Status Updates From The Art of Cruelty: A Recko...

only a chapter in and i think to myself hmm i wonder if she’ll bring up Funny Games (1997)…and then you’ll never believe what happened next

This is the best art criticism/aesthetic theory book I've read in a hot minute. I'm sorry Maggie Nelson I was not familiar with your game

'psychoanalysis gets interesting when it shifts the focus from making us more intelligible to ourselves to helping us become more curious about how strange we really are. and so, i would argue, does art.'

"to live according to nuance."

Locked in on this more than I thought I would be often theory can circle the point but Nelson finds the point of each chapter early and keeps stabbing at it until it’s an open wound with the real revelation uncovered by each subsequent stab.