how to try to live around them while embracing my expressive choices. I still get groped in bars by men who insisted they had to buy me a drink. I’ve been forced to hug someone at a family reunion that made me uncomfortable. 

I know what it means to reclaim ownership over my physical body after being in the visual arts. I know how to read the room and my place in it. I know which men aren’t safe, and I trust the story women tell me. 

So why are you surprised? Did that man who is so funny on stage because of his jokes about fingering chicks truly shock you when one of those women said she didn’t want it? What about the big shot film producer - the one who looks like he goes through secretaries like Halloween candy? 

What is so surprising about these stories? That they happened? Because they’re true. Or is it that we’re finally talking about the rampant sexism and unfair treatment of the female body and person -now you have to start thinking about how to treat women. 

 Stop being surprised.

Follow this author on Twitter and Instagram

[theuglyus]

Read Cat Strain’s most recent work in Fnewsmagazine’s December sex-themed issue!

[theuglyus]

For the Love of Fembots

There are so many different ways to get off. Today’s technological advances and the vast resource that is the internet is a combination that provides infinite possibilities to masturbate to and with. Just when you think you’ve adjusted to the new levels of porn and complicated eroticisms, something new pops up. “My Sex Robot” – a forty-five minute British documentary now streaming on Netflix - follows two engineers, and three fembot enthusiasts, in the United States striving to make their dreams and fetishes a reality with the genesis of the world’s first sex robot or fembot. Two of the enthusiasts, Delosian and Keizo, are both healing from a troubled past. Delosian, a video game tester, developed his interest in robots as a child. For him it’s, “ Intriguing that it could looks so human and not be human at all.” He would have his sex robot programmed to act as a companion – to know what he liked and didn’t like. Healing from a broken heart, Delosian admits that there is an appeal to the concept of human slavery – a man taking charge of another human-looking entity. To him, it’s a kind of relief: Robots can’t break your heart – they can’t leave you because of “emotional issues”. Keizo, an artist, was bullied throughout his childhood for his mixed Japanese and Mexican heritage. For him, the draw of a fembot lies in its indestructible nature – “a partner that can fire alongside you.” For Keizo, facing so much rejection in his youth resulted in a decreased self confidence . A sex robot provides the security of a human relationship without the complications of humanity. Both of these men  crave an infallible partner. Someone that would want them without seeing and rejection their flaws – as an object without flaws. Delosian’s and Keizo’s past experiences with, and fear of, rejection has distanced them so far from desiring a human, connection that their conclusion is to not desire it. Instead, they could have the perfect uncomplicated relationship with the perfect specimen. A robot. A fembot is the ideal repository for the male gaze. An empty vessel for all of their desires, fantasies, and fetishes to be emptied (literally and figuratively) into. Their argument for the creation of these objects is that a sex robot would be able to provide emotional stability, and an outlet for a longing that they’ve been ashamed of and hidden from their friends and family. In a poignant scene, Keizo opens up to two of his friends about his fembot fetish – hoping to relieve the burden of what he feels, is something he, “shouldn’t be ashamed of” and to generate the possibility to have this object in his life, “without being afraid of judgement.” Alexis, a female friend, raises a legitimate concern: “ If it looks like a real woman, if it feels like a real woman - how is that not going to distort how they think real woman are supposed to be? Then they disconnect from wanting to be with a real woman because their robot woman would be perfect. So, it does make me a little nervous – but if it makes them happy who is it really harming?” What is the line between a sex toy and a comfort object? Like children carrying around their blanket when they’re small – using it as a protective agent and method of control in their environment. Instead of acting as a conduit for personal growth and safety while adjusting to the adult world, this sex robot becomes a strange self-masturbatory barrier between grown men and real life. It’s easy to understand the desire for such an object. Who wouldn’t want a faux-human they could fuck, tell you how wonderful and attractive you are, then have the ability to power it off and put it away. Nice, simple, satisfying. But there is no growth in that kind of relationship – no challenge. How could these one-sided relationships fulfill the need for human interaction? Could these men truly believe that these robots love them?  Like Keizo himself says about “Roxie”, a beta-version the world’s first sex robot, “It’s a doll with a tape recorder”. Can objects replace humanity? Can a sex robot replace love?

Follow this author on Twitter and Instagram

[theuglyus]

A Stroll with Murakami

Through Takashi Murakami’s eyes I finally see what 21st century art is supposed to convey to its viewers. A technicolored minefield of raucous holy figures, pluralized across a nebulous whole-screen canvas. This Japanese artist parodies the ready-made commodification of modern art. Klein’s patent blue, Pollock’s masculine depths, Mickey Mouse, the overall distance of contemporary culture from artistic tradition and collective emotion. Murakami’s burlesque of today’s art marries his traditional Japanese art practices to quasi-contemporary aesthetics, turning his shot at Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago’s (MCA), The Octopus Eats Its Own Leg into a walk through international anxiety.

Takashi Murakami has perfected Fine Commercial Art. When viewing his works, you are struck by the fine detail and utter detachment from human hand. The MCA does not shy away from revealing the massive hive-like warehouse production behind Murakami’s genius. At the open entrance on the second floor of the museum, a large screen set into a metallic octopus decaled wall, giving the public a short video of the artist and correlating curator, who introduces the concepts Murakami employs in his work. Beyond his astonishing humility as an artist, it is blatantly clear that he is a story teller. He speaks of his grief for his homeland, and his desire to recall ancient healers to the apocalyptic modern world.

The MCA, for the first time out of many institutions, had curated a show that makes sense. Wandering through the gently articulated U-Turn gallery spaces, the viewer is guided gently through a timeline of artwork. First through early, unidentifiable Murakami paintings of Japanese lore - turtles and fish in muted towns and flattened outdoor/indoor spaces. Next to these, we see the first inklings of Murakami drawing wavelengths between the old and new world. In the mode of the early expressionists, a la Anselm Kiefer, Murakami has depicted shadowy men melded into the backdrop of blackened nuclear towers, overlain on straw and cardboard on canvas in Nuclear Power Picture. Strolling out of this space, the viewer is confronted by Mr. DOB – the artist’s mouse-like persona bursting into the scene on canvas, and a primary red mushroom cloud splattered on the west wall. While it feels like an abrupt departure from the earthy and moody works, it carries with it that Murakami brand of infused subtlety. If you could call bright pop art, subtle.

From this space onward, each piece is over-worked, over-colored, bottomless and “superflat”. Superflat is a postmodern movement, founded by Murakami, an overreaching concept he derived to explain the character of post-war Japan – a melding of high and low classes and arts.

The largest space in The Octopus Eats Its Own Leg is a cosmically centering experience. Two floor-to-ceiling mounted canvas span the length of the room. Each entrance is flanked by gargantuan embodiments of “Um” and “A” - the first and last letters of the Sanskrit alphabet. One red beast and one blue beast, each with a gaping maw and brandishing a club, they stare each other down across the dimly lit space. Um and A are 14-foot-tall guardians of the beginning and end of the universe.

To the right is 100 Arhats, it is roughly 10 feet tall and 32 feet wide, spanning ten panels. The focal point of the show, this work is like a Russian nesting doll - there are Arhats within Arhats. The softly punctuated grey polka-dot background is dispersed between irregular clouds and wide-ranging in size Buddhist figures. An Arhat is a someone who had reached, or is on the path towards Enlightenment, but has stayed in this world to help others. The piece is bewitching. The Arhats’ robes are made out of kitschy constellations and puke-pink lotuses in Hollywood type-cast cloth. Creatures draped in warped history and stereotype, who could eclipse the sun and moon on the canvas panels. The arhats are grotesque creatures, they’re asylum. 100 Arhats is a visual refuge. A place for the eye and mind to go. What is often confused as hypocritical in Murakami’s work, is his genius.

Facing this polychromatic nirvana, a ridiculous blue dragon has spiraled through his canvas habitat. This poor creature has come whirling through and crash-landed eye-to-eye with the viewer. Dragon in Clouds parallels a traditional Japanese depiction of this mythical beast with the use of indigo blue and in its composition – then it is transformed in Murakami style into a caricature of itself. Takashi Murakami straddles the old and the new world. In ambition and style, he effortless blends and then spits out a perfect prototype of what he believes is needed to heal our time. From beastly Arhats to acid flashback flower-scapes, Murakami makes artwork that is a reduction of the greater whole without losing its integrity. He flattens space, concepts and theory to one large frame.

Follow this author on Twitter

[theuglyus]

Identity Crisis

In a humble doorway, eclipsed by the grand glass doors of Columbia College – sits the Museum of Contemporary Photography (MoCP). re:collection, the latest exhibition, is an homage to the vast collection amassed by the institution.

The show spans six rooms, each with a perceptibly different narrative. The time spent in these spaces challenged one’s moral, spiritual, and political compasses. When I spent time with the work, I was confronted by my very own perceptions of what the world would distinguish as American values. Leaving in such a mental tizzy, it took a week after my initial visit to recognize the nationhood I had settled onto the shoulders of the institution.

According to re:collection’s “User Guide”, it is a deliberately collaborate show. Curators chose images that were deliberately “associative”, rather than focusing on a deliberate artist, text, or genre – the photographs generate a “mind map, on sequence of images […] drawing connections to the neighboring photograph, and so on”.

There is no wall-text in the show, to fully allow the viewer’s mind to immerse themselves in the narratives being woven through each space. It could be freeing, enabling viewers to appreciate the photographs for their face value, without having to first code the work with what the institution wants them to comprehend.

Nevertheless, is it possible for an American museum to honor a multi-cultural experience in a show that excludes direct narrative? Or does the show’s medium – photographs – generate space for multiple gazes?

Aside from one’s nationhood and heritage, re:collection undoubtedly caused guilt and shame. The show is about strength in numbers, the pieces coming together to weave a soft blanket that muffles the slow sweet cut of repressed realities. It was a challenge to relate.

The East Gallery is a peculiar composite of home and violence. It features the photograph of “Adam Killing a Cow” by Lucas Foglio and piles of shotgun cartridges. Smiling soldiers who happen to be women, jauntily smoking cigarettes and giggling with their cohort. A “Shotgun Blast” from Christian Patterson – framed and slapped on the wall. Floral curtains and a burning house sit by Simoneau Guillaume’s “Love and War”. It’s an unsettling idyllic series hung in a pyramidal form. Pomegranates above-the-fold – “Terrorists Strike United States”, next to a woman crouched in corduroys with a daisy dropping from her soft mouth.

Many of the photographs featured in re:collection were not taken by an American hand. Thus, the photographs are deliberately unmoored from their origins – national or otherwise. Women are merely women, a cow is a cow, and a house simply looks like home.

The lack of text and genre facilitates the viewer’s predispositions. The viewer will naturally implant themselves into the works, digging up parallels from their own lives in order to understand the art.

These images provide the space for faith and disbelief to come together. Whether that is in the North gallery, contemplating the lack of stars – or in the Mezzanine, facing the flat-affect of bored city-councilmen and an immigrant child.

Each gallery is a different magnetic north, sending internal compasses reeling and throwing personal opinion to the front lines. Perhaps the show was about an American identity crisis because I am having one. Imaginably a person other than myself would see differently. A separate body from a different place, with their own love and war to emboss onto the work.

In re:collection, I see a world separated from loss. That terror and homeland are still distinctly separate in the American psyche. In an era when each mass shooting outpaces the previous, these pseudo-pastoral and “All-American” settings reiterate the assumed distance between home and harm. It’s easy to trip on the threads of the frayed tightrope strewn about the MoCP, but it’s worth a trip to see if you can walk the line.

Follow this author on Twitter

[theuglyus]

[Daddy Issues]

I came from you. I am separate. I am whole.

If only I hadn't wasted so much time figuring out which half of me was you so I could cut it out of myself.

I am so much like you - I hate myself for it.

The loud laughter. The easy smile. My willingness to lend a helping hand.

My toxic sleep and midnight routines. My penchant for cigarettes and bad dreams.

How I hold a guitar and fix someone else's heart.

Why didn't you teach me to love myself, when will I did was watch you.

I just wanted to be you Daddy, and all you were was wrong.

[theuglyus]

Logan Lucky

Logan Lucky follows the hijinks of two brothers from West Virginia, as they plan to rob the impenetrable safe at the Charlotte Motor Speedway during the Coca-Cola 600. Despite the blatantly illegal plot of the movie, the viewer sympathizes with the small-town hardships and the all-American desire to lift yourself up by your bootstraps.

The two brothers, Clyde (Adam Driver) and Jimmy Logan, provide a glimpse into the experiences that prompted states to vote Red. In a rare moment of our post-election Trump dystopia, the public can put their feet up and agree. If only on how fit Tatum looks stars and stripes underwear.

The pull of Logan Lucky doesn’t lie with its outlandishness, but rather in its complete believability, reinforced by the devotion Jimmy’s character – played by Channing Tatum – inspires. With surprisingly star-studded cast directed by Steven Soderbergh, Logan Lucky has the classic arrangement of irreverent characters for a hit heist movie; Daniel Craig, as the acid-blonde robbery specialist Joe Bang, Katie Holmes as the white-trash-to-high-class ex-wife, Adam Driver as Clyde, Jimmy’s younger brother and taciturn Iraq War veteran turned one-handed bartender, and most surprisingly, Seth MacFarlane sporting a Jheri curl/mullet and terrible British accent.

The film opens on a heartwarming moment between Jimmy and his young daughter Sadie (Farrah Mackenzie). She hands over tools as he tinkers with his truck, while Jimmy fills her in on the origin of John Denver’s “Take Me Home, Country Roads”. The movie’s anthem, the audience learns, was written by two people who had never been to West Virginia. This recipe of genuine feeling glazed in skepticism sets the tone for the remaining 115 minutes.

After this touching familial moment, Jimmy loses his construction job in North Carolina. He drives back to a run-down bar in West Virginia and here we meet Clyde, with one useless ill-made prosthetic to his name, deftly pouring shots. The next morning over coffee, Jimmy lays down his “Robbery To-do List” and a charmingly assembled paper model of the Charlotte Motor Speedway. With a few trips to the local correctional facility over vending-machine eggs, they’re off to the races.

Logan Lucky never falls off beat and sticks to the robbery to-do list. In addition to the anticipated redneck shenanigans, like when the vault is blown-up with gummy bears and bleach concocted in a plastic grocery bag, and when Clyde loses his prosthetic arm in the industrial vacuum they’re using to suck up money and deposit into garbage bags. The film is still paced in that classic Ocean’s Eleven style. Smooth with anticipated surprises that still hold onto their shock value.

The characters in Logan Lucky live in a nation that isn’t doing them any favors. Without a single political word, it manages to convey the burden of our time for the non-elites, while thoughtfully showing what could still be so great about America. This is why two down-on-their-luck brothers from West Virginia think a heist this ridiculous could change their fate.