alt Archive

My XBiz Noms by Amelia G on Blue Blood

My XBiz Noms

Hey there XBiz members pals, please nom Barely Evil in the Niche category if you can or Blue Blood in Photography <3
Or maybe Specialty would be better than Niche, as we regularly get nominated in Niche and then lose to someone in a more mainstream huge niche. You decide.
Let me know if there…( Read more )

My XBiz Noms by Amelia G on Blue Blood

My XBiz Noms

Hey there XBiz members pals, please nom Barely Evil in the Niche category if you can or Blue Blood in Photography <3
Or maybe Specialty would be better than Niche, as we regularly get nominated in Niche and then lose to someone in a more mainstream huge niche. You decide.
Let me know if there…( Read more )

Sucker Punch Rejected Geek Rage Contender for Worst Movie Ever

Sucker Punch Rejected Geek Rage Contender for Worst Movie Ever

by Amelia G : March 29th, 2011

sucker punch

When the Sucker Punch billboards first went up in my neighborhood, I felt conflicted. It seemed, on the face of it, to have a decent checklist of things I would like in a movie, but I instinctively lizard-brain hated it. Upon reflection and now that the uniformly negative reviews of the movie are in, here is the problem with media like Sucker Punch.

I might be a little unusual, a little bohemian, artistically-oriented, and a bit disenfranchised. Sometimes the nail which sticks out gets hammered down. Anyone who is a bit different from the norm has most likely experienced being hammered down at some point. (Disclaimer: I would point out that I am about to post a spoiler, but it is impossible to spoil a movie as cynically bad as Sucker Punch.) It doesn’t take an insightful genius to figure out that someone with purple hair might not have sailed through life 100% effortlessly, but having others attempt to hammer one down is not what makes an unusual person interesting. Sucker Punch panders to victims and tries to sell their victimhood back to them. Being unusual doesn’t mean you should embrace victimhood. Ew.

The gist of the movie is that this altporn-looking chick is unfairly institutionalized and scheduled for a lobotomy, in order to rob her of her birthright. So the altporn-looking chick fantasizes that she is actually some sort of stripping prostitute and not a mental patient. Then, when her stripper whore held prisoner in a brothel fantasy gets too sexually specific, she fantasizes that she is a hero in a video game. She is given a quest. Her questmates are raped, tortured, and/or killed. Then the altporn-looking chick hero is lobotomized. But, see, she is still free in her fantasy life, so it is a happy ending. Because chicks, especially alt-y looking ones, cannot change anything or make any kind of difference, even in their own lives, but fantasy can ease our pain.

Uhm, seriously, fuck you, Zack Snyder. Fuck you and fuck the cynical studio that backed this travesty. I note that opening weekend grossed less than $20 million, so I sincerely hope that Sucker Punch’s $82 million dollar production budget is a fiscal sucking chest wound.

It is unusual to find a movie with as consistently terrible reviews as Sucker Punch. It is amusing to . . .

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Alt- vs. Fetish

Kumi posted a blog entry where she talks about not viewing fetish and alt-modeling as related at all. I both agree and don’t. I guess in theory, I disagree, but, in practice, what she observes is often dead-on how this currently goes in the real world. I wanted to share a quick thought of mine on the topic and also direct folks to what she wrote: Alt- vs. Fetish

I discussed this with Michelle Olley years ago, when she was at Skin Two, and we were both trying to promote having models with unusual haircuts and tattoos and dramatic makeup and such in fetish areas. And meeting with resistance. Looking punk or goth-industrial or whatever and showing up to the BDSM party was not always the way to elicit the friendliest welcome in those days. The handcuffs on my leather jacket at the time were fully functional and one of the reasons I founded Blue Blood was precisely to celebrate an aesthetic which resonated with me sexually. 17 years later, I am less impressed by a daring hairstyle than I once was, partly because it takes less courage to rock one in a post-internet world, but I’m still enough of a fetishist there that I will look at two people with the same basic level of appeal and think the one with the mohawk is way hotter.

Something which troubles me deeply is that a lot of people have reinterpreted alt to be where girls (not women) who do not make the grade can put on wigs and LARP like they are modeling. These are generally girls who do not want to have to develop their minds or even their cooking skills, but they do not want to hit the gym either. So they call themselves altmodels and you are supposed to like them for their looks alone, without requiring them to look good.

Certain corporate players in the marketplace have aggressively attempted to de-sexualize alt. But a few more loathsome humans in the overall society doesn’t make liking music and subculture-influenced looks not a fetish.