weekly recs, reviews, & appreciations.

Amber Husain, Vladimir and campus #MeToo narratives, a Waxahatchee cover, & more

Dear friends: I’m going to experiment with a different paywall praxis. The weekly recommendations will, for now, be free to all readers. My commentary before the recs will be brief or not at all. This will give me time to focus more on all the essays I have brewing, and some of those may be available only to paid subscribers. I’m also experimenting with new visuals. Don’t be mad if the branding shifts a few times, I’m figuring things out! Thanks for being here!

love & solidarity,

raechel

Reading + Podcasts.

Vera Blossom writes about the benefits of transactional relationships — from therapy to sex work — in a piece for the cool new-ish pub, Sixty Inches from Center.

Orion featured the introduction to Denali Sai Nalamalapu’s HOLLER: A Graphic Memoir of Rural Resistance, and it got me choked up & eager to read the book.

In class this week, we talked about the art that fueled ACT UP, with a focus on Gran Fury and Greg Bordowitz. As usual, if I have an opportunity to screen the Sarah Schulman and Jim Hubbard documentary, United in Anger, I do it. The film moves me, inspires me, and makes me cry every time I watch/teach it. It’s free on YouTube and if years of me semi-annually reminding you to watch it hasn’t worked, now’s the time!

I read Amber Husain’s Tell Me How You Eat via a recommendation from Alicia Kennedy, and I really loved the book. Husain grounds the book in her experience through anorexia recovery and from there journeys her reader through histories of food and political movements. Husain reflects on questions about bodily autonomy, the role of refusal in social change, the necessity of organized food movements, and focuses on food-specific anecdotes related to figures like Simone Weil, Diane DiPrima, and Audre Lorde. It was an excellent example of autotheory done well, and an inspiring one, too. Also this week, I jumped in Alicia’s salon where we got to hear her in conversation with Husain. It was such a generative and smart discussion!

& some podcasts recs from the week: Conner Habib did an episode on Epstein and childhood sexual violence, and I so appreciate the nuance he brought as a CSA survivor and as a fellow queer who knows that the conspiratorial rhetoric we’re witnessing is more likely to harm sexual minorities than protect women and children. I loved Dean Spade’s conversation with Benji Hart about art, the imperfect results of transformative justice processes, and more. For anyone following the Taylor Frankie Paul domestic violence allegations and subsequent cancellation of The Bachelorette, this episode of Love to See It provided thoughtful and compassionate reflections. I’m also excited about psychoanalyst scholar and Palestine liberation activist Lara Sheehi’s new podcast Psychic Militancy.

Watching.

Listen, I can call myself an “ex” academic all I want, but the truth is that if there is new faculty-centered campus media, I am going to watch like a member of the directly-impacted class. Out of kindness, I chose to dig into a new academia-rooted dramedy while Peter is out of town so he didn’t have to hear me guffaw in ‘that would never happen,’ or groan in ‘oh god, that’s exactly what it’s like.’ Netflix’s Vladimir (based on Julia May Jonas’ novel of the same name) made me do both.

In Vladimir, Rachel Weisz is our unnamed protagonist, a horny middle-aged professor whom we are supposed to consider not incredibly hot (okay), and who reveals early on that she is an unreliable narrator. Her husband (John Slattery), another professor, is in a Title IX suit for his frequent habit of sleeping with undergrads. Turns out they are in an open marriage, and both Weisz and her husband understood these as consensual affairs. Meanwhile, Weisz is absolutely lusting after a new junior faculty member, Vladimir (played hotly by Leo Woodhall). The representation of lust—or maybe more specifically, ‘limerence,’ for anyone who has been so absurdly crushed out on someone that google led you to learning this term—is spot-on. Meeting interrupted by fantasies, the feverish inspiration to write….It’s all there. I was kind of weirded out by the affect of Weisz’s performance, but she nailed the portrayal of obsession. There are moments throughout the series that are both fun and funny.

The other thread of the story—the husband Title IX stuff—felt complicated, and I suppose that’s the point. But I didn’t love it! All the people in positions of power are blasé about the accusations, including Weisz and Slattery’s lesbian daughter (and lawyer), Sid. It’s clear the novel and the show are interested in illuminating the problems with abuses of power, and that we’re not supposed to be rooting for our protagonist, but it was jarring. At the same time, however, I found myself appreciating a speech Weisz’s character gives to her students explaining that she, after growing up hearing that sex spoiled women, found power and pleasure in a variety of affairs, including ones with complicated power dynamics. Who is ever on equal footing?, she asks in response to a student who said consent isn’t possible when power dynamics are present. I suppose this mix of conflicting feelings—a distaste for the casualness of the lecherous professor’s response to accusations alongside an admission of agreement with the Gen X lady prof’s insistence that all sexual encounters involve power, and that doesn’t have to mean they are harmful—is a sign the show was successful. But also: unpleasant!

Wanting to think through my complicated takeaways, I went looking for writing about the series. In an essay in The Cut, Natasha Lasky argues that campus #MeToo narratives like in Vladimir and other recent media (she dissects After the Hunt; Sorry, Baby; Tár; The Chair) leave things too ambiguous. Lasky takes to task the representation of killjoy Zoomer students, often portrayed as caricatures of woke queers. There are a number of points Lasky tries to make in the piece, some that I found to be confusing and contradictory, but this part of her argument is clear:

“Earlier movies like Bombshell, Spotlight, Promising Young Woman, and She Said told straightforward stories of crime and punishment that chart the winding process of bringing abusers to justice. Newer campus-set narratives seek to complicate that moral clarity….But does this onscreen complexity actually deepen our understanding of sexual misconduct?”

I have critiques of several of the campus films she cites (though I think Sorry, Baby is such a clear outlier here), but I am disappointed to see this thirst for more examples of “straightforward” violence (and don’t get me started on how Lasky thinks the end of Promising Young Woman is “bringing an abuser to justice”). There are, certainly, men with enormous power who do inarguably bad things; the news cycle of early March reminded us of that every day. But we will not get to a world free of sexual violence if this is the only framework from which we understand harm; most harm simply isn’t so black and white. Insisting on the carceral logics of “crime” and celebrating the easy morality of stories about undeniable villains (e.g. media conglomerate CEOs like in Bombshell) runs the risk of reverting back to a different version of “rape is committed by strangers in dark alleys.” We oughtn’t wish our way into more “straightforward” violence; the truth is that most of us experience harm in much messier ways. If film only offers simple fables, so many of us won’t see ourselves in them. And as frustrating as some of these campus stories can be, the complexity they insist on is so deeply realistic.

I still don’t know that I can say I liked Vladimir, but I am glad it prompted an engagement with these questions. (And even if Lasky’s takes didn’t quite land with me, I’m glad for her writing on it too. Media can always be an opportunity for us to keep trying to figure things out together. Thank goodness.)

Listening.

A confession that will revoke my #1 Waxahatchee Fan card: I had NO IDEA that Katie Crutchfield covered Jessica Simpson’s “With You” for the Girls soundtrack. How did I not know this???? I am an unapologetic Waxahatchee superfan and a slightly more apologetic Girls superfan….I really should have known this. I continue to not love Apple Music, but it was their algorithm that offered the song to me, for which I am grateful. I had never heard the Simpon version, but when I listened to it this week, I appreciated the cover even more. Simpson’s version, musically, is straight-up bad, and the fact that Katie saw something in it—I’m guessing the lyrics were enticing—is impressive. The result is an incredibly creative rendition which she made before she was fully leaning into her country roots. The sound is loud, gritty rock— almost Pixies-like. I’m so so into it!

The reason the algorithm fed me the above is because I was listening to the latest Waxahatchee single, a collaboration with Brennan Wedl covering Kathleen Edward’s “Six o’ Clock News.” I was really underwhelmed on my first listen, but then I listened to it about sixty more times and now I can’t stop. Lyrically, it’s tragic; musically it’s a back porch country bop.

Joy & Attention.

birdsong. ⇼a sweet visit with my momma. ⇼the big lake & the little lake.⇼ my students & their thinking-together. ⇼driving on the warmest day of the week with the windows down & realizing the moment called for Liz Phair’s “Never Said,” on blast. ⇼hot chaotic bisexuals. ⇼getting through tax filing. ⇼the sweetest cats & their sweetest snuggles & their silliest shenanigans. ⇼watching a pregnant mama groundhog strategize her way under my neighbors porch.⇼ a wild movie & girl-talk drinks with K. ⇼& all of you, thank you for being here, truly.