In early 2022, I am aware of everyone else who seems to be online just the same amount as I am, so I recognize there is a trend in the content I am consuming. There is an online scene managed by college students in downtown New York. They all appear to be actors, creators, personalities, influencers, or all of the above. They are preparing for the next big scene to appear in New York City. This scene never leaves the online stratosphere of think pieces acknowledging the scene as a physical space, rooting from a triangular epicenter in the Lower East Side: Dimes Square. Dimes Square is a microneighborhood that could be more fiction than fact. In many ways, Dimes Square seems reminiscent of earlier microcultures within New York City that rose to prominence, thanks to aspiring artists from outside the city. Think of The Factory without an Andy Warhol ringleader. Like the countless trend articles about Dimes Square, ambitious artists from outside the city create what they believe to be the New York scene due to their own dreams of a setting beyond the reality of an actual “art scene” that exists in New York. This scene is created through online performances for consumption through various tweets, Instagram memes, and podcasts, curated for eclectic teenagers outside the city. These teens beg for a glimpse into the world of a post-millennial generation, zoomers and Gen Z, living in the city, maintaining a lifestyle unaffordable to the vast majority.
To become so acutely aware of the downtown New York art scene in the past year or two is to be fed information selected by a vast variety of authors. These authors write trend pieces trying to figure out how to adapt the word “gentrification” to their own self-fulfilling lexicon. You could label the Dimes Square scene as gentrification; if you are familiar with it, you have likely read several think pieces that categorize it in that way. But a simple term like “gentrification” can’t adequately capture the issue. Rich young people have always used the city’s art scene as a meeting place with their peers, making New York their playground. This is not gentrification, however, because the individuals being displaced by the new generation are also affluent, creatives rather than underprivileged individuals that the term “gentrification” was originally intended to describe. Then what is Dimes Square?
If you are young, interested in the New York art scene and not worried about being called out for gentrification, it is easier than ever to participate as an online observer of Dimes Square without having to recreate settings that were formerly a part of our own personal worlds. Along with every other art student in middle-of-nowhere America who longs for a glimmer of a garbage art microculture to exist outside of Dimes Square, I mindlessly consume media about the scant interaction I could never have with anyone who might help to curate the phenomenon of Dimes Square. Until early July 2022, that is.
If you had happened to find yourself keeping up with anyone artistically involved — even just the pretty faces — from Dimes Square on Instagram, you were inundated with advertisements for a new movie directed by Peter Vack: starring the Ion Pack (the Ion podcast hosts); actresses Betsey Brown, Chloe Cherry, Dasha Nekrasova; and YOU. Most important from that list of names is Brown, who, along with Vack, forms a brother-sister combo that frequently works together on creative endeavors such as Assholes (2017) and Actors (2021). They are also known by their shared Instagram handle, @actorscellectuals. Anyone willing to participate could send their name and headshot to an email affiliated with Simone Films, an independent production company based in New York. Simple enough. I emailed Simone Films with my details and received an invite the next morning to Peter Vack’s “Film Party.” On July 29, I showed up to the advertised Film Party at the Daryl Roth Theatre in Union Square.
My experience made me doubt my assessment of the new movement of Dimes Square participants, who operate as purveyors of detached commentary while disguising themselves as artists or critics. The purpose of being one of the chosen party extras was to fill the Daryl Roth Theatre and act as an IRL comment thread without anonymity. I sat next to Curtis Yarvin, a blogger and affiliate of the New Right, in front of Curtis and KJ of the Ion Podcast and next to two girls who were passing out gum and stimulants. We sat in front of a stage where Vack and his crew were set up. I mingled politely with those around me and began to blank out before the cameras started rolling. I shivered in my seat while I waited for Vack to give us a signal or any idea of what to do. Vack suddenly began rolling when he asked a man by the name of Mike Crumplar (“Crumps”), “What is fascism?” Crump’s response received little notice because most of the audience started to clamor with a wide range of absurd comments. It was funny to imagine that anyone in the audience, at some point, got dropped off in New York by a loved one in order to pursue some form of an artistic dream, only to be captured on camera comparing fascism to the “atrocity” of a man being circumcised. Many people left when they saw the beginning stages of the entrapment that Vack imposed. Then came hours of footage of uninhibited extras bantering about fascism and generating avant-garde societal material for jokes or commentary. “Speaking out” was as simple as keeping quiet and watching Vack direct (provoke?), as he paced across the stage in search of the next reaction to capture.
Important context: Earlier in the year, Actors, a Betsey Brown film starring Peter Vack, received a terrible review from Mike Crumplar. Although Actors had a successful run at the Cucalorus Film Festival in November 2021, theater screenings of the movie are now virtually impossible. Any accessibility the film enjoys is down to private screenings at undisclosed locations in New York City and a limited-edition VHS; there is no streaming option available. Music Box in Chicago most recently canceled their screenings of the film in January 2023, in apparent response to the film being labeled transphobic on Twitter by Jane Schoenbrun. Fast forward back to the “Film Party”: As the filming winds down, Vack asks Crumps why he posted a bad review in the first place, assuring him that even though the camera was pointed in his direction and boom mics were nearby, this bit would not be featured in the movie. All eyes were on Crumps. There was a humorous pause in the hush, when Betsey Brown spoke to Crumps in a baby voice and informed the audience that the Roxy had canceled the showings of her movie. The crowd then caved in and participated in a humiliation ritual, about which Crumps ranted on his Substack days later, saying how he now despised the people who gave his career in criticism a start. Titled “My Own Dimes Square Fascist Humiliation Ritual,” Crumps takes 40,000 characters to say Vack and Brown will never be able to create art that matters. It is astounding, to say the least, to put your critics on the spot after they have projected your work as failure; Vack will ultimately compile an avant-garde analysis of cancel culture, while receiving free advertising from the mild virality of Crumps’s post.
I think it is possible that the audience, like myself, did not fully understand why a negative rating was provided in the first place. Many of us stated that we had never watched Actors, thus we were unable to comprehend the transphobia accusations. Even though the Cucalorus festival is barely ten minutes away from my home, I was unable to attend the screening; therefore, I was unaware of my bias in underestimating the severity of Vack and Brown’s transphobia in the film. Furthermore, after the Cucalorus screening, no unfavorable reviews from authors or journalists surfaced, so my perceptions regarding Actors were not contentious. However, considering the current political climate in the United States, with anti-trans measures and legislation emerging from states like Florida and Texas, the film had certainly evolved in poor taste, at best. Brown had reiterated in prior interviews that Actors was a film commenting on cis white male fragility. However, no matter the context or justification for Vack and Brown’s art, it seemed everyone in the audience agreed that they could never fail in their artistic endeavors. If their art is meant to cause and stir controversy, then the sibling duo has absolutely demonstrated their ability to produce provocative work; art is ultimately subjective to the viewer after all.
I hold Vack and Brown in the entertainment industry in the same regard that their parents probably did when they watched their children perform from the wings of the stage. I am willing to ignore their missteps and am inclined to admire their work as controversial filmmakers. A contentious film can represent significant eras in time, and creative risks have produced controversial films that I admire. I respect the two as artists who know how to make the most of their resources, talent, and critique, rather than seeing them solely as East Village industry plants who will single-handedly make art in Dimes Square meaningful. Traveling to the Daryl Roth Theatre from rural North Carolina to witness a “humiliation ritual” was neither a culture shock, nor an obscure glimpse of a nightmarish fascist regime of wealthy micro-influencers in New York. I was rather able to peek at the advantage that a director who was born and raised in New York City may enjoy.
Every Instagram meme, tweet, and Substack contributes to the Dimes Square scene, just as I had imagined. However, in this era of “Don’t Say Gay” legislation being pushed in many southern states, including my own, there is risk of doing harm to vulnerable communities that have a limited voice in stating their ideas, let alone their artistic interests addressing their experiences as a trans person. Here, in this piece, I want to acknowledge that while also concentrating my focus on the approach of filmmaking that I find compelling: the provocateur director. Actors‘ views on transgender people, while troubling, are ultimately outside the purview of this essay; they undoubtedly warrant additional research. Indeed, Actors’ themes may be intended cynically to stir up controversy and attract notoriety. If that’s the case, then we are all giving the filmmakers more credit — and attention — than they reasonably deserve.
Regarding Vack’s future endeavors in film, my expertise is incomparable to Mike Crumplar’s. I did not have a big part, beyond being somewhat interested in how Vack directs and being impressed by Brown’s portrayal of a deluded mentality in her character on www.RachelOrmont.com. Even though I have definitely learned enough to create further commentary on the intellectuals who are starting a movement in New York, I am still eager to see the actual media that have resulted from the two years of attention we have given to the budding New York visionaries. Future moviegoers should keep an eye out for www.RachelOrmont.com.
Author Biography
Natasha Piner is a rising junior currently studying at the University of North Carolina Wilmington with a double major in Film Studies and Communications. Outside of school, Natasha Piner is a member of the Cucalorus Training Institute.
