Blog
Living in a Material World: The Vanishing of Print Journalism and Its Effects on Culture
The newspaper is a fascinating cultural object. The newspaper, in the exceedingly recent past, epitomized the dynamism of modern life. From the time of its invention, mechanized produc-tion was thought to enable the stripping of the senses and the speeding-up of time. The newspaper was an emblem of fast-paced modern life. That the newspaper is now a symbol of the past proves just how fast time has moved. To think of the newspaper now is to think of nostalgia.
A Literary Guide to Keeping the Holiday Spirit Alive
With the holidays come and gone, a new semester underway, and a fresh lockdown, I find myself in a bit of a slump. It’s too early to dream of spring flowers, yet too late for any more gingerbread or mistletoe— January, for me, felt weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable.
The Phenomenon of “That Girl”
(TW: Discussion of eating disorders and restrictive eating)
This morning, I woke up at noon. Really, it was an accident; I hadn’t even gone to bed that late. I rolled over to grab my phone off the charger, and for some reason opened TikTok. I would not recommend this to be your first visual interaction in the morning. Immediately, I was served with your typical, bright-pastel, cheery music “Morning in the Life.” A beautiful woman, probably younger than I, waking up at 6am to immediately begin her beachside yoga routine, followed by an extensive skin care routine, lots of lemon water, and a five mile run.
Review: Turbulence, David Szalay
Trigger warning for the book: domestic violence
David Szalay’s Turbulence started out as a series of short radio stories for the BBC. The slim 160-page novel circles the world; each chapter title consists of two airport codes (such as LAX, YYZ, SEA, DHA, and DEL) which sets the scene for where the novel will travel next. Each chapter is awarded its own protagonist, who is introduced in its preceding section, allowing the novel to be read as a collection of briefly linked short stories. Still, the compact chapters do not detract from the relatability of their struggles, as each of them face some form of turbulence.
Interview with The Scribe
As I made my way over to The Scribe one autumnal morning, I was struck by the serenity of the scene before me. Even in November, I could still wear my favorite wool coat and sneakers—a rarity for all Torontonians. A few struggling leaves still clung to their branches, while the Danforth was littered with specks of orange and red. A morning without class worked its usual cure on my psyche, leaving me feeling uncharacteristically smug, smiling to myself on the street—like someone who has never heard the word “midterm” or “exam” in their life.
Disney’s Encanto: A tale of accurate representation and political criticism
I’m happy to say that Disney’s Encanto positively surprised me. As a Colombian, I am used to bad representation. From Narcos to the foreign obsession with Pablo Escobar, I don’t expect media accuracy when it comes to my country. As a result, when Disney first announced their production of Encanto, I was skeptical at best. After the Mexican critiques surrounding Coco, and the lack of Colombian writers in the movie, this skepticism morphed into dread over what I thought would be an attempt at taking the fantastic things my country had to offer and fall short in the delivery; I feared that Encanto would become a representation of something I couldn’t recognize. Needless to say, I didn’t have high expectations when I walked in, but on leaving the theater my critiques about representation were almost minimal.
The Student, The Angel, and Golden Autumn: A Narrative Essay
The Student, The Angel, and Golden Autumn: A Narrative Essay “That night [Jacob] arose… [and] Jacob was left alone. And a man wrestled with him until the break of dawn.” (Genesis 32:22-24) The Malaise of deep autumn arises. It floats above and below the clouds, it...
Feeling for the Final Girl: Empathy and the Spectacle of Suffering in Horror Films
How do we distinguish between horror and tragedy? Both feature often graphic depictions of intense human suffering, from gore to rock-bottom misery. Yet, for some reason or another, tragedy elicits our pity while horror elicits our excitement. Our natural, human response to suffering is empathy, but somehow this switch is temporarily turned off as we encounter the horror genre. Perhaps this phenomenon is unexplainable, a mere mystery of human nature; perhaps it is not.
Squid Game: Sensationalized Violence or Social Commentary?
Squid Game follows Seong Gi-Hun, a South Korean gambling addict who, strapped for cash, falls prey to a mysterious man in a subway station who offers him an opportunity to make thousands of dollars—all Seong has to do is call the number on his card. When he calls, a mysterious voice tells him to wait outside his apartment at midnight, and when he does, he is picked up in a van and knocked unconscious by a sedative gas. Gi-Hun and a few hundred others meet the same fate and are gathered on a remote island to play a series of children’s games with high stakes—if you lose, you get shot and killed. If you win, you stay alive until the next game and keep playing in hopes of winning a multi-million-dollar prize.