Hot or Not: Brains

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I realized late last night that for this blog to be honest, I can't really avoid talking about books and movies. I've done it before, but with hesitation. Shake it off.

Dawn of the Dead was not my favorite in the quadrilogy; I expected it to be, which might sound weird, but I just did. Zombies take refuge in a shopping mall/last humans standing raid said mall while fending off zombies/fresh meat for the agonizing first day of cultural studies class in college all over again, ugh ugh ugh, all zombie-consumer/Trader Joe's squawking aside. Good heckling all around though; self-conscious talk about our hot slices of chicken parm pizza from Carmine's during the guts-eating scene, Tex Beta's jungle fever jokes and zombie lust monologues. And so, instead of that great, great, great feeling of zombie dread, I felt light and silly, carried on the bubbles of Canada Dry. Which isn't what I exactly what I hope to get from these films, but later on in the evening, I longed for it. To wit:

So I have a zombie thing and probably some issues with basic existential saddles like bodies and humanity and right, that's me up there on the banner, and yes, my zombie-girl was there that night, and okay, we won't talk about that (I finally called a therapist!). But for whatever, reason, I felt compelled to go home after Dawn... and watch Claire Denis' ultra-bare cannibal/sex meditation Trouble Every Day, which has fundamentally questioned my abstract appreciation of, well, the pretty suffocating eroticism of blood, etc. It seems beside the point to talk about the tender nexus of disgust, fascination, and shock, because it's so obvious in the contract of the movie; it's not exactly something you'd like, talk about a lot with people. (An aside: fondly remembering a hilarious interaction about 5 years ago when I met a girl and she was drunk and told me to read Bataille's The Story of the Eye; a week later, I did, and told her that I liked it, and thanks. She had no recollection of recommending it to me and blushed a great shade of red.)

The juxtaposition between Trouble and Dawn... was probably important for me--the dead stare of Romero's slapstick v. Denis' explicit linkage of MOUTH to FLESH to SNACK to DESIRE to CONSUME (a tired ring encircling an essay with the word "abject" repeated enough to make it totally meaningless). The film made it seem so absolutely real that the theme lost its metaphorical power. I remembered how my dad used to say "I'm gonna eat you up with a great big spoon"; I thought again about phrases like "you look good enough to eat" or whatever utterly insane things we thoughtlessly say to express affection. Those are interesting; Trouble Every Day isn't, exactly. But it is affecting. After it was over, the sound of my own breathing practically made me vomit.

Mom, I am working things out all on my own!