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writers gone wild!
Keep up with Bright Lights between issues by visiting our companion blog, Bright Lights After Dark.
Andrew Grossman
in issue 64
Between Nudist Morality and Freudian Realism! Denuding Fleshly Hypocrisies, Cinematic and Otherwise — "Nude on the Moon's exploitation is as innocent as the Good Christo-Nudist's reclaiming of a pre-figleafed (albeit non-recreational) Eden."
in issue 62
Finding Unlikely Ideology in Prokofiev: Polyphonic and Anti-Authoritarian Gestures in The Gambler — "Alexei must be condemned to the pointless, loveless, and finally false freedom of a spinning limbo, as unfinished and unfinishable as the best Bakhtinian polyphony."
in issue 59
False Consonance and False Consciousness: Contrarian Notes on the Ideology of Film Music — "Defenseless against music, I must submit to its despotism and, depending on its whim, be god or garbage." — E. M. Cioran
in issue 55
How to Hate Titles Correctly: A Pillow Book of Misguided Assertions —
What's in a name
in issue 50
Against Pleasure, Against Identification: Feminism, Cultural Atheism, and the Tragic Subject (Part Two) — "The more a man dreams, the less he believes." — H. L. Mencken
in issue 49
Isolating Isolationism: Recent INDEX Releases from the Austrian Avant-Garde — Part 1: Austrian Exhibitionists
in issue 47
Against Pleasure, Against Identification: Feminism, Cultural Atheism, and the Tragic Subject (Part One) — Rescuing feminism from rape — and queer theory
in issue 46
How to Murder John Williams: Toward an Ideology of Contrapuntal Antirealism — To construct musicality through expressionism, or to express musicality through constructivism?
in issue 44
Blood Feast Revisited, or H. G. Lewis as the Keeper of the Key to All Erotic Mystery — After forty years, now serving porn as intentional camp for erotic consideration
in issue 43
What We Talk About When We Talk About Ho Meng-Hua — How to strike at the heart of a beast with the heart of a beast
Twelve-Tone Cinema: A Scattershot Notebook on Sexual Atonality — Is queerness an angry chord or a beautiful harmony?
in issue 41
Trembling Before G-d, or Die Volkschmiere — Who will judge the judges trembling before sex? The atheists!
in issue 40
How to Turn One's Back on a Tyrant, Part Two — The opposite of realism is not fantasy, but disappointment
in issue 38
An Actionist Begins to Sing: An Interview with Otto Mühl — "I have been making art for 50 years and have never quite allowed myself to be corrupted. Quite the opposite, I was locked up." (Otto Mühl)
in issue 37
Bleeding Realism Dry, or How to Turn One's Back on a Tyrant — The cripplingly small-minded art of verisimilitude becomes crippled by its own technology
in issue 36
The Japanese Pink Film: Tandem, The Bedroom, and The Dream of Garuda on DVD — All jargon and no authenticity?
in issue 35
Better Beauty Through Technology: Chinese Transnational Feminism and the Cinema of Suffering — Feminism adrift in a sea of ogling orientalism, global capitalism, and fatalist aesthetics
Beautiful Mystery and I Like You … I Like You Very Much on DVD — The DVDs of these two rare gay pink films could use some extras and better source prints, but at least they’re here!
in issue 33
Gohatto — or the End of Oshima Nagisa? — Truly subversive or mere cinematic "seasoning," in the director’s own phrase?
in issue 32
The Boyz of Bollywood: Kaizad Gustad's Bombay Boys — These boyz mix it up, sort of, in what seems to be India’s first gay indie
