DivineDemento

Anyone who’s read any of my previous blog posts will, hopefully, not be surprised to find out that I’m rather invested in queer culture. So much so, that I started a blog dedicated to queer analysis of films, books, music, celebrities…any way I can put a defiantly queer spin on any given topic, I get excited. It is a way I’ve found I can express my deep, emphatic love and pride for my community. But sometimes, being an outspoken queer activist (if I may be so bold to give myself that title – God knows there are many who are more deserving) means questioning and criticising things that happen within your own community. Our community is not perfect, and often things we hold sacred need to be challenged when they’re not up to task. For a while now, RuPaul’s Drag Race has been such a cultural phenomenon. The show has done wonders for introducing positive representation of queer and gender non-conforming people into the media landscape. It was perhaps the first show to portray drag pe...

J.G Ballard’s infamous cult novel Crash shocked and dismayed many readers upon release. It depicts a world where the barriers between sex, cruelty and technology have been broken down, as a group of traumatised fanatics explore the latent sexual potential of the car Crash. In 1973, this assessment of the modern word seemed impossibly bleak. Now, in 2019, the inextricable link between sex and machinery has become a worrying reality. Introduction - 'A Brutal, Erotic Novel' ‘This author is beyond psychiatric help – do not publish!’ This infamous line, quoted in maybe every article written about Crash, is apparently the reaction from a publisher’s wife upon reading her husband’s edition of J.G Ballard’s definitive post-modern novel. As hysterical as this reaction may seem, it was indicative of the novel’s reception at the time. Crash is a wilfully challenging book – mixing graphic descriptions of car-crash sustained injuries with equally graphic sex scenes, all if which ...

With their pioneering blend of electronic instrumentation, repetitive beats and simple yet effective hooks, Kraftwerk defied all expectations as a totally electronic German band that became a worldwide phenomenon in the early 1970’s. However, Kraftwerk not only rewrote the rulebook on what pop music could be, but also defied the tired hyper-masculine rock clichés of the 70’s - and redefined what it meant to be a man in pop. Before Kraftwerk broke through to mainstream critical acclaim in 1974 with their seminal track Autobahn , the perception of electronic music in the public consciousness could not be more different from what it is today.  Electronic music existed only on the fringes of popular culture, either as novelty records (Hot Butter’s ‘ Popcorn ’, 1972), cinematic scores, or the foil of avant-garde composers and installation artists. For electronic music to have become the staple genre and approach to pop consistently over the past 40 years is in itself a testament t...