I met Countess Elizabeth Bàthory in the pub opening her leather trench coat, I was hoping she would flash me but she only wanted to flog me her DVDs. “Cult…” she gasped, between breaths of cigarette smoke that came trickling out from her mouth, and perhaps also her nose and ears... she seduced me through her last remaining eyelashes giving me the look of a smouldering cinepheliac... I could only oblige... My roommate stole my DVD player and I cancelled my MUBI subscription so I left 20 quid poorer and with so much plastic in my living room, watching YouTube Shorts. Where was the cinema? I saw her again sleeping under a piece of carpet in a corner of Peckhamplex. Timidly, I asked her, since I couldn’t watch the films myself, whether she would be able to summarise them for me. “I already have,” she said, “I’ve been thinking of you.” She touched my hand as she gave me a stack of papers, she was soft with an ancient twinkle in her eye. This new blog series for Hollywood Superstar is a transcription of her manuscripts.

Vol.1: The Bloodettes (2005), set in Yaoundé, Cameroon, in the year 2025. Director Jean-Pierre Bekolo said that he was bemused to hear from European critics that he had made "The First African sci-fi film". An outspoken critic of Western film festival imperialism and its obstruction of African cinematic self-definition, Bekolo addressed these concerns directly in his 2018 open letter to the Berlinale, which can be read here. Bekolo makes films for “places, not for audiences”. His films are about Yaoundé, where “funerals are the best parties,” and where the complete mimicry of the Hollywood horror genre is neither possible nor desirable. Instead, by attempting to make sci-fi in a place without a future - where bureaucracy is bloody and time is unstable - Bekolo’s process yields a film of “many impossible genres.” Shown last year at UCLA’s programme African Futurism perhaps this morbidly sexy political satire fits more comfortably in the tradition of The Gothic. Two vampiric sex workers deal with the dead body of a dictator by using their seductive/destructive bodies as modern agents of the pre-colonial women's secret society Mevoungou. For the enjoyers of neon-soaked streets, those who want to see women sexually dominate in ways scientifically unforeseen, those interested in hearing the hardest loop from a post-millenium soundtrack…

- Eileen Slightly

The diary of Countess Elizabeth Báthory: The Bloodettes (2005)

'My friend is tired - Your corpse is beautiful’

One moment the light and sounds were falling out of the shut door, and the next only a scream. It’s weird however used I am to women screaming it’s always a jump to hear someone you love do it. Into the room we fell from the ceiling, His body was cold, wet and stiffer then His cock just 2 minutes prior. How did a man write and direct this, how did he write us so right and real we not only demand respect from you, but love and respect ourselves. Anyway, more of that later. First we gotta find out what to do with this Goddam body. All these powerful men coming and cumming night in night out, they uphold an idea of this country and our cunts that frankly don’t work. You see this country is independent now, but the structure of hypocrisies was left behind, and these dogs of men desperately re-enforce it.

How can you describe our future when you’ve only focused on re-writing our history? We’re living in the future of 2025, listening to mevoungou, we know this dystopia like it avoids us. How can you expect us to dance and sit and look this goddam good just to belittle our native tongues? Yep you paid for this night, but we paid for this country with our asses.

“How can you film a love story where love is impossible?”

Quickly we lost his body either in a fridge or another scene, now alone with us three in this car and his head in a Sainsbury’s bag for life, we ride.

How can you feign sisterhood? I can’t even explain it, you would just have to experience it, or you just have to believe when I say it’s me + Majolie + Chouchou 4eva. To recognise the ‘I’ is to admit there is not only you but others, tonight I reject this self-alienation, there is no ‘I’ only ‘we’. Our blood has been sucked and un-sucked time and time again. Who said this story is one you can follow? You make us laugh. This is beyond narrative, beyond these structures and beyond the systems we’ve been raised in. Tonight we will get ready in our own time. Slow motion fight scenes in front of cars and hotel rooms remind me of the old kung-fu movies we’d mimic as kids, the powers of the east to battle the evils of the west. We shimmy around putting on knickers and skirts and swapping tops and blotting lipstick. Circles around the bedroom, I smile up at the posters they have in their room, especially the Scream (1996) one that I too have hung on the wall in the nook of my lair. Our beautiful bodies joyfully montage to the repeating melodies, we hum along. I feel the blood leave my veins and I’m light headed again. This is sacred.

Eternal powers, cgi, holding her hand. We sit to eat at the table in the room we cooked in. I sip lots of green potion from my comically large wine glass and transport back and forth from this alien planet to the moon. 2025 is here, I wear glitter on the lids of my eyes and the sky has the colours of love bites and wine.

“How can you make a horror film in a place where death is a party”

I slurped and sniffed too many letters this weekend and now the salt I lick from my fingers burns my tongue. He throws a punch and I knock him to the ground, my kung foo choreo is reminiscent of Bausch; the absurdity of reality. Blood takes a hold of him, clogging up his airways, choking him, he always liked it rough. He splutters red, Majorie reaches over and with her finger collects the thick dribble and smudges it onto her lip and cheek. My tummy grumbles. Only through destruction can we achieve such beauty...or something like that.

When their zippers are undone, their walls come down, they told us all their secrets and now we can use them to bury the body.
Stood around the open casket, orange plates holding cake. We exist in these spaces of the in-between and nowhere in particular. How did we get here? Was this before or after? It doesn’t matter, it just happens; how can we continue to make sense in plots and art when the real life makes no sense at all. Our world holds too many histories, projections and thingamabobs all too intersected to be told or sold separately. Christian Metz defines fiction as “seems-real” tonight we define fiction as “non-fiction”. The General's dead and we gossip over his body.

I spent this evening surrounded by my best friends, but whispering with Him, he too saw the words I was saying. They bled into his skin and he said little but wrote me the sort of lines I usually struggle to write. We performed so naturally that I wondered if we’d directed it together, or if he just had once been me as well as the director. I don’t know, it’s confusing, but as I said, isn’t that the point. This evening bled out of his skin and we appeared clean in a morning. I smiled on my way home, clambering into bed with my Majolie and my Chouchou, they sleepily engulfed me with body and blanket, and together we shall wait for tomorrow.

"How can you make an action film in a country where acting is subversive?”

Why the fuck are you still trying to answer me? There is no answer. Well I’m lying. There’s too many answers, a thousand truths and you still pick to pray to one. The lights flood out the opening door,
out the hotel bed sheets,
out the limousines window rolling down,
out the open casket,
out all the holes,
bam.
BAM. Light floods out over us all, and how can you still hide in a place with no shadows but your own?

As part of a regular blog, waitress-turned-writer-turned-political-savant Floss Crossley responds to baiting questions from Editorial. Crossley mediates on political apathy, slacktivism, dictatorial boardgames and the continually futile philosophising of micro-trends. WE THANK HER.

I just invaded China by candlelight. The electricity has run out.
I lost my card again so I can’t take money out so I can’t top it up at the store.
But it’s ok we have some old wax burnt down to a height too ugly for
tomorrow’s restaurant guests. My ears are warmed by an aviator hat I refer to
as Russian and my boyfriend’s upset his new jacket will be my new jacket now because he
thought he was a woman’s small. His six silver buckles are
creaking out a whistle from any slight movement.

My friend L starts shouting at my friend M. M’s dressed like he’s a
young Sci-Fi concubine- loose twisting linens and high-laced
leather boots. L is in a tall Prussian Cavalry hat, black, red
lining, gold stitching. M rolled a six, as he always seems to
do, and now his two green men are a massive threat to L’s
five orange occupying Scandinavia. My friend E is bored
and wants to actually hang out and talk and things. She has a
weed leaf and a Jamaican flag on the camo jacket I gave her
that came in the post for me, but I couldn’t have ordered. I’m
in a coat that makes my shoulders extend to far greater
lengths than our grandmothers could have hoped for us in
the 70s when they burnt their bras.

Most of my legs are covered, but the last button is only nay heigh so the two parts of the
coat swing open to reveal my cute little brogues. They
ripped open on a job interview- but luckily the interviewer
was an artist, so I got the job and he taped them up, but the
only tape he had was for his artwork, which was real camo
tape from Operation Desert Storm, but then I’m not sure if
I’ve got the job anymore because this was six months ago and
it’s subject to funding. But now, if I take Russia, I’ll have the
whole of Asia, and I can expand west. I’ll let L and M shout
and I’ll laugh every time they emasculate each other so that
they will make rash competitive moves and not notice how I
benefit from a weakened Europe.

While L dramatically rolls his dice, I check the light box in my hand. I click “See Post Anyway” to a trigger warning on Instagram. I see a dead child. Their face is obscured by blood. Below reads “liked by my ex boyfriend and others”. I know he’s liking the journalism, not the content, but it still reads in bad taste. I look around at the kitchen. The room is foggy. E’s clothes dry dangled over the kitchen cabinets. She did not manage to get all the dog period out of her new Polish T-shirt so her Black Water merch really is stained in blood. The heat of the room - the wet smoker’s breath locked in to keep out the winter wind - causes the tape which held an old photo against the fridge to finally give up its last grip. The glue’s dried out. The paper floats calmly down - the space heater’s upwards breeze allowing it to fall in slow motion- turning seductively from a mysterious food-stained blank side to reveal to me a long enough flash of text and garment- Melania in Kakhi:

I DONT REALLY CARE DO YOU ###

When S. Sweeney asked me to discuss the correlation between my milieu’s habit of wearing military regalia and the current accelerating political climate, I have to admit I was a little defensive. My reasons to be so I think are summed up in that historic image of the First Lady climbing the steps of air force one.

1. I. Trendy Military jackets are nothing new, we’ve only just moved on from last decade’s olive green high street revolutionaries.
2. II. I’m forced to address or even allude to the Indie Sleaze revival, and in a worse extension, I’m forced to address that a notable response of my friends and I - in the wake of mass global horrors - is as immaterial as a mild change in style and self-imaging.

   

One line of Research:

Vogue says:

Few garments better encapsulate the “I love typewriters and casual amphetamines” spirit of the indie sleaze than ornate martial jackets.

Even typing the words indie sleaze to say you don’t care about indie sleaze feels too much like an authorial legitimising of indie sleaze. (That's five
times I’ve said it now) I’ve always been
disgusted by the Hellp and the fit of their jeans. I
think it’s nice when my best friends waddle
around in tight denim and pointy sandals, but I
don’t want to see a plastic outline of what men
are lacking. I understand that the military jacket
is now often associated with the post-Celine
Opium for white boys vibe you see on evil “What
Are People At The X Gig Wearing” reels. And I
am uncomfortable with a restaurant coworker
assuming my association. But I do
own a typewriter and am prescribed
amphetamines. Separate to any contemporary
influence in this trend, there is definitely a bit of
newly or not-so-newly adults just dressing up as
what they thought a cool person looked like
when they were twelve. We have given up faith in new ideas of cool as they seem untrustworthy,
manipulated by all the microplastics and blue light rays we have since allowed to poison our imaginations.

There’s a very Gothic current to the English Memory of the World Wars. As a child on the 11th of November a melodramatic solemnness would take over me. In the shade of the town’s memorial monument, I’d display my plastic poppy on the square breast of my duffel coat with all the seriousness of a junior cadet. Staring up at the awesome obelisk, I would whisper a prayer for my troops and my country. The cold turning my little cheeks and fingers pink, I’d yearn for my father’s hand as he stood a foot behind me far away on the beaches of Normandy. I’d then wake up to shake my head at classmates slightly further along in puberty then I, their sweet perfumes smells and metallic crisp rattlings invading my total sensorial immersion in the still, calming fantasy of an old world war. At school, I took Evacuee Day so seriously that I was scouted by a teacher to play a sickly Victorian child in mortar and pestle workshops at the local community centre.

Maybe the hot nazis in New York think they’re being Libertines when they wear a trump hat and say retard. And the anorexic revival of this fashion is definitely not completely detached from their popularity. I do think, however, that a real fascist dress code is a lot more The Row than Slimane or Ali Express. People looked at Melania’s inauguration outfit and choked at the return to fascism. The Chanel style tailoring and colour scheme was certainly 1940s inspired, but I’d argue this is still cosplay over continuation. Georgia Meloni is a real fascist and she is one of the most normal looking people I have ever seen.

And, now, months after I began writing I’m still sitting around the table playing my board game. America and China are now in a trade war. Germany has promised to increase their military spending. I’m losing all of Europe, isolated in my island territory with a few guilty figures in the Middle East. They’re quietly well defended but unable to expand. It's Spring now so I wear a light Kakhi jacket I borrowed from L to dress as one of Gadaffi’s bodyguard for Halloween. I’ve paired it with a cute Glastonbury vibe dress just like TikTok showed me to. I want the white dress to feel like the end of the Hunger Games, I have my man and a child and a large expansive field with only birds over head. I'm not from District twelve, I'm from London and could probably do this all right now if I really wanted. But late at night I'd watch the Tesla satellites cross past the stars and know I’d still be in cosplay. The world is very loudly falling apart, and we know that we are not the real victims, nor the true perpetrators. We’re complicit through our impotency, we’re zombie soldiers dragged through comfortable trenches, hoping at least one of us could be a Sigfried Sasoon or Wilfred Owen.

Below are three accounts from the editorial team of their time at EU:RE/ London Woodstock/ Battle of the Bands. We hope that the multivalency of our narrative can put the ROCK back into baroque; as we shimmy up the Post-Drain pipe to the heavens of NEW BRITISH MUSIC. Here we are:

Cyberdog mini dress and over-the-knee black fishnet socks

The fever dream which was The Cause became a house party without a house and an afters before the gig had finished. The night was a mystical green room with a club attached underneath. In the upstairs bar people kept accidentally drinking the non-alcoholic strawberry cocktail puree, which looked like ketchup in a cup.

The downstairs was an apocalyptic onslaught of what I’ve started describing as ‘Post Drain’. I’ve noticed a scene of kids, maybe 5 years younger than me, glorifying what my early teen years were. They are a mismatch of drainer sensibilities, Sherlock fanfic era tumblr, proto influencer-Charlie Barker mixed with early 2000s; emo, mallgoth, gyaru, grime, Lolita and e-girl.

This is what I imagine all those magazines are constantly trying to coin as the godforsaken term Indie Sleeze. I fear they have it all wrong. Yes, these guys are wearing Isabel Marant sneaker wedges - but - they aren’t trying to glorify the downtown Hipster scene of the 2010s or the indie aesthetic; it’s a much more nuanced amalgamation of internet-core. They’re fans of the ”UK underground”, they listen to BassVictim, Fakemink, Fimi, Feng, with their forefathers being Lancey, Yung Lean, Lil B and Imogen Heap. It’s heavily attached to the music being made now, not just a replica of past counterculture-turned-aesthetic.

The atmosphere of the club, despite making me feel fucking old at the age of 23, was good. I had begun worrying that Covid had fucked up the 18 year olds ability to party, but, as I danced (pressed up against the security guards trying to control Maria’s quirked-up crowd) my faith was restored. They happily partied to Leo’s 10-piece hippie band WPDMT complete with Effie’s hand-knit headbands, bongos and a whistle, and I have to say I’m walking away glad the scene isn’t all Hedi Slimane and no fun.

DSquared dress. Chie Mihara heeled pumps. Sheer white knee socks
I was in the Green Room when someone turned to me to ask if I had a filter. “Wait”, she said, “You actually don’t look like the kind of girl who would have a filter”. This was my evening at EU:RE at The Cause.

The green room is filled with people one could categorise in a high-school-cafeteria fashion. There are jocks, geeks, nerds, indie twee revivalists, myspace-emos, dolls and hot-quasi emo cheerleaders, clean-girl goths and warring ex-girlfriend vinted warriors. This may be a Jaded London culture grab visuals factory. I’m failing the micro-trend test, but winning the battle of sobriety, stepping over the vomit-caked shower in the toilets.

WPDMT, led by WPDMT (original member) and Rowan Miles. She sang like an angel and dressed like one of the nubile young women in the cult from Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. I respected the female-to-male ratio in this band, having spent a substantial amount of time watching all-male bands perform music to kill yourself to. WPDMT had the cadence of a sugary-sweet edible - it made the sweaty pit of the crowd feel like a shroom trip at a millennial Greenpeace festival. Think the scene needs more of that.

Bassvictim starts, and half the venue turns on their heels toward the stage. Maria’s ethereal: sitting on her knees (thigh socks are taped up with double-sided tape), hands outstretched into the crowd like she’s Mother Teresa. I have an image of her in my mind like this from a couple of shows, a baroque painting, where she leans toward the crowd while everyone’s trying to get a piece.

When Ike and Maria play, it's a mix between this heady, sweaty mosh pit and moments of absolute introspection and quiet; you're getting flung into someone, and the next moment you’re alone listening to Wooden Girl with your eyes closed.

Blue latex corset. White t-shirt. Vintage a-symmetrical skirt. Blue fishnet socks

I saw the most fragile minds of my generation grabbing at greenroom wristbands like they were the last helicopters out of Saigon
And the Viet cong was an endless flow of 18 year old emos
The mature emos (Mitsubishi Suicide) were upstairs
And so was all 300 members of Worldpeace DMT (and counting)

This is like my fyp in real life, but that’s not what I said, Issey K said that

Yung Lean saw my friend Fleur playing the whistle for WPDMT and asked her to go on tour
With him I was like damn that’s crazy.
When I say damn that’s crazy that’s when I know
my beer to coke ratio was completely off
And that I could neither smile nor laugh
Only agree. That
my corset had been squashing up my internal organs, I was like oh fuck
don’t puke on Young Lean’s bodyguards.

The curse of the cause was lifted at an undisclosed afters location
Which went on for the rest of the night and day and then some night again
Everybody gives a glimpse of their personal internal hell in these situations,
apart from Chill Chris who does Atomiser.
A tenacious doll (banned from Fold)
told me she was impressed, like damn, I didn’t know straight people
got down like this.

Everybody wants a British invasion,
recession historians aren't stuck for a reason
sensitive yanks come over
just to go back.

“I have more sympathy this time around towards myself and to Libya. She looked tired.”

Franz Fanon describes the American flag flying as a reminder of reality’s conditions, recognized through its tension, a stimulant. At first the flag appears graceful, but as you get closer, that grace seems to break apart, and we pick up as many pieces of mercy we can find.

I’m drawn to that visual stimulant of tension because it feels energised. Fanon described the moment of this encounter as a “jolt”. A "jolt" represents a profound moment of realisation, rupture, or awakening that disrupts the established order of consciousness or being. It’s not necessarily a shock in how we might think of it objectively, but a transformative moment where existing structures—psychological, social, or colonial—are disrupted. It signifies a moment of profound disillusionment. The catalyst that is a transformative possibility. It’s as much about the shattering of the old as it is about the emergence of the new—a dynamic, often painful, necessary step towards agency.

So I find myself in Libya for the first time in 12 years, where these “jolts” visualise that Libya is still a child learning how to walk. The flag came to symbolise the reality of a country stuck in time from conditions of a civil war that the West conditioned to happen; I saw faded flags everywhere, often distressed, covered in dust, tied up underneath air conditioning vents. Not too much has changed since the last time I was there. Lanes still don’t exist. Men do donuts with their cars in the middle of an intersection. Libyans are quick to find humour in their situation. They have to laugh a little at themselves - try not to lose themselves to the stress. I found myself doing the same. All my relatives said the same thing - “it’s Libya, that's how it is”.

When you think of the American highways, you think of open roads, long-haul trucks - Road trip Americana. Maybe country music is playing in the background. Every car I saw in Libya was missing a tail light with fake Mercedes Benz emblems on the hood of Hondas; at least one door wouldn't be able to unlock on its own.

After 12 years, I was ready to document everything. In 10 days, I had taken nearly 1,000 photos and videos. The last time I was there, I disliked everything that it was to be Libyan. In retrospect, I was a kid who hated myself—living in Portland. I begged my parents to buy me a patagonia puffer vest because it was “cool”. So here I was, in a much better place, eager to prove to myself that I had changed and that validation existed in that act of catching these jolts. I came out of that tension and discomfort I had held within myself - that I was always scared to grow out of.

Here’s my top 5 photos from that trip:

1: First Look

There is no such thing as “too much” in an Arab wedding. The glam and drama of the brides’ sisters and friends having the first look at the bride was all too good. I was lucky enough to sneak a picture before the hijabi security guards tried to follow me around all night to tape the back of my phone to stop me from documenting. Weddings are like the club: You can tell who’s single based on how much they shake their hips. Aunties sit and gossip to figure out which ones they can set up with their sons.

2: Bootlegs Galore

If the fakes on Canal St were actually all storefronts, then we’d all agree it would be a game-changer for the market. That was Libya. These shops' dedication to having lights, mannequins, etc, is all for their culture of logo-mania. They love a logo. None of the major fashion houses have an actual store in the country, except for Omega Jewelry (thanks to Ben Saoud). This hijab store plastered all the logos of the ‘designers’ they sell—big fan of the directness here.

3: Passport Photo

One of the most important things I had to do in Libya was to get my first passport. The order of events to get a passport there is like the plot of a well-awarded indie short film. When we needed to take our photos, I noticed that they had a menu of outfit choices one could be photoshopped into. Seeing that half of the options became increasingly militant made me laugh. How many men decided: “I want that one.”

4: Beautiful

The freshest orange juice would cost you maybe 50 cents for a bottle. Even gas was cheaper than water at 30 cents a gallon. I miss how simple it was. The beauty of everyday life in Libya is that, as chaotic as it might get, they take pride in the simplicity of executing their tasks. If you’re going to do something once, you had better do it right - and do it the “easy” way. They have an eye for finding the shortcuts on the street or the “DIY” approach to fix anything - literally. Driving on the freeway, I saw these guys on the side with hundreds of oranges, and it felt like they were just emanating a glow onto the street. Orange juice tastes better here. Maybe it’s because it's made by two chill dudes posted on the side of a high-speed freeway with no lanes: like this ^.

5: She’s tired

Any neighbourhood I visited in Tripoli and Benghazi was never short of a Libyan flag. They were everywhere. I had revisited the area called “The Old City,” where my Dad spent most of his childhood selling Jewelry in the Medina. He took us on a tour of his old spots. During my 10 days in Libya, I took a photo of every flag that I saw - this one made me the most emotional. Just a faded flag folded up on itself, tucked in the corner of an arch, in a place I hadn’t seen in 12 years. It felt like you could see the flag's life, not only because it was faded but because it was alone. It hadn’t been interrupted by anything else, no wires, graffiti, or even more flags surrounding it. I think this sums up what I felt like coming back. Tied up, faded…but still the same. Older now, understanding what a flying flag aloft in the wind means when you see yours faded and blue. I have more sympathy for myself…for Libya. She looked tired.