ONE NIGHT ONLY!

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 3 - 5 PM

Join us as we take a deep dive into the darkest recesses of the internet. Together with film theorist Andrea Avidad, as well as filmmakers Gabrielle Stemmer and Gala Hernández, Spectacle Theater presents a one-night only investigation of despair and delusion on the internet.

Many films in recent years have tried to make a spectacle of outré online communities by emphasizing their idiosyncrasies. Such projects like FEELS GOOD MAN (2020) and QANON: THE SEARCH FOR Q (2022) have resulted in harmful portraitures of social outcasts, simultaneously catering to viewers’ fantasies about othered demographics and producing distinctly alien, rather than nuanced, representations of incels and similarly radicalized online users. Gabrielle Stemmer’s CLEAN WITH ME (AFTER DARK) and Gala Hernández’s THE MECHANICS OF FLUIDS both employ different means of characterizing the different online communities they choose to depict. Their approach balances structural analysis with compassion, producing a complex picture of the cultural catalysts and systemic pathways that allow these micro-cultures to form.

Our screening of these films will be preceded by a lecture courtesy of Film-Philosophy Award Recipient Andrea Avidad and followed by a remote Q&A with filmmakers Stemmer and Hernández.