Editors’ Note: To Our Friends

BY SOFIA ANDRADE AND JADEN S. THOMPSON CRIMSON STAFF WRITERS

Dearest readers, Neither of us were prepared for how fast 2022 would come and go. We know it sounds trite, but it has been the joy of our college careers to lead The Crimson Arts this year. It is fitting that in our last act as Chairs, we present the tenth annual Year-in-Review — the films, TV shows, music, and cultural moments that defined these past twelve months. As all of this art was released, there was one constant in our lives: the steady production of Crimson Arts content, and the warm and effervescent community that goes along with it.

We are immensely proud of the work that The Crimson Arts has produced this year. We published over 600 — 600! — articles in 2022. It was our first full year

BY SAWYER TAYLOR-ARNOLD CRIMSON STAFF

“On some level I knew horror wasn’t just about monsters doing bad things,” S. Trimble writes in the opening essay of “It Came From the Closet,” “It’s also about doing gender badly.”

This notion undergirds much of Joe Vallese’s anthology, released in early October by the Feminist Publishing Press and comprised of 25 essays from a talented group of queer and trans writers. “It Came From the Closet” dives head first into the muddy waters of horror — a genre notorious for its demonization of queerness and gender nonconformity — and the queer people that consume, question, and love it despite its problematic history. Replete with beautiful, memoir-style narratives, this collection of essays is well worth the read regardless of the reader’s affinity for horror or movie analysis.

While many of the essays use queerness as a lens through back on campus since the pandemic, and it was a historic year for The Crimson Arts. This was our first year covering the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, Rolling Loud Music Festival, Dreamville Music Festival, as well as the Boston Underground Film Festival. We had the joy of editing some incredible concert reviews when up-and-coming artists like Lizzy McAlpine and The Driver Era stopped in Boston. We interviewed some fascinating artists like author Elif Batuman ’99, actor and singer Ben Platt, and Hollywood producer Marty Bowen ’91. We published insightful and hilarious additions to our Unpopular Opinion and What the Hell Happened series, several nuanced thinkpieces, and many beautifully crafted columns. We were continuously impressed by our writers’ wit, incisive commentary, and thoughtful approach to arts journalism. We obviously could not have published over 600 articles on our own. We owe so much to so many. To Raquel and Jasper, thank you for always having answers to our questions and for fielding late night texts and phone calls. You put countless hours into this organization and you did it with grace. To our multimedia exec Allison and our de - which to analyze horror, horror is also used to explore ambiguous notions of queerness. Though these two paradigms serve as the backbone of the anthology, they are far from the only things discussed as authors grapple with race, religion, disability, parenthood, family, illness, grief, friendship, and even twinship. These 25 essays traverse a vast sea of topics, gifting the reader with brief glimpses into an array of different lives, experiences, and interiorities. Some authors attempt to do what Trimble (author of the essay “A Demon-Girl’s Guide to Life”) citing Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick calls a “reparative reading”— an alternative way of looking at these films that explicates their resonances with queerness rather than their demonization of such; other authors like Zefyr Lisowski (writer of “The Girl, the Well, the Ring”) are far more critical of the genre that has historically weaponized queerness, transness, and gender non-conformity as a signifier of monstrosity. These internal discrepan- sign exec Nayeli, thank you for helping to bring our written content to life with dynamic visuals and beautiful print pages.

To our dedicated and loyal Arts execs who showed up again and again, who approached the editing process eagerly and with keen eyes — thank you, thank you, thank you. We will miss seeing you all every week. We will always think of the long hours spent at Monday production nights and smile fondly; we consider you not only our coworkers, but our friends. Production nights could have gone a whole lot faster if we sat quietly while we edited, but we could never help joking around with each other. And we wouldn’t have it any other way. To those that came before us, thank you. Joy and Kalos, we’re sorry for still texting you with cies, however, speak to the most compelling things about this book: The diversity in stylistic approach, the varying ways authors found to weave together horror and queer existence, and the multitude of lives that come alive on the page. Particularly notable essays include “The Girl, the Well, the Ring” by Lisowski, which intertwines analysis of “The Ring” and “Pet Semetary” with musings on chronic illness and disability; “Black Body Snatchers” by Samuel Autman which links Jordan Peele’s “Get Out” to Autman’s experience as a Black, queer journalist surrounded by the omnipresent whiteness and Mormonism of Utah; and “Indescribable” by Carrow Narby who articulates a fascinating exploration of “The Blob” and “Society” in an essay about genderlessness, corporeality and pain, and the pursuit of imperfect intimacies.

We know it sounds trite, but it has been the joy of our college careers to lead The Crimson Arts this year.

Perhaps most compelling, however, is Vallese’s own contribution to the anthology. In it, Vallese interweaves a dissection of “Grace”, a 2009 film about an infant that feeds on human questions 12 months after you finished your tenure as Chairs. You paved the way for us and taught us everything we know. And to the compers and staff writers, the future generations of execs: Those 600+ articles would not exist without you. Nothing makes us happier than talking to a new writer who is passionate about contributing to Crimson Arts and being a part of our community. There is no doubt in our minds that we’re leaving this organization in good hands. We bonded as a community this year in our first full year in-person since the pandemic started. We were together at the Crimson Arts Oscars watch party when Will Smith slapped Chris Rock in February. We sent links to Wordle spin-off games to each other on Slack (Taylordle being a personal favorite). We hosted rooftop socials where compers and execs alike posed alongside a projection of a Robert Pattinson fan edit on YouTube. We posed for each others’ BeReals at pitch meetings and production nights. We could go on, but to put it simply, it was beyond special to spend this year alongside you all. You made 14 Plympton St. home for us. We would be lying if we said we didn’t tear up a little as we left blood, with a moving narrative about queer parenthood. The effect of this is a poignant essay about a gay couple’s journey to create a family intertwined with cinephilic analysis of a cannibalistic baby that, in spite of this seemingly contradictory and macabre content, leaves the reader feeling hopeful and light.

While many of the films discussed are predicated upon the vulnerability of bodies — in conjunction with the purported “monstrosity” of queer and gender nonconforming bodies — there is something undoubtedly resilient about authors using these films as the lens through which to explore their own lives and survival on the page. Many of the authors identify with the werewolves, witches, monsters, and blobs (yes, even blobs) that they write about, finding humanity and commonality in the monstrous, unearthing stories of community and self-discovery in the tales that normally haunt us. The stakes of this should not be underestimated: “It Came From the Closet” finds value in iden-

Harvard after our last production night as Chairs this December. We both knew we’d be coming back to campus, but we knew we wouldn’t be coming back to The Crimson, at least not in the way we did this year. (Though we will definitely visit!) We’ll have free time on Monday nights, and that will be a strange, bittersweet sort of freedom. We won’t have to run to the Quad shuttle at midnight after production night only for it to pull away as we arrive because neither of us pays close enough attention to the time. This is a long winded way of saying…we’ll miss you, Crimson Arts. We’re so thankful for you. And we’re so excited to see the work that Anya, Alisa, and the new masthead will do to make our content better and our community even stronger. We’ll be cheering you on ’til we graduate, and after that, too.

Okay, officially signing off now to go have a “Shrek” marathon and cry sentimental tears.

Artslove forever, Jaden S. Thompson and Sofia Andrade

Arts Chairs of the 149th Guard of The Harvard Crimson tifying with the monsters that have historically been used to demonize queer people in film. Yet it does so with incredible success as this identification manages to humanize, deepen, and complicate all involved, alive and fictitious. While an ambitious project — to identify with the monster society has said you are — it is one that the writers of this anthology carry out with grace and skill. Notably, there is very little recognition of these high stakes throughout the anthology, and only one author acknowledges what it would mean for this book to fail:

“It’s dangerous, I know, to connect transmasculinity or gender dysphoria with a movie about female self-mutilation,” Jude Ellison S. Doyle writes. “The idea that transmasculine people are self-harming ‘women’ is currently one of the main talking points TERFs (trans-exclusionary radical feminists) use to try to argue us out of existence.”

At its best, this anthology offers captivating personal essays, astute movie analysis, and lyrical prose that expands (and compli- cates) conceptions of queerness. In the moments it falters, authors rely on a tenuous link between the film they are purportedly discussing and a disconnected personal narrative. These low points are few and far between, however, and the quality of storytelling, prose, and analysis throughout the anthology more than makes up for occasional moments of disjointedness.

“It Came From the Closet” is a compelling read across the board — for those whose childhood was shaped by these cult classics to those whose horror movie consumption ends at the trailer — as much as it is an ambitious project to shift our conceptions of queerness and horror.

JANUARY 27, 2023 THE HARVARD CRIMSON ARTS 13

MUSIC EDITOR’S PICK COURTESY OF PARAMOUNT PICTURES

Concert Review: Modest Mouse Reminds Us Of The ‘90s

BY ASHER J. MONTGOMERY CRIMSON STAFF WRITER

I

ssac Brock, lead singer and guitarist of Modest Mouse, walked onto Roadrunner’s stage on Dec. 16 with a jean jacket and spiked hair, picked up his guitar, and began to perform a sloppy version of Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” When the crowd cheered, he laughed to himself and stopped playing. Then the set began in earnest. On tour to commemorate the 25th anniversary of their 1997 album “The Lonesome Crowded West,” the highly influential indie-rock band reminded the audience that they were grungy back in the day, and they still are. They may look slightly older and have bigger bellies, but that reckless teen spirit is still there.

like an alarm blaring. The band embraced the eccentricity of the song, acting as if they were teenagers once again.

The concert mixed nostalgia with a hefty dose of good humor. Simon O’Connor on the guitar wore long bangs in front of his face in a style oddly reminiscent of the 90s. Many newer fans who know them for their Indie Rock hits like “Float On,” a song they didn’t play at the show, were introduced to the grunge of Modest Mouse’s starting days.

The fifth song of the set, “Jesus Christ Was An Only Child,” featured acoustic guitars to highlight the folksy feel behind the lyrics. “Jesus Christ was an only child, he went down to the river and drank and smiled,” Brock and O’Connor sang together, Brock’s face turning redder with exertion as the song got louder.

he danced around in an unusual stepping type of salsa.

He danced like a middle aged man might if no one was watching. The lyrics were so random they could have been made up on the spot. But that could also have been the point. Regardless, his performance was unforgettable.

In “Doin’ the Cockroach,” the drummer, Jeremiah Green, held the chaotic song together, switching between quick and complicated rhythms at lightning speed. At one point, Green even took out maracas that he shook with one hand while he kept playing the drum set with the other.

‘BABYLON:’ HOLLYWOOD’S GLAMOUR AND UGLY SIDE note, not when they were focused on reminding everyone how grungy they are.

But it would be impossible to forget after this show. The song “Shit Luck,” started off with Brock screaming the first line of only four in the whole song. “This plane is definitely crashing,” he yelled. He leaned forward and slammed on the strings of the guitar at his shins. Then, as he stood up, he brought the guitar up to his face and played with his teeth, his mouth eating the strings.