wildflower

I am tremendously proud of myself. I achieved every goal and exceeded every expectation I had for myself. This has given me such a renewal on life. […] I have no regrets. This is a big dream come true. Just being here was amazing. And the fact that the girls that were here are half my age and I was able to actually compete on a show with these young babies that is so influential. And plus, I did the show with an ostomy bag. Can you believe I have an ostomy bag? But I never told anyone, because I didn’t want it to be a crutch. You know, I can say it now, because I wanna inspire somebody to push forward in life. You know, don’t let your situation and your circumstances be a hindrance. Let it be your motivation, like it was mine. If I can do it, anybody can do it. And look, I made my dream come true. I got to see RuPaul up close and I left a lasting imprint to show the world why I am the head mother of the Iman dynasty. Broken, but still fierce. I wish I could stay here longer, but I am not disheartened at all. I may be leaving, but this is not over for me. This is just the beginning, so look out world - here I come!

Howard Ashman, who collaborated on the film’s score and had a huge influence on the movie’s story and themes, was a gay man who died of AIDS shortly after work on the film was completed. If you watch the film with that in mind, the message of it becomes clear. Gaston demonstrates that bullies are rewarded and beloved by society as long as they possess a certain set of characteristics, while nice people who don’t are ostracized. The love story between Belle and the Beast is about them finding solace in each other after society rejects them both.

Notice how the Beast reacts when the whole town comes for him. He’s not angry, he’s sad. He’s tired. And he almost gives up because he has nothing to live for. But then he sees that Belle has come back for him, and suddenly he does. In the original fairy tale, the Beast asks Belle to marry him every night, and the spell is broken when she accepts. In the Disney movie, he waits for her to love him, because he cannot love himself. That’s how badly being ostracized from society and told that you’re a monster all your life can fuck with your head and make you stop seeing yourself as human.

throughout the show we see how these genres have the potential to do great harm. the messages they send, the power structures they reinforce, the boxes they try to fit people into: all of these things can contribute negatively to a person’s mental health or life decisions. at the beginning of the show, rebecca has bought into the stories she grew up on, she has internalized the messages they sent her, she has defined herself as a character in a story (the hero in her own story, if you will).

but none of these stories offer what rebecca truly needs, which is self-love and self-understanding. instead they offer roles, personas, and caricatures, which she tries on and casts aside in a desperate effort to understand herself in relation to the world and people around her. she’s the hero! no, she’s the villain! no, she’s just a girl in love! no, she’s the crazy ex-girlfriend! she’s in a fairytale! no, she’s in a rom-com! no, she’s in a horror movie! no, she’s in a buddy-cop tv show (coming soon to cbs)!

what ends up freeing rebecca from this mindset is her realization that she does not have to be bound to the stories she was fed as a child, that she can actually write her own stories. when she returns to the musicals she loved as a child and realizes they are deeply problematic, her impulse is not to bury her feelings of discomfort in order to enjoy them, nor is it to abandon musical theatre altogether; rather it is to rewrite those musicals to say what she wants them to say. and in the end, she decides to write her own musicals, her own songs, her own stories. and it is through this process that she finally finds what she was missing in those other stories: not a role but a self, who is too hard to summarize but still worth meeting.

this was his tweet from November 7, too

So, sometime last year (?) science invented Vantablack, which is the darkest possible shade of black. Art world got incredibly excited. But as it needs to be very carefully made in a lab, it’s hard to get a hold of, and is extremely expensive. Enter Anish Kapoor, aka FuckFace McGee. Anish Kapoor buys the rights to Vantablack. He is the only human being on the planet that can legally use it, and he’s kind of a prick about it.

Art world is not thrilled with that.

Enter Stuart Semple.

Stuart Semple is an artist, and also makes pigments to sell in his free time. Stuart Semple is astoundingly pissed about this Vantablack nonsense, and Anish Kapoor’s dickery. Stuart Semple makes a new pigment, the brightest shade of pink ever, called Pinkest Pink, and puts it for sale on the internet. To be bought by everybody except Anish Kapoor. Literally, to purchase, you need to confirm that you are not Anish Kapoor, do not associate with him, and will not sell or give the pigment to Anish Kapoor or his associates. Art world has a good laugh, everyone buys Pinkest Pink because it’s awesome, and damn it we deserve something.

Anish Kapoor however is a penis, and will not take this lying down, because HOW DARE he not have literally everything.

Anish Kapoor gets his London associates to buy him a thing of Pinkest Pink, and being such a classy human being, posts a picture to instagram of him with his middle finger covered in Pinkest Pink, captioned with “Up yours. #pink”

Everyone flips shit, because. Y’know. Fuck that guy. Especially Stuart Semple. For context here, Anish Kapoor is one of the richest artists on the planet, and has repeatedly been referred to as everything wrong with the art world, and the epitome of the art worlds elitism problem. He’s a giant douchebag. Meanwhile Stuart Semple makes pigments just to get them out there. He turns 0 profit from his now enourmously popular pigments.

Stuart Semple launches an investigation as to who the fuck leaked Pinkest Pink, and plans to strike back. He does so by releasing two new products. First is Diamond Dust, which is a glitter made from glass, so that a painting is still visible after it’s applied, but glitters like a mofo. It’s the most reflective glitter out there, and is available to everyone who isn’t Anish Kapoor. And it being made of glass, if you stick your finger in there, it’s going to hurt quite a bit, so that was Stuart Semple’s way of saying “shove your middle finger in this, asshole, see what happens”. Except without saying that, because he can get an insult across while still being fucking classy.

He also releases Black 2.0, created with the help of over a thousand artists worldwide.

Black 2.0 is the answer to Vantablack. Black 2.0 is a slightly less black black, but looks functionally the same to the human eye. It’s completely safe, smells like cherries, and costs four pounds. Vantablack is highly toxic, potentially explosive, needs to be applied in a special laboratory and sealed properly, can’t be moved across borders, can reach 300 degrees celsius if you’re not extremely careful, and costs thousands of dollars. Anish Kapoor is the only human being who can use Vantablack. He is the only human being who cannot use Black 2.0.

So I think we can guess who got the better deal.

And thus the feud ends, Kapoor defeated.

…But not quite.

Kapoor, in this entire afair, has made exactly two comments to the public. The first being his charming message about aquiring Pinkest Pink, the second being claiming to Buzzfeed that he and his small army of lawyers will be suing Semple, an extremely poor artist who cannot afford a lawyer.

No lawsuit has been made yet, fyi.

The point is, Kapoor is a prick, and doesn’t like talking to the lower classes. So one day in July 2017, he decides he needs another floor on his London studio apartment, and starts making arrangements to have it built. His neighbors are fucking pissed, because this will ruin the light of their apartments. They call to Semple to save them, or at the very least piss Kapoor off some more.

Semple answers to the call, and releases two new paints, Phaze and Shift, as always, banned to Kapoor. They change colours, Phaze with temperature, and Shift is just iridescent. Shift needs to be painted over Black 2.0 to work, and Phaze just works on its own.

So that’s been the art world for the last two years.

1. “Anish Kapoor is however a penis” is the best line in this post.