Volume 25 Eyecandy Staff

Volume 25 Eyecandy Staff EDITOR-IN-CHIEF PRINT WRITERS debra bilodeau lior ayalon debra bilodeau HEAD CONTENT EDITOR jasmine lee ehrhardt jasmine lee ehrhardt catie ellwood larissa sturm gonzalez diana joves CONTENT EDITORS marisol medina-cadena lior ayalon brian mislang debra bilodeau jasmine lee ehrhardt BLOG WRITERS emily landa nick campolito mollie goldberg BLOG EDITORS larissa sturm gonzalez amara channer michelle goodman larissa sturm gonzalez erika mejia diana joves brian mislang laura santoro MAGAZINE DESIGN stephanie villanueva lior ayalon debra bilodeau FINANCIAL MANAGER ren brownell brian deangelis larissa sturm gonzalez SOCIAL MEDIA diana joves larissa sturm gonzalez michelle goodman WEB DESIGN melissa weiner nick campolito CONTRIBUTORS COPY EDITORS seth temple andrews mollie goldberg celia fong larissa sturm gonzalez annie d. emily landa melanya hamasyan josh “grassy” knoll remy dixon FACULTY ADVISOR megan needels l.s. kim jenny panush EDITORS' NOTE Everyone tells you to write what you love, but nobody tells you how. They (whoare they?) teach you to write in arguments, to state your claim, to confine yourself to that eight-page essay — but they don’t tell you how to put yourself on the page. And nobody tells you how difficult, gut-wrenching, and exhausting it will be. That’s exactly what this whole process has been— difficult, gut-wrenching, exhausting beyond belief. No one could anticipate how much this extended process of emotional and theoretical digging would reveal about our identities, how important this catharsis would be, or how friggin’ hard! We want to put our heads down just writing this. But we wrote — and drew, and photoshopped, and edited — these pieces because it is hard, because we know that understanding the media is key not only to understanding society, but to changing it as well. We aren’t going to rattle off a list of themes and ideas presented in this year’s issue. Doing so would be a disservice to the stakes every one of us had in our articles and submissions, to the communities we come from and write about. We made this for ourselves — and for you. We hope our words and images make you think, and we hope they make you talk. Table of Contents 4 megan needels untitled (tvs) 5 lior ayalon we’re here, we’re queer, and we like to be scared! 11 diana joves from cool girl to sociopath 17 debra bilodeau them are us too // in their own words 25 jasmine lee ehrhardt with artwork by celia fong #fresh off the bandwagon 31 jenny panush please like me 32 larissa sturm gonzalez i get my books from my mother 37 marisol medina-cadena screening mi gente: the watsonville film festival 45 melanya hamasyan de-historicized 47 catie ellwood boyhood vs girlhood: gender dynamics in coming of age films 54 annie d. untitled 55 brian mislang the cult of michael jordan 61 grassy knoll the old masters 62 remy dixon rhetorical devices 63 debra bilodeau dad hard: reconciling feminism and dad culture... with a vengeance. 70 seth temple andrews infrared tree veins UNTITLED (TVS), megan needels 4 5 ... We're Here ... We’re Queer and We LikeScared ! to Be Lior Ayalon Queer Identification, Subtext, and Aspirations Within the Horror Genre You know, vampires have no reflections in a monsters that showed me that I am not a monster. mirror? There’s this idea that monsters don’t I am queer, and I want to make horror films. I have reflections in a mirror. […] If you want don’t really know how it started. I mean, I remember the to make a human being into a monster, deny queer part pretty vividly. But the horror part? I remember them, at the cultural level, any reflection of watching one of the Child’s Play films on late night themselves. And growing up, I felt like a monster television when I was about six or seven, and I guess in some ways. I didn’t see myself reflected at all. the rest is history. It’s possible I always had some sort –Junot Diaz [i] of predisposition towards all things creepy, crawly and spooky, but it does not seem to be a coincidence that the Though this speech that Junot Diaz1 gave to a genre that I always felt most attracted to is also one that group of students specifically addresses the lack of capitalizes on difference as a form of fear. Could it have representation of people of color in all forms of media,2 been that I always felt so weird, so different, so “other” his words instantly spoke to me and my own search that I grew to identify with the monster? Could years of for cultural representation. The relationship between middle school bullies calling me a “dyke” and shunning cultural absence and feelings of monstrosity is one that me at the lunch tables made me begin to see myself anyone of a marginalized underrepresented identity can as Frankenstein’s monster, eating lunch all by himself understand, and one that I understood as I came into my in the bathroom? Ultimately, the representation of the queer identity. As a kid, I consumed seemingly endless classic horror monster as the cultural “other,” the genre’s amounts of film, television and other mainstream media preoccupation with the body as a source of fright, and during my early adolescence, but I always felt like internalized feelings of alienation and exclusion from there was something missing. I never felt like I could mainstream media led many queer filmmakers, including relate to conventional images of heterosexual romance myself, to turn towards the horror genre. and domesticity when I was struggling so much to Identification within the horror genre is understand my own identity, one which was clearly complicated. We’re not supposed to identify with “the not a part of the picturesque landscape I had come to monster;” after all, he (and it’s almost always a “he”) expect from Hollywood. Ironically, it was a genre about is the reason the genre is called “horror” instead of 1. A writer whose powerful work focuses on his Dominican ethnicity and immigration experience. 2. In other interviews, Diaz has stated that his love of science fiction and other genre fiction is directly couched in his experiences immigrating to the United States, and that despite genre’s overwhelming whiteness, he was able to see himself in science fiction and fantasy rather than in realistic fiction. 6 “romantic comedy.” But with whom should audiences of for the villain. I do not wish him triumph, nor do I wish horror identify? The angry villagers? The mad scientist death upon the victims. It is, in way, almost a self- who created the monster? The victims? It feels hard to hating identification. I see how his difference harms identify with the victim when they seem to make the and endangers the villagers, or the teenagers of the wrong decision at every turn. No, don’t leave the group; no, sleepy suburban town, and I want him to be punished don’t go down those stairs; no, don’t have sex right now,3 for it. I want the respectable villagers and the pretty, you’re supposed to be running for your life! However, as heterosexual teenaged victims to Carol J. Clover writes in her seminal essay on the Could triumph over the horror that psychoanalysis of gender, sexuality and sex plagues them. I want the in horror films, Her Body, Himself: Gender years of middle difference to go away. in the Slasher Film, audiences are school bullies calling Ultimately, despite my encouraged to identify with the “Final me a “dyke” and shunning peculiar position as Girl,” the inevitable female character a femme-identified who survives, eventually either to be me at the lunch tables Have queer, I still occupy rescued from the monster or killing MAde Feel Like Frankentein’sthe male gaze and its him herself.[ii] Clover writes that the monster, eatingin lunchthe hegemonic virtues and Final Girl is signaled as a main character all by himself expectations. In order for through her own subverted femininity, as well bathroom? the expectations of a traditional as her intelligence, ruthlessness and will to survive. narrative to be satisfied, deviance must be In this analysis, Clover assumes, and perhaps rightfully punished, and I expect that. However, despite the self- so, that audiences of horror are “by all accounts largely loathing nature of my identification, it was nonetheless young and largely male (Clover 192).”4 Clover’s essay is a identification, which was more than I could find in any fascinating analysis of this cross-gendered analysis, but other genre. for me it ultimately begged the question: if straight male Much of the monstrosity in horror films comes teens can identify with the female victims/heroes of a horror from a subversion of gender roles.5 For example, Norman film, can I identify with the male villains of horror films? Bates, Buffalo Bill and Dr. Frank-N-Furter all, in some Recently, I stumbled across a website advertising a call way, were used as a betrayal of traditional masculinity as for submissions for “a new multimedia festival of genre a scare tactic. Though these characters are undoubtedly works by queer artists, performers, and filmmakers” in problematic and rooted in transphobia, queer fans and Portland, Oregon, which explained some of the appeal: creators of horror can appropriate them -- in fact, horror Maybe it’s the fact that queer people are so genre’s preoccupation with subverting gender roles can often relegated to shadows of otherness that be appealing to queer individuals who, despite their the horror genre is more immediately relatable gender orientation, may be grappling with gender roles for us.

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