Today, my friend & fellow PoMoCon John Presnall & I make our bid for cancellation, by tackling a movie about transsexuality — which is related to what some people now call transgender, as gender has replaced sex, but also changed the idea of an unchangeable biological reality, of nature, with something else, more willful, individually asserted & obscure to everyone else — by the master of thrillers after Hitchcock, Brian De Palma. It’s of course a kind of story that couldn’t be made now, not because it is sordid, but because it is politically & ideologically problematic — but it is ultimately problematic because it questions the liberal commitment to & understanding of love: The sexual revolution is the context of Dressed to kill (1980), & the drama is the pursuit of an identity through eroticism. It leads not to liberation or self-actualization, but to horror…
I’d also like to take a moment to thank Lauren Scott, the Hillsdale intern who has edited the podcasts for us at the ACF this summer. She took time to save us all some time & the occasional embarrassment of misspeaking, so that we sound like pros.
We can't get cancelled, Titus- that's the beauty of Substack
That's the hope, I guess--the substack head honcho recently went on Joe Rogan, so that seems reassuring for freedom of speech!