Good morning!
Welcome to Issue 66.1 of Digestable, your thrice-weekly mouthful of real things happening in the world, minus alarmist pandemic news.
Today’s news, fermented:
Gabriel did my job today, so I’ll just leave you with this:
The Second Look
Half-baked cultural criticism from Gabriel Coleman.
I know it’s more Lena’s job to digest, but this week I just have a lot of opinions and none of them are big enough to write a full piece about so here are a collection of my hot or notsohot takes:
Fashion:
Richard Quinn’s FY21 runway film is the queer kink fantasia that the Cats remake was too afraid to be and the love letter to London fashion that Cruella thinks it is. Maybe it’s just my ecoqueer brain, but juxtaposing latex (congealed plant juice) with floral print dresses and gimp suits gives me such a lovely suffocate-me-in-flowers-and-feed-my-body-to-a-mushroom vibe
Solange Knowles’s film for the Woolmark prize is so excellent. She’s a visionary and I love seeing her mark on things. The score is top notch, Dionne Warwick is stunning and, like Richard Quinn, I love that the film showcases the versatility and storytelling of natural fiber - in this case wool.
Film/Television:
As stated above, Cruella isn’t very good and doesn’t make any sense but I love that they gave Emma Stone red hair again.
Loki is just Marvel trying to do Doctor Who. Love the brutalist Met Breuer set design but the design doesn’t contribute much to the story. Also the blue filter they put on the Lamentis 1 scenes is kind of tacky. I’m really just wondering how purposeful it was of them to borrow the acronym from a real life vague yet menacing government agency.
Drag Race Down Under is hot racist garbage and made me want to give up on the show (again) but somehow All Stars 6 is some of the most entertaining television airing right now.
Music (Video):
The LOONA comeback is so good y’all. The song bops and I love the way the repeated and juxtaposed images in their videos encourage you to draw your own plot conclusions.
Religion?
I just found out that Jesus doesn’t poop. I can’t stop thinking about it. I guess his body is so perfect it completely assimilates everything he eats which seems like a nice zero waste strategy. I guess this is because pooping is sinful which [insert eco-theology take here] but early-christian poop-theorist Valentius only specifies that Big J was exempt from solid waste so I guess peeing is still a holy act.
And that’s the inside of my brain this week!