Luke’s Tops
You don’t have to read very far into Kill Dick to notice that this isn’t your average whodunnit thriller. The characters are complex in the way that real people are: genuinely kind but also sort of scammy; intellectually curious but perfectly happy to waste away day after day in the sun; well-intended(ish?) but also creepy af. The characters in Kill Dick are human, and their descriptions are referential. For example, watching Inglorious Bastards (if you haven’t already or don’t know what that is, it’s a classic, a necessity) is required if you want to get a really good picture of Susie Vogelman; you have to know something about the era of GigaPets and the Columbia House 12-CDs-for-a-penny-scam to conceptualize a childhood which could produce a character like Professor Krolik; and it might help to read Kant to understand how Goebel is defining ‘brotherhood.’ But also, no knowledge required, because even if you weren’t around during the nineteen-nineties and early aughts, the frenetic energy of the era transmits. The world of the book is mobilized by unrest, and the characters are able to respond critically, if despairingly, because they understand that dystopia has become banal and they’re rubbing up against that reality.
The rich, cinematic landscape of Kill Dick could only be written by a prolific, close reader, a deep, critical thinker, a person with a real cultural historical context. Luke knows his stuff and, in turn, his characters know stuff, too. And I can say confidently that he didn’t ask Chat GPT for a list of theorists to weave into the book, because he didn’t have to. How to tell? There’s a big difference between name-dropping and aptly mapping theory and context onto the inner and outer worlds of a character. You can’t do that with just facts; you need understanding, too.
When I got to the Dean Spade reference on page 49 I thought, OK Luke 💁♀️ and decided it would be fun to get a down-and-dirty list of the theorists, filmmakers, and artists who have been most influential to his thinking and art-making. Here’s what he said. In his words.
Luke Goebel’s Top 6 Most Influential Films
Stanley Kubrik’s Barry Lyndon and Eyes Wide Shut
This is a twofer. Together you get the ambition and delusion of a fearless climber mixed with the darkness of the conspiratorial dream and deniability perfected through secretive systems of decepto-corruption: two forces that test any brave young noble fighter as she battles forces of villainy, murder, abuse, and patro-fascist-capito-hatred. Meanwhile, the fun of opulence and occultism call for more profound spectacle and pleasure.
Toss the play Hamlet in for good measure and you’ve maybe got the building blocks to predict the nation’s next 2 years.
Sofia Coppola’s The Virgin Suicides
Female gaze craze profundity. So-Co (Sofia Coppola) whips his hair back and forth— meaning the boy wonder “Trip Fontaine” (played by Josh Hartnett.) Hot.
David O. Russell’s I Heart Huckabees
Comedy meets theory. Is it all darkness or light? Is the universe meaningless and cruel? Are we forsaken by those who should love us? Or are we in the blanket of delight and wonder, all connected, in a unified theory of magic and coincidence, the divine watching us and winking in wonder? All the shit about petroleum just lights my fire. Fuckabees. Shania Twain, Jude Law. The stories we tell ourselves and everyone else over and over. Burn the jet skis. Fuck you, Brad!
Spike Lee’s BlacKkKlansman
The era crystallized. The bastards on blast. Protest art. Fuck you, Donald!
David Fincher’s Fight Club (based on novel by Portland’s own Chuck Palahniuk)
Queerness repressed begets violence. Donny? Burn it down! I got both inside me. And Marla too.
Luke Goebel’s Top 5 Most Influential Theorists/Theory Texts
Plato’s Ion
Don’t trust anti-representation representation in the form of dialogue-as-theater. But is it real or is it memorex? Can you trust the abstraction? What about the world beyond the world? Realms of form? Heavenly kingdoms? Is this it? Back to Hamlet.
Jean Baudrillard’s Simulacra and Simulation
You got lost in the sauce of representation. Plato warned you. Better to fight back with art or bullets?
Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble
There’s gonna be trouble. Susie is coming for you. She’s on the sidewalks. She’s in the building. Simone de Beauvoir on Bridget Bardot. If you don’t take a shit you explode. Better have a hole in the boundaries of othering. And by the way…if you spit it out you can still swallow. It’s an illusion.
Edward Said’s Culture and Imperialism
They will try to keep you down if you don’t rise up. They will offer you the short cut if you let them use you. You better learn the game yourself so you can play it like they do. Susie isn’t gonna let her daddy slap her around. He trained her for war. Game on. Make your own game.
Michel Foucault’s Discipline and Punish, and, Speaking the Truth About Oneself
Susie wanted to be the “I” and she earned it. Everyone else wants to be first person player, too. Better earn it. And they’re all watching you—everyone is surveilled and taught to be ashamed—turn the camera back on them. Susie exposes the power mad bozos of greed and reclaims the body. Hers and the victimized and murdered. Don’t fake the funk or your nose will grow. Outlaws are the hero.
Luke Goebel’s Top 6 Most Influential Artists/Exhibitions
[ No comments, just art, so you can experience/interpret for yourself ]
Charles Ray’s Two Horses, 2019
Michelangelo’s Pietà, 1488-89
Nan Goldin’s Greed Kills, 2019
“The US artist and her activist group P.A.I.N dropped faux-prescription slips and pill bottles, and staged a ‘die-in’”
Pablo Picasso’s Head of a Woman in Profile (Jacqueline), 1970
I Like America and America Likes Me, also known as Coyote, 1974
Performance by German conceptual artist, Joseph Beuys.
The Wig Museum, 2017
Solo show of Jim Shaw’s work, curated by Philipp Kaiser
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If you haven’t gotten a copy of Kill Dick yet, go ahead and take care of that: get one for yourself, for a friend, even for an enemy.
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Ryan-Ashley is our managing editor and a board member for the NYC non-profit, Refuge America.
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* This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are producs of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to real events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
