An appreciable reminder that boy culture and girl culture can feel mutually exclusive, and that the young boys who opt to embrace girl culture from an early age risk exclusion from both. A reminder, as well, that so much of our self-making is not deliberate: so much of it comes from images of others that we unknowingly, nakedly turn inward. This is, or can be, as invigorating as it is dangerous. If there's a flaw to the logic Haynes (a Semiotics major, in college) explores here, it's that for most of the film, a young boy seems to be acting on unknown impulses. But by the end, when it comes to destroying his icon, he seems to be acting on something approaching knowledge. I'm not sure about that. But I'm fond of the rest.

let me be perfectly clear: i'd lay down my life for Todd Haynes this very second

todd haynes: makes another film about queer sexual repression in suburban america
me: talented, brilliant, incredible, amazing, show stopping, spectacular, never the same, totally unique, completely not ever been done before

Has Todd Haynes always been great? This is a damn impressive short, almost surprises me that Haynes has never made a horror film, I can definitely see him do well in that genre with films like The Suicide, Poison, and Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story. Todd Haynes is one of the best working directors and this makes me amped for Wonderstruck.

todd haynes has never missed once in his career; he’s just too good! the gays always win!!!

Haha, damn I love Todd Haynes.

why are there university courses in queer theory when you can literally watch a todd haynes movie and learn everything you needed to know in less than an hour

Todd Haynes owns my gay ass. I feel like our sensibilities lie up a lot and I just wanna talk about 50s/60s pop culture and the environment with him at lunch at a diner in a small town.

abolish fathers, imo

Week 10. A queer short film. (part 2!)

Technically a rewatch, but it's been over a decade.

Dottie Gets Spanked is boldly, almost painfully, visceral in its treatment of dreams/fantasies, gender transgression, nascent desire, and the inability to ask your family for what you aren't getting but desperately need.

I was a few years older than Stevie before I started to experience the disorientating dynamic of a fantasy life that emerges when you're by yourself and the hairpin turn into shame and alienation that you're made to feel about it the second you step outside. I don't think that's an experience exclusive to queer folks, but I'd wager that it's a near-universal experience among queer folks.

Todd Haynes manages to do more in this thirty minute short than many directors are able to pull off in a feature length film. A young boy's obsession with a television comedy is closely examined in a film that attempts to sell itself as a coming of age drama about realizing that one's fantasies don't always work out in life. Always communicating between the lines, Haynes has really made a tragedy about the pressure one receives from a very young age to conform and repress any unusual desires, which obviously makes the film a devastating metaphor for growing up homosexual. Full of horrifyingly surreal nightmare sequences.

This perfect little vignette sensitively depicts a situation that is, I'd venture to say, universal among gay boys. The way fantasy inspires us to identify with and idolize cultural icons (often female). And the tension that comes with being different: celebrating it and experiencing shame around it. From reading the recent New Yorker profile (November 2019), it's obvious that the adorable little boy who vacillates between timidity and grandiosity is autobiographical, but the translation to a film short is inspired and sophisticated.

Made me want to watch Ma Vie en Rose again.

Part 1: youtu.be/_81LQGI6Boc
Part 2: youtu.be/sKqgtHceSSQ
Part 3: youtu.be/Y8HCEOk1khQ
Part 4: youtu.be/-D1v7SCL1ac

Utter purity. Kitsch without camp. A gentle outsider tale with an insider's empathy. So unique and modestly excellent.

Reminds me of when my parents showed up unannounced to my college art show lol.

Just let him like what he likes

film collective bender 19/24

that boy needs a well

The great, late Alexander Doty (Dottie?) once said: "If television didn’t exactly make me queer or a feminist, it provided almost daily feeding and provoking of what became the queer and the feminist in me".
Say no more.

That kid wanted a spanking in the worst way!

Should be called “A Fetish is Born.”

Really interesting, with various styles invoked by a talented filmmaker on the cusp of his greatest works.

Despite its kitschy packaging (I mean, just look at that poster), this is something deeply troubling and sad, the expected Haynesian artifice only doing so much to push this out of the realm of the worst of childhood memories. It (or at least what it dredged up) seems to have permanently scarred Haynes for how much it ripples throughout his subsequent films; the stifling nuclear families of [safe] and Far From Heaven, the "queer longing through media" angle of Velvet Goldmine, the "kid longing through media" angle of Wonderstruck, even the various shots of Rooney Mara in cars from Carol are lifts from this.

Well, that was certainly a movie that was trying to say something and failed miserably at it. At least the child actors were surprisingly good.