a biweekly column
by michelle ampofo ‘25
managing editor
Seduction
warning: gore, violence, sexual violence
Before break, I was sitting in the Davenport library and saw a band of crows that were fighting over a flower that looked like a piece of bread. The strangeness of this fight holds no importance, but the fact that a murder of crows happened to land in front of me felt fitting for this season, the season of Halloween. The sight inspired me, and if I knew how to write fiction, I would title my story “Seduction,” and it would be about a murder and a man.
The protagonist of the story would have a happy childhood, really. One cloaked in much love and affection. His mother would be a prima-donna and his father a fool. When he was a boy, that didn’t matter much, but as he grew older his respect for each dwindled. His parents met when they were young,
His father tried his best for his wife, but he’d always had a drifting eye. She knew this, and longed for someone to love her, to depend on her fully. Thus our protagonist was conceived, through deception. His sole purpose was to love. He was treated with a special affection, doted on regularly. No, I don’t think there’s been a love quite like it. They loved their son more than other parents loved their children. And in the night, yes, they loved him completely. He was their monument. They built him stone by stone.
Yet there was something strange about him – he often retreated to this place within himself. You would talk to him, and it was like no one was there. He began to enter this place more frequently. Sometimes, he would lie in bed unable to recount the happenings of the day: what he ate, what movie he had gone to see, the conditions of the weather. He lived someplace else, wholly removed. But sometimes, when he stood still, he remembered.
His father was a coward, a cuck.
His mother was a slave for attention, a hooker for love.
No, it wasn’t that.
Well, he had met her when they were young and from the beginning, she didn’t stand a chance. What started as something meaningless quickly became more—he was so quick with his attachments. It was something about her caresses (oh, how she caressed him so!), sometimes sweet, other times sour that always kept him on edge. Or how she looked at him, with what at first seemed to be genuine affection, but upon closer inspection was uncanny. It was the right emotion lined with something darker, wrong. Flipped like an object in the mirror.
There must be a reason why he put up with it because my, was she ugly. An ugliness neither inherited or self-made —an ugliness that just was. Further heightened by her self-neglect and lack of dignity. In fact, her presence often made his stomach churn. She often had food in her teeth, stained clothes, and a sour smell he didn’t quite agree with. But although no one’s prize, she was his and this possession was enough.
And he did care for her, and he did his best to do right by her. He only conceded to her and this was the cause of her incessant taunts. She wanted a real man, not a sorry excuse for it. Why couldn’t he stand up to her? Why did he still let her treat him this way, after all this time? Was he really that pathetic? My God, he was insufferable. She needed someone she could respect, someone who could handle her.
Well, one evening, he asked her to come over, wearing that purple dress he liked, at a specific time (“not one minute before or after,” he said). She was surprised and intrigued at his new found authority.
The blood was sticky. His eyes rolled back as he bludgeoned her. Apperception. The best memories are blurry, but oh how he swung and she danced. Gethsemane.
A groan, a tremble, a throb. It was a blood moon. The moon glossed over. The moon felt primitive. His surroundings darkened. Silence amplified. But inside— first a flicker, and then a flame. He felt warm, overcome. Something hardened, something lifted. His eyes widened, but it was hard to see. Bright white. Blinding white. Pure ecstasy. He had unlocked himself—what monstrosity. This was not his final form.
He cocked his head back and laughed—red, the shade of red only joy can bring. He was laughing, and it was red. A sticky red. She was red and he was red and it was hot. A burning red. The red was blinding. Oh my God, it was red. It’s getting hot now. The red engulfed him. The inferno now. A wicked red. God save us, what red. What a wicked, wicked red. The afflicter, the afflicted—we are all of these.
I’ve been told that flesh takes you on a journey when you eat it. The first layer of skin is tough and sour. This initial bitterness should not deter you. Nor should the smell. Though it seems foreign now, so unlike you, with time it will get easier. Humans are adaptable. You will soon reach sweeter meat. There is a lesson in this, but I will not extract it further.
There was blood on his shirt, his favorite shirt. It was a button down, off white, collar fit just right (he hated for it to be too loose or tight) and the sleeves fit snugly on his biceps. On his lip, it was sticky, not really sweet.
At his feet, a pool of blood. If he cared to look any closer, he might have seen a figure instead of his own reflection. On the other side, I was walking back from Bass at an ungodly hour of night—nearing the witching hour. I was on edge that night, afraid of even my own shadow. (You know that day, a couple weeks ago, when it poured lightning and rain?) It was dark and I was walking home alone, on edge, taken by this strange anxiety, I felt followed, hunted. Stuck in the imbalance. A brooding figure neared me; I tensed though it was just a man. I needed to calm down but the rational part of me refused to participate. While on the corner of York and Elm, I looked around, then down, entranced by a puddle so dark it could have been mistaken for oil. Again, I was on edge. Earlier that day, while studying at Davenport library, I had read an article about the murder of a nine year old girl. She was lured into a strange man’s basement, a lamb. The rest, unfit for poetic language. Afterwards, he hanged her by the collar of her blouse. How would her family recover from the grief? How could they? Trapped by her memory, they will have to live lives of pain and misery, locked in remembrance but not allowing themselves to forget. Scary.
I don’t need horror; this world is just enough.
But I suppose there is also a horror in this: us living as if we have dominion over ourselves; walking through life with the belief that nothing can touch us unless we give it license to. The hope that bad things are a condition of yesterday; that only good things await. But what’s the alternative? One can’t live life afraid of the dark.
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It’s not that I’m anti-Halloween, it just has never been my thing (though I embrace almost any opportunity to dress provocatively). Don’t get me wrong, I understand the appeal: the desire to live life as something other than yourself for a day, a day where chaos reigns supreme, a time to embrace the dark and the macabre without others blinking an eye. With that being said, it’s a little harder for me to understand people’s obsession with horror.
First, I find the ritual of going to the movies fascinating. The act of traveling to this place, selecting your favorite snacks, picking a seat with optimal view, and allowing yourself to enter this vulnerable, transfixed state, surrendering yourself to the happenings within the movie. Putting faith, hope, and trust into the movie—that it will ease some of your stress, teach you something, leave you changed in some way. It’s almost a religious experience, isn’t it? God lives in cinema.
But to partake in this ritual in order to watch horror, makes me a little uneasy. We can agree that it is a different experience to watch a horror movie by yourself or with others—most prefer the latter. But there is something strange about a group of people sitting down with the sole objective to watch a character’s pain and suffering. There is also a strangeness in the collective consumption, voyeurism, and enjoyment that a theater-goer gets from watching it (main characters of these movies are mostly female, so it is often an enjoyment of female pain). Additionally, there is an implicit policing of consumption when you observe something with a group. For example, what if you were in the theater, and the person next to you got an erection after seeing a mutilation scene? That would be disturbing, but should that response be indicative of that person’s character? Similarly, it would be inappropriate for someone to laugh during a murder scene, as specific scenes illicit a particular response. But if I was watching a scene in the movie Fresh and laughed when Sebastian Stan’s character gets his dick bitten off, would that make me a bad person? Because I did laugh during that scene– both times that I watched it.
But the scene, and the movie itself, didn’t necessarily feel real to me. And this is a critique that horror movies get quite often. What does it mean when a horror buff says they didn’t like a movie because it was unrealistic? Wouldn’t it be better for a horror movie to be unrealistic, to require suspension of disbelief? That way, we could assume the contents of the movie occurred in a different world, one we don’t live in (perhaps, a product of a different time and realm). Why is it that people want to believe that horrific things in these movies actually do occur?
Well, one argument is that many of these things actually do occur. Take “Dahmer – Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story,” the new Netflix adaptation that everyone is talking about. To me, there is something terribly cruel about the consumption of that show. While at work, some of my coworkers were discussing it, exchanging their thoughts. One of them said that some episodes were better than others and that she had to take breaks from watching because it was so intense. I’m sure both these things are true. But from the victim’s perspective, it is an utter shame to have your death made into an episode and then ranked and compared to the ones that happened prior because those deaths were better executed. And to have these people, who in the comfort of their own homes (and in their living bodies), not only watch your death for enjoyment but to be able to experience the worst part of your life in bits, to partake in your mistreatment, but have the ability to leave and come back for more whenever they feel ready is a cruel advantage.
Another argument is that horror is “just for fun,” that no character is real. I was talking to a friend about this, and we agreed that there should be an appropriate place to experience these (in any other context) negative emotions (ie. fear, panic, distress) that give us adrenaline. Similar to riding a roller coaster or playing a violent video game, we need places where we are able to choose to indulge with the knowledge that we are safe, not actually in danger.
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Read:
“I Thee Dread,” by Jia Tolentino in her book Trick Mirror: Reflections of Self-Delusion
The Age of Instagram Face | The New Yorker
Please Fire Jia Tolentino – The Paris Review
On Wednesday, a friend and I skipped class to go to the Jia Tolentino tea at Ezra Stiles. It was okay. I think a lot of her words felt empty to me. Though I like her work, I came into the talk with reservations already solidified. If you’re unfamiliar with her work, she is a staff writer in the New Yorker who skills in cultural criticism. My critique of her criticisms is that they are about everything. Nothing is safe. In the tea alone, she criticized the rising anti-work ethos (despite saying her dream is for her daughter to not go to college and live on a farm), simple living (despite saying her dream is for her daughter to not go to college and live on a farm), farmcore (despite saying her dream is for her daughter to not go to college and live on a farm), natural/organic leanings (despite saying her dream is for her daughter to not go to college and live on a farm), and private schooling (despite her bringing up how she almost went to Yale, but decided not to).
Funnily enough, I agreed with many of her critiques, but I am still abjectly against the act of vilifying, picking apart, and making thought pieces out of everything that people choose to indulge in. (I’m acutely aware of how hypocritical it is of me to bring up this point after I just criticized people who enjoy horror, but I’m going to continue anyway). I fully agree that cottagecore and other TikTok trends are stupid as fuck, but people need vapid things to attach themselves to in order to live. With the state of the world today, if a teenage girl finds some inspiration or hope from a silly TikTok trend, let her.
I guess the talk triggered a greater annoyance I have seen particularly on Youtube, where critiques and video pieces have been running rampant. I’ve seen critiques of the corset trend, people liking Euphoria, TikTok music, Lana Del Rey, Twilight, Lauryn Hill, true crime, Olivia Rodrigo, Emily in Paris, Depop, the “romanticize your life trend,” Gen-Z memes, Billie Eilish, femininity, the “girl boss” trend, femininity, the buying of lottery tickets, Target, the act of deleting old Instagram posts, and countless others. As one Youtuber, “Shanspeare,” put it, we have entered the “Era of the Critic,” and it is utterly exhausting. People should be able to consume harmless pleasures freely without it being hyper analyzed or made into a broader social/political/ethical issue, even if there is a basis to the claims being made. It should be noted that many of the things criticized in thought pieces and video essays are things that teenage girls gravitate to, yet another way to shame girls for what they enjoy.
I’ve attached two of Tolentino’s pieces that I’ve enjoyed — “The Age of Instagram Face” where she talks about how influencers on social media all look eerily similar, and “I Thee Dread” which is an essay in book about the marriage industry and how the institution of marriage does not favor women. I’ll admit, I fully read the “Please Fire Jia Tolentino” piece thinking it would be a critique of her work, but it is actually a rather generous interview, so read that too if you’d like.
I So Love Being Old and Not Married – The Paris Review
This piece consists of fragments from author Helen Garner’s recent journals. The entries are random and quotidian, but still interesting because they reflect another woman’s interiority.
Clarice Lispector: Madame of the Void
Another Lispector piece. Join the cult.
Happening by Annie Ernaux
Update: I was able to obtain some works by Annie Ernaux over break. I bought “The Years,” “Get Lost,” and “Happening,” and plan on reading them in order of their publication. I started with the latter because it surrounds the story of her illegal abortion when she was a 23-year-old college student in France. Her writing is real and raw (like her reviewers say).
Three parts of the book struck me in particular: when one of the doctors she went to gave her medication that prevented miscarriage (when she was under the impression it would aid in her abortion), how utterly mistreated she was during her illegal abortion and during the care she received at the hospital after it (a young woman at the hospital who decided to keep her baby was also mistreated—women can never make the “right” choice), and the scene where her and her roommate hold the four month fetus in their hands on the floor of their dorm’s bathroom. On page 23 of the novel, there is an excerpt on the terms of punishment for abortion at the time. Not only are women who have abortions imprisoned, but they are also required to pay a fine… because of course they are. People are wringed of their money and then promptly discarded; the government profits and depends on the “sins” of the people.
Quirkalities 1: On the Character of Sexual Allure – The Philosophers’ Magazine
A Question of… Desire – The Philosophers’ Magazine (About the general idea of desire)
Halloween—the day where women dress in as little clothes as possible and men dress in the uniforms of masculine careers (construction worker, police officer, military man, etc), all in the name of desire. The author of this essay analyzes Schopenhauer’s “The Metaphysics of Love,” which talks about the narrow margins of desirability. Several arguments are made: that people subconsciously choose who to fill attributes they lack (“small men seek large women; blondes love brunettes”), women between 18 and 28 are the most desired (elderly women “arouse disgust”), a deformed figure of any kind completely repels but “a strikingly beautiful stature can compensate all defects,” a woman should possess a “certain plumpness” and a “full female bosom” (but no excessive fat), an upturned nose is beautiful and attractive, “a pug nose mars all” (“The life’s happiness of innumerable girls has been decided by a slight upward or downward curve of the nose.”) Men, too, have a set of standards that determine their desirability (though of course, not as extensive). Men of 30-35 years are found the most attractive, younger men are not preferred in the same way younger women are. Women frequently fall in love with ugly men, but a weak man is repulsive. For both groups, there is an attraction towards romance that will lead to heartache and destruction (ie. femme fatale, womanizer). It’s all very interesting to think about.
Watch:
X dir. Ti West (2022)
Real fans of horror hate this movie with a passion (it’s really not a good movie, more camp than anything), but I loved it. The premise of a group of actors renting a farm in rural Texas in order to make a porno was enough to intrigue me, but I stayed for Mia Goth.
Jennifer’s Body dir. Karyn Kusama (2009)
I’ll be honest in saying that I’ve never watched this movie, but I support it wholeheartedly in that it revolves around men getting seduced and then brutally destroyed. I don’t feel wrong saying that; one point up for the girls.
Fresh dir. Mimi Cave (2022)
I’ve watched this movie at least three times now, and I haven’t gotten sick of it! The official synopsis is this: “The horrors of modern dating are seen through the eyes of a young woman who is battling to survive her new boyfriend’s unusual appetites.” I think it’s best to go in knowing only this, and it doesn’t disappoint. For me, there’s no way it could; I’m a slut for Sebastian Stan.
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Movie dir. Mike Nichols (1966)
A friend and I went to go see the production of this play at the Yale Rep two weeks ago. I watched the 1966 movie afterwards and it’s essentially the same— three hours worth of fighting, vitriol, and quite honestly the most toxic relationship I’ve seen in any movie I’ve ever watched. If you generally love chaos and want to leave a movie amazed but traumatized, this is for you. Truth and illusion, my friends.
Listen:
column three playlist: “seduction”
Rhiannon by Fleetwood Mac
Apocalypse by Cigarettes After Sex
Which Witch by Florence + The Machine
Criminal by Fiona Apple
Brooklyn Baby by Lana Del Rey
Dark in My Imagination of Verona
Pain by PinkPantheress
Maneater by Daryl Hall & John Oates
Oblivion by Grimes
(You’re The) Devil In Disguise by Elvis Presley
Cigarette Daydreams by Cage The Elephant
Dark Red by Steve Lacy
Sex, Drugs, Etc. by Beach Weather
Disturbia by Rihanna
Edge of Seventeen by Stevie Nicks
Angel of Small Death and the Codeine Scene by Hozier
Thriller by Michael Jackson
Slideshow At Free University by La Tigre
I Put A Spell On You by Nina Simone
Gods & Monsters by Lana Del Rey
Teenagers by My Chemical Romance
Unasked for advice:
There is something that you’ve been wanting to do but have held out on in fear that it will result in the negative. You are allowing your life to be dictated by fear, thus you are its slave. Turn away from fear and don’t look back, lest you become a pillar of salt. Conquer fear by making the choice to act. And if it is the wrong choice, make it anyway. Why? Because at least it’ll be your own. What’s the harm? One day you’ll die.
ta ta,
michelle
