Like most of my tweeps, this trans-identified male came to my attention following his hysterical tizzy to Cannes when he won Best Actress, in typical AGP fashion, taking the full throttle approach in an appeal for pity. You might think from watching the clip, that he would be scenery chewing in Emilia Pérez, but in fact easily manages a nuanced performance.
Category: Culture
Review: Conclave
Contains spoilers including reference to ending.
Conclave, in addressing the Western culture war, comes down very firmly on the right side of history and serves as a reminder to dissenters that we’re on the naughty step.
Review: Jon Ronson’s Psychopath Night 2024
The blurby bit I’m not quite sure who this show was actually aimed at. Presumably most people who booked were, like me, hugely impressed by
Review of film: Emilia Pérez
On the one hand, there is your typical AGP bingo, our man Manitas always knew he was trans, he’d been suicidal about having to live a lie, etc and so on. I’d expected that. And like a lot of gangster movies, there is more sympathy for the violent quasi-psychopathic character than is really reasonable. I might have expected that too. Ultimately Manitas (even as Emilia) can’t bear that his wife goes off and creates her own life with a new man, taking the children with her. Again, no surprises there. And of course, Manitas as Emilia is at the centre of all the women’s lives, particularly Rita whose existence is very much as a simp – she exists just for him, her love unrequited.
Review of play: Spit It Out
‘Call me Emily, just one of you, please …’
… said ‘Emily’, with an imploring look to his audience. I don’t think we learnt what his ‘deadname’ was, so the plea didn’t really make sense, as we were already calling him ‘Emily’ in our heads (though it was ‘useless tosser’ in mine).
Review: Participatory performance with Danielle Braithwaite-Shirley
Danielle Braithwaite-Shirley (hereafter DBS) first came to my attention because Travis Alabanza (where art thou, my love?) has spoken approvingly many times, then the opportunity to attend this ‘participatory performance’ came up. Like Travis, DBS is a well spoken, middle class, black- & trans-identified male, who makes art focussed on ‘archiving the black trans experience’ (groan) and hailed as a genius by some (okay, possibly just Travis). On the artist’s website there’s a chance to play the computer games that have bought the gaming nerd so much kudos. I have to say, they’re rather intriguing, often terminating abruptly in the way trains of thought do but perhaps also thought-terminating? Anyway, very dream-like and other worldly. They definitely require patience as they are slow paced. However, such praise does come with a qualification: it’s pure propaganda.
The Lies They Tell 
You must be logged in to post a comment.