Blog
The Woman with the Cross Tattoo
On my sixteenth birthday, I ask my mother if I can get a tattoo like hers on my wrist. Raising an eyebrow at me, she responds back, like she’s done, a thousand times before,
It’s not a tattoo, she says.
Ferdinand Magellan Circumnavigates Disneyland and Las Vegas: World Possession Made Easy
Anno Domini 1522: Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan’s Victoria returns to harbour in Spain after circumnavigating the globe, tying up the world with a golden girdle—which is a necklace, which is a collar, which is a garotte. Magellan himself had so famously expired many months ago on the island of Mactan in the Philippines—speared to death like a fish, by all accounts—but, alas, the flat-earth, anti-Cartographic forces of the universe were too late. Magellan’s will be done: the globe is complete.
Grow Up and Vote
With the American presidential election just weeks away, the importance—and the question—of voting is heavy on our minds. In the past year, the leadership of one of the most powerful and influential countries in the world has broken down. President Trump was briefed on the danger of the Corona virus in late January, and did nothing to protect the American people except imposing travel restrictions on China; and this was after he disbanded the pandemic response team set in place for exactly these kinds of outbreaks. Over 200,000 Americans have died from the virus, and many of those deaths could have been avoided if the Trump administration was more proactive, and less concerned for the economy.
Racial Diversity in Literature – What it Means and Why We Need It
“What I wanted, needed really, was to become an integral and valued part of the mosaic that I saw around me,” wrote Walter Dean Myers in a 2014 opinion piece for the New York Times, titled Where Are the People of Color in Children’s Books? He explains that when living through extremely difficult points of his life (including coping with the murder of his uncle, grief, and alcohol abuse by family members),reading books became a retreat from the world. He noted that the world he saw around him was not reflected in his reading material: “As I discovered who I was, a black teenager in a white-dominated world, I saw that these characters, these lives, were not mine.”
The Chick-Flick Dilemma
Throughout our lives, women and girls are spoon-fed the genre of romance in books, movies, and television. We are told through a host of stories that our princes are out there waiting for us, and that we will all have cute love stories—with some ups and downs—but that eventually, he’ll make a grand gesture, and then we’ll walk off into the sunset together. While romance is in fact real, the romance women are led to believe will be performed by men in our society is a fabrication. ‘Chick flicks,’ or romantic movies, are at the forefront of this misleading narrative. Whether it be The Notebook, which has long been hailed as an epic love story, or a more comedic film such as Friends With Benefits, in the end, the female protagonist always falls happily in love, while the man at her side loves her intensely, and vows to be faithful to her. This is seen also in romantic novels, especially romantic Young Adult novels, catered towards girls as young as 12 and 13 years old. These stories specifically indicate that the man falls in love as well. Even if sex is at the forefront of the narrative (as it is in Friends With Benefits) said man will never be able to resist the main character’s personality, and he will end up falling for her no matter what. Even if he only views her as a possible sexual partner at first, in the end he wants her as a life partner. This narrative can lead to a lot of false hope, and not because ‘men are trash,’ and all they care about is sex.
A Short Analysis of What A24 Does Well
In the winter of 2019, I attended the Sundance Film Festival as an over-worked intern. Although the experience was mostly dropping off Uber eats orders and escorting people to their interviews, I had been given free tickets to watch two films of my choice. I had to choose from a list, giving each film a numerical value ranging from 1 to 5. The film marked “1” (meaning the film I wanted to watch most) was A24’s “The Last Black Man in San Francisco” . Due to popular demand, I was not able to get a ticket to this film, and was instead stuck with watching a horrifically boring documentary about lumber.
Review: Tenet
Why exactly was Christopher Nolan lobbying Warner Bros to release his new film Tenet to theatres in the middle of a pandemic, when cinemas around the world are operating at a sharply reduced capacity, if not entirely closed? That’s a conundrum only rivalled in convolution by the film’s plot. Nolan still got it done, and the film is the first blockbuster to reach the silver screens since March. But for all the confidence the Dunkirk director seems to have in his most recent work, there is little in the 150-minute film to back it up.
The Good Life, Ukrainian Style
Tennis anyone? Horseback riding? A round of golf? Try your luck at the shooting range, or out on the hunting grounds? Aim clear of the private zoo, with its collection of peacocks, yaks, ostriches, deer, antelope, pheasants, and wild boar. For the motoring minded there is a lineup of antique cars to ogle, 27 in all, valued at more than $1 million. At the end of a busy day a spa awaits to offer massages (Thai, Swedish, or facial, with designated rooms for each), a tanning room of nagging clouds has obscured the Slavic sun, and a fully functional gym to tone muscles is left untried. Dinner awaits in either of two formal dining rooms or a restaurant housed in a Spanish warship afloat on a manmade lake. Before bedtime, nightcaps are poured into crystal glasses in the wood-paneled bar. Were these the delights on offer at a five-star resort on the Black Sea coast? No, they awaited guests of former Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych at Mezhyhiriya, the site of his country home until he fled to Russia on February 21, 2014 following a flurry of nationwide protests.
Look Closer: The Importance of Punch Drunk Love
Punch Drunk Love is a kind of movie we are all familiar with, but also one that is unlike any other. The initial shot of this movie makes director Paul Thomas Anderson’s vision clear: he aims to show us something we could not have seen otherwise. It is through his craft that the audience is treated to a subversion of the romantic comedy—a genre of film riddled with clichés. PDL is special because it is made up of things we are used to seeing and flips them on their head. This subversion of components generates something entirely different: a beautiful, intimate experience that demands that we change what we ask for from these kinds of movies.