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Aug. 17th, 2024 05:28 pmI've been thinking today - what is sleaze, visually.
(i like sleaze in my art, and i want to make it more obvious, more biting, more unavoidable. but it's hard to do that without pinning down what it is. otherwise if you as the artist are only pulling from specific decades in a blind way, you're still grasping at shadows.)
is it only grime? sexuality, but kink specifically? -> that feels too shallow and limited as definitions.
"knowing play" with the taboo? deception? -> closer, but doesn't quite feel like it encompasses all of the broad brush of sleaze. i think certian games beautifully capture a sleazy tone versus others, movies too. sometimes it's more about the setting, sometimes it's more about a specific relationship or a way that a person chooses to present themselves as. it feels very fluid of a term, just as much based in perception of others than it is the world. Vibes, if you will.
is it actually - and i use this word very specifically - the flip side of the definition to degeneracy*?
(* the word is most known as a fascist dog-whistle, which goes naturally with the perception mentioned above, of how sleaze gets bite as soon as somebody gets disgusted by what's being shown, but what if we lean into it? the sleaze, degeneracy- as subversion? finding the beauty in it?)
honestly the more i think about it, i like the sleaze/degeneracy flip.
sleaze-as-grime, as a city or bar that appears run down, falling down, some kind of shithole - but celebrating the pure life and vibrancy and defiance that can only be found there versus some five star restaurant. degeneracy/sleaze as a kink relationship whether it be M/s as a power tilt or somebody whose experience are crudely stereotyped as a porn tag... when the reality is so, so much more compelling, lived in, sensual, and genuinely erotic. (possession as a trope always felt inherently sleazy because it's real agency being robbed, mind-rape at its worse, even aside from the occultic trappings. authoritarians always dislike the occult because like the above it's outside of their control. )
i live in a body that some consider inherently sleazy. same thing with a dear who might identify as a transsexual. framed this way, it makes perfect sense why (given both of us are unavoidably labeled as degenerate by fascists). decay, rot, dis-normal - but then -- who defines the tyranny of normal?
without some visual flavor (and perception-as by one group/person) of degeneracy, sleaze has no bite. this also feels why some games can make their world as "grimy" and grimdark as they want to, it still doesn't hold a candle to some genuinely sleazy worlds that understand this connection. and i feel like it's quite hard if not impossible to understand how to subvert it as an appeal without owning it first like a chosen mantle with fiendish glee and play.
(i like sleaze in my art, and i want to make it more obvious, more biting, more unavoidable. but it's hard to do that without pinning down what it is. otherwise if you as the artist are only pulling from specific decades in a blind way, you're still grasping at shadows.)
is it only grime? sexuality, but kink specifically? -> that feels too shallow and limited as definitions.
"knowing play" with the taboo? deception? -> closer, but doesn't quite feel like it encompasses all of the broad brush of sleaze. i think certian games beautifully capture a sleazy tone versus others, movies too. sometimes it's more about the setting, sometimes it's more about a specific relationship or a way that a person chooses to present themselves as. it feels very fluid of a term, just as much based in perception of others than it is the world. Vibes, if you will.
is it actually - and i use this word very specifically - the flip side of the definition to degeneracy*?
(* the word is most known as a fascist dog-whistle, which goes naturally with the perception mentioned above, of how sleaze gets bite as soon as somebody gets disgusted by what's being shown, but what if we lean into it? the sleaze, degeneracy- as subversion? finding the beauty in it?)
honestly the more i think about it, i like the sleaze/degeneracy flip.
sleaze-as-grime, as a city or bar that appears run down, falling down, some kind of shithole - but celebrating the pure life and vibrancy and defiance that can only be found there versus some five star restaurant. degeneracy/sleaze as a kink relationship whether it be M/s as a power tilt or somebody whose experience are crudely stereotyped as a porn tag... when the reality is so, so much more compelling, lived in, sensual, and genuinely erotic. (possession as a trope always felt inherently sleazy because it's real agency being robbed, mind-rape at its worse, even aside from the occultic trappings. authoritarians always dislike the occult because like the above it's outside of their control. )
i live in a body that some consider inherently sleazy. same thing with a dear who might identify as a transsexual. framed this way, it makes perfect sense why (given both of us are unavoidably labeled as degenerate by fascists). decay, rot, dis-normal - but then -- who defines the tyranny of normal?
without some visual flavor (and perception-as by one group/person) of degeneracy, sleaze has no bite. this also feels why some games can make their world as "grimy" and grimdark as they want to, it still doesn't hold a candle to some genuinely sleazy worlds that understand this connection. and i feel like it's quite hard if not impossible to understand how to subvert it as an appeal without owning it first like a chosen mantle with fiendish glee and play.
