Phil Gentry
@pmgentry.bsky.social
2.1K followers 510 following 1.6K posts
musicologist at the University of Delaware, citizen of West Philly. http://instagram.com/philipmgentry Current projects: -250 Years of History and Performance in Philadelphia -Anti-Communist Blacklisting in the Music Industry, 1945–1960
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pmgentry.bsky.social
Came back from dropping off child at school and realized I had leashed the dog up and forgot to take her with us.
Forlorn dog all leashed up with nowhere to go.
Reposted by Phil Gentry
brentcebul.bsky.social
A blistering piece by Penn historian Ben Nathans on the dangers of Trumps’s Faustian compact www.thedp.com/article/2025... Benjamin Nathans | Autonomy or obedience | The Daily Pennsylvanian
pmgentry.bsky.social
I think there are enough UD faculty on here that it's worth circulating? On Oct 22, UD's Interdisciplinary Humanities Research Center is hosting a virtual grant showcase, with past grantees presenting, and I'll answer questions about next year's CFP. events.udel.edu/event/ihrc-g...
IHRC Grant Showcase & CFP Info Session
events.udel.edu
pmgentry.bsky.social
West Philly, our beloved indoor cat “London” is MIA, and might have gotten out on the 4700 block of Baltimore—please let me know if you see a fluffy gray cat who looks way too soft for the street life.
pmgentry.bsky.social
lol, Facebook memory from 2010 😭
pmgentry.bsky.social
This is good, and makes me think of how indebted the album is to an AI aesthetic. Not an actual LLM (although who knows) but a shared aesthetic of filling space with endless circular memes from an aggressive imitation of first person perspective, with the occasional hallucination.
mckinneykelsey.bsky.social
i wrote about The Life of a Showgirl
pmgentry.bsky.social
Always so interesting how insanely invested they are in the Ivy League, they would never send their own children to liberty or Ave Maria or wherever.
pmgentry.bsky.social
Probably should also add to the diagnosis that certain universities places elites park and invest a huge amount of capital, both literal and cultural, and they are worried about their returns!
pmgentry.bsky.social
And seems important that all three, Buckley, Kirk, and Weiss (and many more, I skipped over the 90s “canon” and anti-PC activists) broadened their work into much broader campaigns implicated all of society, but you can always sense that core status anxiety that started it all.
pmgentry.bsky.social
Quickie diagnosis is that attacking professors is a strategy that connects elite desire for children to reproduce their class status with the anxiety that education will turn their children against them, all couched in faux-populist anti-intellectualism.
pmgentry.bsky.social
Very different kinds of conservative activists, but worth noting that William Buckley, Charlie Kirk, and Bari Weiss all started their careers by advocating for professors to be fired for speech they disagreed with. Such a through line of the post-war right in the US.
pmgentry.bsky.social
Which goes with the theme of the album not showing much self-reflexivity in her own role as the most powerful artist in the world. Both “Cancelled” and “Actually Romantic” really rubbed me the wrong way in that regard.
pmgentry.bsky.social
In all seriousness, one thing I learned from watching the movie is that Taylor didn’t really understand what a “showgirl” is; she seemed to think it is an enduring archetype for women who make a living on display (e.g. her) but missing the crucial part that showgirls are nameless and powerless.
pmgentry.bsky.social
That was precisely the vibe I got as well.
pmgentry.bsky.social
So much for authorial intent, smdh
pmgentry.bsky.social
“Why don't you pass the time by playing a little solitaire?”
pmgentry.bsky.social
Okay, so according to Taylor’s own exegesis in the movie, “Wood” is about superstitions and nothing else, you perverts.
pmgentry.bsky.social
Yes, it’s slightly hilarious 😂
pmgentry.bsky.social
And by “time” I mean the 11:30 screening to which I am taking a flock of 9yo girls.
pmgentry.bsky.social
In that liminal moment where I can’t tell if posts about Life of a Showgirl are parodies or not. Like, is there really a song about Travis Kelce’s penis? Time will tell.
pmgentry.bsky.social
It would make a great Dar Williams song.
pmgentry.bsky.social
It’s really just rich white people using colleges to attack desegregation all the way back to…1951.
Cover of William Buckley’s God and Man at Yale
pmgentry.bsky.social
Real missed opportunity for some judicious camera panning here.