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Recent diary entries
Poetry Weekly: Alina Pleskova, Marwa Helal, June Jordan
Feb 19, 2019
Poetry Weekly: Alina Pleskova, Marwa Helal, June Jordan
Feb 19, 2019
Feb 19, 2019
20 Free and Magical Ways to Engage in Self-Care
Feb 15, 2019
20 Free and Magical Ways to Engage in Self-Care
Feb 15, 2019
Feb 15, 2019
11 Valentine's Day dates for badass witches
Feb 14, 2019
11 Valentine's Day dates for badass witches
Feb 14, 2019
Feb 14, 2019
Survival and Truth: How Tori Amos' Under The Pink Changed My Life
Feb 8, 2019
Survival and Truth: How Tori Amos' Under The Pink Changed My Life
Feb 8, 2019
Feb 8, 2019
Poetry Weekly: Monica Youn, Traci Brimhall, Rosebud Ben-Oni
Feb 6, 2019
Poetry Weekly: Monica Youn, Traci Brimhall, Rosebud Ben-Oni
Feb 6, 2019
Feb 6, 2019
How Do We Name Ourselves?
Feb 4, 2019
How Do We Name Ourselves?
Feb 4, 2019
Feb 4, 2019
Your February 2019 Horoscopes Are Here
Feb 1, 2019
Your February 2019 Horoscopes Are Here
Feb 1, 2019
Feb 1, 2019
Kristine Esser Slentz on Polyamory & Being Raised as a Jehovah's Witness
Jan 30, 2019
Kristine Esser Slentz on Polyamory & Being Raised as a Jehovah's Witness
Jan 30, 2019
Jan 30, 2019
Poetry by Brandon Amico
Jan 29, 2019
Poetry by Brandon Amico
Jan 29, 2019
Jan 29, 2019
A Grimoire For Self-Love: A Peek At Light Magic for Dark Times
Jan 28, 2019
A Grimoire For Self-Love: A Peek At Light Magic for Dark Times
Jan 28, 2019
Jan 28, 2019
5 Books I Had No Idea Existed and Must Find at Once
Jan 28, 2019
5 Books I Had No Idea Existed and Must Find at Once
Jan 28, 2019
Jan 28, 2019
Vi Khi Nao Reviews Diana Hamilton's God Was Right
Jan 25, 2019
Vi Khi Nao Reviews Diana Hamilton's God Was Right
Jan 25, 2019
Jan 25, 2019
Poetry Weekly: Omotara James, John Murillo, E. Kristin Anderson
Jan 25, 2019
Poetry Weekly: Omotara James, John Murillo, E. Kristin Anderson
Jan 25, 2019
Jan 25, 2019
Brandon Amico on Why He Doesn't Want to Be Unreachable
Jan 24, 2019
Brandon Amico on Why He Doesn't Want to Be Unreachable
Jan 24, 2019
Jan 24, 2019
How To Become A Freelance Writer: On Starting Out, Discipline & Ritual
Jan 23, 2019
How To Become A Freelance Writer: On Starting Out, Discipline & Ritual
Jan 23, 2019
Jan 23, 2019
Bewitched: When The Velvet Underground Cast an Identity Spell on Me
Jan 23, 2019
Bewitched: When The Velvet Underground Cast an Identity Spell on Me
Jan 23, 2019
Jan 23, 2019
DIY Gift Ideas for The Magical, the Dreamy, and the Crafty
Jan 22, 2019
DIY Gift Ideas for The Magical, the Dreamy, and the Crafty
Jan 22, 2019
Jan 22, 2019
Review of Christine Stoddard's 'Water for the Cactus Woman'
Jan 22, 2019
Review of Christine Stoddard's 'Water for the Cactus Woman'
Jan 22, 2019
Jan 22, 2019
Poetry Weekly: Vanessa AngΓ©lica Villarreal, Jessica Morey-Collins, Justin Karcher
Jan 18, 2019
Poetry Weekly: Vanessa AngΓ©lica Villarreal, Jessica Morey-Collins, Justin Karcher
Jan 18, 2019
Jan 18, 2019
June Gehringer Tells Us What She's Afraid Of
Jan 16, 2019
June Gehringer Tells Us What She's Afraid Of
Jan 16, 2019
Jan 16, 2019
5 Film & TV Inspired Nightgowns You Need
Jan 15, 2019
5 Film & TV Inspired Nightgowns You Need
Jan 15, 2019
Jan 15, 2019
Music Friyay: Stevie Nicks, Sun Ra, Hamilton Leithauser
Jan 11, 2019
Music Friyay: Stevie Nicks, Sun Ra, Hamilton Leithauser
Jan 11, 2019
Jan 11, 2019
Poetry by Fatima-Ayan Malika Hirsi
Jan 10, 2019
Poetry by Fatima-Ayan Malika Hirsi
Jan 10, 2019
Jan 10, 2019
Poetry Weekly: Kay Ulanday Barrett, Devin Kelly, Elizabeth Metzger
Jan 9, 2019
Poetry Weekly: Kay Ulanday Barrett, Devin Kelly, Elizabeth Metzger
Jan 9, 2019
Jan 9, 2019
Poetry by Karina Bush
Jan 8, 2019
Poetry by Karina Bush
Jan 8, 2019
Jan 8, 2019
Hillary Leftwich on Happiness & Why It's Important to Love Childhood Films
Jan 7, 2019
Hillary Leftwich on Happiness & Why It's Important to Love Childhood Films
Jan 7, 2019
Jan 7, 2019
This Moon Playlist Is Everything You Need
Jan 4, 2019
This Moon Playlist Is Everything You Need
Jan 4, 2019
Jan 4, 2019
Poetry Weekly: Chloe N. Clark, Faylita Hicks, Saretta Morgan
Jan 3, 2019
Poetry Weekly: Chloe N. Clark, Faylita Hicks, Saretta Morgan
Jan 3, 2019
Jan 3, 2019
Jordan Rothacker On the Apocalypse, Jared Kushner, and Daily Rituals
Jan 2, 2019
Jordan Rothacker On the Apocalypse, Jared Kushner, and Daily Rituals
Jan 2, 2019
Jan 2, 2019
Your January 2019 horoscopes are here
Jan 1, 2019
Your January 2019 horoscopes are here
Jan 1, 2019
Jan 1, 2019
Via BBC Films

Via BBC Films

The Dandy Monster: 3 Films Of Fateful Foppery

November 23, 2016

BY MONIQUE QUINTANA

The term metrosexual is often used to describe a modern man that takes an interest in the latest fashions. The term dandy is much more decadent and carries with it the gravity of male fashion politics. The dandy is often shunned and/or vilified to make way for a society’s dark scheme. These men are often ridiculed due to gender expectations, and this public shaming is often explored and examined in art. 

In film, dandies are often made a spectacle to teach their communities a lesson. As we see in the following three films, men who succumb to the decadence of glamour often pay a large price for their vanity.

Via Warner Bros.

Via Warner Bros.

DANGEROUS LIAISONS (1988)

John Malkovich is masterly as Valmont, who manipulates his way into the bedrooms of beautiful women with the help of the dazzling Marquise Isabelle de Merteuil, played by Glenn Close. Valmont has made an art of making other people suffer and he lacks for nothing when it comes to trendy French fashion. The opening scene of the film is a kaleidoscope of foppery. Valmont has male servants that dress him in opulent textiles and powder his wig and face to a deathly alabaster hue.

RELATED: How Horror Movies Help Me Cope with Anxiety

The film also stars Keanu Reeves as the very poor musician boy, Le Chevalier Raphael Danceny. On a different social stratum than Valmont, he doesn’t get custom made wigs, but rather, styles his dark brown hair to a dewy innocence. He’s so beautiful, he’s painful to look at. His modest fashion marks him as the foil to the depraved Valmont, who must find redemption through the love of a woman. As the film progresses, we see Valmont tragically unravel due to a vanity that he cannot control.

Via BBC Films

Via BBC Films

WILDE (1997)

This biopic explores all the delicious decadence of queer Victorian London.  Oscar Wilde is very easily the poster-boy of dandy fashion and Stephen Frye plays the Irish-born novelist and playwright with a subdued fabulousness that is always eclipsed by warmth, charm, and intellect. On screen, he is a perfect pair with his young lover, the rich brat, Lord Alfred β€œBosie” Douglas, played with dazzling intensity by Jude Law.

While Boise is fascinating to watch, he is easy to loathe. Wilde is the heart of the film. His large overcoats allude to both his flamboyance and his vulnerability. While β€œBoise” often wears his boyish straw hats and flashy pastel suits, he also dons black and white tuxedos, revealing the fact that he must turn his gentleman switch on whenever the status quo and his illustrious family, requires him to do so. Wilde is never too far from his dandy aesthetic. Like the cane his taps along the London streets, he is always grounded in his convictions.

Via BBC 

Via BBC 

BYRON (2003)

Byron is another biopic, a made-for British television film. It’s the immense story of a fashionable, yet important Romantic poet. While the real life Byron was rumored to wear his dark hair in rag curlers to create Botticelli-like curls, the figure is no less stunning in this film, played by a statuesque Jonny Lee Miller.

Byron’s story could be likened to the tragic rise and fall of the contemporary fashion designer, John Galliano, a man of fashion who was celebrated for his brazen risk-taking art and then condemned for his extravagant lifestyle and unfortunate atrocities against others.

The Byron film explores the poet’s controversial politics and relationship with his half-sister, Augusta Leigh, whom he was rumored to be involved with sexually. While it is unknown if the real-life Byron actually shared an incestuous relationship with Leigh, the film relays it as a truth and Byron is compelled to flee London and his detractors, in self-imposed exile. The rock star of  early nineteenth-century London, he is doubly shamed because of his ever-looming vanity. 


Monique Quintana is the Editor-in-Chief of the literary blogazine, Razorhouse. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from CSU Fresno, and her work has been published or is forthcoming in Huizache, Bordersenses, and The Acentos Review, among others.  She is a Pocha/Chicana identified mother, daughter, sister, lover, and teacher from California’s Central Valley.  

Β 

In Art Tags fashion, gender, culture
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TONIGHT, Feb. 13, Brooklyn/NYC: join @attheinkwell + Luna Luna for a reading on Self-Love.
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Readings by @lisamariebasile @joannacvalente  @stephanie.athena  @erinkhar cbwilhelm @lifestudies + hosted by @anditalarico!
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When: 7-9 p.m. WORD Bookstore, 126 Franklin Street, Brooklyn A sampling of a few of the poets who will be reading at the FEB. 13 event at @wordbookstores for @attheinkwell: @lifestudies + @joannacvalente + @lisamariebasile + @anditalarico (our lovely host) πŸ–€Mark your calendars! February 13, 7pm, Word in Brooklyn Want to get into the writing life? @lisamariebasile wrote a guide to starting your freelance life. All about working from home, money & logistics, ritual and mindfulness, finding clients, developing a portfolio, and negotiating your rates. πŸ™ŒπŸ½ Visit lunalunamagazine.com to read! Our very own @joannacvalente has some images up over at @yespoetry from their #Survivor photo series. (There are more at Luna Luna, too!). πŸ–€ We’re about 200 followers away from 10,000 (!!!!) over on twitter πŸ™ŒπŸΎ Pop over and follow us if you haven’t yet (we’re VERY active there, always having conversations and sharing work and engaging with all of you!) β€” were going to do a giveaway at 10,000. Thank you for the love, it means the world to us πŸŽ‰ LINK IN BIO! WANT TO CONJURE LIZZIE BORDEN? Of course you do. Preorder Lizzie, Speak by our phenom editor & poet @kaileytedesco via the lovely @whitestagpublishing. πŸ‘» The Luna Luna crew! Stay tuned for a reading announcement in February here in NYC. πŸ’œπŸ–€πŸ˜ˆ HAPPY NEW YEARS, friends and readers! πŸ™ŒπŸ½ The lovely @joannacvalente posted your January 2019 horoscopes today. Head over to lunalunamagazine.com to check it out. We have good vibes about this year + we hope you had a beautiful celebration!
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PS, as Joanna says: β€œA lunar eclipse will occur on January 20 during a full Leo moon is going to be emotionally intense. It will stir up feelings about belonging, identity, and love. It might not be an easy moon, but it will  help you shed any unnecessary habits and relationships. Get rid of what doesn’t serve you.” Start thinking about ways you can release those things or people β€” and what you’d like to focus on instead. πŸ’œπŸ™ŒπŸ½πŸŽ‰

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