CULTURE AND AESTHETICS
EDITED BY KERRI KILMER AND RACHEL SPENCER
In Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis (2024), aesthetics supersede culture in defining and building a ‘better’ future and world. That is, the highly stylized and visuals-led film tends to smother any cohesive cultural critique that Coppola attempted throughout its two-hour-eighteen-minute runtime. Whether his flat critiques were valid is another matter entirely. While Coppola’s film offers a flailingly myopic read, the authors reviewed in this section broaden our conceptions of how culture and aesthetics collide, merge, and reinvent each other into an expansive and more equal future.
First, T Lim reconsiders the moral, racial, and gendered valence of laziness in her review of Revolting Indolence: The Politics of Slacking, Lounging, and Daydreaming in Queer and Trans Latinx Culture by Marcos Gonsalez. From the liberatory “lackadaisical shimmying and chit chattin” on the dance floors of Paris is Burning to the poetry of Justin Torres filled with sensual images of “worm-filled mud” and daydreaming, Gonsalez vibrantly brings the “liberatory indolence” at the intersection of queer, trans, and Latinx identity to life.
Second, Alex Keith describes the artistic and archival interplay of Jill Dawsey and Isabel Casso’s For Dear Life: Art, Medicine, and Disability—an accompaniment to the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego’s exhibit of the same name. A curated mediation on disabled artists and their work, this collaborative work emphasizes that medicine, disability, and survival necessarily frame the experience and creation of art and identity.
Third, Jessica Peña Torres’s review of Choreographing Mexico: Festive Performances and Dancing Histories of a Nation by Manuel R. Cuellar brings focus on the interchange of folklórico and other dance traditions with questions of nationhood, class, and identity. The first scholarly monograph of its kind in English, Cuellar’s work celebrates the integral role that Afro-Mexican, Afro-Caribbean, and Indigenous peoples of Mexico play in the country’s development of what it means to be Mexican.
Finally, Samantha J. Ceballos unpacks the significant contributions of Latinx creatives in the world of television. Reviewing Latinx TV in the 21st Century, edited by Frederick Luis Aldama, the authors navigate critical topics in Latinx television media, such as mental health taboos (and how to refute them), the depiction of Latinx immigrants, and how to celebrate Latinx joy and humor.
What all these works and reviews share is a common belief in the vital role aesthetic and cultural experience has in shaping both our daily lived identities and also the worlds we wish to see. In a seemingly infinite world of creative potentiality, all the writers, artists, dancers, and creators described here see art as a critical revolutionary tool for both the self and the communities they build. In contrast to the monomaniacal lone hero of Coppola’s film, who seeks to create the world in his own image at the expense of others, these artists and reviewers offer a way forward into the future with a complementary and shared vision of art and humanity.
