DivineDemento

From the sonic terrorism of Throbbing Gristle, through to the playful experimentation of modern acts such as SOPHIE, industrial music has formed a core aspect of the queer musical landscape. Through studying its history, we can see how this most challenging of genres has reflected the lives of queer people perhaps better than any other.  When performance art collective COUM Transmissions unveiled their Prostitution exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London in 1976, the resulting furore was almost inevitable. The show – which included artefacts ranging from used tampons to double ended dildos smeared with blood – led to Conservative MP Nicholas Fairbairn denouncing the troupe, and especially their sole female member Cosey Fanni Tutti, as ‘wreckers of civilization’. However, the show was also notably the moment COUM Transmissions made the full transformation into the equally challenging musical outfit Throbbing Gristle.  Drawing their name from Yorkshire sla...

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 Introduction - 'A Brutal, Erotic Novel' ‘This author is beyond psychiatric help – do not publish!’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 ...

In 1972 and 1974, Pink Flamingos and the Texas Chainsaw Massacre were two of many American movies that exploited the nations fear of social and moral collapse. Both films depicted families living in violation of our most basic ideas of dignity. So why does Divine, and her family of misfits, inspire generation upon generation of queers and outcasts, whilst Leatherface continues to inspire terror? I would wholeheartedly argue that Pink Flamingos , the breakout hit for both director John Waters and the original Drag Superstar Divine, is the most important queer film of all time. Its reputation is legendary, the level of disgust it inspires infamous. It follows Divine and her misfit family, who are hiding out in a trailer somewhere outside Baltimore. They are forced to put their peaceful existence of hold when Connie and Raymond Marble attempt to steal Divine’s title of ‘Filthiest Person Alive’. What results is an ever-escalating tornado of taboo-breaking acts, including singing s...