| EastWesterly
Review
|
The Mainly Annual
EastWesterly Review/Postmodern Village
14th Annual Conference
 The
Love Bloat: How America's Obesity Epidemic is Challenging the
Size of Sexy
by Dell Tah-Burke
Tah-Burke was not the most convincing half-Asian female impersonator
of the conference, but she had the biggest voice. Special guest
presenter Gavin McLeod made us all feel better about our extra
cellulite, though, despite (because of?) plugging his latest
project: The Love Handle, a reality show designed to
help the zaftig find TV romance just as genuine as The Bachelor
has. |
 Polesmoker's
Eleven: Gay Softcore Meets Light-Hearted Action/Adventure, a
Study in Cross-(A)dressing the Marketing Expectations of the
American Male
by Abercrombie N. Fitch
Fitch pitches the idea that the "metrosexual" look
dovetails nicely with polls suggesting America's youth are more
accepting of homosexuality than generations before. Not that
there's anything wrong with that. I mean, he's not sayin'; he's
just sayin', you know?
|
 Uncle
Ben's Cabinet: Contemporary Black Culture Sells Out to the Politico-Corporate
Media Slavemaster
by Sisyphus "Retread" Jones and hell books
books's fiery rhetoric acted as a nice counterbalance to Jones's
more measured delivery, but the anger was still astute: just
what does a poor kid from the 'hood owe Gulfstream, Cristal,
Bently, and Benz?
|
 Uncle
Chandler's Water Cabinet: how Parboiled Detective Stories Presage
Contemporary Performance Escape Artistry
by Christy Blaine-Spade
Blaine-Spade is both tough dame and consummate magician, both
femme fatale and private dick. She's her own hot-dressed assistant
as well. Delivering the paper from memory as she worked her
way out of a suit of locked chains looked easy for her, but
the case for her thesis was harder to make. Stan? She's too
much man—and woman—for you. |
 From
Orson to Outcaste: Cinematic Depictions of Smoking as Civil
Disobedience
by Billy Holliworth
When is a cigarette not just a cigarette? When it's a means
of protest, according to Holliworth. As characters in films
light up under "No Smoking" signs, they're giving
The Man the finger. The smoke in the room was too thick for
this reviewer to stay too long. |
 Uncle
Ben's Water Closet: Extreme Home Makeovers for All Today's Oreos,
or how the Architecture of the Suburb Kills Contemporary Blackness
By H. Pap Brown
Brown brought on da funk—of drywall mud—and brought
on da noise—of power tools—in this attempt to bring
back the Black Power decor of a bygone Afrocentric future-past.
His paper was a diatribe against the bourgie subdivision mentality
of middle-class American blacks and in favor of the boogie get-down
interior design of the way things ought to be: beatnik meets
batik meets dashiki-chic in colloidal cultural remix. Plus,
this reporter finally mastered the miter-box during the audience-participation
section. |
 Rainbow
Abolition: Depictions of Racism and Gang Violence in the 'Splatter
Paintings' of Jesse Jackson Pollock
by Q. Morten Pappenfussburger
It doesn't take a genius to see that the red represents blood
-- and boy, is there a lot of it -- in Jesse Jackson Pollock's
paintings. Pappenfussburger further explicated the nuances less
obvious though: from the blue of the Crips to the green of the
Grove Street crew (a Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas
reference lost on all but one highly-enthusiastic gamer who
immediately shouted "CJ's my DAWG, yo!"), each color
represents the different gang colors and the violence inherent
therein, with each drop a deceased member. Pappenfussburger
argues that Pollock just pours one out for his fallen homies,
but that "one" isn't a forty ounce bottle of malt
liquor, but acrylic paint. |
 Blue
Riders in the Sky, or Riding Through the Rhineland on Three
Horses With One Name: The Predictions and Postdictions of Nazis
in Paintings of Ponies
by Frank Mark Shaw-Gall
While Der Blaue Reiter were only active from 1911-1914,
they accurately predicted the rise of Nazism, as symbolized
by the horses of the apocalypse, Shaw-Gall argues. Despite the
commonly accepted argument that Kandinsky believed that blue
was the color of spirituality and that Marc was essentially
a pantheist and nature-worshipper, Shaw-Gall argues that the
horses in the paintings of Der Blaue Reiter can only
be Hitler, Goebbels and Himler (and sometimes Mussolini, but
only sometimes -- it depends on which way the horse is facing).
In paintings of horses after World War II, such as Robert Casper's
"Boy on Horse," the anti-Semitism is still present
and has stripped the boy clean, although he still has the force
of Nazism under control. An organized sit-in from the EastWesterly
University Neue Blaue Reiter Club, all three of them,
made this a more interesting presentation -- although the horse
whinnies were a bit distracting, as was their intention.
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Page 6: Have you looked to see if it's plugged
in?
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