BLOG #11: ANTICHRISTS AMONG US

 

We are witnessing perhaps one of the grossest violations of federal law and habeas corpus in 21st century America. It makes me sick.

Not gonna wax poetic about how disgusted I am by the various raids happening in LA so I will just say: I hope that shit burns. Fuck ICE.

IF YOU ARE IN THE SOCAL AREA, see either marked or unmarked vehicles with ICE agents executing what you believe is a raid, write down any information (car make/model/color/license plate, cross streets, etc.) and CALL THESE NUMBERS DEPENDING ON YOUR AREA: 

Los Angeles: (888) 624-4752

CHIRLA: (213) 353-1333

Orange County: (714) 881-1558

ORALE(LBC): (562) 245-9575

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A couple weeks ago, it was announced that Maria Grazia Chiuri is no longer at Dior. Immediately I shared the news to designer and general pal Elena Velez via Instagram DM. She and I both reject more “traditional” kinds of feminism in the sense that we don’t really give a fuck about rules or social dogma aimed at getting women to work together, and instead would rather just be women who work together (see our work together here). Remember that Dior “We Should All Be Feminists” t-shirt from Spring/Summer 2017? That t-shirt communicates MGC’s central platform, essentially. Girls rule; I love women, but not enough to actually make clothes that fit them. That t-shirt is also a current RTW piece for Dior and is also now $1,150. LOL. 

So, I did do some primo Bible-cherrypicking to make this point. When I say MGC is the antichrist for women, I mean she is the Antichrist of Revelation, which I’ve learned is different than the term “antichrist” (which merely refers to people who do not accept the Father and Son and are thus anti-christ). The Antichrist of Revelation is also known as the beast: “The Antichrist of Revelation is the one who wants to be exalted and worshipped by man as God. From the beginning, Satan’s desire has been to be like God and to take all God creates for good and pervert it—to draw people away from God and to himself,” according to Love Worth Finding Ministries. I don’t think MGC set out to be seen like God and pervert it, but to make the analogy, I do think she set out to be Thee capital-F Feminist which fundamentally perverted the actual movements of and associated with feminism. Making a “We Should All Be Feminists” shirt that costs an insane amount of money is, to me, a mark of the beast. Branding feminism for high fashion consumption so literally, and trying to capitalize on that as some kind of calling card is proof of evil, to me. Anyways, I don’t even necessarily believe in God (?...maybe this is a future post) but you get the big idea. 

Stills from Antichrist (2009) by Lars Von Trier

Last week I revisited Lars Von Trier’s filmography, specifically starting with Antichrist (2009) to continue this biblical theme. Lars’ name is also an acronym (LVT), though he himself if not an antichrist like MGC. You can call this internalized misogyny and I will say it’s overt disdain for MGC who just so happens to be a woman. 

Antichrist is about a lot of things: loss, escape, fundamentally evil people who also really love to fuck, fundamentally depressed people who also really love to mutilate each other. For those who haven’t seen, you totally should, so here’s an incredibly brief and spoiler-free overview: grappling with loss, a couple (Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg) retreats to a cabin in the woods where supernatural forces link with depression-fueled psychosis, causing ruptures both spiritually and physically. The rest, you’ve simply got to watch to grasp. 

The first time I saw Antichrist, I was exhausted by it, formally. The classic LVT long-shot, painterly, slow-motion frame didn’t feel as artful as they dragged, cut in half by extreme violence and really gratuitous sex (unstimulated, might I add). The entire movie is like this, and while plot does unfold alongside character arcs and emotions in a way I find profound, it’s a really gnarly first-time watch. However, every time I rewatch this movie (this is my fourth time watching) I find more behind the pain. The violence isn’t as sadistic as it is revelatory, a darker side of human expression, but expressive nonetheless. It makes sense that LVT wrote this film while hospitalized for clinical depression in the same way it makes sense that this movie was considered an “abomination” at Cannes: feeling isolated sadness is a terrifying experience when made visual. LVT’s distinct directorial way of getting in touch with the salt of the earth, in this film, pours salt in mother nature’s axewound (yes, there is vulva in Antichrist), and from the hole births the idea that anguish is the most nascent human emotion. This film is depression, in all its sadomasochism. 

That same year at Cannes, Charlotte Gainsbourg won Best Actress. People still debate the misogynistic/anti-misogynistic messaging in Antichrist so it feels apt to include that LVT-facilitated win for #women. Gainsbourg is a phenomenal actress so, well deserved.

From re-regulated merchandise, 2025, Sofia Leilani Kugelberg

Two Fridays ago, my artist friend Sofia Leilani unveiled re-regulated merchandise, a somewhat guerrilla style installation staged inside one of Eric Adams’ padlocked weed-dispensary/delis. re-regulated merchandise is made up of one central piece, a giant inflatable poly bag filled with weed-deli goods—candy bars, rolling papers, whippet cartridges, condoms, gum. Audience members could try and enter the space to find little room to breathe, the space almost entirely filled by the overly inflated bag so swollen it pushed up against the ceiling’s gaudy chandelier. In the storefront’s front windows were razorblades meant to suggest puncturing the structure, which attendees later did, looting the goods from inside the bag. The twist: almost all of it was expired. 

While I missed the one-night-only installation because I was on a not entirely unfortunate date, I had the chance to link with Sofia the next day to see what was left. Upon entering the former “illegal” smoke shop, I was faced with the dregs of the slashed open bag, piles of snacks on the ground, some non-perishables stacked on the counter for later. Sofia and a few friends she’d enlisted as the cleaning crew milled about tidying. To my shock, there was a nearly untouched refrigerated section of various bevs like Vitamin Water and Gatorade and Calypso tea, all expired for at least a year. I asked Sofia why, and she told me about Eric Adams’ Operation Padlock to Protect, and order initiated in 2023 to shutter all illegal smoke shops in NYC to “protect” the youth from drugs. The plan was to padlock these establishments, clear them of contraband, and reopen them to the public as normal delis. However, for some shops such as the one we were standing in, the store’s merchandise was left in waiting well past its expiration date. The stuff Sofia put inside the inflated bag is her way of intervening on objects otherwise left to die. She blows them up in a bag as a means of re-regulating goods deemed illegitimate. Conceptually, this is fire. Formally, it’s guerrilla, rough around the edges, lived-in; the best way to articulate the concept. While my date wasn’t disappointing I wish I was there for the one-night-only exhibition. Re-watching Antichrist made me think of Sofia’s show in the sense of recontextualzing a bucolic garden of Eden-like escape as somewhat of a wasteland, full of detritus.

Some of the loot Sofia and her friends kept before it was destroyed.

When the antichrist comes, or you take the padlocks off of stores whose goods were left for dead, what is left? A galaxy rolling tray, gum, and bath bombs? Willem Dafoe’s mutilated prosthetic dick? A “We Should All Be Feminists” t-shirt? All of these are legitimate propositions at what could happen at the end of the world. 

Today, ICE raids bear the mark of the beast. If, in Christian belief, people are to worship God and condemn actions that resemble his will yet wield it against others to garner favor (Trump and any other anti-immigrant constituents), ICE raids are the work of the antichrist. They are marketed to protect America as a sovereign state, but are really just repeated violations against America’s founding principles, as elucidated by the Constitution. Borders and walls do not protect America, they protect an idea of America, a white, Christian-Catholic-white-picket-fence one. That is wack. 

I’ve been hearing a lot of really insane shit from Dems/center-lefties/libs about this issue, saying “immigrants are the backbone of our society! Who do you think built your house?” and I find that morally apprehensible. To value someone who immigrated to this country on what kind of labor they can provide as a means of “sure, let em stay!” reduces that person as being good for nothing except labor, stripping that person of the right to their own human potential so long as they are an immigrant in America, not an American-born citizen. Be so fr. 

When Trump said “Mexico isn’t sending its best,” from his initial 2015 presidential campaign, he wasn’t just being clickably racist, he undermined a fundamental principle of 21st century America: people have the right to choose where they want to live. You don’t have to offer something to be able to move. We as people are multilocal. Being alive is not a meritocracy where you must offer services to justify living in a country that you were not born in. I mean, if we were speaking on usefulness, we’d deport all infants until they reach a state of self-sufficiency. I digress. 

That is our wasteland. One where as Americans, our government thinks it can tell people that they are illegal. I rebuke this, and I hope you do too.