In Defense of Offense

I have been working on Kill Crew recently, which is an attached sci-fi spin off of my sci-fi roman a clef Galaxia, both expected to be series (probably novella series) and out … whenever I say it will.

Kill Crew, I super love but if it were a film, it’s very NC-17. Sex, violence, stuff like that. I’m already duly aware it’s going to offend somebody.

And I actually am a fan of that.

Here’s the thing, I was born in 1987 so I was not brought up in the hyper-sanitized Friendly-For-Advertisers era of now. I came up in the Politically Correct Era, which is just White People Bullsh-t for: pretend to be a half decent person but you’re still evil to the core. Fake Civil, in other words. It’s also not real, btw. It isn’t “politically correct” to say Black with an upper case B or Black period – it’s accurate. It isn’t “politically correct” to say “transgender” instead of straight up singing “Dude Looks Like A Lady” at them – it’s accurate. And both examples are humanizing – because they’re about humans and humans who have had extremely long histories (including merged, because Black trans people exist, hello) of being dehumanized. Just say you’re a terrible person, hate to be anything else, and get over it, good gods. It looked fake then, it looks fake now. And I don’t tend to care much for fake civility because let’s face it, it’s not genuine, now is it?

I get that some of the content in Kill Crew will be offensive but I’m glad that it is. Kill Crew was designed to be a release valve for me and Galaxia is vent art – they both are. For those who slept through literature class or AI-brained it the entire way, roman a clef is a type of memoir. I’m not sanitizing things that actually happen in the real world. If you don’t like it, don’t whinge to me, try your local government official and the systems you live in. Rape culture is real. Racism is real. Abuse is real. Misogynoir is real. And most people rather uphold it than examine it and the part they play in it, even if it is just lobbing “just a joke”. Kill Crew isn’t a trauma dump series, it follows four space pirates who are extremely ok with killing and all the things that pillagers do in actual real life, and are glib about it. It’s essentially following the villains of a story and I never been the type to make good Bad Guys. I really like the fact it’s shaping into a very raunchy work. Plus, I have work that isn’t so messed up so it isn’t as if this is all that I have.

I think that offensive things do play a role in media. I mean media already likes offensive. American Pie, Austin Powers, Duke Nukem, Borat – and those are old school references – but note who it offends and who it laughs with. If you’re a White straight cis guy, these are awesome films and you just need to learn how to take a joke. But when Dave Chappelle had a skit – not movie or full length feature, a skit – of a pimp going back in time to shoot a slave owner, boldly and directly, guess who got offended? The White folks. Chappelle is quoted with saying “apparently no one thought that was funny”. No one White did, but it’s a lot of Black folks’ favorite skit, however. But when you put major value on Whiteness, bs like that happens. And at least the pimp was shooting an actual bad person (he owned people, plain and simple), the bigger movie examples above were based on targeting people who weren’t usually bad, just existing. If it punches down on historically marginalized people and histories, that’s somehow “fun” offensive but if it punches up, or even jokes about revenge on historical oppressive people, time to have a meltdown about “going too far”.

I’m from Baltimore (I’ll also be at the Baltimore Book Festival on Sept 19, for a panel held by Charm City Books, details available) and for me, I think a lot of Baltimorean culture is based on basically being honest, even to a crude degree. We literally have John Waters. (And Luigi Mangione.1) He’s considered the king of the obscene. And I actually like it. And, surprisingly, so does my super Christian mom. He’s her yardstick of “obscene”. As in, if it is more gross than what John Waters does, it’s incredibly unacceptable. If it is in John Waters-land, it’s plainly unacceptable but she’ll be begrudgingly ok with it…ish. If it is from John Waters, he’s unacceptable but, hey, he’s from here. I remember when he said that an award didn’t mean much to him, someone vomiting in the movie aisle was his award because that was a direct effect, no panel of stuffed shirts and talking heads needed (not David Byrne from The Talking Heads, but he grew up in Baltimore, too. Same as it ever was, amirite?). And I’ve adopted the same. Literature awards are hella White and get major upset when it isn’t [link] to a degree it is surprising they’re not embarrassed of so chances of me getting one is already slim. But visceral reactions aren’t panel-discussed or voted on, they happen. When one of my friends read Kinetics, they told me that they were about to visit my apartment with cuddly blankets and their soft cat in tow and asked how was therapy going. That’s a reaction. And sometimes, I rather just disturb others.2 Because why not?

My personal rule is as long as the art isn’t punching down on the historically marginalized, all is good. Because offensive isn’t just simply offensive, it also comes into play who is offended, sometimes who is doing the offending and why. The reason a lot of racist and sexist movies got play for the longest time is not because they didn’t know it was offensive. Getting a nasty letter from the NAACP or being a talking point of Gloria Steinem is pretty hard to ignore – it’s that they didn’t care. They’re lying big time (or “bigly” as one person they idolize would say) if they say they didn’t know, they did. It’s they didn’t care. Because they’re not White, they’re not male, they’re not straight, you get the drift – and thus, “Who Cares What You Think?” Heck, I remember when Miss Teen America and Miss America contestants talked about Trump strolling through dressing rooms while getting ready, from the 90s to whenever people started taking stuff like that seriously, 2016-ish, now-ish? That was laughed off as “well he owns the place and who wouldn’t like to see half-nekkid pretty girls, you’re just being a dumb feminazi. Why else do you think you’re there? To solve world hunger? For looks, sweet-cheeks. You’re pretty, he’s attracted to pretty, you’re at a beauty show, what is not making sense?” That’s offensive behavior but since a rich White dude did it, it was painted as fine. It would have only been dangerous and offensive if it was a guy of color because those people are born criminals.3 Sooooo, it’s not about the “oh, they can’t take a joke”. That offensiveness gets debated for. So if that’s fine and debated for and given a “we’ll just say ‘we didn’t know’ when its later” stamp of approval, I ought to be fine, no matter what I write.

It’s ok to be fairly crude4 but usually it’s used as a defense mechanism towards upholding messed up stuff. Not poking fun at it, not chipping away at it, nothing. It’s basically the cement mortar and spackle paste of Oppressive Systems: The Society Edition. Think of every mean joke or reference you have heard about trans people or queer people in general, for example. Or disabled people, especially the mentally disabled. It’s meant to paint them in an awful “you shouldn’t help them or feel sorry for them” or “aren’t they just freaking useless?” kind of way – but make it funny! It’s crude and funny but at the core, it’s meant to make you desensitized to when they actually get murdered, treated poorly – or built to make you think, “probably deserved it”. However, try to think of some jokes or references of cis people or abled-bodied and neurotypical people, the kind jokes that makes you start to distrust them and even be disgusted of them existing. And I mean super common, this-is-tossed-around-all-over jokes. Probably can’t think of any, right? There’s a reason for that (one being your taste in comedy is crap). Because of who it would be crude to. “Cis people oh noes, that’s almost everybody! Why should they be made fun of?” because why not? If anti-trans jokes are regarded with a “because why not? I’m just being funny”, then shouldn’t it cut both ways? But it doesn’t. “Abled-body or the neurotypical, what’s wrong with them to deserve being made fun of?” Same thing. It reinforces the idea of “A is Right but B is Wrong”. Not to mention, when stuff like that gets said, it’s usually out of the “Oh no! I respect everybody!” crowd5

A lot of John Waters’ works are objectively crude – they literally have scat humor (real poo!) and a living chicken was used for a sex scene … and the chicken didn’t survive it – but they also poke fun at the status quo. Whiteness, cis-ness, straight-ness, Christian-ness, what is “okay” and what is not. The running joke in Baltimore is that he’s the only person who knows every obscenity law here because he’s been hit with them all. The city sees him as a nuisance, The Baltimore Sun loves going “dear god, he’s got a camera, what degenerate filth will he make next?” across several articles and columns. No matter who is the the mayor, they will be concerned of standing anywhere near Waters. But the thing is, he’s a very tall, skinny man that could probably be blown over by a stiff breeze and is easy to startle (I did it twice, not on purpose ;_;). If you bring up “Pink Flamingos”, he smiles. Bring up “Hairspray” and he doesn’t.

Again, he’s my mom’s barometer of the literal edge of marginally acceptable and she still finds him obtuse and amoral. I still lived on the same street he did (different block, he was closer to Druid Hill, I’m not). I’m still familiar with his works but from a local perspective. He may make people eat poop and bink chickens for the big screen but I respect him more than the folks who made The Wire and one of the two people responsible for that show was my sister’s high school English teacher. Waters’ humor is a bit standard Baltimorean humor – which is a bit crude. Then again, you sit here and put up with some of the bs we do and see how nice you are at the end of it. If you want your ego to get a blowjob, go to DC and if you want it spectacular, stand on Capitol Hill. Here, it just may wind up face down floating in the Inner Harbor. That’s reflective in Waters’ works. It’s also reflective in our club music. We will play anti-police club songs in front of police, that’s pretty standard. There’s even a police dance we have, which also mocks police and their corruption (because they’re very corrupt here, even the FBI didn’t know who to notify when they investigated and thus had to do so in secret – btw, City Hall likes to pretend they have zero idea how the heck that happened, very ” it wasn’t like that a minute ago” 😒). We’re not really the “okay, bestie!” type city. Our stats don’t really reflect it either. Even our murder rate has a 30% closure rate6, but it’s painted as a cheery, “we’re on the up and up” picture. It’s, well … offensive.

It’s interesting, in a “are you all freaking joking?” kind of way, that Waters’ is offensive but I have seen material that would make his works pale in comparison. But since that material was starring White guys doing White guy things like violence and rape towards women, vicious and sometimes violent homophobia, but it’s all played off as the cool thing to do. There’s homophobia, gender violence, male power fantasy, the standard fare. But because those get okayed by people who shouldn’t have so much power to say what is or isn’t ok – a point that gets made by the documentary “This Film Is Not Yet Rated” (it’s a super White film but it makes a point) – then it’s “offensive but funny”. But Chappelle having a pimp shoot a White guy for doing slavery nearly got his show taken off the air. And “The Boondocks” caught heat very regularly. I actually remember watching John Waters’ “A Dirty Shame” not too long ago, a film I had never seen when it came out, partly because of its NC-17 rating and I was a teen at the time and partly because my mom doesn’t mind talking about John Waters but watching his stuff is a whole ‘nother ball game. It was surprisingly tame to me, as far as John Waters works go. No chickens were harmed in the making of the film and it basically was an art film glossary of different, lesser-known kinks, such as sploshing/food kink. If anything, it was like the creators of the game Orgynizer sat in the theatres and went “WE HAVE AN IDEA FOR A GAME!”7 I think perhaps the most objectively offensive scene in there was probably the bottle grab/nursing home scene but even that was pretty tame in comparison to Waters’ past works. In American Pie, which came out roughly the same time, there was a guy actually porking a pie on a kitchen island, with his pants fully down – y’know, actual food kink in action. At least the sploshing lady in “A Dirty Shame” was fully clothed. That American Pie scene was played for laughs. And became a popular movie that still lives in the American cinema imagination.

All that is part of why, even tho I recognize my work Kill Crew is going to have some offensive material hard-coded in there, I’m happy with it and still plan on putting it out. Yeah, it’s bawdy and raunchy but that’s exactly the way I like it. Plus, I have works that aren’t so hair-raising so it’s not like readers don’t have options. I have tame work, I have not-so-tame works and I have works that reflect the fact I came from the same city John Waters did (and educated CEO killers :3 ). And it will have it own unique content warning page most likely. It’s why I use them, so I can put in some seriously ungodly sh*t in there. Because, hey, I warned you.

  1. Born in Towson but attended school in Baltimore and parents were from Baltimore, I believe. Not gonna lie, with his rich kid background, I’m a little surprised but I guess he finally figured out what poor folks usually say to the wealthy and the wealthy don’t like to believe until it happens: money can’t buy everything, not even health. Apparently he had to see that the hard way with his mom. Oh wellz. Rich kid on rich kid violence, I guess lol ↩︎
  2. Kinda. I actually get super apologetic when people tell me my books – which a few are horror – frightened or disturbed them. I’m a dichotomy, meh 🤷🏿‍♀️ ↩︎
  3. Trump literally lives in litigation. He’s an actual convicted criminal. Several times over. Can’t even run a hat stand in New York. From rape to fraud. But even a White person with a rap sheet has a better chance at getting a job than a Black person who never had a run-in with the law ever. It’s not about criminality or White folks wouldn’t have voted for the rapey fraudster that has been openly tried in several states. It’s anti-Blackness and general racism, pure and simple. ↩︎
  4. Wow, you could almost taste the Old Bay and hear the club music in that statement. ↩︎
  5. They usually say that after chuckling out some remarkably disrespectful nonsense 🥴 And with the same cadence and volume as a surprised dude going “She said she was 18!” ↩︎
  6. As in “if you shot someone in the middle of the day in the middle of the street, you have a 70% chance of getting away with it, no problem”. ↩︎
  7. To Orgynizer: STOP ADDING LEVELS. I want my 100% Steam Achievement, Perfect Game badge to stay right where it is. I’ve lost it twice ;_; And the diversity as you play is starting to look a bit like a Klan meeting at a BDSM convention (which is also what a regular BDSM/kink convention looks like but still, knock it off) ↩︎

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