#place: basel

[peacefulandcozy]

Instagram credit: greykins

[honoratacarnage]

Honey, you’re pretty enough to be my sugar baby and I really want you to be😩😩😩, I’m not in for any sex shits or nudes, I’m here to pay your bill and always make you happy when you need me, just talk to me everyday and make me feel happy also

ZIONISTS GET THE FUCK AWAY FROM MY BLOG I DONT WANT YOU HERE

ZIONISTS GET THE FUCK AWAY FROM MY BLOG I DONT WANT YOU HERE

ZIONISTS GET THE FUCK AWAY FROM MY BLOG I DONT WANT YOU HERE

[lepseas]

Basel, 2024

watching over her city

[gregdotorg]

Untitled (happy place), 2014, was a print I made using a page from The Art Newspaper's daily edition in Art Basel.

[swampgallows]

vetted palestinian gfms i've received

Click the name to be taken to their campaign. Many of these campaigns are verified on el-shab-hussein's & nabulsi's spreadsheet which is a tumblr-based campaign, by Operation Olive Branch, by Project Watermelon, or by The Butterfly Effect Project. Others are either corroborated by verified campaigns or groups of previously-verified Palestinian tumblr users, like @gazavetters.

as of september 29 2024:

‼‼ LOW FUNDS (LESS THAN HALFWAY TO GOAL):

🍉 MAHMOUD AYYAD - €6,422 / €55,000 (11%) @mahmoudayyad, (x)

🍉 BILAL ABED RABOU - €9,061 / €80,000 (11%) @bilalassadabedrou, (x), (claims relation to waseem abedrabou, killed in airstrikes), (link to article in the guardian)

🍉 BASEL AYYAD - CHF8,193 / CHF60,000 (14%) (#214), (x), (x) vetted twice

🍉 DR. IMTITHAL, DDS - €6,782 / €50,000 (13%) @d-imtthal (not yet vetted, but funds are protected & images are original)

🍉 MUHAMMAD ATALLA - €19,265 / €82,000 (23%) @mohammedatallah, (x), (x), (x)

🍉 FARAH & SHAHAD - €6,050 / €20,000 (30%) @farahmoo2, (x), (younger sister of @nesmamomen)

🍉 DR. HUSAM FARHAT - $10,299 / $29,500 (35%) @frhatfamily & @shamfarhat1, (#248) (x)

🍉 SAFAA & ABED - €40,292 / €90,000 (45%) @safaabed8 & @abedalazeiz, (x)

🍉 FATIMA ALANQAR - €9,593 / €20,000 (48%) @fatma-anqer, (x), (x)

MORE THAN HALFWAY TO GOAL:

🍉 NOUR ALANQAR - €22,689 / €40,000 (57%) @noor-family, (x), (x)

🍉 FALESTINE YOUSEF - $25,125 / $40,000 (63%) @falestine-yousef, (x), (more info on her relatives, the Jad Al Haq family)

🍉 WAFA ABDUL KARIM ABU AL-RISH - $29,197 / $50,000 (58%) @wafaaresh, (older sister of @mohiy-gaza), (x,) (x), (tiktok)

🍉 TAMER AL-DEEB - €24,909 / €40,000 (62%) @tameraldeebs-blog, (#191), (x), (x)

🍉 YOUSSEF HELLES - €15,927 / €23,000 (69%) @4-zien-yousef (#206), (x), (x)

🍉 AYAH, LINA, SAIF, & SIDRA - €42,804 / €60,000 (71%) @lina-gaza, (x), (friend of Mohiy), (tiktok)

ALMOST COMPLETE (MORE THAN 75% TO GOAL):

🍉 NESMA AHMED - $137,869 / $170,000 (81%) @nesmamomen, (x), (x)

🍉 AHMED & DINA ALANQAR - €62,467 / €75,000 (83%) @zinaanqer, (#264), (#741), (x)

🍉 FADI AYYAD - $42,679 / $50,000 (85%) @mayadayyad81, (#144), (x), (x)

🍉 MOHAMMED ALANQER - €60,392 / €70,000 (86%) @abuadamfamily, (#174), (x), (x), (x)

🍉 MOHIY ABU ELRESH - $54,168 / $63,000 (86%) @mohiy-gaza, (x), (instagram), (younger brother of @wafaaresh)

🍉 HAYA NAHED ALSHAWISH - €90,362 / €100,000 (90%) @hayanahed, (#26), (#249), (x)

Please consider donating if you're able, and reblog to spread awareness. To all Palestinians suffering in Gaza or elsewhere, may you and your families reach a place of peace and safety soon.

[acrosscenturiesandgenerations]

▪︎ Drinking vessel belonging to Basel’s shoemakers’ guild.

Place of origin: Basel, Switzerland

Date: 1661

Medium: Leather, mouthpiece made of gold-plated silver.

[ocean-sunfish-hater]

Straight Out of the Colonial Playbook:

The Myth of Untouched Lands

The Jewish National Fund (JNF) is an organisation with charity status all across the world. Many people know them as the people who use their little blue boxes to collect money to plant trees. They seem to be doing well to reach their goals, having planted over 250 million trees since 1901. All this seems pretty innocuous, perhaps even noble. After all, the idea of planting trees seems quite divorced from violent settler colonialism.

ID: A large slice of watermelon. You can see the Red of the flesh, the black of the seeds, and the white and green of the rind. It is set against a light teal background, a colour that may invoke peace and calm, much like a free Palestine would.

But the two have long, intertwined histories. Just look to the National Parks of the US, used to grab land from Native Americans with the justification that they were "uninhabited". Colonisation of the Arabian peninsula was partially justified with the argument that native Arabs had degraded the environment to the point of desertification,  and colonial rule was the only way they could be saved from themselves [1]. Unsurprisingly, most of the ecological damage in that region had been done by the colonialists themselves in the pursuit of resources.

The JNF isn't just some minor organisation that has unfortunate ties to questionable powers. Though they shroud themselves in the soft words of environmentalism,  they currently stand as one of the primary tools of violence for Zionism.

Established in 1901 by the 5th Zionist Congress in Basel, Switzerland, they have always been an organisation with settler colonial intentions. In 1940, their leader Yosef Weitz, said “There is no way but to transfer the Arabs from [Palestine] to the neighbouring countries, to transfer all of them… not one village must be left… for this goal funds will be found." [2]. You know what happened to him after the first Nakba? He became the head of the JNF's forestry department [3].

According to their own website, they currently stand as the "single largest provider of Zionist programs in the U.S." [4]. They also own about 13% of all state lands in Israel [5]. They have been both a major driver, and unsurprisingly, benefactor from the ongoing Nakba of the Palestinian people.

So how exactly does planting trees feed into settler colonialism? The model works like this:

The Israeli government violently displaces people from their lands in the name of "self-defence".

The land becomes "uninhabited".

The JNF uses funds they have accrued from overseas donations to buy up the land.

They establish a national park in the area and begin to plant trees.

Settlers move into the surrounding regions. The JNF have a policy of not leasing land or accommodation to non-Jewish people [5].

Any remigration of indigenous people back into those lands is framed as "environmental destruction" and those people are forced out once more.

You know what's sneaky? They are using trees as bodies. They don’t have enough people to colonise all the land they've stolen, so they plant trees to occupy the spaces that human bodies cannot. They deliberately use fast growing trees like pines to aid in this pursuit [3]. Each forest acts as an occupying force, just one that uses seeds instead of bullets and trees instead of soldiers.

Most of their efforts are concentrated on Naqab (Negev in Hebrew), a region in the south of Israel mostly consisting of desert. On their website, the JNF boast of their Blueprint Negev initiative, and how it's "transformed Israel’s Negev Desert, making the Southern Israel an attractive place to live and work" [4]. Their mission statement in the Naqab includes the justification that they are providing homes, jobs and opportunities in the "empty" region [6]. One of the slogans have on their website is "Building the Negev, town by town"[6]. This is explicitly a settler colonial project, and all of it can be found on JNF website, in their own words.

And to top it all off, you guessed it, the Naqab is far from uninhabited. It was never empty land. In August 2018, 350 villagers from Umm al-Hiran were displaced to the state-regulated Bedouin township, Hura to accommodate the expansion of the Beit Yatir settlement in the Yatir forest, which was planted by the JNF [5]. In 2010, Nuri-al-Uqbi presented evidence that his ancestors had owned and lived in the lands of al-Araqib since before the Israeli occupation to the courts. In 2010, a Beersheva judge rejected the case, siding with the government's claims that his tribe had no ownership claims on the land [7]. The indigenous peoples of Palestine are constantly disenfranchised, displaced, and have very little means of winning their land back within an Apartheid legal system.

The JNF are using strategies employed by colonial powers in the past to violently seize land from native peoples. Acting under the guise of environmentalism "launders" the colonisation, adding extra steps in between the expulsion of people from their homes and the eventual settlement of that land by colonists, with the added bonus of making the JNF look very good. And you know what? Their reforestation schemes suck. Fast growing, new growth forests in the DESERT are not a substitute for old growth forests, not to mention the enormous amount of water they must be using to keep these forests as, well, forests.

What boils my blood the most is that you can see them honouring their colonial inspirations and sponsors in how they name their parks. Britannia park in the Hebron district obviously takes its name from Britain, a country instrumental in the establishment of the Israeli state and the Nakba that has ensued. Fittingly, it sits upon the ruins of seven Palestinian villages, destroyed by Israel during the first Nakba [8].

And this isn't just stuff that has happened in the past, but is happening right now. JNF UK is currently receiving donations to plant a memorial forest "to commemorate those who were brutally murdered on October 7." For £100, you can plant one tree. For £250, you can contribute to an outdoor seating area for group events. For £36, you can pay for an irrigation system that will provide enough water for one tree for four years [9]. Doesn't it make you angry? 36,000+ Palestinians have been murdered, and the JNF are collecting money to water trees on their graves.

I hate it when scientists stay neutral. We and our work are not divorced from the world around us. Conservation means nothing if it comes at the cost of human lives; it means nothing if it is used to veil the atrocities of colonialism and apartheid. It is our duty as conservationists, and as human beings to hear those whose voices carry cries for help, and answer the call. Do not be won over by the siren song of green colonialism.

Free Palestine. May all empires fall.

Bibliography

[1] Skandrani, Z., Decolonizing ecological research. Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences, 2018. 8(3): p. 368-370.

[2] Stop the JNF, The JNF, Apartheid and Settler Colonialism. (Spring 2024). https://www.stopthejnf.org/the-jnf-apartheid-and-settler-colonialism-spring-2024/

 [3] Stop the JNF, Tower and Stockades, Forests and Jim Crow Vetting Commitees. https://www.stopthejnf.org/jnfs-sordid-history-tower-and-stockades-forests-and-jim-crow-vetting-committees-by-jonathan-cook/

[4] Jewish National Fund, We are JNF. https://www.jnf.org/menu-3/about-jnf

[5] Amnesty International, ISRAEL: APARTHEID IN ACTION. Amnesty international: submission to the 43rd session of the UPR working group, 9 May 2023.

[6] Jewish National Fund UK, Homepage, https://www.jnf.co.uk/

[7] Jonathan Cook, Bedouins defiant despite Israel eviction plan. https://www.jonathan-cook.net/2014-06-14/bedouins-defiant-despite-israel-eviction-plan/

[8] Palestine Land Society, Britannia Park - Burial and Treachery. https://www.plands.org/en/articles-speeches/articles/2022/britannia-park-burial-and-treachery

[9] Jewish National Fund UK, Green Sunday 2024 – Memorial Forest. https://israelunderattack.jnf.co.uk/projects/green-sunday-2024-memorial-forest/

[paintedcrows]

Palestinian Fundraisers 🇵🇸

07/09/24 Please donate if you can.

Save Dr. Farhat's family from genocide in Gaza

@drfarhatblog | Dr. Husam Farhat Gofundme | verified (line 248) verified verified and donation protected | $7,785 / $29,500

Help Basel evacuate their family and rebuild a new start

@basel1995s | Basel Ayyad Gofundme | verified (line 214) and donation protected | CHF8,083 / CHF60,000

Help Evacuate Momen's Family from Gaza to Safety

@momenalstaz | Momen Alostaz Gofundme | verified (line 125) verified and donations protected | €22,707 / €70,000

Help Hadeel's My Two Daughters Escape from GAZA WAR

@hadeelmekki | Hadeel Makki Gofundme | verified and donation protected | €16,111 / €35,000

A Gaza Family in Need of Your Help

@majedgaza1 | Majed Gofundme | verified and donation protected | $3,988 / $70,000

Help Mohammed's family

@yasermohammad | Mohammed Gofundme | verified and donation protected | €21,187 / €35,000

Help Dr. Shahad and Farah complete their education

@farahmoo2 | Dr. Shahad and Farah Gofundme | verified verified verified and donation protected | €5,049 / €20,000

Help Them Rebuild Their Lives After the War in Gaza

@shadowyavenuetaco | Maher Gofundme | verified and donation protected | £4,964 / £50,000

Help Fadi rescue her beautiful family

@aymanayyad1 | Fadi Ayyad Gofundme | verified and donation protected | $39,107 / $50,000

Bone Grafting Operation for Muhammad & House Reconstruction

@atalah-mohammed | Mohammed Gofundme | verified and donation protected | €15,390 / €82,000

Save Mohammad Shurrab's Family

@mohays-blog | Mohammad Shurrab Gofundme | verified and donation protected | €4,459 / €100,000

Help to fight starvation for an extended family

@mahmoudayyad | Mahmoud Ayyad Gofundme | verified and donation protected | €4,619 / €55,000

Please Save What's Left of Mahmoud's Family

@freepaleatine95 | Mahmoud Baalou Gofundme | verified and donation protected | $8,158 / $50,000

Help Ahed and Samah

@ahedalshaer | Ahed and Samah Gofundme | verified (line 407) and donation protected | €6,193 / €80,000

Support Family's escape from rafah to save place

@lina-gaza | Lina Gofundme | verified and donation protected | €38,925 / €45,000

Emergency Relief for a Family in Gaza

@a-ss-123 | Ahmed Mohammed Gofundme | verified and donation protected | £862 / £55,000

Help Mohammed get food water and medicine for their little kids

@mohammedayyads-blog | Mohammed Ayyad Gofundme | verified and donation protected | €1,786 / €35,000

Help Adham Escape the Ravages of the War & Emergency Evacuation

@lawyer-adhamayyad81 | Adham Ayyad Gofundme | unverified but donation protected | €80 / €50,000

Help Farah study and follow their dream

@areej1982 | Farah Areef Gofundme | unverified but donation protected | €165 / €8,000

Help Wajih's family escape to safety

@wajihmadi | Wajih Madi Gofundme | unverified but donation protected | €110 / €50,000

Help Imtsal and her family have a better future

@d-imtthal | Imtithal Gofundme | unverified but donation protected |€5,672 / €50,000

Help save Muntaha's family reunite her with her husband

@hamadamontaha9988 | Hamada Jamal Al-skafi Gofundme | unverified but donation protected | €300 / €60,000

Help Mohammed save their family

@abood99quffa | Abdulrahman Quffa Gofundme | unverified but donation protected | €734 / €100,000

Help Ali's family get out of Gaza

@alihelles2 | Ali Helles Gofundme | unverified but donation protected | €607 / €100,000

A Cry from Gaza: A Mother's Plea for Her Children's Survival

@tarneem-sami | Tarneem Sami Gofundme | unverified but donation protected | €294 / €60,000

Help Hamdi Ali Ayyad rebuild his family's life

@hamdiali112233 | Hamdi Ali Ayyad Gofundme | unverified but donation protected | €547 / €25,000

Help Etaf Al-Qataa get out of life's crises and the woes of war

@familyetaf1234567 | Etaf Al-Qataa Gofudme | unverified but donation protected | €1,582 / €50,000

Help Diab's family get out of Gaza as soon as possible

@yasmeena200 | Diab Gofundme | unverified but donation protected | €145 / €25,000

Help Amany evacuate their family

@amanyayyad74 | Amany Ayyad Gofundme | unverified but donation protected | €50 / €50,000

The Story of Alaa, a Mother's Cry for Help

@alaa-syam | Alaa Syam Gofundme | to be added to Bees and Watermelons verified list and donation protected | CAD $51 / $30,000

If any campaign has since been verified or has been incorrectly labled, please let me know. Thank you. From the river to the sea Palestine will be free 🇵🇸

[mossadspypigeon]

if you can't see why a mob of people burning effigies of any jew is wrong, let's explore:

and then of course, we have the SPANISH INQUISITION:

NOW AMERICA:

AND THE SHOAH:

this is just a small collection of examples about why this would be concerning. here's the farhud for another:

i won't tell you what that "piece of meat" was.

as they like to say on this website..."educate yourself."

[aronarchy]

A copy of the first reading list, if you dislike clicking on Google docs links:

The liberal news media is working overtime to silence Palestinian voices. As we sit thousands of miles away, witnessing the massacre through social media, the least we can do is educate ourselves and work to educate others. Apartheid threatens all of us, and just to reiterate, anti-Zionism ≠ antisemitism.

Academic Works, Poetry and Memoirs

The Revolution of 1936-1939 in Palestine: Background, Details, and Analysis, Ghassan Kanafani (1972)

Palestinians: From Peasants to Revolutionaries, Rosemary Sayegh (1979)

Popular Resistance in Palestine: A History of Hope and Empowerment, Mazin Qumsiyeh (2011)

My Life in the PLO: The Inside Story of the Palestinian Struggle, Shafiq al-Hout and Jean Said Makdisi (2019)

My People Shall Live, Leila Khaled (1971)

Poetry of Resistance in Occupied Palestine, translated by Sulafa Hijjawi (Baghdad, Ministry of Culture and Guidance, 1968)

On Palestine by Ilan Pappé and Noam Chomsky (2015)

Gaza in Crisis: Reflections on the US-Israeli War Against the Palestinians, Noam Chomsky and Ilan Pappé (2013)

The Politics of Dispossession: The Struggle for Palestinian Self-Determination, 1969-1994, Edward W. Said (2012)

Queer Palestine and the Empire of Critique, Sa’ed Atshan (2020)

Stone Men: The Palestinians Who Built Israel, Andrew Ross (2019)

Ten Myths About Israel, Ilan Pappé (2017)

Blaming the Victims: Spurious Scholarship and the Palestinian Question, Christopher Eric Hitchens and Edward W. Said (2001)

Palestinian Walks: Notes on a Vanishing Landscape, Raja Shehadeh (2010)

The Gun and the Olive Branch: The Roots of Violence in the Middle East, David Hirst (1977)

Gaza: An Inquest into Its Martyrdom, Norman Finkelstein (2018)

Fateful Triangle: The United States, Israel and the Palestinians, Noam Chomsky (1983)

Israel and Palestine: Reappraisals, Revisions, Refutations, Avi Shlaim (2010)

Politicide: Ariel Sharon’s War Against the Palestinians, Baruch Kimmerling (2006)

The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering, Norman G. Finkelstein (2015)

Light in Gaza: Writings Born of Fire, Jehad Abusalim (2022)

Nakba: Palestine, 1948, and the Claims of Memory, Ahmad H. Sa’di and Lila Abu-Lughod (2007)

Peace and its discontents: Essays on Palestine in the Middle East peace process, Edward W. Said (2012)

Three Poems by Yahya Hassan

Articles, Papers & Essays

“Palestinian history doesn’t start with the Nakba” by PYM (May, 2023) 

“What the Uprising Means,” Salim Tamari (1988)

“The Palestinians’ inalienable right to resist,” Louis Allday (2021)

“Liberating a Palestinian Novel from Israeli Prison,” Danya Al-Saleh and Samar Al-Saleh (2023) 

Women, War, and Peace: Reflections from the Intifada, Nahla Abdo (2002)

“A Place Without a Door” and “Uncle Give me a Cigarette”—Two Essays by Palestinian Political Prisoner, Walid Daqqah (2023)

“Live Like a Porcupine, Fight Like a Flea,” A Translation of an Article by Basel Al-Araj

Films & Video Essays

Fedayin: Georges Abdallah’s Fight (2021)

Naila and the Uprising (2017)

Off Frame AKA Revolution Until Victory (2015)

Tell Your Tale Little Bird (1993)

The Time That Remains (2009)

“The Present” (short film) (2020)

“How Palestinians were expelled from their homes”

Louis Theroux: The Ultra Zionists (2011)

Born in Gaza (2014)

5 Broken Cameras (2011)

Little Palestine: Diary of a Siege (2021)

Al-Nakba: The Palestinian catastrophe - Episode 1 | Featured Documentary

Organisations to donate to

Palestine Red Crescent Society - https://www.palestinercs.org/en

Anera - https://support.anera.org/a/palestine-emergency

Palestinian American Medical Association - https://palestinian-ama.networkforgood.com/projects/206145-gaza-medical-supplies-oct-2023

You First Gaza - https://donate.gazayoufirst.org/

MAP - Medical Aid for Palestinians - https://www.map.org.uk/donate/donate

United Nations Relief and Works Agency - https://donate.unrwa.org/-landing-page/en_EN

Palestine Children’s Relief Fund - https://www.pcrf.net/   

Doctors Without Borders - https://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/what-we-do/where-we-work/palestine

AP Fact Check

https://apnews.com/article/israel-hamas-gaza-misinformation-fact-check-e58f9ab8696309305c3ea2bfb269258e

This list is not exhaustive in any way, and is a summary of various sources on the Internet. Please engage with more ethical, unbiased sources, including Decolonize Palestine and this list compiled by the Palestinian Youth Movement.

[trungles]

Cross-posting an essay I wrote for my Patreon since the post is free and open to the public.

Hello everyone! I hope you're relaxing as best you can this holiday season. I recently went to see Miyazaki's latest Ghibli movie, The Boy and the Heron, and I had some thoughts about it. If you're into art historical allusions and gently cranky opinions, please enjoy. I've attached a downloadable PDF in the Patreon post if you'd prefer to read it that way. Apologies for the formatting of the endnotes! Patreon's text posting does not allow for superscripts, which means all my notations are in awkward parentheses. Please note that this writing contains some mild spoilers for The Boy and the Heron.

Hayao Miyazaki’s 2023 feature animated film The Boy and the Heron reads as an extended meditation on grief and legacy. The Master of a grand tower seeks a descendant to carry on his maddening duty, balancing toy blocks of magical stone upon which the entire fabric of his little pocket of reality rests. The world’s foundations are frail and fleeting, and can pass away into the cold void of space should he neglect to maintain this task. The Master’s desire to pass the torch undergirds much of the film’s narrative.

(Isle of the Dead. Arnold Böcklin. 1880. Oil on Canvas. Kunstmuseum. Basel, Switzerland.)

Arnold Böcklin, a Swiss Symbolist(1) painter, was born on October 16 in 1827, the same year the Swiss Evangelical Reformed Church bought a plot of land in Florence from the Grand Duke of Tuscany, Leopold II, that had long been used for the burials of Protestants around Florence. It is colloquially known as The English Cemetery, so called because it was the resting place of many Anglophones and Protestants around Tuscany, and Böcklin frequented this cemetery—his workshop was adjacent and his infant daughter Maria was buried there. In 1880, he drew inspiration from the cemetery, a lone plot of Protestant land among a sea of Catholic graveyards, and began to paint what would be the first of six images entitled Isle of the Dead. An oil on canvas piece, it depicts a moody little island mausoleum crowned with a gently swaying grove of cypresses, a type of tree common in European cemeteries and some of which are referred to as arborvitae. A figure on a boat, presumably Charon, ferries a soul toward the island and away from the viewer.

(Photo of The English Cemetery in Florence. Samuli Lintula. 2006.)

The Isle of the Dead paintings varied slightly from version to version, with figures and names added and removed to suit the needs of the time or the commissioner. The painting was glowingly referenced and remained fairly popular throughout the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The painting used to be inescapable in much of European popular culture. Professor Okulicz-Kozaryn, a philologist (someone with a deep interest in the ways language and cultural canons evolve)(2) observed that the painting, like many other works in its time, was itself iterative and became widely reiterated and referenced among its contemporaries. It became something like Romantic kitsch in the eyes of modern art critics, overwrought and excessively Byronic. I imagine Miyazaki might also resent a work of that level of manufactured ubiquity, as Miyazaki famously held Disney animated films in contempt (3). Miyazaki’s films are popularly aspirational to young animators and cartoonists, but gestures at imitation typically fall well short, often reducing Miyazaki’s weighty films to kitschy images of saccharine vibes and a lazy indulgence in a sort of empty magical domestic coziness. Being trapped in a realm of rote sentiment by an uncritical, unthoughtful viewership is its own Isle of Death.

(Still from The Boy and the Heron, 2023. Studio Ghibli.)

The Boy and the Heron follows a familiar narrative arc to many of Miyazaki’s other films: a child must journey through a magical and quietly menacing world in order to rescue their loved ones. This arc is an echo of Satsuki’s journey to find Mei in My Neighbor Totoro (1988) and Chihiro’s journey to rescue her parents Spirited Away (2001). To better understand Miyazaki’s fixation with this particular character journey, it can be instructive to watch Lev Atamanov’s 1957 animated film, The Snow Queen (4)(5), a beautifully realized take on Hans Christian Andersen’s 1844 children’s story (6)(7). Mahito’s journey continues in this tradition, as the boy travels into a painted world to rescue his new stepmother from a mysterious tower.

Throughout the film, Miyazaki visually references Isle of the Dead. Transported to a surreal world, Mahito initially awakens on a little green island with a gated mausoleum crowned with cypress trees. He is accosted by hungry pelicans before being rescued by a fisherwoman named Kiriko. After a day of catching and gutting fish, Mahito wakes up under the fisherwoman’s dining table, surrounded by kokeshi—little wooden dolls—in the shapes of the old women who run Mahito’s family’s rural household. Mahito is told they must not be touched, as the kokeshi are wards set up for his protection. There is a popular urban legend associated with the kokeshi wherein they act as stand-ins for victims of infanticide, though there seems to be very little available writing to support this legend. Still, it’s a neat little trick that Miyazaki pulls, placing a stray reference to a local legend of unverifiable provenance that persists in the popular imagination, like the effect of fairy stories passed on through oral retellings, continually remolded each new iteration.

(Still from The Boy and the Heron, 2023. Studio Ghibli.)

Kiriko’s job in this strange landscape is to catch fish to nourish unborn spirits, the adorable floating warawara, before they can attempt to ascend on a journey into the world of the living. Their journey is thwarted by flocks of supernatural pelicans, who swarm the warawara and devour them. This seems to nod to the association of pelicans with death in mythologies around the world, especially in relationship to children (8). Miyazaki’s pelicans contemplate the passing of their generations as each successive generation seems to regress, their capacity to fulfill their roles steadily diminishing.

(Still from The Boy and the Heron, 2023. Studio Ghibli.)

As Mahito’s adventure continues, we find the landscapes changing away from Böcklin’s Isle of the Dead into more familiar Ghibli territories as we start to see spaces inspired by one of Studio Ghibli’s aesthetic mainstays, Naohisa Inoue and his explorations of the fantasy realms of Iblard. He might be most familiar to Ghibli enthusiasts as the background artists for the more fantastical elements of Whisper of the Heart (1995).

(Naohisa Inoue, for Iblard Jikan, 2007. Studio Ghibli.)

By the time we arrive at the climax of The Boy and the Heron, the fantasy island environment starts to resemble English takes on Italian gardens, the likes of which captivated illustrators and commercial artists of the early 20th century such as Maxfield Parrish. This appears to be a return to one of Böcklin’s later paintings, The Island of Life (1888), a somewhat tongue-in-cheek reaction to the overwhelming presence of Isle of the Dead in his life and career. The Island of Life depicts a little spot of land amid an ocean very like the one on which Isle of the Dead’s somber mausoleum is depicted, except this time the figures are lively and engaged with each other, the vegetation lush and colorful, replete with pink flowers and palm fronds.

(Island of Life. Arnold Böcklin. Oil on canvas. 1888. Kunstmuseum. Basel, Switzerland.)

In 2022, Russia’s State Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg acquired the sixth and final Isle of the Dead painting. In the last year of his life, Arnold Böcklin would paint this image in collaboration with his son Carlo Böcklin, himself an artist and an architect. Arnold Böcklin spent three years painting the same image three times over at the site of his infant daughter’s grave, trapped on the Isle of the Dead. By the time of his death in 1901 at age 74, Böcklin would be survived by only five of his fourteen children. That the final Isle of the Dead painting would be a collaboration between father and son seemed a little ironic considering Hayao Miyazaki’s reticence in passing on his own legacy. Like the old Master in The Boy and the Heron, Miyazaki finds himself with no true successors.

The Master of the Tower's beautiful islands of painted glass fade into nothing as Mahito, his only worthy descendant, departs to live his own life, fulfilling the thesis of Genzaburo Yoshino’s 1937 book How Do You Live?, published three years after Carlo Böcklin’s death. In evoking Yoshino and Böcklin’s works, Hayao Miyazaki’s The Boy and the Heron suggests that, like his character the Master, Miyazaki himself must make peace with the notion that he has no heirs to his legacy, and that those whom he wished to follow in his footsteps might be best served by finding their own paths.

(Isle of the Dead. Arnold and Carlo Böcklin. Oil on canvas. 1901. The State Hermitage Museum. Saint Petersburg, Russia.)

INFORMAL ENDNOTES

1 - Symbolists are sort of tough to nail down. They were started as a literary movement to 1 distinguish themselves from the Decadents, but their manifesto was so vague that critics and academics fight about it to this day. The long and the short of it is that the Symbolists made generous use of a lot of metaphorical imagery in their work. They borrow a lot of icons from antiquity, echo the moody aesthetics from the Romantics, maintained an emphasis on figurative imagery more so than the Surrealists, and were only slightly more technically married to the trappings of traditionalist academic painters than Modernists and Impressionists. They're extremely vibes-forward.

2 - Okulicz-Kozaryn, Radosław. Predilection of Modernism for Variations. Ciulionis' Serenity among Different Developments of the Theme of Toteninsel. ACTA Academiae Artium Vilnensis 59. 2010. The article is incredibly cranky and very funny to read in parts. Contains a lot of observations I found to be helpful in placing Isle of the Dead within its context.

3 - "From my perspective, even if they are lightweight in nature, the more popular and common films still must be filled with a purity of emotion. There are few barriers to entry into these films-they will invite anyone in but the barriers to exit must be high and purifying. Films must also not be produced out of idle nervousness or boredom, or be used to recognise, emphasise, or amplify vulgarity. And in that context, I must say that I hate Disney's works. The barrier to both the entry and exit of Disney films is too low and too wide. To me, they show nothing but contempt for the audience." from Miyazaki's own writing in his collection of essays, Starting Point, published in 2014 from VIZ Media.

4 - You can watch the movie here in its original Russian with English closed captions here.

5 If you want to learn more about the making of Atamanoy's The Snow Queen, Animation Obsessive wrote a neat little article about it. It's a good overview, though I have to gently disagree with some of its conclusions about the irony of Miyazaki hating Disney and loving Snow Queen, which draws inspiration from Bambi. Feature film animation as we know it hadonly been around a few decades by 1957, and I find it specious, particularly as a comic artistand author, to see someone conflating an entire form with the character of its content, especially in the relative infancy of the form. But that's just one hot take. The rest of the essay is lovely.

6 - Miyazaki loves this movie. He blurbed it in a Japanese re-release of it in 2007.

7 - Julia Alekseyeva interprets Princess Mononoke as an iteration of Atamanov's The Snow Queen, arguing that San, the wolf princess, is Miyazaki's homage to Atamanoy's little robber girl character.

8 - Hart, George. The Routledge Dictionary of Egyptian Gods And Goddesses. Routledge Dictionaries. Abingdon, United Kingdom: Routledge. 2005.

[dunmeshistash]

Some people that have reached out asking me to share their fundraisers, please donate if you're able to

@zinaeleenyamin

@06679799

@mohammedalanqer

@burningnightgiver

@aymanayyad81

@basel-1995

[renthony]

Lost in the Remaster: Star Trek, Vintage Special Effects, and the Charm of Old Media

by Ren Basel renbasel.com

Originally created by Gene Roddenberry, Star Trek is a franchise that spans decades. From the original series of 1966 to current shows such as Lower Decks, it stands as a titan of television and pop culture. The real world has undergone incredible change since Star Trek’s first appearance, yet nerds everywhere still find entertainment, inspiration, and hope in its classic episodes. Recently, along with my husband and best friend, I decided I wanted to attempt the gauntlet of watching the entire franchise from beginning to end, revisiting favorites and finally checking out the ones I missed. Media and fandom studies are my passion, after all, and Star Trek is a foundational part of modern American nerd culture.

Starting with the original series proved more difficult than expected. Living in a tiny apartment, we don’t have much space for DVDs, so Star Trek wasn’t in our existing collection. The local public library didn’t have copies, either, and putting in a purchase request doesn’t guarantee it will be made available. My family doesn’t have the funds to pay for every single streaming service on the market, and Star Trek isn’t available on any we do have access to. Piracy was starting to look like the only option, but even that fell flat when we couldn’t find a version with subtitles. Finally we dug it up officially and with subtitles, for free via PlutoTV, but there were still limitations: PlutoTV only streams season one, and season one is only available in the remastered edition that replaced the original special effects with new visuals.

It wasn’t ideal, but, hey, it was Star Trek.

Watching just one episode a week gave us enough time to scrape together savings to get what we really wanted for seasons two and three: the official BluRay release, which includes both remastered and original-release versions of each episode. The remasters are fine, but as a lover of media history and practical effects, I’m always disappointed to lose a chance to appreciate the originals. It doesn’t matter how good it might look, remasters are never as much fun to me as matte paintings, camera tricks, and whatever the prop department could pull off with ten dollars and some glue.

Finally having the BluRays in hand for season two only affirmed my love of vintage practical effects. Seeing the Enterprise in her original glory, before she was ever rendered in digital form, felt like opening a time capsule. I love time capsules. My favorite pieces of media are always those which capture a moment in time, showcasing the aesthetics, concerns, and culture of the time and place they were created. Star Trek: the Original Series is rooted in the late sixties, when mainstream culture in the United States was experiencing immense upheaval and social change. That context is written all over the show. The vintage effects add to it, grounding it in a very specific time and place. Updating the show’s effects takes away some of that 60s aesthetic, and while some may see it as making the show more timeless, I don’t care for it. To me, seeing what they could pull off before modern technology is half the fun of watching old shows. The ingenuity and creativity of propmakers, makeup artists, and set designers working on shoestring budgets is unparalleled.

To be clear, digital effects are also done by skilled professionals who deserve much more respect and many more labor protections. There are some truly stunning works created with digital tools. That said, I hate when digital effects are used to cover up the practical effects that came before. It feels disrespectful to the original artists, as if telling them their work wasn’t good enough; as if their work was just a placeholder until something better could come along and fix it. Practical effects aren’t a placeholder, they’re an art form in their own right, and that art form is one for which I have deep appreciation.

It frustrates me that the original, non-remastered episodes were such a pain for us to access, but I’m very glad to have added them to my personal media collection. No matter what future tweaks Star Trek’s rights holders might make, I can always pop in our personal copies to enjoy the Enterprise and her crew in all their vintage, “outdated” glory. If you’re also too young to remember the show’s original airing, and you have the opportunity to watch the unedited version, I highly suggest you do. Watching the version that aired in 1966 gives the show a charm that no amount of remastering can ever match.

_

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[z-moves]

Hi dear donors ! ❤️

I would like to extend my thank and gratitude for the support you have been offering over the last eleven months. ❤️☺️

My family and I have been suffering and going through the hardest days we have ever experienced in our life . Things are very hard to get and and sometimes unattainable.😭😓

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This is a part of burying the dead. We also face some problems in the process of buying our dead people as no place is there for the family. Tombs aren't for the number of people living on a small spot of land.

All what we need is to survive the war and be safe. We are trying to secure the daily basic living necessities and this can come true with your contribution and support. Please don't spare this moment of supporting the people in need in Gaza in this tough and dire time. You can help us by either donating however small it is or sharing my posts. Your support makes a big difference for families in need.https://gofund.me/7e428359

hi again, Basel! i still hope for your and your family's survival. i will share this again so that more people will see it.

CHF8,785 / CHF60K

this fundraiser is still extremely low on funds!

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[ringneckedpheasant]

I can’t believe they took andreas from me I was so obsessed w him… my agnostic christian mystic college dropout </3

finished act 2 of pentiment and ohhhhhh this game is going to make me so crazy