News

My next ebook, Your Favorite Superhero Sucks is available for preorder! Out September 19, with an awesome cover by my son.
 
Patreon

Free for all, I wrote about It Follows as a vampire film. (venereal disease horror ftw.)

For $1/mo subscribers, the introduction to Your Favorite Superhero Sucks. Find out why superheroes are bad!
 
Utilitarians Everywhere

At the Guardian I wrote about

—Nelly Furtado, Timbaland, and the joy of promiscuous R&B.

—Spellbound, Suicide Squad, and fear of a female psychiatrist.

In my first piece for LitHub, I wrote about N.K. Jemisin’s The Obelisk Gate and why fantasy needs an apocalypse.

At the Reader I reviewed R&B duo Lion Babe.

At Splice Today I wrote about

—the joys of digital self promotion.

—the fact that you can think Trump is a fascist and still oppose him through democratic means.

—Otto Preminger’s Advise & Consent and the dream of a politics of individual conscience.

 
News

Artist Ganzeer said nice things about my ebook Fecund Horror.

And a print version of the book is now available on Amazon.

Patreon

I write about the 1922 film Nosferatu and why Loki from the Avengers is a vampire. (also why he’s Jewish.)

Next week I’m going to post a piece on the wonderful 1988 film Lair of the White Worm and why obvious penises symbolize vampires, or maybe the other way around. I put up the beginning of the essay here. pledge $2/month and you’ll get the whole thing delivered to your inbox on Monday.
 
Utilitarians Everywhere

Al Fanar Media translated my article on poor academic writing into Arabic.

—the crappy new Killing Joke cartoon and the perils of updating old comics or movies.

—why violence against women is different from violence against men in pop culture. Not that it’s worse; it’s complementary.

At Quartz I talked about lessons that progressives can take from Sanders’ successes and failures.

At Splice Today I wrote about

—My Son John, and why paranoid anti communism is a relief after Frank Capra.

—why concerns about desistance seem overblown (there’s a good criticism of my piece in comments on the site, so you should read that too.)
 
Other Links

Gabriel Sherman has a terrifying article about Ailes’ long history of sexual abuse.

Bridget Phetasy says sexually liberated women deserve respect.

Interesitng and nuanced interview with a woman who is detransitioning.

R.P. Boo at Pitchfork

 
News

After more than 9 years, HU is going on hiatus. Lots of nice memories of the site in comments.

And Heidi at the Beat took a moment to be a jerk in my direction one last time.
 
On HU

Featured Archive Post: Domingos Isabelinho on Geneviève Castrée, who died last week.

mouse interviews Colin Spacetwinks on the history of furry.
 
On Patreon

On Bava’s Wurdulak and devouring your own children.

On Kevin in Ghostbusters, and why it’s men need incompetent, ditzy heroes.

I listed my 12 favorite films.
 
Utilitarians Everywhere

I went to Pitchfork and reported back to the Reader on what I found:
—Day One.

—Day Two

—Day Three

On Splice Today I wrote about

—Captain America and amnesiac Nazism.

—All the King’s Men and Hollywood’s post-racial populism.

Fecund Horror

My ebook, Fecund Horror, is out! Please consider buying a copy if you haven’t, so I can write more and then you can buy those and then I can write more, like an aesthetic ponzi scheme, but without the ethical problems.

Matthew Brady put together this great list of every movie I mention in the book, to whet your appetite.

And Phil Sandifer said nice things about the book. “I’ve been enjoying the hell out of the book, which takes the tired “trashy exploitation films have something interesting to say” angle and finds fresh new life in it, suggesting that the genre works by “looking wrong” at the world, and that this is a generative and, well, fecund angle to take. It’s a delightfully odd collection, hitting obvious things like I Spit On Your Grave and also totally weird things – the title essay culminates in an enthusiastic paen to the subversive potential of a piece of erotica about wasps that lay mind-controlling eggs in people’s brains.”

On HU

Chris Gavaler on Kirby layouts vs. Steranko layouts.

Jimmy Johnson on a Law and Order episode that doesn’t suck.

Petar Duric on Attack on Titan, Saga, and a better American war canon.
 
Utilitarians Everywhere

At Random Nerds I wrote about the joys of writing exploitaiton ebooks.

At Patreon, for $2/month subscribers I wrote about how Keanu Reeves is perfect as Jonathan Harker in Coppola’s Dracula, precisely because he is such a stiff.

At the Chronicle I wrote about why most academics will always be bad writers.

At PLayboy I argued that more black women police officers might reduce the number of police shootings.

At TNR I wrote about why police aren’t at the forefront of the gun control movement.

At the Guardian I wrote about Frank Cho, William Marston, and whether Wonder Woman should be sexy.

—the sexual assault charges against both Bill Clinton and Donald Trump.

—the new Ghostbusters, which is less sexist and better than the first.

At Splice Today I wrote about

— the documentary Pervert Park, and how treating sexual offenders as monsters doesn’t help victims.

—the Great McGinty and the dream of unambitious politicians.

For the Chicago Reader I wrote a brief piece about the music of singer/songwriter/indie genius Mobley.
 
Other Links

This open letter about conflicts on the left over racism and sexism has been circulated a lot.

Brianna Wellen on the fact that Pitchfork doesn’t book many female-led acts.