🤡✨The Nexialist #0181

time of monsters | clown in mainstream | rose of the winds | she’s gone, dance on | sxo

Jul 11, 2024

welcome to your weekly phygital brainsparking periodic, the nexialist

hey, you! i hope this message finds you in a better-than-good moment. last week i had the opportunity to skinny dip in tuscany a couple of times (thank you giacomo, my love juan and roel), witnessing incredible sunsets, disconnect while reading in front of the water and getting the best tan line i’ve had in a few years. this week, i’m in beautiful and warm sardegna with my boyfriend andrea and his family. the relaxation continues. i decided to enjoy some time in the AC to write this week’s newsletter, so i hope you enjoy this one, as i’m enjoying to notice how a sunny vacation setting shapes how i’m noticing my surroundings, and that’s what you see this week and the last one 🫀✨

—Rodrigo Turra

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👹time of monsters

thank you,

Cynthia Hansen

, for sharing this with me. “time of monsters: finding comfort, meaning and expressiveness in horror” by

Elodie Marteau

from

In Case of Doubt

puts together several solid signals on how horror has become an evergreen theme in our culture, not only reserved to halloween: from screens, to fashion, to influence, horror vibes have become another way to escape the harsh and chaotic reality.

No matter the winning name, “now is the time of the monsters”. Halloween is not around the corner, and the horror associated with the season has already become a normalised reality. No need to remind us of our contemporary permacrisis truth, but the everything-scary dominates our era: wars are scary, climate change is scary, AI is scary, political unrest is scary. Scary and non-fictional.
[…]
Horror movies are the 4th most popular movie genre in Canada and the USA between 1995 and 2023, with a 34.3 billion U.S. dollars total box office revenue, equalling comedy. — Statista, 2024
Horror movies are US Gen Z’s third most favourite movie genre (28%), next to comedy (41%) and action (29%). — Deloitte, 2022
Horror’s popularity grows well beyond the arrival of the Halloween season: as of October 2023, the 43 horror films released theatrically last year had already generated more revenue than the genre’s total box office in 2022. — Nielsen, 2023
Last year, nearly a quarter (24%) of top-ranked podcast shows in the US focused on true crime stories — compared to politics and government (10%); entertainment, pop culture, and the arts (9%); and self-help and relationships (8%). — Pew Research Center, 2023

this weekend, we watched rupaul’s drag race allstars s09e09, rosemarie’s baby shower rusical, inspired by the horror classic rosemary’s baby, but then it’s all drag queens of rosemary, her baby and other classic horror classics who showed up at the baby shower: the clown from IT, the exorcist and m3gan, the ai doll. while watching it, i was thinking: wait, but it’s not even halloween yet, confirming marteau’s thoughts. gottmik, the first ftm trans constestant in the show, put it very well:

“horror is just so important to queer people. queer people can watch these films and see themselves in the monsters in a way, and how society shuns these creatures because they don’t understand them, and girl… they’re just trying to live! very us.” —gottmik

thanks to my friend giacomo, we were on a mission to watch some classics in these vacations’ evenings: what ever happened to baby jane? (1962) and sunset boulevard (1950) were the first two, then after this, we decided to play rosemary’s baby (1968). even if we didn’t know about polanski’s pedofile crimes, i’m sure we would still cringe at the movie’s narrative choices: rosemary was drugged, raped, gaslit and her character was uncanningly child-like.

Fiction keeps meeting reality in horror, a genre anchored in the persisting male gaze. “Horror has a history of misogyny. For a long time, women in horror were typically hypersexualized and often punished for their sexuality.” explains University of Florida professor Dr. Julia M. Mollenthiel. But paradigms are shifting.

horror is not the once generally empty genre any more. it has gained depth and meaning as the female, queer, bipoc gaze claimed the style and injected nuance to it. of course, this is not new, from the success of elvira, rocky horror picture show and addam’s family, to lady gaga’s little monsters, kim petras (aka the queen of halloween), the chilling adventure of sabrina, wednesday, and jordan peele’s movies. the thing is, now, it seems that we are getting it.

brainsparks: shifting realities (tn#176), permacrisis (tn#194), counterculture x counter-futures (tn#10), synthetic media (tn#18), play-full futures (tn#121)

🤡clown in mainstream

talking about escaping reality, this article on dazed beauty hit me: “everyone is wearing clown make-up because everything is absurd by nicki harrington. Since 18th-century pantomimes, clown make-up has been a symbol of rebellion against conventional beauty standards and the status quo. Now it’s infiltrating the mainstream.”

a few years ago, clowncore came to the surface as one of the fast-moving aesthetics presented to us in the nostalgia well that is the internet. the jester/clown/entertainer archetype has been present for centuries, but it feels only recently it has been back and more in our face—literally—as artists, influencers and characters use the make-up as part of their artistry.

Whether it’s goth make-up or a clown aesthetic, people are finding solace from the often-harsh realities of life through increasingly maximalist make-up, and challenging the sometimes unbearable pressures of conforming to mainstream beauty standards. Its popularity also speaks to the boredom that people are feeling around the minimalist beige make-up that has dominated the last decade, from Instagram face to quiet luxury. Clown make-up and those inspired by it signal a new age of camp being cool again.

this post made me think how in the y2k and 2010s the lines between reality and fantasy have been blurring, and now some artists are making a counter-movement to make clear who they are on stage or in the media is different from who they are off-stage. recently elvira (cassandra petterson) was an honoree at rupaul drag race s16 finale, showing up on stage without her “mistress of dark” attire, and i remember being surprised. remember when lady gaga gave us incredible looks for the paparazzi, as if she walked out and about as a work of art? now we see chappell roan making a more clear division in her social media, going to performances in full drag while sharing personal thoughts while wearing no make-up. perhaps, it’s a reckoning moment, where artists exaggerate their mediatic personas, reminding us that that is not the full reality, and that we are allowed to shift between personas in our lives.

brainsparks: margiella’s artisanal collection (tn#158), namecore (tn#71), non-playable characters (tn#132), age of enchantment (tn#123), humancore (tn#132)

🌬️rose of the winds

we’ve had some pretty windy days on vacation and i was surprised when my friend giacomo (thank you for opening this rabbit hole for me) could name the warm wind that was taking our towels and making us feel like beyoncé in our kaftans: scirocco — “a Mediterranean wind that comes from the Sahara and can reach hurricane speeds in North Africa and Southern Europe, especially during the summer season.”

wait, winds have names? being raised in the big city, i never learned that, in school or in culture (or i cannot remember learning it). i knew about the compass rose, but more as a tool to understand directions, not necessarily wind directions. i was familiar with a couple of these names, but unsurprisingly, as brands.

after doing a google search, i found different regions have different names, but because of the mediterranean maritine history, sailors/fishermen used a common language, and the wind directions, temperature and intensity carried different meanings of what would come after, helping them keep safe or change routes. i even found a more international non-exhaustive list containing some winds from asia and the americas.

it felt like discovering a new language. it made me think of moon ribas (tn#178), who added a microchip implant to her leg to feel earth’s earthquakes. back then, they didn’t need a device or an implant to listen to the environment, it was a knowledge passed from generations, and still today it’s present in culture.

A compass rose, sometimes called a wind rose, rose of the winds or compass star, is a figure on a compass, map, nautical chart, or monument used to display the orientation of the cardinal directions (north, east, south, and west) and their intermediate points. It is also the term for the graduated markings found on the traditional magnetic compass. Today, a form of compass rose is found on, or featured in, almost all navigation systems, including nautical charts, non-directional beacons (NDB), VHF omnidirectional range (VOR) systems, global-positioning systems (GPS), and similar equipment.

where can i find a beautiful zine with all these winds, a windtionary?

brainsparks: cyborg art (tn#178), calculating empires (tn#180), nature disconnection (tn#137)

🌺she’s gone, dance on

disclosure’s new release is not only a delicious feel-good bop, but also a beautiful video (directed by @vincentcatel) to be added to the hall of queer hedonistic aesthetics we’re seeing lately, along with troye sivan’s rush and tove lo’s heat. i always love to see a brazil t-shirt, as part of the reclaiming green and yellow (tn#71) movement.

brainsparks: the age of pleasure (tn#123), rush (tn#130), heat (tn#178), reclaiming green and yellow (tn#71)

🍆sxo

this horny queer bop from brazil has been playing on repeat in my spotify, and has become one of my favorites this summer. nsfw.

brainsparks: the age of pleasure (tn#123), slutty archetype (tn#139)

see you next week, monsters 🫀✨

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