i've just realized that actually something similar to the stuff described in this manifesto/rant also happened to an academic paper of mine during this summer - and i just jumped to my silly little computer to type a silly little thing!!!

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so, during summer 2023 i wrote a short paper on queer horror film, discussing among others the quite campy film Otto; or: Up With Dead People (R: Bruce LaBruce, CAN & GER 2008) (sneaky people might find an okay-ish version of this film at great online places like The Internet Archive...).

(ah yes, a discussion of camp would be spot on for this discussion of aesthetics too, of course!!! i discuss it a bit in the unpublished paper i wrote, but it is german. for a quick and online introduction to camp, as most notably described by Susan Sontag, i highly recommend James Somerton's tremendous video essay The Queer Sensibilities of Cinema. [edit 07.12.2023: i just watched the whole hbomberguy's Plagiarism and You(Tube) and others on Somerton, and I'm so shocked right now. Luckily, I haven't referenced him as a main source somewhere, as video essays due to their lack of citational accuracy aren't a credible source, but I did mention him as interesting additional material, and even though I have oftentimes trouble deleting stuff, I will definitely remove any mentions of him even as a minor point of additional reference.]) (omg i just saw that youtube now really blocks its video player when one uses an adblocker in germany as well???)

in this paper i also touch a bit on the concept of "homonormativity". this term basically means that society privileges/accepts cis male gay people who display an otherwise "hetero-friendly" and normative lifestyle over other queer identities.

here are two of my sources from this paper for reference:

Elliott-Smith, Darren (2016): Queer Horror Film and Television: Sexuality and Masculinity at the Margins. I.B.Tauris, London und New York 2016.

Reyes, Xavier Aldana (2014): Beyond the Metaphor: Gay Zombies and the Challenge to Homonormativity. In: Journal for Cultural and Religious Theory, Vol. 13, No. 2 (Summer 2014). pp. 1-12.

(as all fellow slay academics know, one might find these academic publications for free in a shadow library of choice...)

one could hypothesize that this homonormativity is at play in aesthetics as well: aesthetics and queer artists are then prefered by society who display a very normative aesthetic style and have a general vibe to them that passes as somehow not queer. i've actually oftentimes encountered this phenomenon ~back in the days~ in the german literature scene, of queer artists writing texts that could've been easily written by cishets as well, and texts that do not explicitly embrace "the queer" aesthetically (whatever this even means, one could of course complicate this again and pose the question whether every mental image that one would associate with queerness in aesthetics is again a stereotyped construct that never escapes its uneasy relationship with an otherwise cisheteronormative society and with every cultural artifact that this society produces).

(to throw in a little illustrative anecdote: a cishet friend of mine once asked me why queer art is oftentimes so "over the top"/"in your face" /"rainbow and glitter" queer, and this person prefered more subtle art. i personally would challenge this with questioning why cisheteros always shove their "straight stuff" into our faces in literally most of the artworks EVER created. i would argue that these more overtly celebratory(?) queer artworks are always a reaction to this culturally dominant oppression of queerness. i of course also like subtlety and more cryptic things, but i definitely do enjoy more explicit, proud & celebratory queer stuff too. there is an history of suffering shining through, and not just a history, but of course a still continuous battle for life in so many areas. (wow, now sexually active gay people are not rejected anymore when wanting to donate blood in germany? what an achievement... - this should be the bare minimum, also considering the general lack in blood donators. // wow, it is planned that the dehumanizing TSG pathologizing being trans* is replaced with a law that finally allows trans* people to change their name easier, but in turn we are seen as possible criminals and reported to several german government agencies, among other things that are rightfully criticized as contributing to discrimination? - this too is the bare minimum, maybe not even this.) it then seems to be a cisheteronormative aesthetic position entangled with subtle discrimination and bias that judges queer art for being "to much", "to loud", "to colourful" etc - especially when not applying these same critical standards to cishet art too.)

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on another note, this aforementioned academic paper was written for a publication of a student initiative, and i've put a lot of research & writing effort into it over several months. when giving it to my fellow peers for review/feedback, they were overwhelmingly negative about it. (i will go into depth more in another essay at some point in the future.) i knew that this paper was definitely too long for their maximum page count and that it wasn't my best one, and more mäandernd/circling around a thing/unclear, not as precise as academic writing (if judged by neuronormative standards!) usually tends to be. i personally love academic texts that are a bit more experimental and not constraind be the usual and REALLY BORING formalia that these texts oftentimes have to abide to.

the unironic suggestion of my fellow students was to just focus the whole text on the arguments of one of the straight authors i've referenced, and to delete everything else, and to thus effectively cut out most of the queer scholars from this text - from a text that is about queer film??? this would be absolutely unacceptable; how could anyone with serious academic integrity think that it would be a good solution to literally straighten such a text - both regarding its bibliography and its non-normative delivery of thoughts??? i thought to myself: "wow, this might really be the worst and most insensitive academic feedback i've ever received!", and this from students not that much older than me, extremly disappointing, and then i left & withdrew all of my writings i've worked on for them.

here again, i would argue, we have a situation of academic cishetero- and neuronormativity that sadly puts its restricting system of rules over approaches and methods that might result in more interesting texts that could enrichen academia in some way, whether it being regarding its content or its form. and at least to me, form can be as interesting as content and ideally its norms should be similarly challenged. academic texts can be as queer and weird and mystical etc as any other cultural artifact produced by queer (& neurodivergent) people. a text is a text and it has to find its own way and own voice of delivering the stuff that it wants to deliver - and even if it fails, this failure (and maybe here speaking with Bo Ruberg again: queer failure), is part of the process, is part of the text, is part of this specific text's voice. and we don't need our oppressors to tell us, what academic texts they deem good, what academic texts they deem worthy.

"Today, it is more important for [academics, addition LF] such as you to listen to the voices of bodies excluded by the patriarchal-colonial regime than to reread [insert any canonic academic text here lol, addition LF]." - Paul B. Preciado, Can The Monster Speak?: Report to an Academy of Psychonalysts

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(i will definitely publish my mentioned paper at some point, most likely as part of my very extensive collection of essays, unpublished poetry lectures and manifestos etc that i am quietly working on (~sometimes~) since 2019.)

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& thanks btw for all the kind reactions so far to If You Think This Is Trash, i was actually quite surprised by that, considering it was just some random little thing i randomly wrote down & turned into a game art thing. i didn't expect this to vibe with other people, but turns out i was wrong :3 (which is actually a good thing in this case!) so, thanks.