#it's not the foundation of the narrative language of film and tv the way it is with comics

[thedreadvampy]

every so often I discover new things I'm unhappy with about the Sandman adaptation and each one is pettier than the last

what do you MEAN the word battle is between Dream and Lucifer? no it's NOT. it's between Dream and Choronzon who's acting on Beelzebub's behalf it's about the petty politics of Hell which is in large part what Lucifer finds so tiresome.

also why does Dream have human eyes give that bitch some contacts or Something

[holly-mckenzie]

Hello! I love LOVE your blog it's so good. I always find the most interesting shows because of your posts so i wanted to ask what are your fav ships with the best chemistry in a newer film/tv show? I saw a whole debate a few days ago about how "ships nowadays are always lacking chemistry " and i was interested in your opinion. Have a nice day!

Hello anon... I need to clarify, I wrote this answer essay thinking about romcoms, bc that's what film twitter has been talking about, but I realised you said "ships". I will answer your question here. Under the cut, is my thoughts on romcoms, please be aware what is hiding beneath the cut is a behemoth of an answer.

But in terms of "ships" and lacking chemistry. I think there's a few things to think about. Specifically, I believe there has been way to much focus on "ships" and sometimes this conversation detracts from other elements of storytelling, or completely takes over the entire story and what it makes it interesting (e.g. - the conversation surrounding Anatomy of a Fall or what Reylo did to Star Wars). On the subject of Star Wars, one of the things to think about in this conversation is how racism, misogyny, or general bigotry shape peoples opinions. The argument of "they don't have chemistry" is a common phrase used by racists and bigots who don't want to engage with their faves being involved with characters of colour/woman etc.

Now unto other reasons why "ships" might not have chemistry. I think if you are discussing American Television, one thing to note is the departure of shows that had 20+ episodes. With the fear that the show might get cancelled and with a shorter time to establish the narrative, I think we, as audiences, are seeing less of the long con, "will they, won't they" game, that we saw in the late 90's/2000's. I would argue this could be one of the reasons that British TV does so well, most British series are only 6 episodes long, and there may be a better understanding of how to write a more compact narrative, and perhaps there's even better job security... But maybe not considering Joe Barton's history.

Lastly, there is a world of media out there and you need to make the effort to find and engage with it. I talk more about this under the cut, but so many people who are minorities are not given the same advantages as white straight people... So if you want to find good stuff. You gots to look for it. It might not be in a language you understand, or about people who you can relate to, but its out there. Go find it.

So in Answer to your Question, what are my fav ships with the best chemistry in a newer film/tv show.

Television: Starstruck (2021– ) : Tom x Jessie The Lazarus Project (2022– ) : Janet x Rebrov & Zhao x Archie & Shiv x George The Artful Dodger (2023) : Belle x Jack Foundation (2021– ) : Hober Mallow x Brother Constant Alex Rider (2020– ) : Alex x Kyra Animal Control (2023– ) : Shred x Emily Tom Jones (2023) : Tom x Sophia

Other Honourable Mentions: Summer Love (2022– ), Colin from Accounts (2022), Still Up (2023– ), Little Woman (2022), Lockwood and Co. (2023), The Flatshare (2022), The Other Two, Suzhal (2022), In Limbo (2023– ), The Buccaneers (2023– ).

Films: Femme (2023), Here (2023), Decision to Leave (2022), Stay the Night (2022), The Big Four (2022), Ponniyan Selvan i & ii, Stellar (2022), Wildhood (2022), Lakelands (2023), Wedding Season (2022), 7 Days (2021), Scream VI, Sanctuary (2022)

Books: Anything by Tia Williams, Sarah Beth Durst, Uzma Jalaluddin, Jane Igharo

Stage: The Effect (2023/2024), Much Ado About Nothing (2019), Much Ado About Nothing (2022), The Notebook (2024), Hadestown

My Original Answer:

Hello anon, thank you so much! Thanks for appreciating my questionable taste. I do really enjoy watching TV, film, and books and then writing academic papers about them in my head. So obviously this question is really fun.

I need to start by saying, I have been thinking about chemistry for weeks, so I am going to answer your question, just maybe not the question you were asking. Brace yourselves, I wrote an essay.

The whole debate is deeply fascinating to me for various reasons. In part I do really believe that people need to broaden their horizons when it comes to the art they interact with. There is a world of cinema out there. If you surround yourselves by clowns and then complain you are in a circus... that's a choice, no?

Expand your horizons, dip into Asian cinema, African cinema, American Cinema (North, South, and Central), that European stuff (that isn't just what the BBC is pumping out or starring your French favs). And if you must watch Hollywood, then watch some indie stuff. Watch some gay stuff. Watch some stuff by people of colour.

Lichrelly no one is forcing you to watch the blandest/whitest romcoms/romdrams. Are they more accessible to watch? Sure. But complaining, when you don't even care to do the research is a choice. Especially, bc of the way that racism/misogyny/homophobia/ableism makes it harder for people to get their stories out. If you really care about these things. You gots to put the effort into caring and finding them.

Secondly, boiling down chemistry to romance is absolutely wild, considering there are different type of chemistry needed for different roles. For example Rob Collins and Shantae Barnes-Cowan have mad chemistry in the show Firebite. Now let me clarify, I am not saying its romantic. They pulled off the single dad and adopted daughter in a survival/action story story so well. Pedro Pascal, who? And it takes chemistry to pull that off. More popularly, one of the reasons that Succession works as a show is because the actors have chemistry. Some of which is romantic ofc, but the vast majority of it isn't (no matter what the in*est shippers on A*3 say). But I understand, the people want what they want, and that's romance.

I also think that chemistry is an odd thing. I know people are inclined to think that its an objective. You look at two people and are like, "Wow, they have chemistry!", and everyone agrees, because "Wow, they have chemistry!". But I am inclined to think its not that straight forward. There is something to be said about our interactions with art being subjective and biased. This is because as we interact with art, we are interacting with it through our own lens. The author is truly dead, and all that matters is the individual reader's interpretation. So, for example, many people love the movie Anyone But You. If you go on YouTube there are many people who have made ship videos about Bea and Ben. But there is a category of people who fucking hate it and think that its trash and the leads don't have chemistry (Yes, I am talking about myself in third person. I will avenge you Much Ado About Nothing).

So, who is right? Who is wrong? Honestly, it really doesn't matter, because its a fucking movie, and like I said, the author is dead. Similarly, some critics really didn't like the series Tom Jones. In certain reviews and articles, criticism of the series was that Solly McLead and Sophie Wilde don't have chemistry. However, if you follow me, you know I completely disagree and made that show my personality for a couple of months.

But on the subject of chemistry (of the romantic variety), I definitely think its more complicated then people let on. I think most people believe that it's about the actors. You put them in a movie, show, whatever, and chemistry they have just happens. It's like love, you can't explain it, but its there. Or, according to my friend, who used to work in the film industry, the best chemistry comes across when the actors hate each other or they secretly like each other/are fucking each other. It's brought on by strong emotions. Which is obviously a school of thought.

However, as my bestie Merry (@akajustmerry) has been discussing, there are actors who are dating/fucking IRL and none of that comes across in the film/show. I highly recommend checking out Merry's blog to see their opinions on this bc Merry is THE film critic of our generation! Someone please hire them!

But I do think it takes more than just what the actors can bring. It's about the direction they are being given, its about the script, its about the staging. It's about the framing. And it's about the actors and their acting ability. Actors are working professionals and contrary to popular belief, it takes skills to act (not just a pretty face). And one of the skills needed is the ability to create trust between the leads, as Merry and an anon discusses in this post. Because without trust, how can there be chemistry. Which is why intimacy coordinators are SO important. Fuck anyone who says otherwise!

To argue against my friend who used to work in the industry, yes hating/loving someone IRL can create tangible chemistry. And yeah, it might be hard to overcome friendship, if you are friends with your co-star (e.g. - that one interview where Jessica Matten jokes about how weird it was to kiss Kiowa Gordan in Dark Winds). But think about Nikesh Patel and Rose Matafeo in Starstruck. From what I can tell, which is little bc I don't know them IRL and its none of my business, Rose and Nikesh weren't hating each other or fucking in each other. They seem to be friends, but mostly co-workers. But regardless of all of that, Starstruck is literally one of the greatest romcoms of our era. And they have mad chemistry.

Additionally, in my opinion, Lee Pace and Laura Birn of Foundation fame, and Lana Gordon and MPQ/Zachary James and Gloria Onitiri of Hadestown fame have chemistry. But all the men I just listed are gay/in relationship with men, so we can't chalk up chemistry to already existing romantic tension. It is an aspect of acting and skill. Both Zachary James and MPQ have spoken about how the trust they have in their co-stars, have allowed space to shape and cultivate the characters they play (including the romance of the show).

You can't just cast two conventionally attractive people and expect their attractiveness to do the rest. You know my thoughts on Anyone But You. But similarly, think about the way that people were thirsting over Zoë Kravitz and Robert Pattinson bc of all the press and photo shoots they did for The Batman. But then also think of the accusations of whorebaiting, that followed. They simply, in my opinion, did not have chemistry. Even if the Bat and the Cat are one of the funnest dynamics in them comics.

So now that we have discussed actors, and audiences. We gots to discuss actual story telling. Writing is a skill. I know on the tumblr dot com, we have discussed that writing good sex scenes is a skill. Writing good romance is the same... I don't want to labour on about this, bc I feel like you must already know that. But some things to consider is the way in which the focus on tropes instead of storytelling is a detriment to the genre. The fanfictionization of romance. The way in which abuse is touted as romance. The way that studios (coughcough Netflix) are churning out these stories (some of which are def US military propaganda). The lean towards making these movies, more and more explicit. The way that some studios/book publishers are trying to profit off already successful stories without realising what made it successful (e.g. - the amount of fake dating stories in the wake of To All the Boys, or the remakes of older movies).

So what made the movies of old so special. What made romcoms from the late 90's early 2000's, the movies by Nora Ephron and Garry Marshall oh so special. The bleak answer is nostalgia. But you could also discuss the type of narratives that were told during the time. The type of backgrounds these actors and storytellers had before they took these roles. The socio-political enviroment that cultivated these stories. The amount of money and time the studios were willing to invest in these movies. The lack of AI technology... All of the cheating scandals that arose on the sets. The existence of the Film Stars™ vs. just actors.

The fact that streaming has changed the way that movies/tv are made, and the way people consume them. Which could potentially lesson the impact on audiences, as there is less need to go to theatres. To wait for the movies to be released on DVD/VCD/VHS. Lessen the need to re-watch the movies obsessively, bc it was one of three movies you owned on DVD/VCD/VHS, and thus a lack of cementing it in your brain as THE RomCom. Yes, this is just an excuse to yell: BRING BACK PHYSICAL MEDIA, YOU COWARDS!

But one thing that I haven't seen discussed as much is the existence of the Hays Code.

A couple years ago, I watched this lecture and read this book by this academic that focused on RomComs. (I forgot the academic, but I can find it later, if you want. Can you tell I studied English and Film in school?). Regardless, the academic argued that during the 90's filmmakers had to grapple with the remnants of the Hays Code. The code was a "self-imposed industry set of guidelines for all the motion pictures that were released between 1934 and 1968." The Code prohibited things like "profanity, suggestive nudity, graphic or realistic violence, sexual persuasions and rape."

So, while RomComs, like Pretty Woman, were in production, more then 20 years after the Hays Code, this academic argued that filmmakers were grappling with what this freedom meant. That while Pretty Woman was definitely a movie that could have never been made during the time of the Code, the affect of the Code meant that these narratives were adhering to the Code, whether intentional or not.

I think one of the things to consider about the Code was the way that filmmakers had to figure out ways to work around the restrictions in order to tell the stories they wanted. So, for example the Noir is a genre came about during the height of the Code and a time where film-makers didn't have access to that much money. So, the filmmakers had to be creative to get the shots they wanted, which is how we got the highly stylized way of filming that is so iconic to the genre. Not out of excess but out of need. Additionally, the iconic archetypes of the Noir Detective and the Femme Fatale are directly due to the Hayes Code and the period that villanized certain types of woman, and esteemed certain types of men.

Yet, there is an entire study on the homosexual subtext, which was written into these films. For example in The Maltese Falcon, the main character, Sam Spade, refers to another character as a "gunsel". The the censors wrongly assumed this was a reference to a gunman, however, it is vulgar way to refer to someone who is gay. This is the same movie that features a different character, Joel Cairo, who is suggested to be gay (which is one of the reasons the film could not be legally shown on US television stations). Being a filmmaker meant learning how to navigate around the code. Being a filmmaker meant taking a risk, bc you may end up on wrong side of it.

If you want more information on queer films of the time, I believe that Merry or Deah would be able to help you seeing they have an entire podcast on gay movies/shows/games. Check out the @gayvclubpodcast.

So, going back to the RomComs of the 90's. You are talking about an entire industry of filmmakers, who were making movies after the wake of an extreme censorship, and on some level they must known or have heard stories about navigating that terrain. They must have also, on some level, understood what it meant to cultivate stories where characters want each other, like each other, yearn for each other. Because during the Code you couldn't just point a camera at them and say "See they are fucking each other, they did fuck each other, they will continue to do so. Clearly this is a romance". More work needed to be done and laid out in order to cultivate the romances that we now love.

I would argue, if you want to buy this argument, that this is the same reason that K-Dramas/Movies are SO popular. Because it was not that long ago, that Korea was more strict about the way in which physical intimacy was filmed. Think about the era, where actors would stand next to each other, lips touching, and the camera would spin in a dizzying way around them. Now, obviously, kisses aren't filmed in that way, and some movies feature open mouth kisses. Scandalous, I know. But I would argue this is one of the reasons that K-Dramas are so famous, because of the knowledge on how to draw out emotions from the audience that does not rely on physical/sexual intimacy.

So, I suppose the conversation of "ships nowadays are always lacking chemistry " comes down to a skill issue. Skill on the filmmakers parts for not being able to cultivate good stories. Skill on the Actors part, for not being able to do what is required of the role. Skill of the studios parts, for not realising the long term impact of physical media and what sells. And skill on the audiences part, for not seeing the world in one way, and not caring to do the research to find the stories you are looking for.

[reanimatedrenaissance]

The Renaissance Used as a Foundation

When it comes to animation and the Renaissance, there is no greater love interest to these artists than the works of William Shakespeare. Numerous derivative narratives have been created out of his works, and as such there is also a variety of adaptations from close comparisons to mere shadows of the original play.

Disney Animation Studios is quite possibly best known for their 1994 animated film, Lion King. It was a huge success at the box office, making $968.5 million at the box office when their original budget was only $45 million. This came as a huge shock to the studio when it outshined the film they expected to be a bigger cultural hit, Pocahontas, released just over a year after Lion King. However, there may be a bigger underlying reason as to why Lion King was so popular among the vast majority of audience members: a close tie to Shakespeare’s play Hamlet.

There has been such a widespread acceptance that Lion King was inspired by the plot of Hamlet that artists, critics, bloggers, and more have created articles and graphics to showcase the similarities of the two (Cuthbertson, “9 reasons why The Lion King”).

Graphic by Stephen Wildish

Lion King’s similarities to Hamlet are indeed quite interwoven, and because of this it is clear that audiences are engaged by more than just the visual appeal of the animal characters. More than likely given the comparisons, many viewers may have seen this film as a creative reinterpretation of this classic play, and therefore were compelled to engage more with it as it no longer was a stereotypical play put on with modern people put in Renaissance-looking attire. During the late 1980s and throughout the 1990s Disney was producing one successful film after another, so much so that after awhile fans termed the decade of 1989-1999 as the “Disney Renaissance.” Even this term implies a similarity and symbolic connection to the historical era. Because of this, it is clearly important to current culture that the concept of the Renaissance being a time for creative rebirth live on, and they felt as though Disney’s animated films of that decade deserved such a title.

Disney is known to create other works which have a foundation of Shakespearian literature as well, which could be said to provide both a simplified, educational understanding of Shakespeare’s work, as it is written in modern English, as well as give a new creative twist to it. One such example is one of their short animations in the TV series House of Mouse in which they have a modern English retelling of A Midsummer Night’s Dream starring Mickey Mouse, Minnie Mouse, Donald Duck, and Daisy Duck.This animated short was made as episode eleven of a series of shorts made under the title Mickey Mouse Works (1999) which was then later incorporated into House of Mouse (2002). The premise of Mickey Mouse Works was to allow Disney’s many characters to have their own opportunities to star in animated segments of their own, without developing extremely deep plots. In this way it is very similar to the format of children’s television with quick plots running from 8-11 minutes in length.

House of Mouse, episode “House of Scrooge” (Walt Disney Animation, 2002)

By providing a new visual twist in the animation format, Disney has been able to provide audiences with a new way to enjoy these classics without feeling as though they are watching the same exact play over and over. Not only this, but by changing the language to reflect the speech of the present Disney is also allowing themselves the creative license to add a few extra jokes and visual gags which give these already established personalities listed above their time to shine. Such work showcases how Disney is able to appeal to a wide age range in their audience as it helps to introduce young audience members to Shakespeare’s work and simultaneously provide adult audience members with something visually new and different than a traditional retelling of this play.

But this is not a special case, and has been a successful model for creation since the early 1920s. Artists have long been using elements from the Renaissance as a foundation for modern adaptations, spinoffs, and other derivative works that inspire further creations. The earliest example available in animated format is a work from 1920 entitled Love’s Labor Lost based on a Shakespeare play of the same name.

Love’s Labor Lost, dir. Vernon Stallings (Bray Productions, 1920)

What this seems to imply is that although the works of William Shakespeare were created hundreds of years ago, the present culture of the twenty-first century still finds this material to be both “timeless” and continually entertaining. In fact, it is often easy source material to use as many elementary and high school institutions require reading works by Shakespeare as a fundamental part of Western education. Because of this, animators can assume that audience members have at least a basic understanding of Shakespeare’s famous works. What becomes new is the ways in which these classics of the Renaissance are reinterpreted to fit the themes and cultural desires of the present. However, one of Shakespeare’s works is by far the most notorious for having tons of reinterpretations in modern media and animation: Romeo and Juliet.

Perhaps the most recent and culturally prominent of the animated interpretations of this play is Gnomeo and Juliet, a 2011 film created by Touchstone Pictures, a subsidiary branch of Disney Animation Studios. Listed below is the trailer, showcasing the basic creative licenses the artists take which are seen throughout the film.

Gnomeo and Juliet, dir. Kelly Asbury (Touchstone Pictures, 2011)

Right from the beginning, this film establishes that although this is based on the classic play, it has changed the cast from humans to garden gnomes, the families from Montagues and Capulets to Red and Blue caps, and the tone from one of drama to one of comedy. By making these creative decisions, the animators found a modern way to connect with their younger demographics’ interest in comical, cartoon-y media which is advertised in their trailer as well as give them an educational gateway to Shakespeare’s original if they have not encountered it previously.

On the other end, the anime series Romeo X Juliet, dubbed by Funimation and animated by Gonzo Studios, takes itself very seriously and is closer to the work it reflects. Below is the first episode of the series.

Romeo X Juliet, episode 1 (Gonzo Studios and Funimation, 2007)

These two seem to be thematically polar opposites of each other, and as such they are also a great indicator that they are meant for different audiences. Gnomeo and Juliet is a work which is meant to entice, entertain, and even educate the public and younger audience members in general to Shakespeare’s Renaissance works. Romeo X Juliet is then a gritty, dramatic retelling aimed at older audiences who both enjoy this tale but are also not afraid to see the violence heightened to more realistic (or even sometimes unrealistic) proportions.

Regardless of the genre, it is clear that works from the Renaissance, and particularly the works of William Shakespeare, continue to be a valuable foundation for creative reinterpretations that capture the minds and hearts of 21st century culture. This significance in culture will likely continue so long as popular culture continues to see a beneficial use for the material. Thus the societal fascination with the Renaissance period suggests that this kind of derivative media will continue to be created for many years to come. Who knows what the next animated interpretation may bring to entice audience members next?

Sources:

Cuthbertson, Galen. “9 reasons why The Lion King is Basically Hamlet.”

Mari, Elia. “Mexican Children and American Cartoons: Foreign References in Animation.”

Omar, Mohd and Ishak, Sidin. “Understanding Culture Through Animation: From the World To Malaysia.”

[straykidsupdate]

Stray Kids Is Your Next K-Pop Obsession — Here’s Why

Just a little over a year after exploding onto the K-pop scene, the young nine-member boy band Stay Kids stands onstage thousands of miles away from their home in Seoul. The New Jersey Performing Arts Center is packed with thousands of fans, called STAY. The majority female audience — strikingly diverse in ethnicity and age — is shouting the opening “na-na”s of “My Pace,” the band’s gritty breakout hit about trusting in your own path and not comparing yourself to others. It’s one thing to hear it on the track, but another entirely to hear it thundering from nearly 3,500 young people in a cavernous space. It’s an empowering, rollicking battle cry.

K-pop has often been likened to a “factory” by the media — a “machine” that pumps out bands on a conveyor belt and hands them hollow, algorithmic pop songs to lip-sync as they move in perfect synchronization. The new generation of South Korean pop groups proves that stereotype resoundingly false. And few subvert it more than Stray Kids — with members Bang Chan, Woojin, Seungmin, Hyunjin, Changbin, HAN, Lee Know, Felix, and I.N — whose inventive mix of EDM, rap, and rock rebel against the norm, and whose sincere, self-penned lyrics are inspiring the rising generation to speak up, because they have something to say.

“We want to be remembered as a team that not only makes good music, but makes the kind of music that really influences and helps people,” fox-faced vocalist and youngest member I.N tells Refinery29 ahead of the second the band’s two sold out shows in Newark, the first stop on the on the U.S. leg of their “UNVEIL Tour 'I am…' world tour. “That's one of our biggest dreams.”

“I don't think it's fair for anyone to say K-pop is a machine. It’s a stereotype." BANG CHAN

Ingrained in Stray Kids’ DNA is their creative agency. Bang Chan, Changbin, and HAN — known as 3racha — have written and produced the majority of the group's discography, but all nine members have had writing credits on their work, which isn't often seen from young bands in the industry. This ownership has allowed them to experiment and play with their sound, and even their videos — many of their visuals are of them singing and goofing off, filmed on GoPros (as one does when not questioning your entire existence). It’s also allowed them to showcase each member’s versatility. While many K-pop group members usually have defined roles within a group, there’s a joke within the fandom that Stray Kids sometimes feels like it has nine rappers and nine vocalists — whether it’s vocalist Lee Know dishing a scorching opening rap in “District 9,” or rapper Hyunjin letting his gentle tenor shine in “불면증 (Insomnia).”

It’s also this personal, hands-on approach that not only allows them to tell their stories as authentically as possible, but has allowed them to speak even more directly to their fans. This line of communication to the generation they speak for is the most vital to their success thus far, so the perception that their work could be anything but personal is ill-conceived.

“I don't think it's fair for anyone to say K-pop is a machine. It’s a stereotype,” says Bang Chan, turning contemplative. “But I think the reason why people might think that is because the way K-pop is built is very well-organized, and performance-wise everything is precise and well-crafted. What some people probably don’t understand is that we think of it as a gateway that allows artists to reach out to their fans.”

Stray Kids discography weaves a narrative that begins with the fictional dystopia of District 9, in which they are prisoners of a suffocating system that tries to define them. They then explored their own identities throughout the group’s I Am… trilogy as they grappled with questions that plague both them and their fans, who are growing up along with them.

“The question that we always come back to, that everyone asks themselves, that I ask myself is, 'Who am I?'” says 21-year-old Australia-raised leader Bang Chan. “I think I've been thinking about that from a really young age. Honestly right now I haven't found out who I am, and I'm still trying to figure that out. Through our music we wanted to express that and reach out to those who feel the same way, so we can have a connection with one another.”

In March, they released a new, more confident chapter of their story, Clé 1: Miroh, led by the massive, boisterous single “Miroh.” Pulsing with brassy beats and lion’s roars, the song, according to rapid-fire rapper Changbin is about “gaining the confidence to face new challenges.” The visual, set in a Hunger Games-esque world, finds the members organizing a rebellion and literally grabbing the mic from the elite class in charge.

If anything, this is the machine that Stray Kids actively fight against — societal expectations and unmanageable pressure put on young people today. And while songs on Clé 1: Miroh such as “Victory Song” and “Boxer” share the same dauntless spirit, the group still leave room for vulnerability. “19” is a haunting, echoing song written by HAN about his fears as he teeters on the cusp of adulthood.

“When I was 19 [Koreans calculate age differently], going into my twenties, I was excited to become an adult,” says HAN. “But as the time actually came closer, I had so many emotions and thoughts running through my head. I was scared, but I wanted to express my feelings to my fans who are going through the same thing through this song.”

Before Stray Kids debuted as a group, they were on a self-titled musical competition TV series. Felix and Lee Know were cut from the group, to the devastation of the other members, but were later added again after proving themselves once more. This emotional rollercoaster that the members endured is partially to thank for their close bond, and why the group treat each other and their STAYs like family. That and the examples set by their own families growing up.

“When we were young, whenever we went through hard times, my mom would always try to cheer me and my sisters up,” says Australian-Korean Felix, whose deep bass tone is in striking contrast to his lithe stature. “This example of loving and supporting one another is something I carry with me constantly. She inspired me to want to help other people, make others feel better by surprising or comforting them.”

“I'm so thankful to my mom for giving me unconditional love,” adds honey-voiced eldest member Woojin. “I learned a lot from her — she takes so much care in how she interacts with other people and keeps good, healthy relationships with the people around her as well.”

This all helped build the foundation of what Stray Kids is today — a group of young people who, by acknowledging their fears and faults, want nothing more than to unite with those who understand them across language and geographic borders, using the tools at their disposal. And even with only a year under their belts, it looks as if their message is already resonating.

“Each and every one of you have your own special story, right?,” Bang Chan said as the Newark show neared its close, and after fans finished a vibrant “We love you!” chant to the nine young men on stage. “[...] So I feel like today is not just STAY and people being in this beautiful venue: it’s a thousand stories all inside this really big space. I’m just glad that through music — and through the music that we make — we can gather all these stories and relate to each other. I think that’s really fantastic.”

Article Source: here

[tlbodine]

Essential Zombie Media

A thing that’s come up over and over again in early reviews for River of Souls is the sentiment that it’s not-like-other-zombie-stories. And that was certainly my intention. But you don’t get to make a good deconstruction without a healthy knowledge and appreciation of the genre you’re twisting around. 

So here is a list of what I would consider essential zombie media -- whether you want to write a story that plays it straight with the tropes, or one that twists everything around, or you just want something new to watch/read. 

Your own suggestions and ideas are more than welcome in the comments! Please reblog with your own favorite zombie book/movie/TV show/comic, I’d love to discover some I haven’t seen. 

The Origins

The generally agreed-upon first zombie movie is White Zombie (1932), starring Bela Lugosi, but I think it’s safe to skip it on account of both obscurity and some troubling racism. The Haitian-Voodoo zombi mythos and tradition is something best kept separate from our modern ideas of the walking dead. 

Instead, start your journey with George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead (1968), which starts codifying the tropes that persist well into modern media (including, like most modern stories, never using the word ‘zombie’). 

Then compare and contrast with the Richard Matheson novel I Am Legend (1954), which is ostensibly about vampires but I think basically invented the modern zombie genre -- from the post-apocalyptic setting to the spread of undeath by way of disease vectors. 

Follow that up with Dawn of the Dead (1978), where George Romero revisits his Living Dead universe with the help of Dario Argento (if you’re interested, there’s a 2004 remake that’s decent, but unnecessary). And then, just to wrap up the trilogy, skip on ahead to Day of the Dead (1985). 

For extra credit, play the videogame Dead Rising (2006), which draws liberally from Dawn of the Dead and also allows you to beat zombies to death with literally anything you can find in a shopping mall (I can’t speak for the sequels as I’ve never played them). Dead Rising is far from the only game franchise to use zombies (more on that in a bit), but it pays homage directly to the genre in a way that many others don’t. 

The Zombie Renaissance

For a long while, zombies sort of fell out of fashion. Oh, there were some decent takes on the concept, like Re-Animator (1985) and Dead Alive (1992) but by and large zombies in the 1980s and 90s were played for laughs. 

But then they made a great big comeback, stronger maybe than they had ever been before. What happened?

Well, for one, they stayed close to the public conscience thanks to video games. Games and zombies are a perfect fit. Their shambling movement and slow, stupid behavior makes them a great choice for imperfect AI programming. They’re people-shaped, which makes them easy to animate, but they can be gross and deformed and scary, which makes them fun for your art team. And since they’re inhuman and dead, you can kill them in any way you’d like without feeling bad about it. 

Which is probably why zombies have been part-and-parcel of the gaming world since Entombed (1982) was released on the Atari. Doom (1993) was wildly popular, and just a few years later we’d start the Resident Evil franchise, which became both hugely influential as games and films. And lest we forget, Blizzard was giving us undead in Warcraft by the early 2000s, rising to greater prominence by World of Warcraft in its heydey (especially Wrath of the Lich King).  

But I’d argue that the number one single most important ingredient in the horror revival was Danny Boyle’s 2002 film 28 Days Later. 

28 Days Later was huge because it breathed fresh life (pun intended) into a genre that had gone stale. The monsters in 28 Days Later aren’t the walking dead at all -- they’re just people infected with a virus similar to rabies that makes them deadly (compare and contrast with The Crazies, both the 1973 original and 2010 remake, which deals with a similar concept. 

But thanks to being an excellent film with some wonderfully creepy-gross effects, 28 Days Later reignited fearful imaginations. It also introduced the world to the idea of fast zombies as an alternative to the usual shambling monsters. 

A couple years later, zombie content exploded. Aside from the Dawn of the Dead remake in 2004, and some Resident Evil and Doom film interpretations, we got Shaun of the Dead (2004), which is both hilarious and an exceptional zombie film. 

There’s also 28 Weeks Later (2007), a sequel to 28 Days (there is much debate as to which is better, I’m in the Days camp) and Planet Terror (2007), a personal favorite and one of the two films in the special Grindhouse double-feature. I’d also like to shout out Pontypool (2009) and, of course, the horror-comedy Zombieland (2009). 

ZOMBIE MANIA 

Probably nothing has been as influential in drawing zombie discourse into the public as AMC’s hit TV show The Walking Dead (2010), drawing on the graphic novel series of the same name. With a level of gore and violence rarely seen on network TV, a cast of memorable characters and an anyone-can-die narrative, it ignited a zombie fervor greater than anything we’d ever seen. 

The Walking Dead overlapped with a cultural apocalypse zeitgeist. Doomsday prepping started to go mainstream, and people started to plan their own personal zombie apocalypse survival plan. Hell, the CDC adopted zombie apocalypse language as a way to talk about real-world applications of survival knowledge. Zombies and survivalism now go hand-in-hand, for better or worse. 

No discussion of a zombie apocalypse is complete without Max Brooks’ World War Z (2007), which bears little resemblance to the film that shares its name. We should also make a shout-out for his more comedic companion volume, The Zombie Survival Guide (2003), which laid a foundation for what followed. 

For extra credit, play the TellTale Games: The Walking Dead (2012) and compare/contrast with the TV show and graphic novel. Then compare that with Train to Busan (2016), a Korean film that plays some tropes straight while turning others on their heads (it’s also one of my favorite films on this list). 

SYMPATHETIC ZOMBIES 

While the zombie apocalypse narrative took root and captured the imaginations of many, others started to look at things from a different angle. 

What if, they asked, the zombies were the heroes rather than the villains? 

John Ajvide Lindqvist, who you might know for the vampire story Let the Right One In, was ahead of his time with this on: Handling the Undead (2004) is a book that’s simultaneously heartbreaking and deeply unsettling in its portrayal of the dead returning to life and what that might mean to those they’d left behind. Compare and contrast that with the TV show Les Revenants (2004), which deals with a similar premise (there was an American remake, but I can’t speak for it as I didn’t watch it - seriously, just watch the subtitles and enjoy the French show). 

But not every zombie-protagonist story was so heart-wrenching. Look at Isaac Marion’s Warm Bodies (2010), and the film adaptation. There’s also Breathers! A Zombie’s Lament by S.G. Browne that is both hilarious and scathing. 

Follow those up with Diana Rowland’s My Life as a White Trash Zombie (2012) and the comic book/TV show iZombie (2015), both of which feature pale-haired, witty female medical examiners with a taste for brains. 

And finally, a shout-out to The Santa-Clarita Diet (2016), a hilariously dark and over-the-top gross show featuring Drew Barrymore as a zombie trying to get her life back together.

[scifigeneration]

New ways scientists can help put science back into popular culture

by Clifford Johnson

How often do you, outside the requirements of an assignment, ponder things like the workings of a distant star, the innards of your phone camera, or the number and layout of petals on a flower? Maybe a little bit, maybe never. Too often, people regard science as sitting outside the general culture: A specialized, difficult topic carried out by somewhat strange people with arcane talents. It’s somehow not for them.

But really science is part of the wonderful tapestry of human culture, intertwined with things like art, music, theater, film and even religion. These elements of our culture help us understand and celebrate our place in the universe, navigate it and be in dialogue with it and each other. Everyone should be able to engage freely in whichever parts of the general culture they choose, from going to a show or humming a tune to talking about a new movie over dinner.

Science, though, gets portrayed as opposite to art, intuition and mystery, as though knowing in detail how that flower works somehow undermines its beauty. As a practicing physicist, I disagree. Science can enhance our appreciation of the world around us. It should be part of our general culture, accessible to all. Those “special talents” required in order to engage with and even contribute to science are present in all of us.

So how do we bring about a change? I think using the tools of the general culture to integrate science with everything else in our lives can be a big part of the solution.

Science in popular entertainment

For example, in addition to being a professor, I work as a science advisor for various forms of entertainment, from blockbuster movies like the recent “Thor: Ragnarok,” or last spring’s 10-hour TV dramatization of the life and work of Albert Einstein (“Genius,” on National Geographic), to the bestselling novel “Dark Matter,” by Blake Crouch. People spend a lot of time consuming entertainment simply because they love stories like these, so it makes sense to put some science in there.

Science can actually help make storytelling more entertaining, engaging and fun – as I explain to entertainment professionals every chance I get. From their perspective, they get potentially bigger audiences. But good stories, enhanced by science, also spark valuable conversations about the subject that continue beyond the movie theater.

Science can be one of the topics woven into the entertainment we consume – via stories, settings and characters. ABC Television

Nonprofit organizations have been working hard on this mission. The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation helps fund and develop films with science content – “The Man Who Knew Infinity” (2015) and “Robot & Frank” (2012) are two examples. (The Sloan Foundation is also a funding partner of The Conversation US.)

The National Academy of Sciences set up the Science & Entertainment Exchange to help connect people from the entertainment industry to scientists. The idea is that such experts can provide Hollywood with engaging details and help with more accurate portrayals of scientists that can enhance the narratives they tell. Many of the popular Marvel movies – including “Thor” (2011), “Ant-Man” (2015) and the upcoming “Avengers: Infinity War” – have had their content strengthened in this way.

Encouragingly, a recent Pew Research Center survey in the U.S. showed that entertainment with science or related content is watched by people across “all demographic, educational and political groups,” and that overall they report positive impressions of the science ideas and scenarios contained in them.

Science in nonfiction books

This kind of work is not to every scientist’s taste. Some may instead prefer engagement projects that allow them more control of the scientific content than can be had when working on such large projects in the entertainment industry. Often, they instead work on nonfiction science books for the general reader. Here, I think we also need a change.

The typical expert-voiced monologues that scientists write are a wonderful component of the engagement effort, but the form is limited. Such books are largely read by people already predisposed to pick up a science book, or who are open to the authoritative academic’s voice telling them how to think. There are plenty of people who can engage with science but who find those kinds of books a sometimes unwelcome reminder of the classroom.

Following from my belief that science is for everyone, I suggest that publishers need to work with scientists to expand the kinds of books on offer, assured that there is an audience for them. This is currently difficult because publishing companies are risk averse: Something truly original in form likely will have trouble getting past the book proposal stage.

Like an overheard conversation, the author’s graphic novel explores big scientific questions about life and death. 'The Dialogues,' by Clifford V. Johnson, CC BY-ND

Progress is possible, however. Many years ago I realized it is hard to find books on the nonfiction science shelf that let readers see themselves as part of the conversation about science. So I envisioned an entire book of conversations about science taking place between ordinary people. While “eavesdropping” on those conversations, readers learn some science ideas, and are implicitly invited to have conversations of their own. It’s a resurrection of the dialogue form, known to the ancient Greeks, and to Galileo, as a device for exchanging ideas, but with contemporary settings: cafes, restaurants, trains and so on.

I decided it would be engaging for the reader to actually see who’s having those conversations, and where, instead of describing them in words. This led me to realize that I was contemplating a powerful form of visual storytelling: Graphic novels for adults have matured and exploded in popularity in recent years. Spiegelman’s “Maus: A Survivor’s Tale,” Satrapi’s “Persepolis” and Bechdel’s “Fun Home” are just three well-known examples.

But the storytelling tools of the graphic book have been little used in the quest to convey nonfiction science ideas to a general adult audience. The vast majority of contemporary graphic books with a science focus are presented instead as “explainer/adventure comics” for younger audiences. This is an important genre, but graphic books about science should not be limited to that.

And while there are several excellent graphic books for adults that include science, they typically focus instead on the lives of famous scientists, with discussion of the science itself as a secondary goal. Some excellent recent examples that balance the two aspects well include Ottaviani and Myrick’s “Feynman,” Padua’s “The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage,” and Doxiadis and Papadimitriou’s “Logicomix.” The scarcity of science-focused non-biographical graphic books for adults is especially true in my field of physics. So I decided that here was an opportunity to broaden the kinds of nonfiction science book available to engage the public.

Clifford Johnson at his drafting table. Clifford V. Johnson, CC BY-ND

So over six years I taught myself the requisite artistic and other production techniques, and studied the language and craft of graphic narratives. I wrote and drew “The Dialogues: Conversations About the Nature of the Universe” as proof of concept: A new kind of nonfiction science book that can inspire more people to engage in their own conversations about science, and celebrate a spirit of plurality in everyday science participation.

What’s at stake

Science increasingly pervades many aspects of our lives. If people succumb to the typical view that science is difficult and should be left to experts and nerds, the most important decisions about all of our lives will be made by just a few people: from the quality of the water we drink, our medical treatments, energy sources, through to action on climate change. That is not a democratic situation. Moreover, it makes it easier for a powerful few to sideline or misrepresent important ideas and lessons about our world that come through scientific research.

To push back against that scenario, it’s important for scientists to try to engage the public with science. In a changing world, it’s important to keep looking for new ways to do that.

Clifford Johnson is a Professor of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Southern California – Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. 

[theartofthepersonalessay574]

professional writers

About me

How To Become A Professional Writer Or Author

How To Become A Professional Writer Or Author I'd like a flexible program that has a curriculum in skilled and enterprise writing. Not all writers work as or want to be novelists, poets or authors. Writing is an extremely numerous occupational field with multi-faceted career paths. There isn’t a single route to turning into a writer, which is one of the main benefits of the profession. Yet, two-thirds of writers are self-employed freelancers and the data under outlines example steps somebody can take to turn into a writer. Writers need to have the ability to analysis and write about any topic, even these which might be unfamiliar. Research skills are a core component of the skilled writer’s toolbox. Because many writers are freelancers or self-employed, they have to be self-motivated and determined, taking a strategic strategy to touchdown new clients and producing sturdy materials. In turn, screenplays turn into the master plan for a producer, director, and actors to follow when shooting a movie. Grant writers work with nonprofit and public organizations to analysis and write proposals to receive funding from government companies, charities, and personal foundations. Bachelor’s degree applications usually require four-years of full-time study and expose college students to common education coursework and classwork of their chosen writing specialty. At this degree, the commonest majors embrace English literature, creative writing and English with a writing emphasis . These writing levels provide college students a number of educational pathways that may result in both work as a author or into additional graduate studies. Below is an outline of the completely different writing majors at the bachelor’s degree. Writing certificates are short-time period instructional applications that teach college students applied writing expertise, information about mechanics and elegance, and perception into tips on how to write for various audiences. There is so much professional writing that takes place in any business context. Another software you will need when you are studying to write down like an expert is the way to change your writing type. You will learn to know your viewers before you write. You will know the way to write within the first, second, or third individual narrative. Like a matchmaker, grant writers should find funding opportunities that align with the mission, actions and objectives of the group they are making an attempt to fund. This program is geared towards students excited about careers in editing and writing in government, enterprise or trade positions. Curriculum covers skill-based mostly writing in policy growth, grant writing, white papers, and other forms of office writing. This major exposes students to the fundamentals of skilled writing, expertise required across writing careers in nonprofit teams, authorities companies, publications, leisure, media and enterprise. The curriculum offers an summary of composition, enterprise writing, grammar and rhetoric, and language concept. Through this curriculum, college students develop abilities in crucial writing, research and evaluation. As professional improvement applications, certificates include curriculum in a number of area of interest areas. These areas range from fiction to feature movie writing, tv writing to grant writing. The size of certificate packages vary, however usually require five to eight courses to complete. I'm a working media professional, however need to enhance my writing skills. Screenwriters are sometimes self-employed freelancers that develop and write screenplays for tv shows and films. These pieces may be completely unique or primarily based on current content material, similar to a novel, quick story, comedian e-book or one other film. Screenwriters have distinctive understanding of tips on how to assemble a narrative and join it to a larger plot and story. Although some writers are born nice, most require experience, schooling and training to turn out to be proficient at their craft. Learn more about a few of the qualities writers should possess, the instruments they use in their every day work, and credentials they will earn to develop new expertise and advance in their careers. You may even be a grasp of e mail etiquette and how to employ efficient word alternative. There are many alternative instruments that you will use as a professional author to get your message across to your audience. Here are a couple that you will want to know to be able to be a very skilled author. There’s much more to being an expert author than that. Jan Archer holds a Bachelor of Arts in political science and a master's degree in inventive writing.

[askjonfreeman]

Pixar's Coco - spoiler free review

TL;DR = Through and Through it's on quality par with Disney Classic 2D animated.  I'd rank it alongside Beauty and the Beast easy, no questions. Ton of heart, balanced fare, and with basically none of the negatives you're probably thinking it will have. Go see it! ... but if they show the Frozen short, leave the theatre for 15 minutes to get popcorn.  that short is terrible and needs to be cut from existence. ========== Saw it on Tuesday.  Now that I've had time to digest it I can properly review it. THE GOOD! - It feels more like a Disney Classic Animated Film than a Pixar Film. ... and I mean the good Disney classics, like Aladdin, Beauty and the Beast, Lion King, etc.  (though it's definitely in the half-step lower that Beauty and the Beast was as opposed to pure gold Lion King / Aladdin) - The music is amazing I've had the main song of the film stuck in my head off and on and I've had no complaints about it. ... bonus points, they clearly wrote the lyrics in spanish first, then translated to english.  Savvy viewers will be able to pick this up.  Also, the soundtrack has Spanish language versions of the songs. - The characters are fantastic Expect fanart of Dante from me - I seriously don't have complaints about it! This is better explained through the subsequent section... THE GOOD ASPECTS THAT ARE DERIVED FROM AVOIDING PITFALLS! - It doesn't feel like a Pixar film! Pixar films lately have been terrible.  They also focus heavily on The Science of Sad (i.e. calculated forced tear jerkers or teaching kids the valuable life lesson of DEATH). ... It doesn't feel like that.  The only times you might cry are when they touch on resonating tones (because the film is heavily family centric), but they aren't cry moments.  So it's like Disney animated better films where you might get weepy eyed because it touches you.  Not because they pull a narrative sucker punch. - It isn't Book of Life! I still haven't seen Book of Life myself.  But I've read plot synopsis ... the two stories have basically nothing in common.  So if that's a concern, don't worry about it. - It doesn't follow the "but I wanna be an artist!" trope-line I hate that plot line.  Seriously, it's predictable sappy artuer wankery.  Coco presents the foundations early on for plot twists later where it breaks away from that horrid story-flow.  So it's not a "I'll show everyone artists are better than you pleb" story.  ... but why it's different is spoiler territory, so I can't talk about it further. - It isn't political! This was a big concern going into it for me.  And this is because of how pants-on-head retarded Hollywood liberals have become (let's politicize everything, get the facts wrong because we focus on feelings, and alienate everyone destroying our story!).  There's absolutely ZERO political sentiments in there.  That means it focuses on stuff that everyone can relate to ... WHICH MEANS IT'S A GOOD STORY. - It doesn't get lost in its myth This is a general concern about any film with magic elements: story tellers get sidetracked by the world/myth lore to the point where the audience can't connect.  They keep it focused to a few simple/unique aspects that have a resonating quality to them ... which means you don't have to remember WHY something's important or get re-explained anything.  It's stuff you likely care about. THE BAD FROZEN it's that bad. It's the only thing I regret and hate about the experience And it frustrates me that they paired something so HORRENDOUSLY AWFUL with something so good. The rumors are true about how terrible this thing is. You'll wish everyone (except Oaken) dies by the time the "short" is over. - rumor, that lines up with product, is that it was a made-for-tv special that got cancelled (because animated TV specials are almost always terrible) - so it's 20 minutes, way too long - the music is terrible garbage - they made Olaf into a truly unbearable waste of space (actually impressive since I didn't mind him before) - They made the clown the main character.  That never works out. - Olaf goes out literally looking for traditions.  I mean ... WHAT.  nobody can relate to this shit. - you'll pray for a quick death and nail in the coffin to Frozen Fever ... and hopefully a cancellation of the sequel ... and with how bad this short is that just might happen - the lesbian princess scrapped story line still hangs its awful uncanny head over the sisters (substantiated rumor is that Anna/Elsa lovers was plan A and it didn't test well, so they recast them as sisters ... and now you can't unsee it. ... Granted, I think it's more that Frozen isn't that interesting of a story, so having a divisive politicized element in a boring story will lose half your audience instantly as opposed to "THEY AREN'T READY!" but tumblr-ites will never accept that answer).  This short did nothing to shift the dynamics away from Anna/Elsa being lovers ... which is totally weird since they're sisters.   - I mean, for example, Kristoff coulda been a bigger part in this to make Anna have an actual love interest (with an odd-couple romance) and further push that uncanny creepiness away ... BUT THEY ALSO COULD HAVE MADE A GOOD SHORT. - i think i laughed a total of 3 times in 20 minutes - I can't even imagine what the story boarding meetings where like when they crew had to try and sell each other on this garbage?  Did those happen in a vacuum? - We got this instead of a cool short like Piper.  Screw you Disney.   Screw you and your Frozen Fever! - however, the sauna house guy, Oaken, makes a 60 second appearance.  He's still an amazing character.  ... that's the only good point of the short. Out of spite, I'll pitch a better story line set in Frozen with the same parameters of it being a Holiday Special... - Keep the intro gag that the sisters try to host a party and all the citizens go home to their families for christmas, leaving sisters without a party to host - ... but then have Anna be torn between spending time with her boyfriend Kristoff (in some adorkable odd couple romance hijinks) or spend time with her sister ... - and have Elsa feel a little bitter and jealous over this and sulk a little, with Olaf misunderstanding everything for comic dramatic irony - then the sisters both get over their little argument, and apologize - have a quiet ending where the characters spend time together  (not some big chorus number full of painful sap) - the idea is to strike tones with anyone who's dealt with marriage, significant others, and other time conflict of interests - keep to 5-7 minutes and boom.  Cute story, simple conflict that's resolved, stuff people can relate to So yeah, IF they show the short.  walk out for a 10-15 minute stretch.  A lot of theater houses are complaining and are trying to figure out how to cut the short from their screenings.  So you may not have to suffer.

[femmingway-blog]

“I Know You” : On visibility and support for LGBTQIA+ youth and children

Today I want to discuss welcoming spaces, supporting LGBTQIA+ children, and the importance of queer visibility.

My partner and I recently had the pleasure of being invited to speak at two churches in the small village in which I grew up. Long Reach United Church, and its sister congregation Westfield United Church, form part of the Two Rivers Pastoral Charge. They invited us to speak as part of their efforts in becoming an “Affirming with a capital A ministry” (as the minister put it when speaking to us about the invitation). As part of the Affirming Ministry application process, they have accepted the challenge to bring in people from various backgrounds and walks of life to discuss what it feels like to not always belong, and ways that they have felt welcome and belonging, so that the congregation may learn to do it more adeptly.

[Image description: A wooden table outside the Sanctuary of Long Reach United Church. On the table is a cream coloured cloth with floral embroidery in earth tones, a vase, guest book, pamphlets, and in the foreground of the photo is a sheet of cream paper with the words “Entering Guilt-Free Zone” in large, bold capital letters.] This was not only an incredibly admirable and humbling goal to consider, but we could not possibly have felt more welcomed, loved, and appreciated while we were there. The focus of our particular talk was on welcoming transgender people, and I touched on the subject matter of LGBTQIA+ children, particularly trans children.  It occurred to me as we spoke that I have a lot to say about finding ways to make sure that young queer people have something positive to look up to or envision for the future.  I think it is so important that no matter what, whenever we are discussing issues to do with LGBTQIA+ people, that we be aware that children hear these conversations happening. While children may not currently have the necessary vocabulary, understanding, and self-knowledge it takes to actually put a label to their identities or experiences, LGBTQIA+ adults will remember and look back on the times they were allowed to feel joyful and safe in their ways of expressing attraction and gender identity, rather than ashamed or abnormal.  Children may not have the language to identify the problem, but they do still know when something doesn’t feel quite right about themselves - and that feeling is a direct result of a world that has been built without them in mind.

These experiences will shape the ways they engage with those identities later in life, and how safe they will be able to feel in any given situation. In a world that is still so full of hostile stances on queer and trans people, it is difficult to feel secure in trusting that silence could mean quiet support; when one is accustomed to being excluded, they will rarely make the assumption that they are invited in.

In terms of consequences for a lack of support and visibility for queer and trans youth: according to the TransPulse research project done in Ontario , strong family and parental support can account for a 93% reduction in suicide attempts for a trans youth, who are already at an astronomically high risk for attempting suicide:

Consideration of suicide was common [among youth participants], and was reported by 35% of youth whose parents were strongly supportive and 60% of those whose parents were not strongly supportive. Particularly alarming is that among this latter 60%, nearly all (57%) had actually attempted suicide in the past year. In contrast, only 4% of those with strongly supportive parents attempted suicide. While 4% is still far too high, the impact of strong parental support can be clearly seen in the 93% reduction in reported suicide attempts for youth who indicated their parents were strongly supportive of their gender identity and expression. 

These numbers show that having a supportive family has an unfathomably deep connection to a desire to continue living for young children facing a scary and unfamiliar existence. They can be compared to the general national average, which shows that over the course of a lifetime, 14.7% of Canadians think about ending their own lives, and 3.5% ever make an attempt. 

Something that I mentioned to the Churches’ minister when we spoke to her last week about what to focus on in our talk was the issue of how to address someone who expresses the somewhat common the fear that their child may become gay or trans themselves. I believe that it is important to have honest discussions with people who express this kind of worry, to help them to identify where it may be coming from, and to question its foundations. We must also question any assumptions we hold that this kind of fear is founded in something inherently negative, unsupportive, or harmful, or that it something impossible to change. We must consider whether, for example, it founded on the fear of a hostile world’s effects on a child who grows up to adopt a non cis-heteronormative identity, or if it is a fear that is based in stereotypes and assumptions about what kind of person holds those kinds of identities. It is not enough to answer that question, because that doesn’t help anyone cope with or confront their fear; after naming it, we must consider what can be done to alleviate it. In the examples above, if it is the former, we have a responsibility to make the world safer for the child in question; if it is the latter, we have a responsibility to learn to engage with people as individuals, rather than walking embodiments of something we dislike or with which we are unfamiliar.

Support can come in the form of having conversations, and discussing the basic fact that other kinds of people, other kinds of families, other ways of seeing the world, all exist and can all simultaneously be genuine, beautiful, and worthwhile. When I considered what it meant to me to be given the chance to speak to a group of people about our perspective and experiences, I was struck by the idea that there have more likely than not been times when a young child listening to me - or a friend of mine, or another out and outspoken member of the community - has learned something more about themselves, or has potentially been given, for the first time, an opportunity to see a possible future as a queer person that isn’t frightening or lonely. Consider the way trans people  are represented on tv and in the news. As well as bisexual people, and queer people of all kinds. The choices available through the mainstream media are: extremely unstable, tragically lonely, dead, and/or a criminal of some sort. Choose at least one. And it’s usually dead. This ties into some work that my partner did a while back for a queer literary magazine called Vitality - the premise of the magazine was to publish creative content (stories, art, poetry) by and/or about queer people, and the only other criteria was that it had to be happy or positive - no sad endings, no deaths of one partner leaving the other completely alone, no “overcoming harassment” narratives, and no focus on deviance or criminality. The magazine eventually shut down, unfortunately, for lack of funding.

Consider our cultural narratives about LGBTQIA+ people, often the first exposure young LGBTQIA+ children have to a world where these kinds of people exist. Often, they are demonizing, and even when trying to supportive, they often rely on a form of tragedy porn that necessitates the death and sacrifice of a noble queer character who may serve as an example to us of the importance of acceptance. While it may be humbling and inspirational for onlookers, what we teach our children is that queer people can expect to grow up to be freaks or to be dead. We need to expect better for them.

This idea also ties into a number from a musical that is very close to my heart. Based on the illustrated strip-comic-style memoir of prolific lesbian cartoonist Allison Bechdel of the same name, Fun Home the musical is the story of a young girl growing into a woman who is forced to confront the very real effects of queer invisibility in our families and communities.  Alison Bechdel is also known for her famous comic strip Dykes to Watch out For and as the creator of the now-familiar “Bechdel Test” used to gauge a given film’s portrayal of women.

Bechdel’s memoir in Fun Home focuses on the reality she knew as a young girl growing up in Pennsylvania, never really feeling that she fit with the role that she was told to strive for - one of femininity, softness, attraction to men, and a desire to fit in. The book spends a good deal of time focusing on her feelings of confusion and alienation with the ideas that she was taught to value, when she felt that the things she liked were perfectly legitimate as well, especially when she saw young boys being encouraged to do the very things she was barred from. When Bechdel finally came out to her parents after going away to university, she was immediately confronted with the revelation that her father was also gay, and had been secretly (and clumsily) concealing his affairs with men (and sometimes young boys) from his family and peers for decades. Not only was this a complete surprise to Alison, but she was thrown into further chaos and confusion when her father took his own life only a few months later, before ever having the chance to truly speak to her about their unique yet similar experiences of living as an LGBTQIA+ person living in a world that denies their very existence.

The musical contains a scene between Allison at 43 and her younger self at age 7 or 8, which I consider to be one of the more powerful and moving vignettes I have ever seen. This scene stuck with me for a good deal of time after first seeing it, and comes to mind for me often. I had to do a good deal of unpacking in order to process the emotions it brought up to me, and I would like to share it. Here is a video copy of the scene being performed at the Tony awards in 2015.

This scene in particular is made up of so many subtle and important details, not the least of which is the strong sense of recognition and joy expressed by Young Al when she sees an adult exhibit a way of existing she hadn’t even known was viable until that moment. This scene is so important to me personally because it perfectly embodies the ideas behind why queer people know that visibility is important. We all know at this point that Allison does not know she is gay yet - she will not know this about herself for more than a decade to come. But she knows that there is something about her that she isn’t able to name, but with which she is familiar enough to recognize when she does see it in another person.

[Image description: two panels from the Fun Home book. The first panel shows a large, butch woman with short curly hair, a plaid button up shirt with the sleeves rolled up and tucked into jeans with a belt and a large ring of keys hanging from the belt. She is speaking with a server at a cafe who takes her order with tired, uninterested eyes. The woman stands with her back straight and her hands on her hips. In the background of the first panel, Young Al can be seen in a booth, looking right at the woman with her hands between her knees and a fixed, interested expression. She has a bob that goes to her chin, held out of her face with a barette. She wears a striped long-sleeved cotton shirt and blue jeans. Across from Al, her father looks back over his shoulders at the woman as well. The caption at the top of the panel reads: “I didn’t know there were women who wore men’s clothes and had men’s haircuts.” at the bottom of the panel, the caption reads: “But like a traveler in a foreign country who runs into someone from home -- someone they’ve never spoken to, but know by sight -- i recognized her with a surge of joy.” In the second panel, young Al and her father are facing each other in profile. they are sitting in the booth of the cafe but are shown from the neck up (Young Al) and shoulders up (her father). The Caption at the top reads “Dad recognized her too.” and there is a speech bubble in which her father says “Is THAT what you want to look like?” in a strong suggestion that she should not, in fact, want to look like that. ] Not only is this a charming demonstration of the intangible internal struggle that comes with having experiences that aren’t reflected in the stories and examples given to us in narratives our society tends to produce, but it is also one of a very few LGBT coming-of-age narratives that are not heavily reliant on sex and sexuality. In fact, it is the only one I can personally remember encountering that is not. This small scene, meant to represent just a few seconds’ worth of real time, is able to express a very intangible concept about identity, representation, and innate self-knowledge combined with a profound sense of alienation, all the while not relying on the imagery or act of sex - or even romantic attraction - just because the subject of the story is gay.

Ring of Keys is an excellent reminder to us that children pay attention to the world of adults; they do not live in a world that is separate from our own, nor are they sheltered from the values and prejudices we hold as adults. I think Young Al is an excellent reminder to all of us that we don’t need to have the “right” vocabulary, or any of the answers, in order to make children feel safe and values regardless of how they like to dress or what excites and pleases them. Making an effort to acknowledge and celebrate difference, including exposing children to different ways of being an adult, different ways of shaping a loving family, and different ways of structuring one’s life, can do and incredible amount of good to that child’s own self-esteem. At the end of the day, kids may not know exactly who they will grow up to be, but if they know that the possibilities are only limited by their creativity, and if they know that their families and communities will celebrate them as long as they keep a caring heart and are honest to themselves, they will inevitably be more equipped to handle the world they will travel through.

------

[Image Description: The sanctuary at Long Reach United Church. The pews are a warm golden brown colour and sunlight streams through tall windows to the far right. The Church is empty and service has not yet started.]

On Sunday March 26th, a young child walked to the front of Westfield United Church’s sanctuary and helped an adult light a white pillar candle brightly banded by the seven colours of the rainbow. The first point of order in the church bulletin was to acknowledge that the church stands on unceded Wabanaki territory, and the microphone system and electronic display of readings and song selections demonstrated an active effort to include people with disabilities or impairments. From the moment we walked in the door, we were warmly welcomed with smiles, handshakes, and hugs from strangers and family friends alike. We heard from many adults who expressed a desire to find ways to show LGBTQIA+ people that they are welcomed and loved in their community. They spoke of wishing to find ways to show that support, to make it real and tangible to those who otherwise may not even be fully open about their identities.  The longer we spent there the clearer it became that this was an example that, while communities may not have as much access to information and resources they can clearly understand about LGBTQIA+ people, the first and most important step is seeking it out in the first place.

[dictacontrion]

Hey there! I always wanted to ask: as a writer, which literary works have influenced you the most? :)

Hi anon!!! This ask is so much fun to think about loads of non-fiction - creative essays, memoir, scholarly stuff, news - and still do. I took a lot of literature classes, so I was reading things from different historical periods, different countries, authors with different types of experiences. I’m pretty omnivorous when it comes to reading, and thinking through what I like most in each type of reading has done a lot to influence what I want my own writing to do.

But of course, there are faves! Or, not necessarily faves, but things that have stuck with me and that I’ve thought more about and been more influenced by. When I was little, Anne of Green Gables and Little Women, and thank goodness for Lucy Maud Montgomery and Louisa May Alcott and the people who gave me those books, for making the first stories I read ones where women were complex and had interiority and complexity and ambition and skill and were loved because of it, not in spite of it. There was a pretty formative Vonnegut phase, and I still admire his ability to make complex points with simply told very accessible stories, and the sort of line-blurring he does between sci-fi and not-sci-fi storytelling. David Foster Wallace’s essays and short stories have been big; his voice is very much his own, his writing is smart, his observations are incisive and funny, and his work manages to convey so many emotions simultaneously that I’m often blown away (can’t let you go without recommending “A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again.”) Adrienne Rich and Audre Lorde, in addition to being my heroes, are phenomenal at giving form to unspoken things and pinpointing exactly that thing you felt, and somehow always knew, but didn’t have words for They’ve influenced my life as much as my writing, but their ability to articulate experience honestly and beautifully and unflinchingly is where I admire them most as writers, and I hope I’m influenced by that.

There are so many more. A whole bunch of queer theorists for how they combine the political and the aesthetic. The way Ralph Ellison uses metaphor in Invisible Man, the way Jeannette Winterson uses gender in Written on the Body, Dorothy Allison’s unwavering gaze in everything. Details in specific scenes in so, so many more books. A whole bunch of people who engage magical realism in different ways (interestingly, though perhaps not surprisingly, I think that has made it easier to write about wizards). A whole bunch of books that were influential because I didn’t like them (Jack Kerouac can jump in a fucking lake, pretentious dirtbag). And that’s not even getting into writing for TV and film, which I guarantee you has done just as much, if not more, for my sense of language and narrative.

Also, I know we don’t usually talk about these things in the same breath, but I don’t want to undersell how much other fanfiction writers have influenced me. After a very long spell of reading only nonfiction, it was @femmequixotic’s writing that reminded me that beautiful, evocative writing and the pleasure that comes from richly drawn worlds is a worthwhile end unto itself, and that’s what made me want to write fiction again at all. @firethesound‘s humor gives her stories a lightness and heart that’s made me way more interested in being a funny writer than I’d ever been before, curiouslyfic and abbycadabra makes me want to play with abstraction again, @eidheann reminds me that including my characters’ less noble reactions makes them realer and truer and shouldn’t be shied away from, @vaysh11 males me want to push my descriptive skills, blamebrampton made me want to try setting human stories against politics, @lol-zeitgeistic made me think through my world-building foundations in a whole new way, frayach and kedavranox made me want to explore darker themes, @icmezzo made me want to try writing magic front and center and making it visual and beautiful, so many people made me want to try writing sex and seeing what that could do for a story, which I’d never done before, and really, I could go on and on and on.

Truly, every time I read a great new fic, there’s something I take away. In just the last round of erised, birdsofshore’s Lumos made me want to think more about how magic would feel in the body, @thistle-verse‘s A Ghost in the Garden has me thinking about how to use tropes and how to more richly use canon, @femmequixotic and @noeeon’s Boom Clap (The Sound of My Heart) has me thinking about how to make canon richer and how to give familiar settings and characters new life, @blithelybonny‘s 1,000 Points from Gryffindor has me thinking about story structure and how to build OCs, @ravenclawsquill’s The Full Four Seasons has me thinking about when and how and why characters’ sexual identities matter and how to resolve conflicts around characters doing complicated things, A Ghost in the Garden and @lol-zeitgeistic’s Antediluvia both have me thinking about how to tell stories in fictional worlds that feel relevant to our own and how to do it without making the world seem bleak, and listen, I could go on and on and on some more, and still be talking about that one fest in this one fandom.

I still wouldn’t have have touched how These Inconvenient Fireworks made me rethink genre, or how Pull Me Under made me rethink coming out stories, or how tell me about the big bang made me rethink structure and how we write intimacy.

And I could talk about all of that and still not have touched how much the existence of fanfiction changed my writing - how accessible it makes it, how freeing it is to write in a context that transcends the boundaries that can pigeonhole published works, how it is to write in this kind of community of writers and readers, how much I love the variety, how much it’s shifted my sense of what makes writing worth doing, how much less it’s made me focus on what makes Literature Good and how much more it’s made me focus on what makes stories move people, what makes words reach into your chest and find something there that needs knowing.

So: fanfiction, dear anon. Fanfiction may be the most influential literature of all.

[mrhotmaster]

Best Pandemic Movies & TV Series On Youtube, Amazon, Netflix & More

List Of All Pandemic Movies And TV Series On Netflix, Amazon Prime, Youtube & More

The world is a wreck and we're all searching for idealism. Solace nourishment sitcoms or trashy unscripted television, here we come. For a few of us however, the best way to ponder the circumstance is to comprehend it better. 

You know, become familiar with pandemics, how they spread, how specialists react, and what happens when nothing works. In light of a legitimate concern for simply that, we've gathered a lot of amusement decisions that fill that need, including films, TV arrangement — and a prepackaged game. We'll answer "why" for the remainder of those in a moment. None of the alternatives underneath have the infection transform people into zombies; we'll be covering those in a different rundown. 

Here are the best pandemic motion pictures and shows, that could possibly help how you feel about things at this moment. Contagion (2011)

It's the pandemic film that everybody has been viewing, so normally it must be on the rundown. Coordinated by Steven Soderbergh (Ocean's 11) off a content composed by Scott Z. Consumes (The Bourne Ultimatum), Contagion opens with the astonishing passing of Gwyneth Paltrow, which promptly indicates that this thing isn't to be upset. You don't murder off a major name entertainer except if you mean business. From that point, it continues in deductively precise style �� Burns counseled WHO reps — and gives us a glance at how a pandemic can draw out the most exceedingly terrible in individuals and separate society. Matt Damon, Marion Cotillard (Inception), Laurence Fishburne (The Matrix), Jude Law (The Young Pope), Kate Winslet (Titanic), and Bryan Cranston (Breaking Bad) round out the ritzy cast.  Watch Contagion on Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV, Google Play, or YouTube Virus (2019) 

Closer to home, we've this anecdotal story that is set against the genuine scenery of the 2018 Nipah infection episode — with a 75 percent death rate — in the province of Kerala. It follows doctors, disease transmission specialists, the pastor for wellbeing, and a region gatherer as they unite to contain the infection's spread. Infection highlight the huge commitments of the clinical crew in occasions such as these. Parvathy (Take Off), Tovino Thomas (Mayaanadhi), Asif Ali (Traffic), Joju George (Joseph), and Revathi (Man Vasanai) are a piece of the skilled cast of this holding Malayalam-language spine chiller coordinated by Aashiq Abu, a National Award victor for delivering Maheshinte Prathikaaram. Watch Virus on Amazon Prime Video Outbreak (1995)

For those searching for equals to their flow circumstance, an anecdotal coastline California town is isolated and put under lockdown in Outbreak, which follows an Ebola-like infection bouncing from monkey to people — previously (some way or another) transforming and getting airborne. It's not really logical and it's not generally excellent film either, yet it makes for terrifying film, if that is suited to your tastes. Armed force specialists having a place with the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) and researchers working for Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) are the film's legends, as they attempt to design a serum. Dustin Hoffman (Rain Man), Rene Russo (Nightcrawler), Morgan Freeman (Se7en), and Donald Sutherland (The Hunger Games) lead the cast. It co-stars Kevin Spacey, who stands blamed in the #MeToo development. Watch Outbreak on Apple TV, Google Play, or YouTube 12 Monkeys (1995)

In the event that you need your pandemic amusement with a time-travel curve, look no farther than 12 Monkeys. Bruce Willis, Brad Pitt, and Madeleine Stowe (The Last of the Mohicans) star in the number one spot of this science fiction spine chiller, which finds a detainee (Willis), living in 2035 dystopian Philadelphia, prepared and sent back so as to 1996 to get some answers concerning the infection so researchers later on can think of a fix. Obviously, things don't go as arranged. He winds up in an inappropriate year twice, he's hospitalized in a psychological foundation on a specialist's (Stowe) counsel, and he meets an insane eco-bioterrorist (Pitt) who could conceivably have something to do with everything. Pitt won a Golden Globe for playing said crazed fear based oppressor, and 12 Monkeys proceeded to make about multiple times its financial limit in the cinema world. Watch 12 Monkeys on Netflix, Apple TV, Google Play, or YouTube Designated Survivor: Season 3 (2019)

Indeed, that is a touch of responsibility, we understand, yet dislike you're going out anyplace. While the principle focal point of the arrangement's third season remains legislative issues, with Kiefer Sutherland's US President crusading for re-appointment, a subplot manages a demonstration of bioterrorism, which includes a viral flare-up that lone targets ethnic minorities. America's history of prejudice is the common equal here. Assigned Survivor showrunner Neal Baer met with Johns Hopkins, Harvard, and MIT specialists during the composing stage to keep things near science, however the TV show accepts noteworthy inventive freedoms as and when it feels like. It likewise makes the circumstance shortsighted, however that additionally implies it accompanies conclusion, dissimilar to what's going on around us at this moment. Watch Designated Survivor season 3 on Netflix Pandemic: How to Prevent an Outbreak (2020) and Explained: The Next Pandemic (2019)

These two titles give a narrative way to deal with pandemics, as they either take us through how specialists fight sicknesses and hostile to immunization dolts (Pandemic: How to Prevent an Outbreak), or inform us regarding the historical backdrop of pandemics and how they spread (The Next Pandemic). Both miracle if a greater pandemic is around the bend, which is spooky given they discharged in the previous scarcely any months. The Next Pandemic, some portion of Explained season 2, publicized early November. The six-section miniseries Pandemic: How to Prevent an Outbreak dropped in late January. Perceptive. Watch Pandemic: How to Prevent an Outbreak and Explained: The Next Pandemic on Netflix

Pandemic (2008)

Remaining at home is the most ideal route the vast majority of us can support the world at the present time. Be that as it may, in case you're tingling to accomplish more, go give to a reasonable nourishment good cause. At the point when you're set, you can drench yourself in sparing the world from a pandemic right now operation tabletop game that causes you to feel in charge and much better, at any rate for its span. For those tired of detached media utilization, Pandemic is great. In it, you transform into a person on call — surgeon, researcher, analyst, isolate authority, or dispatcher — and help find a fix. Up to four players — more with extensions — can collaborate and avoid four maladies that take steps to dominate. Since we're totally expected to be social separating, get the application variant of Pandemic that permits you to play online with others. Download Pandemic: The Board Game for Android, iOS, Xbox, or PC

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[lefilmdujour]

Another 500th movie celebration

My Tumblr just reached the 1000 movies mark, so I figured it’s time I write something about my last 2 and a half years of movie viewings and recommend 50 more movies out of the ones I’ve seen since the last 500th movie celebration.

Times have been strange in the last couple of years, and my movie habits have reflected it. There have been times when watching films was all I would do, but there have also been moments of complete disconnection from the medium. I went from watching several movies every day to spending months avoiding anything to do with sitting through a movie. 

Part of it had to do with the space I share with my demons, but mostly there has been a change of pace. My laptop died, it took me months to get another one only to also die on me. On the other hand, an enormous chunk of my viewings have been in cinemas or squats, which is a very positive change but led me to watch more recent films in detriment of classics or ancient underappreciated gems. I also got my first TV in over a decade this month, and my very first Netflix account last week, so I may be exploring streaming a bit more, although so far I am not finding the experience  at all satisfying. All pointless excuses since I went through 500+ movies in a little over two years, which is not bad at all.

It was hard to pick only 50 movies this time, and the list would have probably looked a little different if I did it tomorrow. Regardless, here are 50 movies I recommend, and why. Random order, all deserving of love and attention.

Ghost World (Terry Zwigoff) - This movie is unfairly  ignored in the best comic book adaptation lists out there on the internet. The opening scene is memorable, the soundtrack is a lesson in early Blues, and the characters are quirky and well written.

Hate (Mathieu Kassovitz) - An absolute classic about the class system in France and its tendency to end up in riots. Beautiful shot and highly quotable. Saw it a few times, the last of them with a live score from Asian Dub Foundation. One of the greats.

Audition (Takashi Miike) - Whenever I’m asked about my favorite horror movie, I tend to fall back on this one. Audition is very slow, starting out soft but with an underlying tension that builds until the absolutely gut-wrenching finale that makes us question our own sanity. Brilliant subversion of the “hear, don’t see” rule, just the though of some of the sounds used in the most graphic scenes still send shivers down my spine.

Kedi (Ceyda Torun) - A Turkish documentary about street cats, what’s there not to like?

Sympathy for Lady Vengeance (Park Chan-wook) - The third in the loosely-connected Vengeance trilogy by Park Chan-wook, and my favorite of the bunch, especially the Fade to Black and White edition, in which the movie very gradually loses color as the violence grows. A visual masterpiece.

Paterson (Jim Jarmusch) - The poetry of routine. Adam Driver is one hell of an actor.

Love Me If You Dare (Yann Samuell) - Two people that obviously love each other but are not mature enough to follow it through. Frustrating. Beautiful. Made me sob.

The Exterminating Angel (Luis Buñuel) - I am realizing that a good part of this list deals with frustration. A group of people finds themselves unable to leave a party for no apparent reason. Buñuel is a genious in surrealism, I have yet to watch most of his Mexican period.

The Mutants (Teresa Villaverde) - Kids on the run from themselves. Strong visuals, very moving interactions at times. A hard but very rewarding watch. Teresa Villaverde’s entire filmography also gets a seal of approval.

Bad Education (Pedro Almodóvar) - A movie about sexuality and problematic relationships, taken to unbelievable extremes.

The Death of Mr. Lazarescu (Cristi Puiu) - The adventures of Mr. Lazarescu as he struggles to find help for the sudden pain he feels and ends up being passed on from hospital to hospital. Felt very real. Sold as a comedy, but I found it terrifying. 

The Killing of a Sacred Deer (Yorgos Lanthimos) - A classic greek tragedy brought to the modern age. My favorite Lanthimos film, ranking slightly below Dogtooth. The deadpan acting and the unnerving sound serves as wonderful misdirection.

It’s Such a Beautiful Day (Don Hertzfeldt) - Three shorts stitched together to create a confusing, philosophical, absurd, funny and deep masterpiece. The animation skills of Don Hertzfeldt needs more recognition.

Amores Perros (Alejandro González Iñárritu) - A movie so good it didn’t even had an English name. Three tales of love, violence and loss, all linked by a dog.

Endless Poetry (Alejandro Jodorowsky) - Jodorowsky’s romanticized auto-biography, played by his own sons.Bohemian and poetic.

The Passion of Joan of Arc (Carl Theodor Dreyer) - Show this movie to someone who refuses to watch silent movies. The acting is so impactful and emotional, and the use of close ups was highly unusual for the time. A 90-plus years old masterpiece.

Everything is Illuminated (Liev Schreiber) - Sunflowers.

Dunkirk (Christopher Nolan) - I have a soft spot for war movies, as to remind myself how brutal people can be to their fellow man and how meaningless the concept of nations truly is. This movie in particular achieves greatness due to its usage of sound, the best I’ve heard in recent memory.

Vagabond (Agnès Varda) - Be careful of what you wish for yourself, you may end up frozen and miserable in a ditch (spoilers for literally the first few seconds of the film).

Stroszek (Werner Herzog) - I know Herzog mostly through his documentaries. His voice brings me the feeling of a deranged grandpa sharing stories of a reality tainted by dementia. I have yet to explore his fiction work in-depth, and this has been my starting point. Stroszek is bleak and desperate but humor still shines through it at times. Ian Curtis allegedly hung himself after watching it. Not sure if this story is real, but it once more feeds into the Herzog myth.

HyperNormalization (Adam Curtis) - Put together through found footage and newscasts, HyperNormalization is an unforgiving study on how we got to where we currently are. Fake becomes real. Trust is an abandoned concept. “They've undermined our confidence in the news that we are reading/And they make us fight each other with our faces buried deep inside our phones”, as AJJ sings in Normalization Blues. Which you should also check out.

Chicken with Plums (Marjane Satrapi & Vincent Paronnaud) - A man decides to die, so he goes to bed and waits. An apparent simple plot that uncovers a world of beauty and poetry, as life passes slowly through the man’s eyes.

The Florida Project (Sam Baker) - William Dafoe was born to play the role of a motel manager. He is so natural in his role that I think he would actually be great in that job. The rest of the movie is great too, but his performance is the highlight for me.

Lucky (John Carroll Lynch) - Speaking of great performances, Lucky is Harry Dean Stanton’s final movie and a great send off. IMDB describes it best: “The spiritual journey of a ninety-year-old atheist.“

Paris, Texas (Wim Wenders) - More Harry Dean Stanton. The desert plays a more than decorative role in this wonderful movie, representing the emptiness that comes from estrangement. A story about reunion and all that can come from it.

On Chesil Beach (Dominic Cooke) - I sometimes cry in movies, but this one shook me to the core. A play on expectations and reactions and their devastating impact on relationships. We all fuck up sometimes. Try not to fuck up like these characters did, not on that level, you will never be able to make up for it.

The Royal Tenenbaums (Wes Anderson) - An absolute classic. A movie about the concept of family.

No Country for Old Men (Coen Brothers) - Murder mysteries and bad haircuts.

Dawson City: Frozen Time (Bill Morrison) - I highly recommend this documentary for anyone who professes their love for cinema. The story of how hundreds of lost silent movies were preserved though sheer luck and human stupidity. Seeing these damaged frames coming back to life is truly magical.

Mandy (Panos Cosmatos) - Some films turn into cult experiences through the years, some selected few are already born that way. Mandy is a psychedelic freak-out and Nicholas Cage fits like a glove in its weirdness. If you didn’t catch it while in cinemas, you’re already missing out on the full experience. Mandy is filled with film grain, which adds to the hallucinogenic experience with its continuous movement, a feature that does not translate when transferred to a digital medium. 

City of God (Fernando Meirelles & Kátia Lund) - A masterpiece of Brazilian cinema, very meaningful and relatable if you grew up in a similar environment. One of the most quotable films in my memory, something that gets lost in translation if you don’t speak Portuguese. My Tumblr is mostly pictures because I “só sei lê só as figura”.

Loro (Paolo Sorrentino) - On the topic of languages, I watched this Italian movie with Dutch subtitles, by mistake. It is actually an interesting exercise, watching something without fully grasping every word and letting your mind patch the pieces together to make a coherent narrative. Impressive cinematography, amazing script. I learned a lot about corruption, not everyone has a price. I also learned I can speak Italian now.

Roma (Alfonso Cuarón) - Beautiful shot, every frame of it can be turned into a picture. Roma is about the meaning of family, seen from the eyes of someone who will never be part of it. A lot of people considered this movie boring and pointless. These people probably have maids at home.

Bad Times at the El Royale (Drew Goddard) - Engaging heist movie, well developed characters, amazing soundtrack.

Melancholia (Lars von Trier) - The World is coming to an end and the date and time has been announced. How would you react to these news? Would it matter?

Climax (Gaspar Noé) - A very scary experience, equal parts trippy and evil like all Gaspar Noé’s movies. A dark ballet that that shocks and confuses the senses. Dante’s Inferno.

Fish Tank (Andrea Arnold) - A strong story about ambitions, neglect and survival. Katie Jarvis is very realistic in her performance, a little too much judging by her history after the movie.

A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (Ana Lily Amirpour) - An Iranian feminist movie about vampirism and records. Watched it with live score from The Black Heart Rebellion for extra cool points.

Another Day of Life (Raul de la Fuente & Damian Nenow) - Based on Ryszard Kapuściński‘s autobiography, Another Day of Life consists of rotoscopic animation sprinkled with interviews. A look at the Cold War in the African continent, and an important watch for everyone, especially Portuguese and Angolan nationals.

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (Quentin Tarantino) - Rich in dialogues and paced very slowly until the insane climax, this is probably the best Tarantino film after Pulp Fiction. Filled to the brim with cinematic references, it’s a delight to all film nerds. Looking forward for an Bud Spencer/Terrence Hill film adaption with Leonardo Dicaprio and Brad Pitt after this.

The Beach Bum (Harmony Korine) - Google’s top voted tags: Boring. Mindless. Cringe-Worthy. Forgettable. Slow. Illogical. Looks like this movie didn’t resonate well with the audiences, but then again Harmony Korine’s stuff is not for the masses. I personally think this is one of his best movies, a true exercise on nihilism. The main character is lovable and detestable in equal parts, and every action is pointless. Such is life, the only meaning it has is attributed by yourself.

The Mirror (Andrei Tarkovsky) - A man reflects on his life. Memories tend to get fuzzy, conflicting and confusing. More like a poem than a narrative. A dreamy masterpiece.

The Spirit of the Beehive (Víctor Erice) - The most charming child of this list, she couldn’t memorize the names of the characters she interacted with so they were changed to the names of the actual actors. The innocence of childhood in dark times.

A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence (Roy Andersson) - A series of absurd vignettes connected by a pair of novelty items salesmen and their struggle to bring a smile to a grey World. Slow, but humorous and delightful. An unconventional and memorable ride.

Man Bites Dog (Rémy Belvaux, André Bonzel & Benoît Poelvoorde) - Fake documentary about a serial killer. Heavy, gruesome and hard to watch, despite the false sense of humor in some scenes.A glimpse at the darkness of human nature.

Tangerine (Sean Baker) - Shot with cell phones. A story about love, gender and friendship. Funny, sad, touching.

The Guilty (Gustav Möller) - Focused on a shift of an emergency dispatcher, the camera focuses only on his face and phone interactions with the callers.A very effective thriller, its setting leads us to create our own narratives just to subvert them at the most unexpected times.

Cold War (Paweł Pawlikowski) - Loosely inspired in Pawlikowski’s parents, Cold War is a beautiful love story set against impossible odds. Powerful and heartbreaking. 

Parasite (Bong Joon-ho) - Poor family scams rich family. Rich family takes advantage of poor family. Everybody feeds off of everyone. Drama/Comedy/Thriller/Horror/Romance about control, delivered in a masterclass on cinematic rhythm. Best film of its year for me.

The Straight Story (David Lynch) - More than the fact that this movie is radically different than the remaining Lynch work, The Straight Story is a wonderful exercise in pacing and storytelling. Mr. Straight’s stories allow us to fill in the blanks with our imagination, and their impact in him is also felt in us. An underappreciated gem in its apparent simplicity.

Thank you very much for reading.

[neworoldnews]

Nihilism is a term which describes the loss of value and meaning in people’s lives. When Nietzsche proclaimed that “God is dead,” he meant that Judeo-Christianity has been lost as a guiding force in our lives, and there is nothing to replace it. Once we ceased really to believe in the myth at the heart of Judeo-Christian religion, which happened after the scientific revolution, Judeo-Christian morality lost its character as a binding code by which to live one’s life. Given the centrality of religion in our lives for thousands of years, once this moral code is lost and not replaced, we are faced with the abyss of nihilism: darkness closes in on us, and nothing is of any real value any more; there is no real meaning in our lives, and to conduct oneself and one’s life in one way is just as good as another, for there is no over-arching criterion by which to make such judgments.

Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction is an odd film. It’s a seemingly complete narrative which has been chopped into vignettes and rearranged like a puzzle. It’s a gangster film in which not a single policeman is to be found. It’s a montage of bizarre characters, from a black mobster with a mysterious bandage on the back of his bald head, to hillbilly sexual perverts; from henchmen dressed in black suits whose conversations concern what fast food items are called in Europe to a mob problem-solver who attends dinner parties early in the morning dressed in a full tuxedo. So, what is the film about? In general, we can say that the film is about American nihilism.

First, a quick run-down of the film:

PART I : Ringo and Honeybunny decide to rob a coffee shop. Jules and Vincent discuss what a Quarter Pounder with Cheese is called in France. They collect a briefcase which belongs to Marsellus Wallace from Brad, Marvin, et al. Before Jules kills Brad, he quotes a passage from the Old Testament. Marsellus has asked Vincent to take Mia (Mrs. Marsellus Wallace) out for the evening, and Vincent is nervous because he heard that Marsellus maimed Tony Rocky Horror in a fit of jealousy. Vincent buys heroin and gets high, then takes Mia out to Jack Rabbit Slim’s, a restaurant which is full of old American pop icons: Buddy Holly, Marilyn Monroe, Ed Sullivan, Elvis; they win a dance contest. Mia mistakes heroin for cocaine and overdoses; Vincent has to give her a cardiac needle full of adrenaline to save her.

PART II : Butch agrees to throw a fight for Marsellus Wallace. Butch as a child receives a watch from his father’s friend, an army comrade who saved the watch by hiding it in his rectum while he was in a Vietnamese prisoner of war camp. Butch double crosses Marsellus and doesn’t throw the fight; his boxing opponent is killed. Butch must return to his apartment, despite the fact that Marsellus’ men are looking for him, to get his watch; he kills Vincent. Butch tries to run over and kill Marsellus; they fight and end up in a store with Zed, Maynard and the Gimp, hillbilly sexual perverts. The perverts have subdued and bound Butch and Marsellus, and the perverts begin to rape Marsellus. Butch gets free and saves Marsellus by killing a hillbilly and wounding another with a Samurai sword.

PART III : Returning to the opening sequence, one of the kids Jules and Vincent are collecting from tries to shoot them with a large handgun; he fails, and Jules takes this as divine intervention. Jules and Vincent take Marvin and the briefcase; Marvin is shot accidentally, and the car becomes unusable. Jules and Vincent stop at Jimmy’s, and Marsellus sends Winston Wolf to mop up. Jules and Vincent end up in the coffee shop which Ringo and Honeybunny are robbing. Ringo wants to take the briefcase, but Jules won’t let him. Jules quotes the Biblical passage again to Ringo and tells him that he would quote this to someone before he killed that person. This time, however, Jules is not going to kill Ringo. Ringo and Honeybunny take the money from the coffee shop; Jules and Vincent retain the briefcase.

As I said, in general, the film is about American nihilism. More specifically, it is about the transformation of two characters: Jules (Samuel L. Jackson) and Butch (Bruce Willis). In the beginning of the film, Vincent (John Travolta) has retumed from a stay in Amsterdam, and the content of the conversation between Jules and Vincent concerns what Big Macs and Quarter Pounders are called in Europe, the Fonz on Happy Days, Arnold the Pig on Green Acres, the pop band Flock of Seagulls, Caine from Kung Fu, tv pilots, etc. These kinds of silly references seem upon first glance like a kind of comic relief, set against the violence that we’re witnessing on the screen. But this is no mere comic relief. The point is that this is the way these characters make sense out of their lives: transient, pop cultural symbols and icons. In another time and/or another place people would be connected by something they saw as larger than themselves, most particularly religion, which would provide the sense and meaning that their lives had and which would determine the value of things. This is missing in late 20th Century America, and is thus completely absent from Jules’ and Vincent’s lives. This is why the pop icons abound in the film: these are the reference points by which we understand ourselves and each other, empty and ephemeral as they are. This pop iconography comes to a real head when Vincent and Mia (Uma Thurmon) visit Jack Rabbit Slim’s, where the host is Ed Sullivan, the singer is Ricky Nelson, Buddy Holly is the waiter, and amongst the waitresses are Marilyn Monroe and Jane Mansfield.

The pop cultural symbols are set into stark relief against a certain passage from the Old Testament, Ezekiel 25:17 (actually, largely composed by Tarantino himself):

The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the iniquities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. Blessed is he, who in the name of charity and good will, shepherds the weak through the valley of darkness, for he is truly his brother’s keeper and the finder of lost children.

And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to poison and destroy my brothers. And you will know my name is The Lord when I lay my vengeance upon thee.

Jules quotes this just before he kills someone. The point is that the passage refers to a system of values and meaning by which one could lead one’s life and make moral decisions. However, that system is missing from Jules’ life and so the passage becomes meaningless to him. Late in the film he teils us: “I’ve been saying that shit for years, and if you heard it – that meant your ass. I never gave much thought to what it meant – I just thought it was some cold blooded shit to say to a motherfucker before I popped a cap in his ass.”

The absence of any kind of foundation for making value judgments, the lack of a larger meaning to their lives, creates a kind of vacuum in their existence which is filled with power. With no other criteria available to them by which to order their lives, they fall into a hierarchy of power, with Marsellus Wallace (Ving Rhames) at the top and themselves as henchmen below. Things come to have value in their lives if Marsellus Wallace declares it to be so. What he wants done, they will do. What he wishes becomes valuable for them and thus becomes the guide for their actions at the moment, until the task is completed by whatever means necessary. This is perfectly epitomized by the mysterious briefcase which Jules and Vincent are charged to return to Marsellus. It is mysterious because we never actually see what’s in it, but we do see people’s reactions to its obviously valuable contents. The question invariably arises: what’s in the briefcase? However, this is a trick question. The answer is really: it doesn’t matter. It makes no difference what’s in the briefcase. All that matters is that Marsellus wants it back, and thus the thing is endowed with worth. lf Jules and Vincent did have an objective framework of value and meaning in their lives, they would be able to determine whether what was in the briefcase was ultimately of value, and they would be able to determine what actions were justified in retrieving it. In the absence of any such framework, the briefease becomes of ultimate value in and of itself, precisely because Marsellus says so, and any and all actions required to procure it become justified (including, obviously, murder).

In addition to the pop iconography in the film, the discourse on language here concerns naming things. What is a Big Mac called? What is a Quarter Pounder called? What is a Whopper called? (Vincent doesn’t know; he didn’t go to Burger King.) When Ringo (Tim Roth) calls the waitress “garçon,” she informs him: “ ‘garçon’ means ‘boy.’ ” Also, when Butch’s girlfriend refers to his means of transportation as a “motorcycle,” he insists on correcting her: “It’s not a motorcycle, it’s a chopper.” And yet – and here’s the crux – when a lovely Hispanic cab driver asks Butch what his name means, he replies: “This is America, honey; our names don’t mean shit.” The point is clear: in the absence of any lasting, transcendent objective framework of value and meaning, our language no longer points to anything beyond itself. To call something good or evil renders it so, given that there is no higher authority or criteria by which one might judge actions. Jules quotes the Bible before his executions, but he may as well be quoting the Fonz or Buddy Holly.

I’ve been contrasting nihilism with religion as an objective framework or foundation of values and meaning, because that’s the comparison that Tarantino himself makes in the film. There are other objective systems of ethics, however. We might compare nihilism to Aristotelian ethics, for example. Aristotle says that things have natures or essences and that what is best for a thing is to ‘achieve��� or realize its essence. And in fact whatever helps a thing fulfill its nature in this way is by definition good. Ducks are aquatic birds. Having webbed feet helps the duck to achieve its essence as a swimmer. Therefore, it’s good for the duck to have webbed feet. Human beings likewise have a nature which consists in a set of capacities, our abilities to do things. There are many things that we can do: play the piano, build things, walk and talk, etc. But the essentially human ability is our capacity for reason, since it is reason which separates us from all other living things. The highest good, or best life, for a human being, then, consists in realizing one’s capacities, most particularly the capacity for reason. This notion of the highest good, along with Aristotle’s conception of the virtues, which are states of character which enable a person to achieve his essence, add up to an objective ethical framework according to which one can weigh and assess the value and meaning of things, as well as weigh and assess the means one might use to procure those things. To repeat, this sort of a framework, whether based on religion or reason, is completely absent from Jules’ and Vincent’s lives. In its absence, pop culture is the source of the symbols and reference points by which the two communicate and understand one another; and without reason or a religious moral code to determine the value and meaning that things have in their lives, Marsellus Wallace dictates the value of things. This lack of any kind of higher authority is depicted in the film by the conspicuous absence of any police presence whatever. This is a gangster film, in which people are shot dead, others deal and take drugs, drive recklessly, etc., there are car accidents, and yet there is not a single policeman to be found. Again, this symbolizes Marsellus’ absolute power and control in the absence of any higher, objective authority. There is one small exception to this, which I will note in a moment.

Pulp Fiction is in part about Jules’ transformation. When one of his targets shoots at him and Vincent from a short distance, empties the revolver, and misses completely, Jules interprets this as divine intervention. The importance of this is not that it really was divine intervention, but rather that the incident spurs Jules on to reflect on what is missing. It compels him to consider the Biblical passage that he’s been quoting for years without giving much thought to it. Jules begins to understand – however confusedly at first – that the passage he quotes refers to an objective framework of value and meaning that is absent from his life. We see the dawning of this kind of understanding when he reports to Vincent that he’s quitting the mob, and then (most significantly) when he repeats the passage to Ringo in the coffee shop and then interprets it. He says:

I’ve been saying that shit for years, and if you heard it – that meant your ass. I never gave much thought to what it meant – I just thought it was some cold blooded shit to say to a motherfucker before I popped a cap in his ass. But I saw some shit this morning that made me think twice. See, now I’m thinking, maybe it means: you’re the Evil Man, and I’m the Righteous Man, and Mr 9mm here – he’s the Shepherd protecting my righteous ass in the valley of darkness. Or it could mean: you’re the Righteous Man, and I’m the Shepherd; and it’s the world that’s evil and selfish. Now, I’d like that, but that shit ain’t the truth. The truth is: you’re the Weak and I’m the Tyranny of Evil Men. But I’m trying Ringo, I’m trying real hard to be the Shepherd.

Jules offers three possible interpretations of the passage. The first interpretation accords with the way he has been living his life. Whatever he does (as commanded by Marsellus) is justified, and thus he is the Righteous Man, with his pistol protecting him, and whatever stands in his way is bad or evil by definition. The second interpretation is interesting and seems to go along with Jules’ pseudo-religious attitude following what he interprets as a divine-mystical experience (he tells Vincent, recall, that he wants to wander the earth like Caine in Kung Fu). In this interpretation, the world is evil and selfish, and apparently has made Jules do all the terrible things he’s done up to that point. He’s now become the Shepherd, and he’s going to protect Ringo (who after all is small potatoes in mob terms, robbing coffee shops, etc.) from this evil. But that’s not the truth, he realizes. The truth is that he himself is the evil that he’s been preaching about (unwittingly) for years. Ringo is weak, neither good enough to be righteous, nor strong enough to be as evil as Jules and Vincent. And Jules is trying to transform himself into the shepherd, to lead Ringo through the valley of darkness. Of course, interestingly, the darkness is of Jules’ own making, such that the struggle to be the shepherd is Jules’ struggle with himself not to revert to evil. In this struggle, he buys Ringo’s life. Ringo has collected the wallets of the customers in the coffee shop, including Jules’, and Jules allows him to take fifteen hundred dollars out of it. Jules is paying Ringo the fifteen hundred dollars to take the money from the coffee shop and simply leave, so that he (Jules) won’t have to kill him. Note that no such transformation has taken place for Vincent, who exclaims: “Jules, you give that fucking nimrod fifteen hundred dollars, and I’ll shoot him on general principle.” The principle is of course whatever means are necessary to achieve my end are justified, the end (again) most often determined by Marsellus Wallace. This attitude of Vincent’s is c1early depicted in his reaction to Mia’s overdose. He desperately tries to save her, not because she is a fellow human being of intrinsic worth, but because she is Marsellus’ wife, and he (Vincent) will be in real trouble if she dies. Mia has value because Marsellus has made it so, not because of any intrinsic or objective features or characteristics she may possess.

The other transformation in the film is that of Butch. There is a conspicuous progression in the meaning and relevance of the violence in the story. In the beginning, we see killings that are completely gratuitous: Brad and his cohorts, and particularly Marvin, who is shot in the face simply because the car went over a bump and the gun went off. There is also the maiming of Tony Rocky Horror, the reason for which is hidden from all, save Marsellus. Again, this is evidence that it is Marsellus himself who provides the meaning and justification for things, and his reasons – like God’s – are hidden from us. (This may in fact be what the bandage on his head represents: the fact that Marsellus’ motives and reasons are hidden to us. Bandages not only help to heal, they also hide or disguise what we don’t want others to see.) The meaninglessness of the violence is also epitomized in the boxing match. Butch kills his opponent. When Esmarelda Villa Lobos (the cab driver) informs him of this, his reaction is one of complete indifference. He shrugs it off. Further, when Butch gets into his jam for having double-crossed Marsellus, he initially decides that the way that he is going to get out of it is to become like his enemy, that is, to become ruthless. Consequently, he shoots and kills Vincent, and then he tries to kill Marsellus by running him over with a car.

The situation becomes interesting when Butch and Marsellus, initially willing to kill one another without a second’s thought, find themselves in the same unpleasant situation: held hostage by a couple of hillbillies who are about to beat and rape them. I noted earlier the conspicuous absence of policemen in the film. The interesting quasi-exception to this is the pervert, Zed. Marsellus is taken captive, bound and gagged. When Zed shows up he is dressed in a security guard’s uniform, giving him the appearance of an authority figure. He is only a security guard, and not areal policeman, however, and this is our clue to the arbitrariness of authority. In the nihilistic context in which these characters exist, in the absence of an objective framework of value to determine right, justice and goodness, Marsellus Wallace is the legislator of values, the ultimate authority. In this situation, however, his authority has been usurped. Zed holds the shotgun now, and he takes his usurpation to the extreme by raping Marsellus.

Just as Jules’ transformation had a defining moment, namely, when he is fired upon and missed, so too Butch’s transformation has a defining moment. This is when he is about to escape, having overpowered the Gimp, but returns to save Marsellus. As I said, initially the violence is gratuitous and without meaning. However, when Butch returns to the cellar to aid Marsellus, the violence for the first time has a justification: as an act of honour and friendship, he is saving Marsellus, once his enemy, from men worse than they are. Note that Butch gets out of his jam not by becoming like his enemy, i.e., ruthless, but in fact by saving his enemy.

Butch’s transformation is represented by his choice of weapons in the store: a hammer, a baseball bat, a chainsaw, and a Samurai sword. He overlooks the first three items and chooses the fourth. Why? The sword c1early stands out in the list. First, it’s meant to be a weapon, while the others are not, and I’ll discuss that in a moment. But it also stands out because the first three items (two of them particularly) are symbols of Americana. They represent the nihilism that Butch is leaving behind, whereas the Samurai sword represents a particular culture in which there is (or was) in place a very rigid moral framework, the kind of objective foundation that I’ve been saying is missing from these characters’ lives. The sword represents for Butch what the Biblical passage does for Jules: a glimpse beyond transient pop culture, a glimpse beyond the yawning abyss of nihilism to a way of life, a manner of thinking, in which there are objective moral criteria, there is meaning and value, and in which language does transcend itself.

In contrast to the (foreign) Samurai sword, the gold watch is a kind of heirloom that’s passed down in (American) families. It represents a kind of tradition of honour and manhood. But let’s think about how the watch gets passed down in this case. Butch’s great grandfather buys it in Knoxville before he goes off to fight in World War I. Having survived the war, he passes it on to his son. Butch’s grandfather then leaves it to his own son before he goes into battle during World War II and is killed. Butch’s father, interned in a Vietnamese prisoner of war camp, hides the watch in his rectum, and before he dies – significantly – from dysentery, he gives it to his army comrade (Christopher Walken) who then hides it in his own rectum. After returning from the war, the comrade finds Butch as a boy and presents him with the watch. The way in which Butch receives the watch is of course highly significant. His father hides it in his rectum. The watch is a piece of shit; or, in other words, it is an empty symbol. Why empty? For the same reason that the Biblical passage was meaningless: it is a symbol with no referent. That to which it would refer is missing.

The sword is also significant because it, unlike the gold watch (an heirloom sent to Butch by a long-absent father, whom he little remembers), connects Butch to the masculine line in his family. The men in his family were warriors, soldiers in the various wars. Choosing the sword transforms Butch from a pugilist, someone disconnected who steps into the ring alone, into a soldier, a warrior, one who is connected to a history and a tradition, and whose actions are guided by a strict code of conduct in which honour and courage are the most important of valuess.

Finally, note how Butch is always returning. He seems doomed to return, perhaps to repeat things, until he gets it right. He must return to his apartment to get his watch. This return is associated with his decision to become his enemy. There’s his return to the cellar to save Marsellus, when he transcends his situation and begins to grasp something beyond the abyss. There’s also his return to Knoxville. Recall that the watch was originally purchased by his great-grandfather in Knoxville, and it is to Knoxville that Butch has planned to escape after he doesn’t throw the fight. After he chooses the sword and saves Marsellus, Butch can rightfully return to Knoxville, now connected to his paternal line, now rightfully a member of the warrior class.

[alex-cordier]

Tony Oursler's Influences and Pioneering Techniques

New York-based artist Tony Oursler is widely known for his playful multimedia installations. His work combines sculpture with moving images, exploring a wide range of themes such as technology and the paranormal. Born in 1957 in New York, Oursler learned to paint from his great aunt. He later headed west for his formal art education, graduating in 1979 from California Institute of the Arts. His work has been shown all over the world and is represented in numerous public and private collections.

Tony Oursler's Early Days at the California Institute of the Arts

At CalArts, Tony Oursler's tutors included the artist John Baldessari and the composer Laurie Anderson. Oursler also attended lectures by the experimental composer John Cage, who taught in the music department. His classmates included Mike Kelley, Jim Shaw, Sue Williams and Stephen Prina. The students were encouraged to work within a conceptual framework, starting with an idea and then devising how best to actualise it.

Oursler originally entered college as a painter, before beginning to experiment with photography, installation and performance. He designed and painted sets before filming them with early video cameras called Portapaks.

Oursler enjoyed the aesthetic qualities of the lo-fi moving images and began to see the potential of using video to reach a wider audience. His early work with video laid the foundations for a career which has continuously evolved up to the present. Also, while at CalArts, Oursler formed an 'art band', the Poetics, along with fellow student Mike Kelley. The pair hosted a retrospective exhibition of their collaboration in 1998.

Oursler's Key Art Influences

Tony Oursler cites Surrealism, Pop Art and Fluxus as important early influences on his artistic development. Unsurprisingly, his tutor John Baldessari was also a key influence. Baldessari was a founding member of the conceptual art movement – renowned for pioneering the use of found photography and appropriated images, juxtaposed with text.

Baldessari taught Oursler about the narrative power of images and language. Oursler's artwork builds on the static images of Baldessari by way of moving images and spoken language. He stated in an interview, "my early idea of what could be art for my generation was an exploded TV". Oursler is also fascinated by the occult and paranormal and has amassed a huge archive of related artefacts and images.

Oursler's Breakthrough Video Art Installations

Having returned to his native New York, Tony Oursler began to make an impact with his video art in the 1980s. His career was boosted by support from the nonprofit Electronic Arts Intermix.

At this time, Oursler's work explored pop cultural themes interwoven with his characteristic wry humour. In the late 1980s, Oursler's work became more concerned with social critique. His video works of this period explored themes of consumer culture, religion and psychiatric treatment.

In the 1990s, Oursler began combining sculpture and video art in a new way. Inspired by blank-faced Steiner dolls, he projected video onto objects, animating them to uncanny effect. He has described these works as "digital effigies", existing in a liminal space between media and sculpture.

Oursler's work has since evolved further, incorporating themes of psychology and digital surveillance. In 2015's template/variant/friend/stranger, he explored the implications of facial recognition technology. Oursler stated that the notion of a machine gaze inspired his large eigenface projections. The central theme of Tony Oursler arts has always been the question of how technology affects humankind, for better or for worse.

Tony Oursler lives and works in New York City. Based out of his Manhattan studio, he continues to produce dynamic and challenging artwork for the modern era. You can read more about Oursler's work on Ocula.com.

[keremulusoy]

Pantomime Is A Universal Art And Its History Roots Back To The Earliest Days Of Humankind. Its Modern Foundations Were Laid Upon Theatre Theory Hence Turning It Into A Technical Performance Art.

Pantomime is a form of expression that roots back to tragedia, the oldest version of the theatre. In most basic sense, pantomime is a wordless form of acting. The name derives from “miming” which is a form of acting where the actor/actress expresses an action or sensation with facial or body motion. The theory defines it as the type of comedy to mime the dailylife and customs in Ancient Greek and Roman cultures. The performer tries to tell an entire story only with facial expressions, mimics, body motions and gestures.

Scream Of Silence Vecihi Ofluoğlu is one of the most prominent names of pantomime in Turkey.  Just like other performers whose lives revolve around an art or craft since early childhood, his eyes shine with the sparkle of the creating. The sparkle of the inner-light emitted from all souls that are passionately in-love with what they do. When asked “How did you become interested in pantomime? Is there a formal school or conservatoire for it or all pantomime performers in Turkey are self-taught artists?” his passion reveals itself in full force.

“In mid 1960s when I was still a pupil of Sarıyer Junior High, I started to take stage in our school group. One day, I heard a French Troop came to French Cultural Centre in Taksim. I watched them and a new, brighter, a more colorful world was revealed to me. It was a stage performance without words but motions only. I was astonished. It was a magical moment for me. You see, I was bored to memorize, and to remain loyal to all those texts for school plays. Then, we were rehearsing in one of the halls of the library in Buyukdere. I went running to my friends and told them what I had seen. I told them: “It was strange and beautiful, they (actors) never speak but easily convey whatever they want to express; I memorized entire pieces, we can try if you want”. That was the moment where everything started for me. I was initiated to the art of pantomime, so-to-speak. You see, there was no place to formally, or academically train in this field at that time. Later on, after I enrolled in the conservatoire, I achieved the much-needed body predisposition of course. Then I trained with different masters of the art and also was in contact with the Turkish pantomime artists, many of whom are deceased now. They contributed tremendously in my development. I have always endeavored to formulate my own, personal style. In short, there is no institution that I was not trained in, since then”.

Pantomime is an art more familiar to early childhood of the generation which grow up with a single TV channel, who are now around their middle-ages. A performer with face painted in white and black, acting mostly funny stories on TV screen, is a picture mostly remembered from childhood of them. Only those who showed an ongoing interest in the art know that this is a branch of performance arts in itself. So, often the mime is confused with clowns for the children who saw him only on TV screen. When asked about the origins of the pantomime, Vecihi Ofluoğlu gives elaborate information, down to the etymology of the art:

Pantomime Is The Act Of Focusing Inside And Expressing To Others “Pantomime” contains “panto” and “mime”. “Panto” means all whereas “mime” is mimicking. You might know, the concept of mimesis, must be deriving from here. So, in terms of etymological meaning pantomime means “mimicking the whole”. Of course, modern sources call the art pantomime, but the etymology is what I described. Technically, pantomime is the entirety of the actions in which the performer conveys the narrative story to the audience without any costumes or accessories or use of language by using only his/her body and face. Can everything be performed? Naturally, this is not possible. Every narration has its limits. Much like the ballet or other performance acts, similar limitations apply to the pantomime as well. The artist, however, should not focus on such limitations but should concentrate on what can be conveyed. This art needs a strict training before one can become a performer. As goes with all performance arts, one should master the body because the body is the only instrument of a mime. We, the performers, must structure the things based on the body. So, it all starts with knowing and highly physical training of the body. To achieve meaning one must master. Therefore, this is the art of focusing internally and expressing externally. What I mean is, you need to know your body and what you can do with it. That’s the starting point upon which you will structure the narrative which you will convey through your body.”

Space And Acting In Pantomime It is a certainty that pantomime has a minimalist approach. To pantomime, costume and decors are mere details which are not so welcome. Considering the theatrical theoretical elements, one can wonder if space is significant, or poses a limitation for the pantomime? Vecihi Ofluoğlu admits the minimalistic approach yet highlights that pantomime is a true performance art in its own right.

“I have given theoretical and practical education and training of pantomime. It is a stage performance. Therefore, it is a format of performance arts and has space requirements and limitations. Especially in abroad, street pantomime shows refuse all spatial limitations, but I personally think that they approach the art in a different format. Because their performance is for the passersby who naturally are not actually attending. It is safe to say that the pantomime performed on stage is different than those performed in streets, without spatial concerns. After all, there is a dynamic circulation in the street. Passersby are not constant. If you can attract their attention, then they become audience. At that very moment, one needs to repeat the story by rewinding a little. Also, a passerby cannot be expected to show same patience and loyalty with the stage audience. So, the street is more difficult and harsher than the stage-performed pantomime.”

Since before the history, acting on stage to make the audience subjected to an adventure or a story is the most basic method of narrating. To achieve this, the artist’s most essential tool is the text to be voiced. Well, the pantomime takes the hard way. The mimes try to convey the story without using this most essential tool of the performance arts. Vecihi Ofluoğlu gives clues to those interested while he tells us about how a mime deals with such difficulties.

“There was a time when the mankind lacked verbal communication and communicated through primitive instinctive voices or gests and mimics. Verbal communication developed later and included a set of concepts and definitions but use of gests and mimics was never abandoned. To put it simply, if I feel the instinctive need to use my hands and facial expressions while talking to you, this is a natural motion of my body. Of course, daily use of the gestures and mimics are not the exact same of those we use in pantomime. So, in short, history of mankind does include transition to non-verbal towards verbal. Non-verbal communication is not a show in itself, of course. But people do enjoy expressing something without talking and thus the art developed in due natural course. Can one express everything with body actions (non-verbally)? Of course not! It is also worth underlining that some bodies are especially predisposed for this. Some people can easily convey what they mean in this way. When technically so needs, pantomime can use minimal number of accessories or sound effects and even visual materials. The essential purpose is to convey a message to the audience in a certain format of storytelling.

Pantomime is not the art of silence but is the art of being able to express in silence. Vecihi Ofluoğlu carefully conveys all he gathered about this art, most of which were learned through trial and error, with the excitement of a man talking about his passion, with the care and mastery of craftsman. He ends his words with the excitement of people who love to express their passion. So we learn how much there is something we don’t know about pantomime, and we understand what a sonorous voice this silent art actually has.

scream of silence

imitating the whole

Vecihi Ofluoğlu

thr language of silence

pantomim education

makeup

mask

 NOTES

Who Is Vecihi Ofluoğlu? Born on 1950 in Bartın, Turkey he was graduated from Trakya and İstanbul Universities. His debut was in 1965 with the play “Ölümden Daha Büyük Şeyler Var (There Are Things Bigger Than Death)”. He started the pantomime in 1966 and put great efforts to promote this art in Turkey. In 1968 he founded the very first pantomime troop of Turkey in modern sense. He created and chaired “Pantomime Branch” of İstanbul University. For a very long time, he gave mimic and motion courses as artist faculty member of Opera and Ballet Department of State Conservatoire. He served in private theatres as trainer and actor and featured in many opera, ballet and films. Holder of many domestic and international awards, his plays were featured on countless domestic and foreign TV channels. He authored approximately a hundred pantomime plays most of which have been staged.

Mask And Makeup In Pantomime Art Preferring a minimalistic style of storytelling, costume and decors are not musts of pantomime but the masks and makeup are used frequently. During the silent era, the cinema benefitted from pantomime acting to a great extent (even though there were some technical differences). This highly contributed development of pantomime in modern era. Charlie Chaplin as well as Laurel and Hardy are successful examples of adaptation of pantomime to silent motion pictures.

Pantomime Education In Turkey “Unfortunately, academically, there is no department of pantomime in university in Turkey. There was a certification program which had been opened within the conservatoire upon my personal efforts. Many people participated in this program and even today most of them actively continues to perform. However, the program was discontinued regretfully. This is not a problem unique to Turkey, same goes for all of the world. The trainings are mostly formulated as courses.”

How Should Be A Pantomime Artist Like? “A mime must be amorph to a degree. The mime is the author, the director, even the poster designer of the play. She/he sells the tickets, create an audience and prepare everything and only after all these, takes the stage and performs. On stage is where the artist must be extremely careful. The audience might miss a part of the story even at the slightest abstraction. So the mime must always, but always, observe the continuity and synchronization of the audience with the story that is being told. Not an easy trick to pull, right?”

By: Bahar Alban

*This article was  published in the  July– August issue of Marmara Life. 

Narrator Of Silent Stories Vecihi Ofluoğlu Pantomime Is A Universal Art And Its History Roots Back To The Earliest Days Of Humankind. Its Modern Foundations Were Laid Upon Theatre Theory Hence Turning It Into A Technical Performance Art.

[zthomasmajorone2018]

The Film Explained/Detailed

It was my intention with for the soundtrack to work as a foundation to follow a visual narrative. As in many ways this film reflects an introduction to a children’s television show. I wanted the film to begin with a narration akin to a bedtime story or intro to a children’s television show and describe the world and ideas even if it seemed ambiguous as to what I was actually saying. The narration I wrote/spoke could therefore introduce us to this world/story yet leaving intrigue as to what it actually meant. I voiced it in a way that was reminiscent of children’s TV shows of the 60’s/70s, which was often heard in a posh high pitched, and innocently spoken tone. Which I felt when put into context of something darker it only highlighted the strangeness and unnerving nature of the film. The innocence is found within fairy-tales and TV shows of old and it is that in contrast with the darker nature that creates a slight uneasiness. A crackling vinyl sound comes in and then the narration begins. I opted for the narration to be over black as this was the setup for the rest of the visual moving imagery.

After the narration the film opens into a black and white scene but as the twinkling xylophone tune begins we have the arrival of the puppet Zoo Noxious pop up into shot and the scene becomes a vibrant colourful image. I liked the idea that wherever this character went he brought colour and light into the scene. This was also to reflect how this was ‘his world’ and that his presence brought it to life. I edited puppets turning movement to coincide with the ticking clock of the score, which demonstrates how he is not quite real and is toy-like and so he and his reality function in a rather toy-like fantasy way.

Another character is introduced to us the Red Riding hood character, who initially was to be the main focus of the film however now has a more mysterious side role as she flickers in and out of the film as well as cautiously strolling past shot in a cut-out illustrated form.

In thinking about how I could piece together all my footage and animation in a way that felt like they all merged within the same energetic flow within a visual context I decided upon layering a film colour burn filter. This was also to bring in some of the 70’s aesthetic as well as to reflect a rave/dance/festival like feel to the piece. The colour burns swayed and moved in a way that felt like the energy of the scenes were merging and bleeding into one another, as well as representing a magical quality.  The puppet Zoo noxious turns and moves rapidly in time with twinkling of the music then turns around again and closes his eyes.  To which he begins dreaming and the colour burns follow into a live action setting where he real person wearing a mask appears in front of an illustrated backdrop. This to me was as if we were journeying into the mind of Zoo Noxious and from his animated puppet state of being through his dreams we somehow come to a real life form. His perspective on reality and fantasy has been altered and almost switched completely. His truer real self being the plasticine puppet and the live action human being which is closer to our sense of reality is accessed via his dreams.

The human version of him holds up a key representing his access to truths and various versions of reality/fantasy and ways of consciousness. This scene flickers back to the puppet who is still and almost frozen but his eyes still blink and stare deeply into the camera/at audience. His animated state almost subdued excluding his eyes, which are his windows to seeing and experiencing his variations of reality of his world. This puppet then closes his eyes and begins dreaming/transporting into another reality/sense of being this time in illustrated cut out form as he walks across a dark red forest. The red symbolic of the red on the traffic lights which means danger/death. As this character walks out of shot the girl returns in a cut out form too. Her red merging with the red backdrop, this girl is an innocent child yet is adorned with the colour of danger suggestion she may be more than she seems or that she is surrounded by danger quote literally she is wearing it.

The flashing traffic light suddenly appears into shot hovering formless in the air. The girl character quickly moves out of shot. And the music turns to a synth-y unsettled siren-like tone as the lights flash and then a black and white piece of footage presenting an illustrated character The Dark Master appears. He has orchestrated the return of THE WATCH the traffic light beings and this is merely a suggestion of his presence. As with almost of this film there is not really explicit explanation as to what is happening and who is who save Zoo Noxious yet even he retains a great deal of mystery. I want this to suggest there are things going on here that aren’t being directly told. This is a trip and journey into this world/narrative from a hazy dream-like mind of Zoo Noxious, a dip into something bigger. The visuals are the language it’s speaking.

As the traffic lights flash stop-motion clips of Zoo overlap and overlay each other in a colourful psychedelic context. This suggests the presence of the traffic lights and the dark master are a cause for concern which is further shown by the distorted/delayed agitated state the music becomes. Then fading out as the visuals settle and return to a innocently waving puppet who begins to narrate an ambiguous poem to the audience who are the children of this world now.

We come to see a another version of the girl character this time as small plasticine puppet in a felt red cloak as the narration/poem continues. The visual comes to the illustrated girl lit by a green fairy-light symbolically the green of the traffic light coding which means “GO” & “GOOD” therefore in a state of safety. Zoo’s face flickers in and out in time with the ticking clock as his poem is told. His poetic narration which describes the warning of the traffic light order who are intent on coming to catch them is reassured to be helped and saved by himself who will fight against their evil intent “In stars and flight burnt through the night your dear old Nox will put it right.” The green lighting visually reflects that he’ll keep his children- (who are those others who defy THE WATCH and us as the audience) –safe. These green shots are much clearer and are not with the aged film aesthetic suggesting the reality shift and bringing it closer to out own more high definition perspectives. A short clip of of goggles on a desk in a flickering candle light, smoke blown set up. Some puppets can be seen stood in the background. This is like the set up of Zoo Noxious’ workshop becoming almost meta and suggesting that perhaps this whole film was created by Zoo Noxious and even the puppets themselves are by his design to further spread news/truth of his fantasy’s states of affairs to people within his actual fantasy. Or just that Zoo Noxious is my fantasy creation and I myself am Zoo Noxious creating the character and world as the storyteller yet bringing it to life. What’s real or what is not? The lines have been blurred. The fourth wall is slightly broken. But not stated this is just my thinking behind it.

We return to a live action shot of myself as Zoo stood in front of an animated background as candle flame dances across the screen as does a shot of the puppet. The variation of the same person/world ghosting one another’s realities/visual embodiments.  The film comes to stopmotion animation of the puppet moving around as the candles flame dances in motion with him. This fades into a live action shot of legs walking across a bridge in a forested scene. The animation flickers and out over the footage. The real life version of the character walks across the bridge and further into the forest as the animated dreams spread across different versions of the same world.

A blurry animated sequence giving ghost like movement and energy to the scene spirals on and loops. We come to a title card “THE CURIOUS ADVENTURES OF ZOO NOXIOUS”  which flickers with various warmth and light. This is suggests this is a intro to a larger story, this is set within a trip that’s reflected the context of a children’s tv show. My voice over from the beginning returns.

We come to a shot of the puppet stood looking thoughtfully outward. The music slowly trails out as the narration echoes of “this is his world” fade out. The  puppet stands still for a moment, a crackling comes in and he begins to walk away as “WAKE UP” begins to booms over. This is a snippet of the soundtrack from my previous film that is set in a time previous to this one. The return of the music and the “WAKE UP” representing a need to wake up from the dreamy animated film we have just journeyed through. However it is more to coincide with the idea of the past is coming back to haunt the present.  As the puppet leaves the shot the colour disappears as in the beginning of the film. A distorted noise begins rumbling, the traffic lights return and are the only source of colour in Zoo Noxious’ absence. Two other traffic lights appear flashing in sequence as the noise grows in intensity. They are the reminders of the darker threats and truths to cut into the dream-like animated world. THE WATCH in a non literal sense are the demons of the mind such as anxiety and depression as well as societal limitations and the restrictions of our own reality. Zoo’s new found fantasy reality is threatened by THE WATCH as they discredit creativity, imagination and freedom. This on a real level reflects myself. The traffic lights flash and the sound increases only to come to an abrupt end, the screen goes back and all we hear is the old vinyl crackling for a few moments. In a way this ending is meant to be like a cliffhanger or at least suggest that there is more to be continued/further explored or at the very least raise questions and deepen mystery especially as these traffic lights seem to be a recurring symbol throughout the film and my work….