Cory Massimino

They took the sign away. #AEWDynamite

Sign at #AEWDynamite @hangmanpage.bsky.social

On the other hand there's something *like* a plan, that the neoreactionaries have banded about since 2017. Which is to prioritize slaughtering the radical left activist class so there's no one to provide knowledge and networks to radicalized liberals, while illegalizing NGOs and terrorizing judges.

The cover of the book "Liberal Emancipation: Explorations in Political and Social Economy." It features a lot of pink as well as a photo with a stairway and a sunny blue sky with some white clouds.

My colleague Mikayla Novak has a new edited volume out called "Liberal Emancipation."

She has brought together a great group of scholars, including @erwindekker.bsky.social, @ottolehto.bsky.social, and even me, to analyze the emancipatory aspects of liberalism!

Read on to learn what I argue... 🧵

the idea of objectivist william gillis remains undefeated

YouTube video by Project Liberal The End of Libertarian Fusionism | Aaron Ross Powell

The fine folks at @projectliberal.org had me on their show for a deep conversation about the past, present, and future of American libertarianism. (And I'm still getting used to this whole video podcast thing. I miss my mic and mute button.) www.youtube.com/watch?v=3orl...

Fascism, as an ideological project, depends upon destroying empathy. From my conversation with @corymassimino.bsky.social. Listen to our full discussion here: pod.link/1614436300/e...

Another day, another declaration of war on Americans by the President.

Post you from a different era

It's important to occasionally step back and reflect on your most fundamental values, how you've developed those values over time, and what makes those values different. I did just that with my good friend @aaronrosspowell.com on his wonderful show @reimaginingliberty.com.

pod.link/1614436300/e...

Sad, but true.

I think these are just orthogonal topics. Plenty of romantic movies don't have a whiff of sex. Many sex scenes don't have a whiff of romance.

One of your top 4 features incest.

YouTube video by Greatest Movie Scenes of All Time Office Space (1999) - Lumbergh Nightmare Scene

It's one of the funniest scenes. And it uses fourth wall breaks and fade transitions for really great comedic effect.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=2sed...

Sex scenes are not the domain of any specific "kind of movie." My list of movies, for instance, had all sorts of wildly different entries: drama, romance, horror, comedy, action, science-fiction, etc, etc.

I agree. Streaming has allowed a fracturing of TV and an ensuing greater freedom of artistic expression, while movies have gone the opposite direction and consolidated so much that profitability increasingly demands flattening movies to be more widely palatable and less artistically expressive.

Sex and action can both be more or less "reality." It entirely depends on the scene and work in question. Either way, the degree to which art captures reality varies and I like having works existing along every different node on that spectrum.

I've seen barely any Game of Thrones, but I've seen a handful of the sex scenes (some in context of an episode, some not), but they all struck me as incredibly pornographic, devoid of artistic expression or perspective, and often exploiting rape and female suffering for titillation.

Sex and the City is one of the very best example of this, in my opinion. It uses sex scenes in almost every single episode to express character and explore themes. And the slapstick is very much the point. It's a comedy show about sex. After all, sex is one the funniest things about people.

That might be my favorite sex scene of all time. From my letterboxd review:

letterboxd.com/corym/film/b...

The prevalence of unhealthy attitudes toward sex is maybe the best reason there is to have (and engage with) art that explores sex unflinchingly.

5. Stuff with good/aesthetically rich sex scenes that come to mind:

-Brokeback Mountain
-Mulholland Drive
-Lost Highway
-Her
-The Matrix Reloaded
-Sense8
-Portrait of a Lady on Fire
-Office Space
-Mad Men
-Sex and the City
-Shame
-Tampopo
-Videodrome
-Moonlight
-American Psycho
-Don't Look Now

4. Game of Thrones may be one of the aesthetically worst instances of sex in art. But there's bad versions of everything in art. Sex scenes are fundamentally just action scenes, using the mostly-wordless physical drama of human bodies to create an aesthetic experience (pro-wrestling does this too).

3. The distinction between TV and movies was always porous and is increasingly useless, so I don't see any reason to modify my view for TV.

2. It's about neither ageism nor denying the art of leaving things to the viewers' imagination. It's about the importance of having (and engaging with) art that cares not for our comfortability but instead for creating its own aesthetic experience and speaking to different facets of human existence.

1. "Sex in art" is not just some more-graphic subset of "intimacy in art." It's it's own thing. Sometimes sex reflects an utter lack of intimacy, or certain degrees or manifestations of intimacy. Or something orthogonal to intimacy entirely.

And I agree with you, this is like the ONE area that "pornification" actually is (partly) to blame. Some people increasingly view sex as the domain solely of porn and content, rather than the domain of art and human life and shared aesthetic experiences.

Some of the youths are good (the ones on letterboxd and supporting criterion), but others not so much. The instinctive uncomfortableness some have for sex in art is part of the broader flattening of the aesthetic experience and related to the plot-obsessed CinemaSins-ification of movie engagement.

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