Twink No Mo
Coverage Check 10-11/2021 (Part I/II): Black Mountain Institute axes The Believer as Sam and Gian pull the plug on the revolution
Sam and Gian, the mesmerising duo behind Twink Revolution, announced the end of the podcast.
Launched in September 2019, the duo produced over 100 episodes, earning a host of foes in the process. Styled in the tradition of Red Scare, they dissected an impressive array of topics, including Russian men’s gymnastics, the hysteria around age gaps and the sex industry in Central Europe, not to mention the infamous case of the Hungarian MEP getting caught at a gay gang bang during lockdown. The pod’s accompanying website, which offered a platform to a host of young contributors, had already been inactive since March. Twink Rev served as an anchor for a number of other pods, the hosts of which guest starred at various points in its two year trajectory. Aside from the Red Scare girls, guests included Angie Speaks, Jack from The Perfume Nationalist, the Thot Topics boys, as well as Twink Rev contributor River Page, who has survived countless character assassination attempts and has since entered the Substack frenzy with Chain Smoking to Babylon, and Zach Langley Chi Chi, a rare voice in cultural criticism, who has founded his own podcast I’m So Popular. The Revolution might be over, but its insurgent idea(l)s survive in these projects that may just be the underground beginnings of something greater.
Repeater Books has clawed Zer0 Books back in indie publishing’s latest development, regaining access to the back catalogue seven years after being forced out. Following six years of seemingly never-ending turbulence, despite a well received second act, The Believer has also come to an end. The Black Mountain Institute announced it will be closing its flagship magazine, the February/March 2022 issue filling in as its swan song, citing the financial impact of COVID-19 alongside the usual media statement around the challenges of running a print publication as culprits. The Las Vegas magazine never enjoyed the crossover appeal of its more prestigious siblings (i.e. Harper’s, NYRB), but had a central part in 21st c. literary history [and on a personal level as it introduced me to Sheila Heti via this Didion interview]. What may happen to this history and the magazine’s archives is anyone’s guess.
Speaking of lit history and you-should-have-been-there-soz-if-you-weren’t moments, November marked the second anniversary of Rachel Rabbit White’s Porn Carnival, the last great party prior to everything shutting down that has gained mythic proportions since, in part down to Kaitlin Phillips’ subsequent reporting for The Cut. Cat Marnell went to a(nother) sex party with Rabbit White and took photos.
The Drunken Canal turned one. Everyone’s fav pod Our Struggle has made it to Book #2 of Karl Ove’s odyssey. INQUE published its first issue but went pretty unnoticed. Dirt hosted a party but no one thought to report on how drunk Daisy Alioto got.
Ottessa Moshfegh, fresh off landing the Vogue Italia cover, has signed with Midland Agency.
No information has been released as to whether the novelist will be walking at fashion week, or if the contract is strictly limited to editorial (what happens after the Vogue cover has happened?). Will other novelists follow suit? Has fashion found a new kind of cultural icon to capitalise on? And can the publishing industry make anything out of this other than a total mess? A London-based fashion PR I reached out to responded with this:
“I don’t think this is the news you think it is. No one cares.”
Fashion might be checked out of the literary world, but art’s blue chips are gagging to align with Moshfegh and other writers of the glam variety in a bid to gain a touch of cultural legitimacy as evidenced by Emma Cline’s collab with Gagosian.
Soho Press snapped AESTHETICA, Allie Rowbottom’s debut novel about an “Instagram model’s rise to fame and spiral into plastic surgery addiction.” Vogue published the most comprehensive oral history of Marie Antoinette, the 00s most fun film. Daddy Houellebecq is publishing a 736-page long novel in January.
Dennis Cooper christened Derek Jarman the true successor to Pasolini. Christina Newland spoke with Mike Leigh ahead of his BFI Southbank and Home Manchester retrospective, finding him as unapologetic and uncompromising as ever. The conversation inevitably centres on Naked [a haunting af fav], with the director responding to the question on the necessity of sex scenes [Newland is truly leading the film criticism Renaissance this side of the Atlantic] as unavoidable when depicting life on screen. “What happened to softcore, to porno-chic, to erotic thrillers?” she asks as in a separate piece. Continental Europe is in a much more better position than the UK and the US, she believes, Paul Verhoeven’s Benedetta acting as a proof point. To those who insist sex scenes are unnecessary as they do not move the plot along, she points out that sex is “an inherent part of our lives” and therefore by default an inherent part of film. So, “to deny sex and sexuality in the cinema is to deny our own fully-fledged humanity.” Perhaps Europeans aren’t ready to give up theirs yet. Over at The Independent, Adam White paid homage to the great Katrin Cartlidge, her understated performances and her unwillingness to sell out, opting for a capital A Acting career, albeit one cut abruptly and tragically short, most would kill for. Naked wouldn’t occupy its current place in film history if it wasn’t for her.
Thomas Chatterton Williams has left Harper’s, his legacy at the mag now overshadowed by that famous/infamous open letter [begging for no more letters or opinions just old fashioned punch ups from 2022]. London heartthrob Owen Vince has traded bricks for flicks, rebooting his newsletter, previously known as awful mass and focusing on architecture, as awful screen where he now casts his attention to film. A natural progression of his role as one half of film criticism outfit MuubTube, in his inaugural blast he looks at Jancsó’s take on the Greek myth of Electra, “an orgy of the collective,” continuing his obsession with Eastern/Central Europe (apart from architecture and film, his criticism oeuvre has also included literature and even fashion). Electra, My Love is too socialist realist to be erotic, he tells us. “Eventually, the dress slips off the shoulder,” he says of Jancso’s later films. “The bodies would fuck and be fucked.” Eventually, Jancso would go in the direction of Borowczyk and Brass [so, hot].
The Annual In And Out trend report from poster @shit_queen returned with its seventh edition.
And as far as forecasting is concerned the end of the pandemic is predicted to mark the end of every loser we’ve suffered since the crash.