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language: English
country: Australia
year: 1995
form: novel
genre(s): literary
dates read: 23.4.21-24.4.21
my overall review of this book is actually a review of the movie (titled Head On): the movie adds a wildly gratuitous and voyeuristic transmisogynist police brutality sequence that is completely absent from the book, adds in some additional transmisogyny elsewhere just for good measure, completely removes the lesbians, severely downplays Ari’s feelings for George, and at the end of the day generally makes Ari come off as a man who has sex with men but doesn’t and would never ID as gay or bi (or a “faggot”, in book Ari’s terms).
meanwhile, in the book, just when I was thinking “you know what this book needs? some commentary on capitalism”, what do we get but some commentary on capitalism. Ari’s hopelessness, bitterness, alienation is the starting point Mark Fisher hones in on in Capitalist Realism, “a situation in which nothing can happen”, begging for something, anything, that will crack open the walls even the tiniest amount so that “anything is possible again”.
the book’s characterization of Ari specifically, of his community in general, and of the characters around him (except perhaps Johnny/Toula) is so much more sensitive — the movie turns all of them except Johnny/Toula into caricatures, and Johnny/Toula is the subject of the wild transmisogyny so, like, I’m not sure the depth outweighs the voyeuristic violence. the ethnic dimensions of Ari’s encounter with George are lost and it becomes just, idk, a commentary on gay men’s inability to be truly intimate (something that the book addresses — as it were — head-on).
(there’s also something to be said about Ariadne — however brief her presence is — as a mirror for Ari, something that’s not at all apparent in the movie.)
moods: challenging, dark, reflective