Notes on Film: Islands

So, June raced past me in a blur of illness and bad vibes. Before I knew it, it was July. I was sick, my girlfriend had a multiple sclerosis flare-up, and it rained every day. Bad vibes all around. More than that, I made it to July without having gotten my thoughts together for my June newsletter.

A bit of a bummer, I’d say.

During June, I did see a few films, one of which was the short film Islands from screenwriter and director Yann Gonzalez. I had always heard Gonzalez’s name mentioned following the release of 2018’s Knife + Heart, but as stylish, giallo-infused shots of rainy city streets and neon-lit club scenes drifted by my Twitter feed, I wandered off to do other things. That was a misstep on my part.

Since June, I’ve absolutely fallen in love with Gonzalez’s work, and his 2017 short film Islands was the perfect gateway into his world.

Islands is a lush erotic nightmare that unwinds during its 24-minute runtime, its vignettes collapsing in on one another in a shifting, hypnotic maze of queer desire. The narrative slowly radiates out from an inciting incident – an erotic stage play between a 70s-style slasher and his would-be victims – to ripple through the audience in a series of dream-like tableaux. Each sequence is marked by the tensions between sex and horror. The horror is specifically rooted in the body – the penetration of a blade, the eyes of the unknown spectator, the destruction of the body through entropy and disease.

While it operates like a lucid dream, perhaps even a nightmare, Islands isn’t a violent film. Its brisk runtime allows us to tumble freely through its three vignettes about queer desire and the voyeuristic gaze. The act of looking shifts from invasive and foreboding to an intimate and affirming exchange between multiple participants in the unfolding erotic narrative. Gonzalez beautifully captures the horror of being seen intersecting with the aching, almost overwhelming desire to be seen as a queer person who wants other queer people.

My favorite sequence is the first, for reasons that will become immediately clear. Two lovers are having sex when a hooded slasher emerges from the darkness of their bedroom to attack the man with a knife. Feathers from the thrashed pillows begin to drift like snow as the woman’s fear turns to curiosity and finally desire. She reaches for the slasher’s hood to reveal his deformed face, a kind of Freudian body horror pulled right from a 70s slasher. The three begin having sex in a stunning sequence that has haunted me since my first viewing.

At the time of writing, Islands is available on multiple streaming platforms for rent or purchase. I highly recommend seeing it if you have not already. Sufficed it to say, it is 100% my kind of bullshit and I suspect some of yours, as well.

Notes on an Essay: Pathologic 2 Helped Me Cope With The Pandemic

I love art and media criticism. My dedication to long, winding personal essays about comic books and TV shows probably goes a long way of conveying that. I’m always drawn to people who can deftly weave well-researched, grounded analysis with memoir and personal writing. My Twitter friend (yes, I’m going there), writer, essayist, and now filthy leftist YouTuber M.K. Anderson recently released a video essay that does just that.

Pathologic 2 Helped Me Cope With The Pandemic is a beautiful, insightful, and truly wrenching work. It deals with the complex intersections of trauma, horror, recovery, gender, and art in a way that has really resonated with me. (Oh, hello gender feelings. How are you doing today?) I’ve watched the video at least three times since its May release and I do highly recommend it to those with an interest in games, horror, and personal essay.

I do also sincerely recommend M.K.’s channel, which is still growing with seven videos at the time of writing. The topics range from video games to cryptocurrency to the most recent video on toxic positivity in the publishing industry.

Check out her videos and subscribe for more if you’re interested. One of my favorite recent videos was on ““problematic”” (double scare quotes for emphasis) boyfriends in visual novels and the failure of narrative to grapple with the horror at the heart of intimate partner violence. The channel’s great and I promise these essays are worth your time.

Notes on Writing: The Playlist

Seated at her table, Cornelia squeezed her thighs together under her dress. She found she could no longer restrain her impulses at the thought. For now, however, Cornelia was content to listen to the old house whisper...

So, I like making playlists for stories I’m working on. I think that’s a pretty generic statement most writers make online. Something I’ve wanted to do for a while was to go through my older short stories and create playlists for those reading experiences.

As I type this, I realize not everyone subscribed is familiar with my backlist of erotically charged literary monster romances.  

Yes, besides the monster-hunting hijinks of the Southern Gothic Series, I attempt to be the A24 of sexy contemporary gothic romance. Themes, questions, sexuality, the complexities of the human condition, hot Draculas – all that stuff.

This time around, and by request from a few readers and peers, I decided to create a playlist for my 2019 haunted house romance, The Ecstasy of Cornelia Day. It’s available on Spotify to check out as you please.

More playlists will become available in upcoming newsletters. I will also be creating playlists for upcoming projects, which I will release when we get closer to launch.

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