#WHO SAID THAT PRIZE BOXES WERE ONLY FOR PRIMARY SCHOOL TEACHERS

[that-cheer-up-anon]

Learnt how to do manicures and hand massage today. Also finally got my last essential eyelash extensions supplies so I can start doing that now and hopefully earn some money.

Was out all day doing beauty school, buying beauty supplies, and helping my lil sis grocery shop. Got my free Baskin Robbins birthday ice cream scoop while I was at it.

[adevotedappraisal]

Short Story: Gershom, part one of two

A short story about a memorable day in the life of the most famous folk-hero of Barbados, one Winston Hall.  I played loose with the actual facts of Winston’s life, the way all folk tales do, but also because the story is less about the particulars of his life and more of the imaginary mind-state and desires of a person in solitude who wishes to connect with a country that is as scared and confused about him as he is of the country itself. Enjoy.

Gershom part one (the mid-day son)

By Christopher White

Run always. Run until it doesn't make sense, until it gets too thick and it makes more sense to stop. Do the patrol. First go up to Old Ledge and do some sight seeing from there. Look. Look at the brown on the rooftops. Look at that section there with the path by the side. You made that path, trample all over the grass. It makes the runs quicker. Sky is clear. No rain smell, good. Mrs. Graves must be cooking by now. She makes good veggies. Are you hungry? You aren't hungry, good. Anything out the ordinary from the sight-seeing? No. Children going school. Look at that little one. Cheez on bredders I know he mother back when she was a child, now look she got a lil' boy. What's her name? She was cute girl, she used to look at me and smile sweet. I thought she did love me, but I was seven, I ain't know what love was then. She was cute. What was she rassole name now? It's an 'M' name. Anyway, check the trespass traps. No one has been up here. Good. Look up again. Look at that sky. Now look at the green. Go over by that mango tree and tie your lacens. What was her name? Winston stood by the mango tree overlooking St. Joseph and tied his shoe-laces carefully. The wind was soft but enough to push the trees to swaying. Down the hill was a pasture, a display of overgrown grass with an arcing path carved into it, made by Winston four months earlier. The countryside was silent save for the cheering that the leaves made in the wind, the occasional high shout of the school-children going to the nearby Primary School. A wooden crate laid half buried and overcome by the dirt, and one of the primary school boys stopped to kick at it. His mother quickly came and slapped his hand and the boy cried and breathed in, cried and breathed in, breathed in, then breathed in again, and then let his cry carry over the sloping section of the country, through the primplers of the dunks trees, over the ribs of the stray dogs, under the stereo of Stephen ' Step-Hen' Roberts, and into the tightly knit and thatched corridors of the Hill-trees (sparkling from the sun light coming through), past the perpetually deciduous Breadfruit tree until the last bit of the cry met the mango tree, and made Winston Hall look up, causing him to pity the boy and his own childhood, the recollections of which were as faded as the child's bellow.

The sun went on during the morning as Winston stayed mostly behind the large and thick line of trees, and carried his supplies as he made the trek to Chimborazo, where a sizable patch of farm land lay.  On his walk along the ridges and down the dips along Joe's River and up through the slowly-swaying trees Winston remembered bits about his childhood. He thought about Primary School sports and how he was real good with the egg and spoon race. His little secret was to do the race on near tip-toes. A strange sort of balance, a strange sort of control occurred when he did this. The finals race was him up against Peter from down the gap, and Peter was the favourite because he had just won the 200m easily, but Winston had his technique. By this time of the day the sun was becoming soft around the Pasture of the school sports, and the sno-cone vendor had run out of evaporated milk, and Winston was ready. He got the lead early, trying to absorb all the shock of movement through his toes and knees. His eyes were on that egg, brown and wobbling, then he looked up at the yellow tape. He kept his nerve, trying to keep all his might and auspices on this one task. Mrs. Licorish was shouting "Go Winston! Lick down boy, lick down!" and he kept it all out while he warbled on. Winston stopped his thinking of his younger-Winston and looked up because he thought he saw someone. Down boy. keep low. Look for shadows that don't move like trees. Could be an animal. Could be nothing.  It's not a person, you would have heard something by now. People is mek noise when they walking without minding their walking. Look the field over there. Good carrots and lettuce. The soil real dark. Gets turned over alot. He could grow some weed at the back there. Make himself some extra money. Remember Dizzy. Dizzy used to get a small boat and go over to Tobago every fortnight to get weed from he stash. Went with him sometimes. On the boat over he used to sing Sam Cooke tunes. Good voice. Barely used to hear him and was right across from him. It real hard to sing at a whisper and sing well. But you could do it if ya practice. I shoulda win that egg and spoon race. I lose concentration. I was thinking about the prize before I get it. Got complacent. Rest pun my laurels before I had de laurels. Peter just took advantage. He was safe tho. It was my fault. I wonder where that silver medal is? Mummy was proud or not? Mummy say once that she wish she had chinee eyes. I tell she I still proud of she eyes. She hug me. Okay stash de bags here. Come back later tonight. Get some carrots then. Sometime during the day you gine be hungry. Just hol off till you get to Robert. Robert got something for you. Remember. Later this evening. On his way back near Suriname, Winston heard a rap song. He wondered when was the time that rap got so popular in Barbados. He cared neither way for the music, it wasn't the music of his youth, and he really hadn't the time to learn new music. After getting free from prison during the late nineties he made it to the foot hills of his home-hamlet of Suriname, but on the way he remarked at all the antennae that were on top of roofs, all the fancy new cars on the road, and the even more churches that popped up during his imprisonment. By the time he reached Robert's house he was dirty, smelling of sweat, and tired, but the first thing he whispered to Robert was "wait Robert, Bajans sell dey ass to de Devil to get these new tings or wha?"

  The sun had gone behind a sudden construction of clouds. Through the spaces in the clouds the sun came down in verdant lines. Winston was in a tree looking out at the country-side and nursing his right knee with a handkerchief in a way similar to this:

He had injured his knee on his latest escape from prison around four years ago. It was morning and the guards knocked on his door and said "Hall! Bath!" Winston got up off of his lumped bed and pushed against the wall. Silently he pushed against the inside of his cell, grimacing his futility only to himself, fingers clawing the faded paint, the thick stale air reminding him of his situation, of his choices. He did this same gesture to the walls everyday he remembered to do it. The young guard knocked on the door then the door opened. He stared at Winston. "Come 'long." he said.

Down the corridor he walked with the two guards flanking him, looking at the sorrowful structures of the century old prison. The feeding chain in the prison no longer surprised Winston. 'Big Criminal eat the little one' he mused. He noticed his feet chains were not the way he remembered them. He was walking with more freedom than the previous mornings. 'water goes to the path of least resistance' he thought. 'Geography teacher said that. But what was his name?' he thought. Then he pushed the guards fiercely aside and ran.

A large percentage of the Prison officials were in a meeting, and Winston ran like if he knew this beforehand - with reckless determination. Prison pants-legs rubbing swiftly against each other as Winston darted through some boxes then up near the play-court where Justin Maynard and Harold Peters stared in amazement at Winston's bursts. So concentrated, yet so risk-taking. Winston ran like freedom to the wall. The guards ran in pursuit and motioned others to tell the rest in the meeting. Gravel sparkled over his legs, then no gravel as he leaped up onto a shed and then onto the sharp-toothed wall. He looked back, at the galloping guards, at the stunned new-comer prisoners and the observant veterans who stopped the basketball game the moment they realised that this was an example that their fellow prisoners should view. They stood up, some cheering, most just beholding. Beholding Winston thirty feet up in the air on the precipice of a barbed wire wall that overlooked an over-run gully packed tight with all types of things discarded.

Winston jumped, not flailing, but not sure.

Don't squeeze it, just put you hands around you knee. Just let it know that you there for it. That jump was messy as blood. Uneven ground to land on. Thought it was broken. Thought it had snapped. Still bothers me to this day. Doesn't hurt when I bend down, only when I get up. This is good enough. Look at the sky. Sun coming back out. Look at the cloud shadow on the ground. That woman is coming back from dropping she son off from school. She doesn't work. Now I remember, she does, she just goes out 'round mid-day. She breasts look good. She do she hair pretty well up just to drop she son off. That's what I like. A woman that care what she look like. What is her name? I should run down there and ask her. Just ask her and kiss her and tell her I ain't got shite to give you but my heart and hope. I should tell she I want she to hope for me. Hope I work something out of this life. I is a good kisser I feel. Suck bubbies good. I would be a good father for de child. Child father aint around. I don't see any man ever with her. I would discipline the child good. I would love the child good. Tell he everything I know. Tell he everything to make sure he never end up like me.

 Miriam Lowe walked down the cracked road to her home. She took her glasses off and started to clean them while walking by memory. She put them on again and stared at the trees and over-run grass behind the row of houses where she lived. Some of the children call that area the jungle and so she forbade her young one to go there without her. Her slippers flapped lazily as she walked up staring at this elaborate chaos back there. Fear truly resides in the unknown. Because fear implores you to assume, demands that you suppose the nature of the things that scare you. She day-dreamed a cabal of mad rastas in the hills, scorning the plaintive practicality of a remote control. Or she dreamt about drug dealers with huge weed trees reaping their harvest that would stick a knife through anyone who discovered their bounty, or any little boy. Maybe back there was a time warp, and pirates and runaway slaves and vampires and duppies and ravenous forest wolves all lived between the trees, all waiting to feast on the minds that fear them, the minds that are so scared of them, that they imagine them on morning walks while cleaning their glasses. Miriam walked up the unpainted steps and into her home. She put the boy's colouring books into a pile, and looked at the back of the newspaper. She then looked straight ahead at the picture of Kevin Lowe, staring straight ahead, policeman hat and visor sloping and shiny across his forehead, lips pursed, against a plain blue background. She stared at him and smiled at the dead man. On the nights that she would invite a man over for a night-time coupling, she would turn that framed picture down onto the glass cabinet that held assorted souvenir cups and decorativia. She put the kettle on the stove, sat down to gather herself before she left for work at a Christ Church hotel. She sat in her chair, bright from the sun coming through the ajar door, and thought about the duppies going to work in the bushes behind her house and up the hills. She thought about this until the kettle began to scree, unsure at first, then full throated as soon as enough of the water had boiled within it. Winston was down in a depression near Joe's River checking on stash B. He had a series of places where he stashed supplies, clothing and weapons. He walked further into the dense grass and further into the hills to Stash C. Stash C had dry foods and loose magazines he managed to get. He took out a green plastic bag filled with dry food and walked further down until the denseness stopped and the ground became softer. The ground gathered on his shoes but he walked on. The ground became sturdy again and a small pasture emerged; mostly dry grass and cracked earth. At the far end of the pasture was a tree with rope tied onto the base. Attached to the base was a dog, pacing silently back and forth, wagging all the while. There he is. He always lets me know he missed me. Give him a hug. Scratch his belly. Wrestle the bastard to the ground. There you go. He likes so much games. Is that lice there? No just dirt from the play-fall. Well, give the bag of dog food. Look at him nose through that. Sometimes you wait too long to feed him. Remember that. There was a boy in primary school who used to take children food from them. Used to call him Charles Bronson. Found out years later he was taking all that food home to feed his brothers. I would have given him the food if I had known that was the reason. He didn't have to hit me that one time. I cry but stop real quick. But I learn that sometimes you could reason with a man, but sometimes it doan matter. When a man hungry, all he know is letting go blows for food. Everybody like that. When dey back to the wall, they would beat they dog for food. Policemen is got to beat confessions out of people to get de case finish. Dem aint care, but when they job on the line dey beating up poor people. And if that poor person was a policeman he would do the same thing. Sometimes my back was to the wall. Sometimes I didn't have nuh big money for nothin. And sometimes I had to share out fuckin blows too.

 And so Winston went through the day, hiding between one spot and the other, travelling with his dog, scouting out movement in the areas of St. Joseph, and thinking an assembly line of thoughts to stop himself from going mad. Winston's torment was not only his choices of his youth ( a naive 20 year old creeping up to a plantation house looking for quick money), but also the realisations that these choices were simultaneously making him more popular and more apart from this country he took for granted in his youth, as we all have. By the time of his second escape from prison (third from police custody), Winston Hall had managed to become the most well known male in Barbados while at the same time being the one person who had the least knowledge of what was occurring in his country for a man his age. He could tell you the best escape route from the gully near Richmond's house, and the best unguarded breadfruits in the parish, and how to separate normal flashlights from more expressive police flashlights, but at the same time Winston had no idea of the movie theatres that were cropping up, the dynasties of night-clubs that rose and fell over the decades, the spread of the internet, the drugs, the government, the rise of women in schools, the travel accounts for black managers at insurance companies, the carve of a rally-car tire into the asphalt, the smell of the west coast after it flooded and killed a few people, the look of a signature on an invoice slip of a DVD player bought at a department store, the progresses, the illusions, the pursed lipped rage of this country, all these things were apparitions - stories he might hear about but never care about because his country was not our country, his anthem was not the same we sing at events half-heartedly, his motto was of no high-minded Pride and Industry, but of only one word embedded into his thoughts, permeated into his action. His only motto was Survival. The sun was beginning it's slope downward now. Mid-day had come and Miriam was in a Transport Board bus rocking slightly, hopping up whenever the huge busses went down into a hole in the road. The grass and boundless grass that went by the window went into her eyes, left the memory that this road had grass on the sides of it, and then the rest of the images left her mind. The distinctions were only picked up by her under-mind, her subconscious, and her under-mind seldomly reminded her of how the world truly looked, of how the world truly operated. While the Bus stopped at a traffic light, and in the background, Grantley Adams Memorial School loomed sprawled by against the pastures. It was then that her under-mind began to remind her of the way her life truly was. The images of her late husband slapping her into the wall of their house came up. Miriam closed her eyes. She countered by reminding herself that he truly loved her, and she was not a door-mat for her man because she could get any man she wanted in Surinam or most places. She knew of the constitution of her breasts. But she stayed because she realised that things get complicated when you get older. "When you are a teenager or a girl like that of course you coul' leav ya boyfriend like that, because the only obligation is to the relationship. There is that thing telling you that you could get a better man. "But when you get married to a man, have a child with a man, get a house with a man, appliances, garden supplies, new bed sheets with a man, ya is become more entrenched. It's harder to leave. All of a sudden you start weighing everything. You is say to yaself 'yeah he hit me las night, but he change de child diaper real good and fix de back door'. The practicality of him over-weighs the emotional shite he might get on with. All of a sudden you get stresses when he get stressed, and vice-versa. We hurt each other differently when we in bad moods that is all. He shoved me into a wall when he was angry, and I tell he that he need to clean he ass better or I ain't gine suck he balls no more. People get hurt in different ways I guess." she thought to herself. The bus went along through the country. Past the mini-marts and the wooden churches and the rum-shops, and into the roads filled with hotels and night-clubs and well-designed restaurants. She rang the bell and got out, and went into her hotel. In the back room Janice Callender had her hand up her skirt pulling her shirt tail down so that it was all flat against her. The younger girl looked at Miriam as a bigger sister, an aunt, a guiding hand of some sort. "Miriam," Janice said while they got prepared for their work of work and smiling. "Yeah what happen Janice?" "Um, wha you would do is you man cheat on you? You woul' cut off he doggie?" "Nah, I wouldn't do that." Miriam said, "Men gine do tings like that sooner or later. I wouldn't even leave he." "Fuh trut? Why you wouldn't leave he?" Janice asked. "Because if you want to be in a relationship you is realise that ya aint in just a relationship, you in a life together. You have to learn patience, and hope, and most o' all, forgiveness. Love is mess up we head, and make us put up wid a lotta shite from de people we love. But to tell ya de truth, I wouldn't have it any other way." Miriam said. The two stood in the back room fixing up, and then Janice said, "but what if he was pun de down low with a man?" "Then I woul' throw he bullin ass out de house and cut off he doggie." Miriam said as they both laughed themselves into the hallway.

All was calm during the afternoon. The grass was knotted up amongst each other and the clouds moved softly. Years ago, there would be Reddifusion boxes wheezing out the hymns and solemn-spoken events of the day, but now those radios were gone and now a home stereo would vibrate bass-lines from a house where an unemployed man might live, or a woman at home with her child, or a middle-aged man going through a youth resurgence, listening to young-people stations while taking a day home from work. The community was at rest, as it usually is, as it usually expects itself to be. Winston sat behind a clutch of dunks trees mostly bare from being picked by Winston all the time. He was sharpening a piece of wood by planing down the edges to a point. Maybe he'd use it as a weapon, maybe he could stick it in the ground, tie rope to it and use it as an anchor for a make-shift tent if he suddenly had to run. Mostly he was doing it so see the soft, tender slices of wood peel off from over the knife and flick off playfully to the ground. Thin bends of wood, making not a sound as they were cleft from the wood that they were part of. No reason that they were now separated from their wood except from pure boredom now, or maybe pure usefullness. In any event, the wood shavings probably understood that these things were a course of life, and it didn't have to be fair, or expected, or planned, or even holy, in order for it to be a part of life. Winston took up the shavings from the ground lest anyone find them and suspect that he was living nearby. He was chewing some tamarind leaves slowly. "Tastes just like de tamarinds" he always told himself, and even as a little boy, it always calmed him down whenever he remembered that tamarind leaves calmed him down, because sometimes he didn't remember. He sat in the shade, his stomach not grumbling, and just stared at the countryside. Most would not believe this but he was not overly concerned with his legacy. He was so pre-occupied with survivng for no other reason than to survive that he seldom really thought about the impact of his survival on people who didn't have to. He once read an article when he was in Trinidad about the situation of the ghettoes around and the near Port-Of-Spain. The reporter asked a question, "How do you think your condition here in this squalour reflects on Trinidad and Tobago on a whole?" and then the reporter reported that the ghetto citizen had nothing to report on the question initially. He wrote that the man just stared at him as if he had never thought of anything related to this. The citizen then said " Ah cahn really say what other people should tink, ah only know what I tink. Maybe it reflect bad bad bad, but maybe nobody else really tek this ghetto into dey mind. In fact ah doan tink they do tink about the ghetto enough to feel ashamed or anyting about it." He heard shouting, but did not startle himself because he immediately recognised it as children's shouts. He slowly looked out and down the road from behind the trees and stared. He counted the money and objects in his pockets as he stared. Bajan women legs either small or big. They either skinny or meaty. no inbetween. They hips move like if only the hips dancing. Mrs. Fenty hand is getting better. Moving it better. One two three four five six seven eight nine ten eleven twelve I feel her husband broke it thirteen fourteen fifteen she looks like the type that would get beaten sixteen seventeen eighteen nineteen twenty and that's where ya is usually grab a woman when ya hold she rough twenty one twenty two twenty three twenty four - twenty four dunks in de right pocket. There's the little boy. The neighbour is carrying him home along with her son one two three four five his face is round just like his mothers six seven eight nine what is her name? ten Maureen? eleven Mary twelve wait Mary? thirteen Mary-Ann? fourteen fifteen Maybe Mary-Ann is she name. That is the closest I could get. I still feel I wrong, but less wrong than before sixteen seventeen. Seventeen bills I got, de same as yesterday so I know is de same amount. I is think about that girl too much one two three I getting feelings for she but I need to still concentrate on tings four five six seven eight she is treat people so good tho nine she so sweet to de other people ten when she laugh I is could hear it eleven and it is a laugh that so sweet twelve I want to mek she laugh like that bad bad bad thirteen rassole I love she? fourteen love who? I only love myself and mummy fifteen I have to talk to she, introduce myself to she, mek she laugh for me eleven, shite I think I lost count. Miriam tugged on the left side of the bed to make sure both sides of the sheet tails draped evenly off the bed. She looked outside the window at the sand, at the waves. She thought about drowning and then moved away from the window. She walked down the corridor, light thumps on the carpet when she walked. She sat down in the break room where the lockers were and unfolded the foil over her lunch. The smell of the beef chunks rose up and made her scramble for her fork. She speared one and shoved it in her mouth, biting down forcefully. She pushed the other chunks to the side to keep for later and scooped up the rice with her thumb on top of the place where the fork bent downwards. She enjoyed the meal but didn't smile about it. Smiling usually comes from enjoying the thing itself only for the entertainment in it. Food that you ate when you were hungry served the purpose of keeping you alive more, so there was little entertainment to enjoy about hunger-eating as opposed to say, eating ice cream. Miriam thought about when she was a child hiding from her father. Balled up inside a suitcase, she watched through the open zipper teeth as her father looked under the bed, sweetly growling her name, with his penis dripping. Yolanda came into the break room. Miriam looked up at her. Yolanda smiled back. "Doan be so sad Miriam. Jesus helps us all." "yeah...you right." she said, then took the beef into the fork and carefully bit the meat from the solid bone, using her tongue to rotate the piece, while she thought about dark rooms.  

The sun was on it's stage to rest by the time Winston got underway to see the dog again. He thought about the future for the first time in a long time. He usually only thought about the future in terms of where things should be, where things are expected to be tomorrow: the sun comes up over there in the future, the school children sound this way in the future, the crickets will go like this in the future, the wind is expected to blow like this, and then like that, and then it would relent. But he never usually thought about that other future - the future that you can change. He wasn't one to think about five years into the future, because in his mind that was absurd. Other than the days, or maybe hours before a jail break he didn't think about his involvement in the future. Even in Trinidad during the calm nights, rain outside and the woman warm against him cooing herself to him saying, "Tony you is mek me feel safe, ya is a strong man ya hear me?", he never thought long about marriage, or where the little children would be in ten years or anything large like that. He just went on in his mind about what the rain was expected to sound when it slowed down to a drizzle, where the only big sounds would be the fat-as-cunt rain drops that fall from leaves, or dribble down the galvanize roof notching into the ground. He would think about that, then about the next day, and only after tomorrow came would he start to think seriously about the day after that, and what the accoutrements of then should look like. End of Part one.

[queermediastudies]

Blue, the Warmest Color? Or the Most Profitable Color?

Blue Is the Warmest Color is a 2013 French movie directed by Abdellatif Kechiche, which won a lot of rewards including the Palme d'Or and the FIPRESCI Prize. This is a three-hour film about the romance story of a 15-year-old high school girl, Adèle (starring Adèle Exarchopoulos) and a female artist Emma (starring Léa Seydoux). The entire story depicts carefully about Adèle’s growth from adolescence to middle age, accompanied by confusion and struggle for her sexual identity. 

At the beginning of this story, Adèle was dating a boy, Thomas. Once they were dating, Adèle passed by a blue-haired girl when crossing the road. After this encounter, Adèle woke up in a dream about making love with this girl. She was confused and embarrassed by this fantasy. When her best friend Valentin, an openly gay man found her unhappy, he took her to a gay bar for fun. But later, Adèle came out and entered a lesbian bar by chance, where she met (again) and started getting to know the blue-haired girl, Emma. Adèle and Emma became friends and hung out with each other frequently. And their romance relationship confirmed by a shared kiss when picnic. A few years later, Adèle realized her dream to become a primary school teacher; Emma was preparing her art exhibition, and their relationship was not passionate like it used to be. Adèle had a sexual relationship with her male colleague Antoine because of Emma’s indifference. After this was known by Emma, ​​she drove Adèle out of the home immediately and refused her apology. Although Adèle expressed her love for Emma again a few years later, could not recover the relationship. And Emma had formed a new family with her first love, Lise. 

At the end of the film, when Adèle attended Emma’s art exhibition and saw many portraits of her own, she chose to leave quickly, which also marked the complete end of this relationship. In general, this film records the whole story of Adèle and Emma in a very delicate way, trying to present the audience with true lesbian life detail. And the goal of making the audience get involved in the real-life of the LGBTQIA community can contribute to the sympathy and understanding of them to a certain extent, which is conducive to the diversity of the media. But I critic that this film is still unable to break away from the use of lesbian love as the strategy “for creating ‘edgy’ programming and attracting a wide range of viewers” (Kohnen, 2015). And many descriptions in this film deepen the audience’s misunderstanding of the lesbian group.

Firstly, this film does a great job of recording Adèle’s life detail. For example, she always has a messy hair, she will open her mouth when sleeping, and she loves biting the bottom of the pen when she reads. When she gets lost or drunk, the film’s scene will shake and be a blur, just as seen from Adèle’s perspective. When she in the literature class, the shots keep switching to the teacher’s lecture and the students’ distraction because of the boring content. As a viewer, I can also feel that this content was very boring. The film recorded all these tiny details by using this first-person perspective technique to make Adèle just like a friend in our own life, or actually, she is ourselves. I believe to depict a character on a very personal level is a great strategy to promote the audience’s understanding. And this method also mentioned in the Goltz’s article for finding an effective term to refers to gay or lesbian in Kenyan language context, that one man focus on “there was more to him than his sexuality and that he was ‘beyond being homosexual or being a gay man’ ” and “ ‘to come out as me and not to highlight his sexuality, preferring to ‘talk about me, about my life, not about my queer life” (Goltz et al, 2016).

The tricky thing is that even though this film wants to show the real-life of lesbian, it almost becomes the most controversial lesbian movie because of the ten-minute (or even longer) lesbian sex scene. In fact, I was super embarrassed when I watch this scene because I invited all my roommates to watch this film together as a celebration of the weekend. I am not an extremely conservative person, I mean, the sex scene in this film is simply porn-level, so that we had to turn down the volume and made some jokes to cover up our embarrassment. Firstly, there was no background music in this scene, only big gasps instead and the sound of skin rubbing. Secondly, the scene boldly shows female whole body, without cover. In addition, the two actresses are very good in shape, without flaw or even pubic hair. This is the most confusing place for me. On the one hand, the director wants to present the most authentic lesbian life, which even refuses the background music at the sex scene; on the other hand, it idealizes the female body just as the male gaze, the flawless body, and the perfect shape.

Interestingly, the original author of this story, Julie Maroh expressed the same shock as me. She rated the most lacking in this film is lesbian, and aired her suspicion that there were no lesbians present onset (Romney, 2013). And “a brutal and surgical display, exuberant and cold, of so-called lesbian sex, which turned into porn” (Sciolino, 2013). Maroh replied in the interview, “everyone was giggling. Heterosexuals laugh at because they don’t understand it and find the scene ridiculous. The gay and queer people laughed because it’s not convincing, and find it ridiculous; and among the only people (who) we didn’t hear giggling were guys too busy feasting their eyes on an incarnation of their fantasies on screen” (Sciolino, 2013). When I learned that the director and both two actresses are straight, this makes more sense.

Director Kechiche labels himself as an unconditional devotee of realism. “I don’t want it to look like life,” he says of his cinema. “I want it to actually be life. Real moments of life, that's what I’m after” (Romney, 2013). But at the same time, he also admitted that his purpose is to idealize the female body (Sciolino, 2013). He explained, “Like paintings, or sculptures” (Romney, 2013). Ms. Seydoux counters the Kechiche’s use of the so-called real lesbian sex scene as an eyebrow-raising directly. When the reporter used “several unsimulated sex scenes” to ask Ms. Seydoux, she interrupted immediately, “Be careful, they are simulated. We were wearing prostheses” (Sciolino, 2013). Ms. Exarchopoulos used the word manipulation to describe the director's guidance for them. For both actresses, the filming process was horrible and indicated that they would no longer work with Kechiche (Stern, 2013).

(Léa Seydoux, Adèle Exarchopoulos, and Abdellatif Kechiche won the Palme d'Or.) 

It can be said that this film is successful in regards to cultural diversity as brand management. This movie has received a high honor, people should know it is the first film to have the Palme d'Or awarded to both the director and the (two) lead actresses (RFI, 2013). Not only that, but the film also performed not bad at the box office. It can be said that this is a work that has gained a good reputation and attracted the audience through brand management of cultural diversity. But as Kohnen mentioned, “the strategic use of LGBTQ content to signify edginess has not disappeared” (2015). Lesbian movies, especially those including so-called real lesbian sex scenes, are not only targeting the group that supports LGBTQIA and cultural diversity but also a straight (especially male) group who wants to satisfy their own sexual fantasies. Although shocked, it is important to know that Lesbian has been the most popular porn search term for porn sites (Lufkin, 2016).

So I have been thinking about whether lesbian movies are the most cost-effective thing. Due to the brand management of cultural diversity, LGBTQIA films can gain a good social reputation, because more or less they are showing/facilitating the spread of cultural diversity. On the other hand, this type of film caters to the Queer Market, as we mentioned the homonormativity, “depoliticized gay culture anchored in domesticity and consumption” (Duggan, 2002). In addition, a large number of heterosexual groups who want to satisfy their sexual fantasies/curiousness are attracted to the cinema.

The toughest point is that, as mentioned above, the director's purpose is to idealize the female body. And the two actresses clarified their heterosexual identity immediately after the processing of the film. Everyone has made a profit from this lesbian-themed film, but everyone is trying to getting rid of any suspicious of homosexuality identity after making a profit.

As an Asian (I used to believe myself as) straight woman, I have to admit that this film started to make me doubt my own sexual orientation. When I was watching this film, I would involuntarily introduce myself to Adèle’s role, and I found Emma to be a very charming woman. In the film, Emma's hair is blue in the first half and light brown in the second half of the film. The blue hair period is the sweetest time for her and Adèle. I think that Emma was really attractive at that time. And the second half with the light brown hair is the period that her relationship with Adèle is about to burst. I think this is why the film's name is Blue Is The Warmest Color. In fact, in the original comics, all the scenes are black and white, except that Emma's hair is blue, and the intuitive contrast that comic can present can more express this theme.

I have always lived in a heterosexual culture community. The heteronormative in Asian culture is more ingrained than Western culture, so I never thought about my sexual orientation. It’s like I also cannot figure out the sexual orientation of Adèle. She did not show any love for women other than Emma, and she had an affair with a man, not a woman. By watching this film, I am rethinking whether it is a wise choice to define sexual orientation based on gender. I love a person because of the gender of that person, or because that person is that person.

In general, I would think this film is a good movie, especially from the contribution that made me rethink my own identity. But when I know more about the story behind this film, the harder it is for me to evaluate it from the work itself. Everything became complicated when lesbian-themed movies/televisions connect with cultural diversity brand management, homonormativity, Queer Market, and even male sexual fantasy.

Reference:

Duggan, L. (2002). Equality, Inc. The Twilight of Equality? (PP. 43-66). Beacon Press, Boston.

Goltz, D. B., Zingsheim, J., Mastin, T., & Murphy, A. G. (2016). Discursive negotiations of Kenyan LGBTI identities: Cautions in cultural humility. Journal of International and Intercultural Communication, 9(2).

Kohnen, M. (2015). Cultural Diversity as Brand Management in Cable Television. Media Industries Journal, 2(2).

Lufkin, B. (2016). The Most Popular Porn Searches in Every State. Gizmodo.

RFI. (2013). Blue is the warmest color team win Palme d'Or at Cannes 2013. archive.org. https://web.archive.org/web/20130608102433/http://www.english.rfi.fr/culture/20130526-wins-palme-dor-cannes-2013

Romney, J. (2013). Abdellatif Kechiche interview: 'Do I need to be a woman to talk about love between women?'. the Guardian.

Sciolino, E. (2013). Darling of Cannes Now at Center of Storm. Nytimes.com.

Stern, M. (2013). The Stars of ‘Blue is the Warmest Color’ On the Riveting Lesbian Love Story. The Daily Beast.

[notcaycepollard]

did you really have a pet lamb that you rode to school? (that sounds like a very nz thing to do. or is that your nz version of the our australian "i rode in a kangaroo's pouch to school"?)

DOESN’T IT. APOCRYPHAL NEW ZEALAND STORIES. but no though it happened. 

so I grew up in a rural situation, which given that I wanted very much to be Mary Lennox was, as you can imagine, problematic

me, age approximately ten: I will wear only FLORAL PINAFORE FROCKS

me, making a face at the cowshit in the paddocks: and gumboots I guess

anyway tho a n y w a y, because it was so rural, every year around lambing season the farmers would ring up the school like “hey yeah we’ve got a lamb if one of the kids want it” and somehow, SOMEHOW, my small sister and I conned my dad into getting us a pet lamb?

the lamb’s name was popcorn

the point of pet lambs is you’re supposed to, like, hand-rear them, and teach them tricks like being led around on a lead, and coming when you call their name, and looking fat and placid and well-fed. we got this lamb in, like, September? there are a solid three months between getting that lamb and Pet Day, the most sacred day of all rural schools

we clearly got bored of this lamb after approximately one week, because sheep are very dull and we were very small. I had Victorian literature to get on with reading. I was an extremely indoors child.

once they made me run cross-country and I fell over in the paddock and got sheep shit on my face and it was the worst day of my life

so, anyway, the lamb lived free, out the back in the wilds of our half-acre section, but we did one thing real well, and it was feeding that fucking lamb. by December that lamb was goddamn Rubenesque. Could it come when we called? no. Did it walk around calmly on a lead being placid and well-trained? also no. was it the fattest fucking lamb in all the lands? absolutely. 

Pet Day rolls around, right, and I put on my most floral pinafore, the one with a full skirt and box pleats at the waist. tie my hair in twin plaits. get on my goddamn gumboots. it is time to take this lamb to the show.

wait, says my dad. you gotta make it sparkle. here’s some baby shampoo, let’s go wash it and give it a blow-dry.

it may interest you all to know that my dad was a very femme gay single father raising two daughters in rural early-90s NZ

just to, like, add more character detail here to this scene.

we washed the lamb and lo, it did indeed sparkle. it was so fluffy, pals. it was extremely fat, and extremely fluffy.

time to take the lamb to school.

now most girls had, like, a nice new lead bought fresh from farmlands for their lambs. we did not have a nice new lead bought fresh from farmlands. my dreams of gamboling lambs garlanded with ribbons were not to be. what we did have, was: some rope.

so we tied the rope around the lamb’s neck, and I was all: come on, popcorn, time for your debut.

did that fucking lamb want to go anywhere I was taking him?

he did fucking not

he wanted to stay in the wilds of our back section and keep eating grass

which is what most sheep will prefer to do, over “being paraded around a primary school rugby pitch for disinterested parents and keen amateur judges”

but, like, this was now a battle of wills. fuck that fucking lamb. I FED that fucking lamb. I washed his wool with baby shampoo. time for the big guns, I said to myself, and went back inside to change out of my floral pinafore and into my purple denim dungarees.

COME ON, POPCORN, I said, through gritted teeth, and slung one leg over that lamb’s back, straddled his portly lil barrel figure, and dug my knees into his ribs. 

this was not a lamb by now

this was a full-ass grown sheep

I honestly could not tell you who weighed more at this stage but it was probably the goddamn sheep, given he’d had all the milk powder and fresh grass his little sheep heart could desire for the last three months

so we got to school, albeit with lanolin stains up the insides of my jeans, and I tied him up in the school paddock and went off to do my Novelty Vegetable Arrangement and Sand Saucer and see whether I’d won the handwriting competition

I did win the handwriting competition

got fucken RSI now don’t I but my handwriting is still so pretty nobody will believe it’s from someone left-handed

then it was judging time. judging time for the lambs, technically, but also: judgment time for me, who had never taught my lamb any stupid tricks

“time to call your lambs!” said the teacher. the other girls called their lambs. the lambs came.

I looked at Popcorn. Popcorn looked at me. I looked at the teacher. the teacher looked at me.

“come on, popcorn!” I said, falsely cheery.

popcorn did not come on

popcorn looked at me, and looked at the sky, and ate some grass, and probably did a shit

“time to lead your lambs!” said the teacher. the other girls took their lambs by the lead, and led them around in a neat little circle. the lambs were led, extremely placid and clearly very well-trained.

I took that piece of rope and I put it over my shoulder and I hauled, while entirely pretending I was making no effort at all, the same way you carry your hand luggage while trying to not tip anyone off that you’ve got about fifteen bricks in there because you love to overpack

I did not win any prizes for obedience

I did win First Prize for ‘condition’, aka: you have successfully reared an extremely fat and fluffy beautiful idiot sheep

there were no more pet lambs after that, which is probably for the best for all concerned, and popcorn ran free with the neighbour’s flock until they all got sent to the freezing works, so

rip popcorn, you were a dickhead

[themoonkissedexplorer-blog]

Finding My Rhythm!

My nursery school experience is one I do not often talk about,a kid should not be able to recall how their teacher had a psychotic break in the middle of a lesson ,went into coloring a bunch of books in a frenzy while screaming and had to be carried out , I did not feel so terrible though,this was the same teacher who told me not to sing the national anthem during morning assembly as she was lost on where to place my voice, I was too off key.

This blew my one chance of making friends as an awkward kid.I wasn't accepted in the little boys and girls choir club ,and that was pretty much the only thing we had going on in that school.The whole episode about a teacher losing her wits infront of the class did not sit in too well with the parents ,so before I had made any meaningful connections,I was off with my first bag ,crayons and evenly spaced exercise books to another school.This was not just a nursery school,it consisted of a lower and upper primary too.

My adventures were just beginning,I thought it was going to be a lovely rosy experience but this school had the toughest bunch in it,I immediately stood out as I was able to read ,albeit with some difficulties a few english sentences here and there,the cheerfulness I displayed when raising my hands in class did not work on my favor,I learnt that there was a way things were running in this school and I was not being a good fit.My new school mates praised illiteracy,this were young kids who thought life was out of school and were just passing time .

Reading or even speaking a bit of english alienated me further from making any meaningful connection or friendship,I had to acquire a tough exterior somehow while still maintaining my grades to avoid any trouble with the old lady at home.I labored so hard to make new friends but it seems the kids knew right away I was a bit apprehensive.My resolve towards bullies was pretty simple as I had one objective in mind,turn foe into friend,and the process involved giving in to their demands with a smile.

The first encounter was around lunch hour with Jamila ,a girl who should not have been in class one.Jamila towered even over our mathematics teacher ,one could always spot the tremor in Mrs Wanja's voice as she called out Jamila's name while going through the register.Jamila asked for my shoes and socks without flinching ,I knew they did not fit her so that confirmed the suspicion that she could have been having a family outside school or was possibly running a business for second hand wares,I gave lady Jamila the brightest smile ever and proceeded to give her my new shoes and old pair of socks.

Back home my mother was infuriated and also worried about my slothful like nature but this gradually went to rage when I came home without school uniform the second week and the last straw was when I walked back home with a polythene bag holding my books having given out my first bag as well.My mother had had enough ,I could tell from my burning ears after she'd pulled them for so long trying to understand what submissive demon had possessed me into giving out everything she was buying for me,she was also worried I was a bit slow.

I had to toughen up ,luckily my cousin Ibrahim and his friend Baraka joined around the same time.With the two I found company and got a bit of respect around school,but it was not enough ,this was all revealed when Jamila towered over us one day after class ,took all our erasers and books and left.A front of three ,and we still got bullied,it was time to think of concise and effective ways to get some respect around school,but outside Jamila's turf of course.I saw in Baraka and Ibrahim friends but I was an outsider in their friendship bond.When they talked me into after school street fighting,I did not ask why I as a female was the fighter and they,two males were managing me.

So we got to watching indian movies in video cafes to learn a few moves and in a day I was ready to take on the world.The mechanism was simple ,Ibrahim and Baraka would get into trouble with someone,to weasel out of it they would throw in a challenge,a fight, and the prize was just respect .They'd meet me outside my class after school,we would then proceed to the back of the school and I would immediately be thrown in to the ring.The first few fights were peanuts ,I was in the best form,thin and fast and throwing in a few shah ru khan moves here and there I would have my opponent begging for mercy in no time at all.

I became quite popular as a result and in class three I was completely unafraid to raise my hands  in class or speak english , but that was till the day we challenged Atman who had sat on Ibrahim's desk and refused to budge.With growing tenacity ,I walked into Ibrahim's class just before the lesson started and told Atman about the pain that was about to rain down on him.I should have observed Atman clearly I understand that now,Atman like jamila seemed the type of guy or kid as I was unable to discern later who would not be going home to do homework but in a certain degree to solve real life problems like rent,or issues like was the gardening hoe returned by the neighbor,or trouble himself about financial issues and the rising price of a loaf of bread.

 Atman was all muscle,muscles were bulging throughout every visible part of him.It did not last long ,one minute I was holding my fist defiantly the next I was face down in the middle of the desk with my legs up in the air,my promoters had taken off and were nowhere to be seen.I went home looking like I had been fished out of a muddy pond,mom took one look at me and took me off to a private school-yet again,another unsuccessful attempt at making friends.

The private school covered what remained of my upper primary years,I was fast tracking into the puberty phase .I had some vague notions of what a private school would be like ,ideas we had passed around in my former schools while walking home when the big new school buses for private schools with english names printed across carrying all this bright faces would zoom past us.We thought to ourselves that the kids must have been born in big hospitals with fancy doctors and the first stream of words they heard were probably bunch of english words.

Fancy we thought,this were a different type of people who only conversed in this words we see in text books,fascinating!I was thrust into yet another environment that I did not fit in,I remember my new class gasping as I read an english statement with the knowledge of the school I was from,a mish mash of tenses. I rose through the ranks slowly in this new establishment by doing a lot of homework for people but it all paid off as I was chosen to be a head girl,attempt at making friends yet again ineffective because power tends to push people away.

Mother says she was worried about me for quite sometime,I was always colliding with bicycles while going to the shop,losing money,forgetting change,zoning off and creepily staring at people ,and my mouth would go off and say the wrong things in a family reunion like aunty Letifa's late night meetings with the village chief which would come as quite a surprise to her husband.So I treaded on looking for people to fit in with, I did not find that escape in high school as the zoning off and staring into space became a topic and people would allude to me when conversing about characters that were not quite okay in the head,the straw that broke the camels back was when I attempted a dance during the entertainment hour in my third year.

I let the beat completely take over me and started gyrating and convulsing to it,I moved like a white girl they said while laughing so I let dancing become a private affair while showering.I was made to feel awkward all through and it happens to date,but I always celebrated the fact that I was different and I was always convinced that there had to be a breed of people I would fit right in with.I  have felt like a box was being designed for me at each stage and I was expected to fit in.Growing up,I had to explain myself to my peers why I enjoyed reading,but at some point ,books became my only solace,and my adventures were restricted to my wandering imagination.

I went camping recently and a picture was taken of me on top of a tree,I spent the next two days on social media being asked by people what brain malady had overtaken me and made me climb a tree.I was shocked,that even as a twenty six year old I was put on the stand to validate my actions as if it was any ones business.I spent so much time growing up trying to fit in to the idea of normal ,what everybody expected of me ,but at each step I was amiss because I was either not tough enough,my hips were too narrow or my ideas too wild.But I stopped trying to fit in a long time ago,I learnt that life is that big dance floor and as I let go and let the rhythm of life overtake me,no matter how absurd my convulsions and gyrations may seem to others ,when I open my eyes I will find some people close to me.

[douxreviews]

Doctor Who - ‘An Unearthly Child’ Review

(aka 100,000 B.C., The Tribe of Gum, The Stone Age, or The Paleolithic Age)

Two teachers follow a mysterious student into a junkyard, spawning multiple generations of sci-fi geeks.

Season 1, Serial A Starring William Hartnell as the Doctor With William Russell (Ian), Jacqueline Hill (Barbara) and Carole Ann Ford (Susan) Written by Anthony Coburn and C.E. Webber Directed by Waris Hussein Produced by Verity Lambert

Episodes and Broadcast Dates:

An Unearthly Child – 23 Nov 1963

The Cave Of Skulls – 30 Nov 1963

The Forest Of Fear – 7 Dec 1963

The Firemakers – 14 Dec 1963

Plot Summary

At the end of another day at London’s Coal Hill School, history teacher Barbara Wright and science teacher Ian Chesterton compare notes about an enigmatic student, Susan Foreman. Her knowledge of history and science surpasses their own, but is also awkwardly unaware of the ins-and-outs of contemporary life. They trail her to her given address, 76 Totters Lane, only to find a scrapyard wherein sits a rather incongruous Police Box emitting an eerie hum. They encounter Susan’s grandfather, who brusquely shoos them away. But when Susan’s voice is heard from inside, they push past him into the Police Box and find themselves in a vast futuristic chamber, much larger on the inside. The old man is furious at their intrusion. Susan explains that they are exiles from another world and another time, and the Police Box is their ship, the TARDIS. The old man is paranoid and irascible, certain that the teachers will expose their secret, and despite Susan’s panicked pleas he activates the TARDIS, leaving 60’s London behind.

The quartet find themselves in the Stone Age, and are soon abducted by a tribe of primitive humans. There is a power struggle for control of the tribe between Za, son of the late elder, and the outsider Kal, focused on the secret of making fire. When the old man announces he can make fire, they become pawns in the struggle. Along the way, Ian and Barbara introduce the tribe to concepts of mercy and helpfulness, that in ‘their tribe,’ the firemaker is the least powerful person, and that one tyrant is not as strong as a unified collective. This lesson is lost on the old man; when Za pursues them through the forest and is attacked by a wild beast, he is perfectly willing to kill the wounded man to help them escape. Ultimately they make fire for the tribe, Za kills Kal, and the travelers escape to the TARDIS.

It is made clear that Susan’s grandfather, who is known as the Doctor, cannot control the navigational systems of the TARDIS, and may never be able to return Ian and Barbara home. They arrive at their next destination and go out to explore. They do not notice the TARDIS’s radiation meter inching into the danger zone...

Analysis and Notes

-- Episode One’s viewership was quite low – possibly due to news coverage of President Kennedy’s assassination the day before, possibly due to a number of regional power cuts – so the BBC granted a virtually unprecedented re-broadcast immediately prior to Episode Two. More people saw the repeat broadcast than the initial one.

-- Episode One was a re-write and re-shoot of the un-broadcast pilot episode, which was beset by technical difficulties and featured an even harsher characterization of the Doctor.

--Most of the principle guest cast would appear in future serials: Derek Newark (Za) in Inferno, Althea Charleton (Hur) in The Time Meddler, Jeremy Young (Kal) in Mission to the Unknown, and Eileen Way (Old Woman) in The Creature from the Pit.

Okay, all you Smith-heads, Tennant worshipers and Capaldians (all three of you, myself included), listen up. The sci-fi institution you know and love originated over a half century ago, right here. Before the action figures, the magazines, the thousands of fansites, the DVD’s, the convention circuit, the minisodes, and all the flood of BBC Enterprises swag, there was An Unearthly Child. And in some cases, it looks and feels very much like the show you’re watching now; there’s a big blue (well, dark gray) box called the TARDIS that flies through time and space, and it makes the same wheezy noise as it takes off and lands. There’s a mysterious central character called the Doctor and a handful of travelling companions. But there are also enormous differences.

In the current series, the TARDIS can land anywhere it wants to. But initially the central concept of the Classic Era was the TARDIS’s unreliability. This meant that when the Doctor takes off with Barbara and Ian on board at the end of episode one, there’s virtually no chance of getting them home again. In future serials where the Doctor and crew need to get to a specific place, they have to hitch a ride.

The early days of the show were a sharp contrast from the ethos displayed in the upcoming Series Nine catchphrase, “I’m the Doctor. I save people.” In most cases, they landed in a certain place or time, got separated from the TARDIS, and spent the rest of the series more focused on Not Dying and/or Not Changing History than they were about liberating oppressed humanoids or saving Earth from alien invasion. And especially in this opening serial, the only person the Doctor feels obliged to save is himself.

Having never been companions by choice, Barbara and Ian’s primary goal throughout their time on the TARDIS was to get home again. Even when they weren’t so much traveling companions as kidnapping victims, this meant getting back to the TARDIS whenever they were separated from it, and keeping the Doctor – their kidnapper – safe at all times since he was the only person who could operate it. Ultimately they do get home again, but end up using a slightly more reliable Dalek time capsule to do it, and we never quite learn how they explain their two-year absence to the Coal Hill headmaster.

And we have to assume they left no significant others behind. Because if there’s one consistent theme amongst the TARDIS’s early classic era companions, it’s that they have no backstories or families or home life that’s disrupted when they meet the Doctor. They’re orphans, bachelors, and free agents. No room for outside domestic drama on the TARDIS.

As for the actual story:

I can’t help but fall in step with the Received Wisdom that the first episode is classic and the remaining three are comparatively mediocre. That said, the Stone Age episodes are very noteworthy. The initial concept for the series was that science fiction and historical stories would balance each other – thus the need for a history teacher and a science teacher. The historical stories would follow the format established here; the TARDIS crew gets separated from the ship, and after a few cycles of capture-escape-recapture where they encounter historical figures or crucial historical events, manage to escape to the TARDIS without getting killed or dramatically changing history.

And the Doctor couldn’t be further removed from how we come to know him now. Selfish, paranoid, and bad-tempered, over-protective of Susan, a kidnapper, a would-be murderer, a refugee rather than a traveler, he’s a quintessential anti-hero, and if it weren’t for the fact that he was the only one who could pilot the TARDIS, odds are they’d boot him out. It’s his dealing with Barbara and Ian that over time gives him a moral compass, either making him a heroic figure, or re-making him one after whatever as-yet-undetermined incident caused him to flee.

The Stone Age tribe is surprisingly multi-dimensional. They’re not ignorant, just uneducated. The oldest among them are fearful of new technology (i.e. fire). The savage conditions in which they live, where death lurks around every corner, render concepts like tenderness, kindness, and democracy as luxuries. You may just have to grit your teeth as the social liberalism is delivered with a side of colonialism; the well-dressed white bourgeois travelers drop into the jungle like the Galactic Peace Corps to teach the dirty savages how to live better. Also a dash of sexism as the girl – named, appropriately enough, Hur – exists as the prize to be awarded to either Kal or Za.

It’s evident that the BBC wanted this program to succeed. Even though they put the show in the young and relatively inexperienced hands of producer Verity Lambert and director Waris Hussein, possibly so they could be scapegoats for the program’s potential failure, they allowed the pilot episode to be re-tooled and re-filmed, and they re-broadcast Episode One immediately prior to Episode Two.

As this is the very first serial, it’s worthy to note which concepts have stayed etched in granite over a half-century and which have been more malleable (if not rejected entirely):

The Doctor’s Name – Susan only refers to him as “Grandfather.” Ian recalls, before they meet, that Susan’s grandfather is “a Doctor or something.” Since the junkyard’s front door reads I.M. FOREMAN, SCRAP MERCHANT, and Susan’s given surname is Foreman, he calls him “Dr. Foreman” in episode two, to which the old man replies, “Huh? Doctor Who? What is he talking about?” strongly suggesting that “Foreman” was never their name. Does one require a PhD to run a junkyard? Or are they squatters, with Susan adopting the name on the door? If so, whatever happened to I.M. Foreman? He never explicitly instructs Ian or Barbara as to how he wishes to be addressed, and basically adopts the title “The Doctor” by default.

The TARDIS – Susan claims to have made up the name of the TARDIS as an acronym for Time And Relative Dimension(s) In Space, as if this TARDIS was the only one in existence. For most of the first season, they refer to the TARDIS simply as “The Ship.” In episode two, the Doctor notes that the external appearance of the ship is supposed to blend in with its surroundings (though the term “Chameleon Circuit” would not be coined for over a decade), suggesting this is the first time it has failed; with rare exceptions, it would never function again. And the most pivotal concept about the TARDIS is that the Doctor cannot navigate it properly. Either he never learned, or he forgot, or the mechanism is faulty; it’s never explicitly stated, but once they leave London 1963, there’s no guarantee they’ll ever get back.

Their Origins – No Time Lords, no Gallifrey, these terms don’t appear for years to come. The details they give in the first episode are sketchy. They’re exiles, wanderers in time, cut off from their own planet. No mention is ever given of Susan’s parents (i.e. the Doctor’s offspring, presumably). They’re hiding on Earth, and have lived incognito for several months; from what and why are never stated.

Been Here Before – Barbara lends Susan a very thick book about the French Revolution, which Susan reads in a split second and remarks, “That’s not how it happened!” Though no mention of a prior visit was ever made later in Season One when they land in Robespierre’s post-revolutionary Paris. The gift of superhuman speed-reading appears again in the New Series’ reboot, Rose.

In Summation

You could be forgiven if you only watch the first episode, but what an episode it is! It’s as noteworthy and epoch-shifting a debut as the Beatles’ Please Please Me eight months earlier (or their follow-up, With The Beatles, issued the day before). Yet despite creator Sydney Newman’s directive of “No Bug Eyed Monsters!”, the program’s watershed moment was yet to come, and British popular culture would never be the same.

Rating: 3 out of 4 epoch-shifting moments in British pop culture.

John Geoffrion balances a career in hospital fundraising with semi-pro theatre gigs, and watches way too much Doctor Who and Britcoms in between. He'll create an author page after he puts up a few more reviews.

[hobbitsetal]

celebratory assassin promposal high school au

for @thisbibliomaniac, because honestly it’s such a nutty idea i couldn’t resist

Cahan shifted nervously and tugged at his tie. Without looking away from the mirror, Rhys said, “Do not mess up my perfect knot.”

Cahan frowned at his brother’s reflection. “It’s a big night. I have a right to be nervous.” 

Rhys clicked his tongue disparagingly, but he didn’t argue, too focused on securing his stiletto knives in his tightly-braided hair without creating suspicious lumps. If their teachers spotted the hilts, he’d get poor marks for obviousness. Junior-year Assassins ought to be above such mistakes.

Poor marks, of course, usually translated into some near-death experience specially tailored to drum the original lesson home. Cahan had very nearly gotten his throat slashed after he’d been startled into an exclamation.

Rather than help his brother, though, he stood in the doorway of the foyer, watching the crowd. Priya had said she’d wear red. Half the boys wore red ties, and all of them glanced around as hopefully as he himself did. Cahan sighed. He might as well go help Rhys.

He sensed a presence in the instant before he would have turned. Senior year of assassin school--he didn’t make freshmen mistakes like turning around. Instead, he dropped to one knee and swung an arm backward at his assailant. The stranger dropped on top of his back, trying to pin him, and Cahan pitched sideways into the wall. It was a calculated move; the stranger slammed into the brick with a gasp of pain. Cahan rocked back, breaking the other man’s grip. He slid a knife from its sheath on his forearm, catching it deftly in his hand. With the open palm of the other hand, he smacked the man’s forehead hard, cracking his head back against the wall.

Coldly, he said, “Hello, Lotaan.”

Lotaan Tiras moved to sit upright and froze as Cahan touched the edge of his knife to Lotaan’s throat. Equally icily, he said, “Windlow. Thought you’d dropped out by now.”

“When I have the chance to defeat you at the skill games?” Cahan said. “Please, Lotaan, don’t delude yourself.”

He rose gracefully and offered a hand. Lotaan ignored it, scrambling to his feet unaided. He brushed past Cahan and stalked into the ballroom, apparently without even glancing around. But when an enterprising sophomore tried to sneak a tag onto his back (five points’ reward from the teachers), Lotaan paused long enough to crack the unlucky girl’s fingers before sauntering over to the punch bowls.

Cahan shook his head and turned back toward Rhys. “Thanks so much for watching my back.”

Rhys smoothed his strawberry blond hair down, still frowning intently at his own reflection. “Can you see any steel anywhere?”

“You’re standing in front of a mirror! Did you not see that rat Tiras sneaking up on me?!”

“If you’re too distracted to handle him,” Rhys said, “you’re too distracted to survive at all. I’m just making sure you haven’t lost your wits as well as your heart.”

Cahan opened his mouth indignantly, but Rhys didn’t even pause for breath. “Have you seen her yet? I don’t think the donkey is going to wait forever.”

Cahan’s mouth remained open for a long moment.

“And I don’t trust those Baltien men to wait for their cue...Luka will, probably, but Egan’s almost as distractible as you are.”

“The donkey?” Cahan gasped. “We said no donkey!”

“You said no donkey.” Rhys waved a hand airily. “But we agreed that I’d be your wingman, and as your wingman, I promise to help you give Priya the proposal of her dreams.”

Cahan rubbed at his temples with the tips of his fingers. “I seriously doubt her dreams involve a pony striped in primary colors and bedecked with flowers.”

“They will after tonight!”

Rhys flashed him a cheeky grin and darted past into the throng. For a minute, Cahan stood gloomily contemplating his reflection, complete with black tie and red rose. A painted pony covered in flowers...and what on earth did Rhys have Priya’s brothers doing, anyway? What cue?

For a romantic, private proposal, this sounded dreadfully involved.

And then Priya swept through the doors, breathless, radiant with her signature belladonna flowers woven into her black hair, wearing a red dress that stole Cahan’s breath and a smile that had stolen his heart long ago.

“I’m so sorry I’m late! I was making one of my specialty tisanes and I blinked and it was twenty after! Have I missed anything?”

A scuffle with your lousy ex-boyfriend. “No,” Cahan said. “You look divine.”

She took his arm, smiling at him. “Murderously divine?”

Cahan grinned back. “Even better. Unsuspiciously divine.”

Priya chuckled. “So if I offer someone a drink...?”

“They’ll take it and drink half before they second-guess the tingling in their mouth.”

“You romantic.” She kissed his cheek.

~~~~

The skill games took half the evening--endless rounds of assassinations acted out, of drugs that weren’t poisons but could have been, of verbal battles seeking to trap admissions, of silent struggles in the shadows with points deducted for visible murders and for being murdered. Cahan excelled at assassinations and hand-to-hand combat. He even succeeded in “killing” Lotaan Tiras once, a victory nearly as sweet as the real thing would have been.

And Priya, Priya handed out drinks like a temple priestess offering libations, promising everything from antidotes to aphrodisiacs, selling her poisonous brews with limpid brown eyes and a sweet smile. Half the students assumed she was one of the catering staff, and half the students were marked “dead” by the teachers.

Normally, Rhys would have been in his element in the verbal battles, outing spies and trapping confessions. But he was disturbingly absent from the festivities, and his absence worried Cahan. Surely he hadn’t actually gotten a pony...not after their conversation about how ponies pooped everywhere. Surely not.

When midnight struck, the teachers called a half to the skill games and awarded prizes. Priya got an exquisite teapot, a nod to her ability to brew nigh-undetectable poisons. Cahan received silver knives, a nod to the number of silent “murders” he’d managed. He was only mildly irked when Lotaan received a pair of bronze knives.

He was majorly irked when a commotion arose in the middle of a slow dance and he realized Rhys was the cause. Everyone slowed to a halt, including them, and turned curiously to the enormous double doors that led to the foyer, and to the clattering echoing from beyond them. 

His hands tightened on Priya’s waist when he caught sight of Rhys’s head above the crowd. Rhys was nearly as short as Cahan; to be visible over everybody meant...oh no. He was on a pony.

Cahan closed his eyes and let his head drop down onto Priya’s shoulder. She put a hand on the back of his neck and whispered, “What’s going on, Cahan?” 

“My brilliant plans are being hijacked and overridden,” he whispered back.

A damp nose nudged his arm. Cahan turned his head slightly and found himself staring at the pony’s muzzle. “Rhys,” he said, “we said no pony!”

“What did you say about confetti?” Rhys asked. “Because I’m not quite sure we had that conversation.” 

Cahan only had time to gape in horror before Rhys produced a trumpet and blasted out a peal that made everyone around him clamp their hands over their ears. A loud pop sounded overhead and they all flinched. But it was only confetti, a million tiny strips of colored paper fluttering down on the startled assassins.

“What is going on?” Priya gasped.

Cahan gave Rhys a withering look. They would have a prolonged conversation later about what being a wingman actually entailed. But since Rhys had set the stage, it made no sense to quibble now over how things should go down.

He dropped to one knee and reached into his pocket...

...and touched nothing. Not even his lucky derringer. All he could think was Now I look stupid.

He didn’t even have to look at Lotaan’s face to know that it was triumphant. The scuffle in the foyer--it hadn’t been malice or oneupmanship. Somehow, Lotaan had known that Cahan meant to propose to Priya tonight. 

Maybe a real murder would gain him a few extra points. Maybe it would get him expelled. Either way, he’d have the satisfaction of strangling Lotaan Tiras tonight.

He surged to his feet, knives already in hand, eyes locked on his target. Then a white body striped in green, red, blue, and yellow stepped between Cahan and his quarry.

“Ye of little faith,” Rhys said. “What kind of wingman would I be if I didn’t make up for you not paying attention to things? Like getting your pocket picked?”

He dropped a small jewelry box into Cahan’s hands. Cahan could just see Lotaan’s face change from triumph to dawning realization and baffled anger. Later, he told himself. Some victories deserved to be cemented in blood. But not tonight.

Tonight, he turned around to find that the other students had drawn back from Priya, leaving her in a little circle carpeted by confetti. She had her hands pressed to her mouth, eyes shining.

Cahan grinned again and dropped to one knee. “Y’know,” he said, “I was just going to take you for a walk and ask you much more quietly. But then Rhys got involved.”

Priya laughed breathlessly and let her hands drop. “Oh good,” she said. “I’ve always dreamed of being carried off on a pony.” She glanced at Rhys and added, “Though I never quite pictured such a colorful one.”

“Priya Baltien,” Cahan said, “will you marry me?”

She laughed again, sobbed once, and nodded. “Yes,” she whispered. “Yes please.”

His hands were shaking so badly, he almost couldn’t get the ring onto her finger. This was it. This was all he ever wanted from life: the love of a beautiful woman who would help him kill people.

“For the record,” Rhys said loudly, “that confetti could’ve been anthrax. I think I’ve officially won the skill games.”

[prince-boi]

I’ll be With You ‘Til The End

Pairing: Reader x Taehyung

Angst ahead lol.

When we were young:

Our mothers bumped into each other at the grocery store, “Eomma! Who’s that girl!” a small boy asked in while pointing to y/n.

“Yah! Don’t point! It’s rude Taehyung!” nagged the parent. The boy pouted, he only wanted the answer.

Y/n’s parent bent down to his level, “I’m your mother’s friend, this is y/n, they will be staying at your place for a little bit because I need to do some grown-up things. Is that okay with you?” Taehyung looked up to his mother with a questioning face, she chuckled and nodded. Taehyung sneaked a glance at the shy girl that was hiding behind the unfamiliar adult and held out his hand, smiling as he did so,

“Let’s be friends!”

When we were in primary school:

Our parents sent us to the same school, we knew no one but us and some other kids from our neighbourhood. We all ran into our class lines, ready to be welcomed into a neat classroom as the bell rang.

“Good morning students! My name is Mr Jung, I will be your teacher”

The teacher started calling the roll after that was our first lesson: Art.

Paint few here, pencils shreddings were being emptied in the bins, chalks was being scribbled, crayons were being snapped in half.

“Art is my favourite subject” Taehyung stated happily to y/n. Y/n and Taehyung had grown close to each other since the first day they met, they were a troublemaking duo, partners in crime.

“Taehyung! Come sit with us!” Y/n called over. It was lunch-time, Taehyung was sitting on the swing-sets alone, eating his chicken sandwich. Y/n ran over, grabbing his wrist and lunch box, dragging him back to her lunch table with all her other friends. After they all finished eating, they played tiggy with all the other kids until it was home time.

Secondary school, where kids change and grow up, figuring out who they are: “Boys are better than girls!! We’re stronger!”

“Wrong! Strength doesn’t make someone better! It’s OBVIOUS that girls are way better!”

Here we go again, the groups are fighting over the lunch tables, Taehyung could see y/n wasn’t having any fun in this and wanted to get out ASAP. Sneaking over, he held a firm grip on your arm, pulling you outside, sitting you under a tree, starting to eat lunch with you.

“It sucks that you’re taller than me, you’re a girl!”

“Nah, you just haven’t had your growth spurt yet.” you loved teasing Taehyung with your height, it was typical for girls to be taller than most boys at this age, after all, we just hit puberty.

You and Taehyung had kept your distance during your time on the secondary campus, everyone always seems to think that someone was dating even if they were JUST friends.

High-School, we’re mature and fully grown, standards have changed as well:

It wasn’t a surprise that you two got shipped in school, almost the entire year level knew you guys were the bestest of best friends, it was obvious too, you two were the derps of the class.

However, that was when you found out you had a heart disease, a sickness that affects the function of the human heart that could lead to death if not treated. Nobody knew this, only the people in your circle.

The first time you found out, you were crushed, devastated. It caused you to fall into deep depression, but Taehyung was alway there by your side. It took a while to pull you out of your hole of darkness, but he did. Though tears were shredded, you made it out safely, unharmed as well.

You were finally pulled out from diving into darkness, but also fallen back again, but for a different reason… Love.

Which lead to leaving a secret love letter in his locker on Valentine's Day.

University and College, we got separated, but we were only a few blocks away from each other. Could this be fate?:

Laughing filled the dorm room.

“HAHAHAHAHA, STOP IT NOW MY STOMACH HURTS.” one of your colleagues cracked. You just pulled off your prize-winning joke, the best joke you had used since you were young.

Life was good, well, except for the fact that you still had the heart disease and still never told Taehyung how you felt. It was too late now. Since you guys were separated into different study centres, he managed to find a girlfriend. Well, the girlfriend found him really. It hit you hard the moment he told you, but you were happy for him, even though you felt a BIT bitter.

The future - one thing no one can fully predict, nor can they promise success or failure, that could send you to the streets or lead you to your dreams:

You were happy, we had your dream job, you were still young and beautiful, Taehyung had made it through BigHit EntertainmentTM, he was in a group called BTS now. Another thing was that he wasn't dating anymore, the female he went out with turned out to be the brattiest person in the world, she was a backstabber and used him to get what she wanted: to make her crush jealous and date him instead. Leaving Taehyung hanging with haunting memories. You still loved him, you still looked at him with the love you first gave him in an anonymous love letter way~ back in high-school, which you still haven’t told him about… yet.

Halfway through the year, you got an emergency call to go to the hospital.

“Miss (your last name = L/n), I’m afraid your heart can’t take the pressures anymore, you don’t have long left. We estimate you to only live 1 more year, or if we find someone willing to donate their heart, we have no other options.” the doctor said in a sympathetic tone. You broke down, your life was perfect the way it was, a loving best friend, a wonderful job, a beautiful home, what did you do to deserve this?

Later that month, you manage to find to confidence, after getting a grip on yourself and went to Taehyung’s apartment to tell him the news.

3 knocks on the door were all it took for you to suddenly hear someone storming to the door, ripping it open.

“WHY DIDN't YOU TELL ME EARLIER?!” Taehyung screamed, you saw that he had dried tears on his cheeks, flushed cheeks, glassy eyes and red tipped nose. You glanced behind him, seeing a wire bin, filled with squishy tissues, probably from runny snot and tears.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t want to--”

“I AM YOUR FRIEND, no. YOUR BEST FRIEND, I THOUGHT YOU WOULD TELL ME THESE THINGS.” you’ve never seen Taehyung like this before.

You were about to reply when he embraced him in a hug, “I’m sorry for yelling….” you felt your shoulder getting wet, and lead him instead, sitting him down on the sofa.

You both calmed down and consulted, you lightened the mood a little by telling Taehyung his favourite joke. Laughter was heard throughout the night, he invited you to stay at his place for the night.

You only had 3 months left, I promise to give you everything, even if it kills me:

Y/n never felt so alive for so long. Taehyung had shown you places you never thought you’d see, both physically and spiritually. Nothing was on your mind but what was happening at the moment: Taehyung had taught you how to live - to live in the present and not worry about the future nor dwell in the past. You hadn’t seen him in almost 2 months. The first month he had some issues to sort out with his company, before meeting you again. It was only a short visit before he returned home to his mother, staying with her for the month.

You received a letter from the hospital, saying your life expectancy will be confirmed in 3 months. You only had 3 months left….. But you had a lucky chance, you had a healthy heart donor! You were so happy and in bliss. You wanted to call Taehyung and tell him about the notice, but he didn’t pick up. You tried again for the next few days, he still never picked up.

Until the day before you had your transfer:

Taehyung: Don’t worry, you’ll be okay, the surgery will go smoothly. Trust my heart.

I’m sorry, I can’t say good-bye:

You entered the operation room, today was the day you had your heart surgery. You were scared, but you thought of the text Taehyung sent, it calmed you just a little.

When you healed, the first place you went to was Taehyung’s apartment. You kept knocking, but no one answered.

“HelLO!! ANYONE HOME?!” no answer. You found the spared keys to his apartment under the doormat and used it to unlock the door.

You run in the living room, not a sign of life. There were only boxes and the sofa, which had a large white sheet over it.

Slowly, you walked into his room, it was the same as the living room, lifeless, boxes stacked in neat towers, the bed covered in a large white sheet.

You walked around the room, observing everything closely. You passed his desktop, a red note catching your eye.

You picked it up carefully and read it, you realised that it was the same love letter you wrote to him in high school, but there was more writing on the back, with his handwriting;

I’m so, so sorry, be happy and smile for me okay?

I always knew this letter what from you y/n, I always had.

I dated her to get my mind off you, I wanted to do that because I knew we can never be together forever, I wanted to confess, but when I heard you had heart cancer, I made it my goal to get rid of it.

I worked hard to become an idol and make enough money to pay for the surgery, I needed to visit my mother to confirm my decision, it took a while, but here we are.

If you haven't figured it out yet, yes, I am your heart donor.

I always wanted to be beside you, all the way to the end. That’s not gonna happen,

I’ll never be beside you forever, but I will will be with you, inside you, for many years to come.

Now smile my sweet-pie, you’re the apple of my eye, I’ll always be watching, and you’ll always have me....

  From your dearest, Taehyung ♡

[ihtspirit]

Macomber teacher Teresa Mahjoory shines in SEL challenge

Macomber teacher Teresa Mahjoory shines in SEL challenge Originally published May 12, 2019 in The Herald News. By Linda Murphy As Alice A. Macomber Primary School physical education teacher Teresa Mahjoory proves, there’s more than one way to bring social-emotional wellness to her students. https://ihtusa.com https://ihtusa.com/macomber-teacher-teresa-mahjoory-shines-in-sel-challenge/ Originally published May 12, 2019 in The Herald News. By Linda Murphy As Alice A. Macomber Primary School physical education teacher Teresa Mahjoory proves, there’s more than one way to bring social-emotional wellness to her students. In fact, Mahjoory slipped social-emotional wellness initiatives into just about every facet of the school day, handily landing the school in first place for the 8th annual Greater Fall River School Fitness Challenge. With the $500 prize, she plans to bring another element to the school that will promote social-emotional wellness: an outdoor classroom in an unused grassy area adjacent to the building. [caption id="attachment_18921" align="alignright" width="550"] LInda Murphy photo[/caption] In one of her initiatives, students had the opportunity to convey how they were feeling that day by choosing to walk over one of three colored tape blocks on the floor as they entered the gym. Green indicated a good day, yellow, was a bit more challenging and red meant they weren’t having a good day at all, giving Mahjoory an indicator that she should check in with those students. In the Integrated Hallway, she created a hopscotch-style pathway where students with sensory needs can get the input they need to refocus as they travel from classroom to classroom, and for those students who do something extra kind, there’s the Helping Paw award. Mahjoory cleverly decided to use recycled donated trophies to give to the recipients of the Helping Paw award. “Throughout the challenge, I was able to showcase kids who were going out of their way,” she said. In an unused nook of the school, Mahjoory did a bit of “remodeling” to make the Wildcat Zen Den, a cozy spot where kids dealing with social-emotional issues could go for some quiet meditative time. And in the gym, she established a Conflict Corner, a safe place where kids can work out conflicts among themselves, thus learning an important life skill. She also created a Social Emotional Learning book bank with special education teacher Amy Sousa. The bank is stocked up with books addressing an array of SEL issues for teachers to use with their students. Mahjoory selected some of the books to use in her PE classes where she read the book and then incorporated the concept into a PE lesson. “Emmanuel’s Dream,” about a boy who wanted to play soccer his despite being born with a deformed leg, led to a lesson in which the kids played scooter soccer, but they were only allowed to use one leg. “They were able to see the struggle that he went through so I was able to relate it back to the book,” said Mahjoory. “To be able to integrate that into PE has been super fun.” Another SEL book, “The Juice Box Bully,” turned into a lesson using recycled juice boxes. One of the promises in the book, she said, was to “take care of ourselves and others.” That promise turned into the students signing a message against bullying that Mahjoory placed into a bottle that was tossed into the ocean. In her classes, Mahjoory created lessons in which kids who wouldn’t normally play together had to work in partnerships, and she added jobs and leadership roles to boost kids’ confidence. “They loved it; having a sense of responsibility,” she said, adding she plans to keep that initiative now that the challenge has ended. She also brought SEL worksheets into the PE classes so kids could think through issues they may be having, and she established a positive character attribute of the week such as “responsible” that the kids explored as it related to the PE class.

For the first seven years of the school challenge, the January through March initiatives centered around some kind of physical activity that goes beyond the programs and activities that are already taking place in the physical education classes. “This year we wanted to take it to another level as well as show others that PE is lots more than simply playing games and shooting baskets. With that in mind, this year’s challenge to PE teachers was to come up with proposals focused wholly on the social-emotional wellness of students,” said Marcia Picard, school wellness coordinator Greater Fall River Partners for a Healthier Community.

Picard said they were blown away by the proposals they received from the teachers, and especially the one from Mahjoory. While most were a couple pages, Mahjoory’s was a 10-page proposal that took the concept from the PE classroom to the entire school. Mahjoory, said Picard, is “the absolute best physical education teacher I have ever seen in my 60 years of being involved in education.” Some of the other initiatives Mahjoory brought to her classroom include You Are, in which the students conveyed positive things they thought about each other and the #IwishmyteacherknewIwasgoodat initiative, in which the students shared things they’re good at outside of PE classes on a slip of paper in a jar. “I couldn’t believe how many kids wanted to tell me what they’re good at, from archery to drawing. I learned so much about them,” she said. “It helps me build relationships with the students.” Principal Cheryl Greeson and the teachers also embraced the SEL challenge. Greeson issued daily kindness challenges and the teachers added lunch book talks, yoga and mindfulness practices, morning teambuilding meetings and an SEL collaborative art project, among many others. A native of Fall River, Mahjoory worked at the Sylvia School in Fall River before taking the position at Macomber Primary School this fall. The kickoff to the challenge at Macomber started on Feb. 6 with Global School Wide Play Day. And this year, Greeson gave them the “green light” to scrap the regular lessons to engage in play. “She’s a huge supporter of learning through play. Dr. Greeson understands the importance of play, and all the social-emotional issues,” said Mahjoory. After Macomber, the following schools placed in this order in this year’s challenge: Westport Elementary School, Edmond P. Talbot Middle School, John J. Doran Community School and Joseph Case High School. This year’s School Fitness Challenge served over 3,000 area students.

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Inquiry-Based Research Essay: Hip-Hop Evolution

Sean McRoberts WRIT1133 Professor Taczak June 5, 2018 Introduction Hip-hop culture began in the 1970’s and has sustained a level of relevance and popularity over decades. Beginning with DJ Kool Herc, the culture has remained a staple of both a staple of the music world and in popular culture, living on today through musicians like Kendrick Lamar and Kanye West. However, the culture as a part of society has not remained stagnant, and has transitioned through several unique phases in terms of music, social relevancy and motivation. The early phase of hip-hop was comprised of DJ’s, emcee’s, graffiti influences, and b-boys. These early characteristics of the culture have changed over time into a new brand of hip-hop, focusing on social commentary, political influences and a re-branded style of rap music. In this essay, the question of “How has rap culture evolved over the past 20 years to become what it is today”? will be answered. To do this, the fluid evolution of hip-hop as a culture and rap music as a popular musical genre will be discussed, and will attempt to dive deeper into the reasons and influences that have caused this drastic evolution. The first and most prevalent aspect of hip-hop culture was that of motivation. In the subject of rap music and hip hop, motivation can be viewed in several different ways. There are the motivations for the pioneers of hip hop to begin creating the culture from the ground up, and also the motivations of artists and rappers throughout hip-hop’s lifespan to create the music that they have produced, and are still producing today. The first source that motivation came up in was in Emmett Price’s Hip Hop Culture, where he said, “Artists were simply motivated to articulate their despair and celebrate their self-determination through the foundational elements of DJing, graffiti tagging, b-boying/girling, MCing, and later beat-boxing and producing” (Price, 45). This statement allows readers of the research to identify some of the main reasons people wanted to produce this new culture, a yearning to express themselves and tell about their struggle. Artists also had similar motivations, the motivation that drives them to create music. Noah Karvelis says in his article that, “this circular path of musical travel is typically designed with the goal of allowing for dancing, singing, intricate rhythms, or the layering of all three” (Karvelis, 13). Artists are motivated to make music so that people can enjoy themselves, dance and sing, and like the original motives, express themselves in ways that they normally cannot without rap music. This idea is contradicted by one of the most prominent rappers in modern hip-hop, Kendrick Lamar, and in a quote from an article by Dorian Lynskey, Lamar says, “There’s actually some real shit going on out there that people can relate to more than any singalong I can bring to the table” (Lynskey, 4). To Lamar, his motives for making music are not solely to make listeners sing along, but to be conscious of real issues in the world that affect the majority of people. This disagreement on motives to create rap music is perfectly related to my research question, as it allows me to view rap from two different spaces in time, and that there are in fact different motivations in these two spaces. Influence, like motivation, has played a crucial role in the development of hip-hop, and give small distinctions as to why the culture has changed so much over the years. First, Becky Blanchard states that, “Violence in rap, and in other forms of self-expression, is the manifestation of a feeling of hopelessness and discontent in America’s working class” (Blanchard, 4) which both identifies the influence of violence of the culture of rap and the subject matter of lyrics, and the discontent in America’s working class. These two issues at the time were big influences on the culture and key concepts in the subject matter of rap for years to come. Another source that picks out a key influence on hip-hop is from an article by Siobhan Brooks and Thomas Conroy, where they identify punk rock as an influencer, saying that “each developed an influence on an ever-increasing set of practitioners and audiences” (Brooks, Conroy, 5). Punk rock had a big influence of the development of hip hop because they both emerged out of New York at about the same time.  Violence, punk rock, and the “discontent” of the American working class were all influences over the entire culture of hip hop at its beginnings, but there are also some more recent influences. In Lynskey’s article on Kendrick Lamar winning the Pulitzer Prize, he gives the example of “Geraldo Rivera on Fox News making the absurd claim that ‘hip-hop has done more damage to young African Americans than racism in recent years’” (Lynskey, 3). Lamar has been such a successful artist that he now has the moral responsibility to discuss and oppose these negative influences in his music. Lamar was definitely influenced by what Gerald Rivera said, because he actively used and discussed the quote in one of his songs, DNA. Along with the negative influences that affect hip hop, Blanchard says that, “rap’s potential for political advocacy stems from the function of its predecessors…” (Blanchard, 2), leading the readers to believe that rap has been influenced by both itself, as it takes from aspects of hip-hop in the past, and political issues. Hip-hop has become one of the most identifiable genres of music in today’s rotation and that is because of its extremely unique identity. In the Netflix series The Get Down, hip-hop was characterized primarily by graffiti culture, b-boys and girls, and the Black community in 1970’s New York (Luhrmann, Guirgis). A quote from Emmett Price’s book compliments this very well, where states that the question of “Who is hip-hop?” (Price, 46) was very common at the start of hip-hop. These both touch on the identity (or lack of identity) built up at the conception of hip-hop, which is where the majority of its identity comes from. In Internet banging: New Trends in social media, gang violence, masculinity and hip-hop, the authors use quotes from Bakari Kitwana, who states that “urban Americans born between the years of 1965 and 1985… he terms this generation the Hip-Hop Generation” (Patton, Eschmann, Butler, A57). This only reinforces the idea that the pioneers of hip-hop were the ones who solidified the identity of the culture for years to come. Also in this source, they characterize “hip-hop identity as the rebellious, assertive voice of predominantly urban youth, males in particular… hip hop identity has rejected the values and norms of the mainstream, while embracing and substituting oppositional values…” (Patton, Eschmann, Butler, A57), further defining hip-hop identity as rebellious and rejecting the mainstream culture. As I have discussed before, much of the influence for hip-hop came from punk rock music at the same time, Brooks and Conroy also say that “What punk and hip-hop mostly share is an attitude, one of detachment, and of some degree of opposition to mainstream, polite, co-opted society” (Brooks, Conroy, 5) which only adds to the rebellious identity of hip-hop. This collection of previous research is very helpful to my own research as when I do my primary research, I can now compare the identity of early hip-hop to what people believe it has become lately. Turning to hip-hop today, the major changes have led to new applications of rap music and the culture as a whole. The dominant application of hip-hop music today has been in education, and I have found two different examples of this. Noah Karvelis is a teacher who has begun to use rap music as a learning experience, saying that he was “quick to notice the interest that many students have in hip-hop and the rich educational opportunities that lie in it” (Karvelis, 13). One of the opportunities that lies within the use of rap music in the classroom is that students “…are extremely excited that something very musically and culturally relevant to them is being used in their classroom” (Karvelis, 14). Rap music has evolved into something that is more than just music but can be used as an educational tool also because of the conscious lyrics and social issues that are addressed. Along with teachers, “counselors and counselor educators were initial forerunners in the Hip-hop therapy movement. More than 30 years ago, Lee and Lindsey endorsed the use of rap music during group counseling with Black elementary school students” (Washington, 5). In this quote from Ahmed Washington, it is evident that rap has more applications that it once did, and because of its connection both emotionally and realistically to the Black community, it can be used as a tool in counselling. Not only is rap music now used in education, but in different ways of entertainment as well. Lin Manuel Miranda, a well-known composer and performer, wrote the musical Hamilton, but instead of implementing normal show-tunes, he wrote a rap show. In an article by Rebecca Mead, she says that “it was, he thought, a hip-hop story, an immigrants story” (Mead, 2). Hip-hop has shown the world, through musicals or education practices, that it has evolved into something totally new, while still drawing from its origins like immigration or social motivations. Although hip-hop has become something entirely new, and could be seen as a beneficial turn for the culture, it is still being scrutinized by the public as being violent and a bad influence. The connotation that it has with crime and gang violence seems to be concrete in the make-up of hip-hop, but has grown many different branches that touch many different parts of our society. The rap “boy band” BROCKHAMPTON advocates for gay acceptance, Kendrick Lamar addresses the similarities between gangs and the political system of America, and Logic begins to bring suicide and mental health into the rap discussion. However, before the discussion of what rap has become today can be brought up, the details for why it has become what it has must be addressed. Methods The public has played a very distinct role in the development of hip-hop, it seems appropriate to use them as the subjects to help dissect how hip-hop has evolved. To do this, I used a mixed method approach, meaning I used both qualitative and quantitative methods to receive opinions and answers from the public. These methods included an online survey, an interview, and observations over time. The survey that I constructed was completed by more than 100 respondents from a variety of age groups. The interview (not done yet, I’m in crisis mode) was done with an up-and-coming rapper out of New York, Fresh the Prophet to acquire his thoughts on the culture and music of hip-hop. Finally, I conducted my observations with two different techniques. First, which is the physical side of my observations, I listened to what other students around campus were listening to in terms of music. The second set of observations I did were digital, and I used the YouTube comments section to data-mine for opinions on different phases of rap music. I created my survey on a website called SurveyMonkey, which was an easily accessible platform for respondents to use. The survey was made up of 8 questions, one asking the respondent’s age and another asking their race. After creating it, it was sent through different group messages, sent to friends and family, and posted on Facebook to reach a wider group of people. I reached over 100 responses, ending with the ages of the respondents spanning from 18 to 65, which helped to give opinions from very different generations. One thing that I did not ask in the survey was the respondent’s gender, as I did not think that it would be relevant to research. However, there was a very limiting factor to the responses of my survey, in that 79% of the respondents selected the White or Caucasian race. The interview was the hardest section of the primary research. I started the interview with plan A and plan B. Plan A included going on to Instagram and direct messaging 6 famous rappers: Kendrick Lamar, Logic, Childish Gambino, Lil Yachty, Lil Uzi, and BROCKHAMPTON. I did this in hopes that I would get one response for a short phone interview. When I received no responses, I turned to plan B. I messaged a friend of mine who went to the same high school as I did, but moved to New York to pursue rap as a career. For the interview itself, I would conduct it over the phone and record the conversation with the rapper know as Fresh the Prophet. Also, before the interview I would email the interviewee and get him to digitally sign the IRB agreement. As mentioned before, my observations were done in two ways. First, I took 3 weeks and actively listened to what my friends and other students around campus were listening to in terms of music, either at parties or just hanging out in their dorms. Mainly, I was focusing on the rap music that was being played, and if rap was the most popular music being played at parties or in the dorms. Also, I tried to distinguish what types of rap were being played, more traditional, or modern rap. I would take notes on my phone and describe the type of music that was being played, the artists, if the majority of the music was rap, and peoples’ responses to the music. The second type of observation I did was data-mining on YouTube videos. The videos that I mined were popular music videos of rap songs from different phases of hip-hop culture. For example, the most recent video I mined was This is America, by Childish Gambino, and I would compare the comments on that video to comments from a video like The Notorious B.I.G’s,  Juicy. This would help to determine public opinion of people during that time, and allow me to compare opinions from different time periods. Results In my observations of the comments sections of popular rap music videos, there were a variety of different findings. First, in the most recent video, This is America, by Childish Gambino, the comments section was split between hate comments from some users and praising comments from others. Also, there were more comments mentioning culture for this video than The Notorious B.I.G.’s Juicy. For the physical observations that I conducted, the majority of music played around campus was in fact rap or hip-hop music, mixed with some other genres as well. In the survey, 82% of the respondents were between the ages of 18 and 22.  79% of the survey participants were White, only 2% Black, and 10% Hispanic. When asked if they liked rap music, 71% responded that they do like rap music, 15% said no, and 14% felt indifferent. Also, 94% of them said that they believe rap has changed over the past 20 years. Finally, the majority, 38.38% of respondents said that they think Kendrick Lamar is the best artist in hip-hop music. In my interview with Fresh the Prophet, he touched on some very interesting points. When asking him how he believes hip-hop and rap music has changed since he started as a rapper, the main point he made was that social media has played a large role. With the introduction of platforms like Instagram and Soundcloud, artists could spread their music more due to social media providing followers who could respond to the music. He also talked about Soundcloud more intensely, saying that it “makes music more accessible” for the people who want to hear it. One of the most striking things that he said was that “the common attributes of a famous rapper 10 years ago are not the same attributes of rappers today”. Finally, he made the point that while there are still artists today who focus on lyrics, lyricism was much more prominent back in the day, and that today, “if the beat slaps rappers can get away with not saying much”. Discussion Over the past 8 weeks I have been aiming to find an answer to the question, “How has rap culture evolved over the past 20 years to become what it is today”? After gathering all of the primary and secondary research, it seems that there are some very definitive findings. First, it is very apparent that there has in fact been a change in the hip-hop culture over the past 20 years. In the survey, when asked the question if they believe hip-hop culture has changed over the past 20 years, 94% of the respondents answered yes. This helps to establish that there has been a definite evolution in the eyes of the public, and that they have actively noticed it. Also, the presence of an explicit evolution helps to lead into answering the question of how it has evolved. The first distinct finding that came up while analyzing the research was that social influences are the main cause of hip-hop evolution over the past 20 years. There has been so much going on in today’s society like controversial politics, mass shootings, climate change and other events, which seems to have caused artists in the hip-hop culture to change what they are writing about. In the survey, when asked why the respondents believed there has been a change, 61% of them answered social influences. Also, when observing the comments on a current music video, Childish Gambino’s This is America, the comments seemed to be split between conservatives and liberals. One commenter named Crooked Hillary, obviously a conservative, wrote that the video and the song were, “…shit smeared on a canvas”. Opposite to this, someone responded that “This is art”, and these two comments were not the only ones that were opposing each other in a politically motivated manner. This was mentioned briefly by Becky Blanchard when she said that hip-hop had strong potential for political advocacy due to its roots in subjugation and slavery (Blanchard, 2). However, Blanchard did not talk about how widespread the effect could be in terms of political advocacy. Along with seeing political motivations in the comments sections of a music video, many songs in today’s rap genre have become centralized around politics in America. Kendrick Lamar has a song called Hood Politics, where he discusses the stark similarities between gangs like the Crips and Bloods and the political system in place in our country. Just from observing the lyrics of the song, like “… new Democrips and Rebloodicans…”, illustrates how drastically that hip-hop has changed since the early 2000’s. Politics are not the only social influences that have made hip-hop culture change over the years, it is a combination of many different influences. One of the main topics within social influence has to be the social media presence. During my interview with Fresh the Prophet, an up-and-coming rapper out of New York, he mentioned that “social media” is the largest influence that has helped hip-hop to change in the last 5 years.. He also said that while many rappers and artists are trying to make it big on Soundcloud and other platforms, he was using Instagram to spread his music around. His reasoning was that he had more followers on Instagram, therefore he would be able to reach more people with his music. This presence of social media in today’s hip-hop scene was mentioned heavily in my previous research, saying that hip-hop used to be the way that people would show their street credibility, but social media has come into replace it as the place where credibility is created and destroyed (Patton, Eschmann, Butler). It has become evident that the introduction of social media has played a large role in how the culture of rap has evolved. Just observing my own Instagram feed, rappers like Lil Yachty, J. Cole, and Logic are advertising their own and other artist’s album releases, posting teasers of their own songs and displaying tour information. However, relating this back to previous research, some critics and scholars believe that the media is the primary catalyst for negative and criminal associations with certain groups (Schneider), like those who are a part of hip-hop culture. The second finding that was very apparent to me from the primary research was that the introduction of Soundcloud and mumble rap into today’s hip-hop culture have had both negative and positive effects. Soundcloud is a music streaming app that allows users to stream any kind of music they would like for free. Also, anyone can upload their own songs onto Soundcloud through their own profile and get streams on their song. When talking to Fresh the Prophet, who uploads almost all of his music onto Soundcloud, he said that the creation of Soundcloud has made hip-hop more accessible for more people, therefore expanding the culture and reach of the music. Also, recently many artists have been popping up on Soundcloud and making it big because of the community on Soundcloud, allowing them to achieve success in a way that was previously not around. Also accompanying this, Fresh the Prophet made the point that with the plethora of artists now available through Soundcloud and the other popular platforms of modern rap, “every couple months there’s some type of pattern or song that’s hot”. Him saying this makes me come to believe that Soundcloud has become one of the leading platforms for new trends in the rap genre, which helps to push the music along and causes evolution. However, Soundcloud and mumble rap have also been viewed as detriments to the culture of hip-hop as a whole. First, in a comment on Biggie’s Juicy, someone said “Today we can’t get rappers like Biggie and Tupac, I am sorry”. This along with many others state that today’s rappers are not as good as they used to be “back in the day”, and that rappers today are “trash”. FreshtheProphet also said that Soundcloud has had a negative impact, when it was the platform that allowed Lil Pump to become famous. He compared Biggie to Lil Pump in the interview, saying that they both rap about similar subjects like girls, drugs and violence, but that Biggie did it in a much more meaningful and emotional way than rappers today do. Still, there are many rappers in today’s culture that have not strayed far from the ideals and motivations of older rappers. In my survey, when asked if people liked the new direction that rap was going in (Soundcloud, Lil Pump, 6ix9ine, etc.) 51% of people said no, with 16% saying yes and the remainder feeling indifferent. What this shows is that the public prefers traditional rap and the more grounded rap of this modern hip-hop culture, and that the majority of people do not appreciate the mumble, trap music made by artists like Lil Pump and 6ix9ine. This grounded modern music leads to my next finding from the primary research. Kendrick Lamar has shown up many times throughout my research and in my own life, as he has quickly become my favorite rapper. He is a perfect example of the changing trends and evolution of rap music. As a younger rapper, Lamar rapped more about drugs and gangs in his hometown of Compton. In a song called A.D.H.D off of one of his early albums, Section.80, he references pills, smoking weed, alcohol, and sex heavily. In the chorus of the song, he raps, “eight doobies to the face, fuck that, twelve bottles in the case, n*gga, fuck that…” which gives a good snapshot of the music at that time and the influences that affected rappers in the early 2010’s. Now, on his most recent album DAMN., most of the songs have deeper meanings in terms of social relevancy. One song called ELEMENT., he says “I don’t do it for the gram I do it for Compton…”. This lyric gets at the larger view of rappers today and why they rap. He is saying that he doesn’t rap for the followers on Instagram or the fame, he raps so that the people of his hometown can live better lives, and so the public can realize the struggles going on in places like Compton, CA. Lamar is probably the most socially influential rapper in today’s rap game, and that is because of his deeper lyrics and attention to social issues. Limitations My research was done in a very short amount of time. Our entire class only had about 8 weeks to complete the research for this project, so everything was very rushed. In my case, this short time frame had some major effects on my final research. First, 79% of my survey respondents identified as white, and only 2% identified as black. This is extremely limiting in terms of my topic, as hip-hop culture has the most effect on the black community since it originated from the black community. Also, some of the survey respondents did not take the survey seriously, making my results even less credible than they should have been. Second, as I have informed about before, I had a plan A and a plan B for my interview. Since I waited on plan A to work out for about 3 or 4 weeks, I was stick with a very small amount of time to use plan B, interviewing FreshtheProphet. As the time to complete the research closed, I still had no date set to do my interview, which set me back in analyzing all of my data together for about a week.

Appendix A

Observation Notes

Appendix B

Interview Questions

Appendix C

Survey Questions

1. How old are you?

2. What is your ethnicity?

   a.  White or Caucasian

   b. Black or African American

   c. Hispanic or Latino

   d. Asian or Asian American

   e. American Indian or Alaska Native

   f. Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander

   g. Another race . 

3. Do you like rap music?

   a. Yes

   b. No

   c. Feel indifferent

4. Do you believe that hip-hop/rap culture has changed over the past 20 years?

   a. Yes

   b. No 

   c. Don’t know

5. Do you like the direction that rap is going in today (Soundcloud, Lil Pump, 6ix9ine)?

   a. Yes

   b. No

   c. Feel indifferent

6. Do you prefer traditional or modern rap?

   a. Traditional

   b. Modern

   c. Both

7. Why do you think rap has changed over the years?

   a. Social influences

   b. Censorship

   c. Public opinion

   d. Artist evolution

   e. Other

8. Who do you consider to be the best artist in rap music?

   a. Kendrick Lamar

   b. Tupac Shakur

   c. Notorious B.I.G.

   d. Chance the Rapper

   e. J. Cole

   f. Nas

   g. Kanye West

   h. Jay-Z

   i. Other

References Blanchard, B. (1999, July 26). The Social Significance of Rap & Hip-Hop Culture. Retrieved April 23, 2018, from Edge: Ethics of Development in a Global Environment: https://web.stanford.edu/class/e297c/poverty_prejudice/mediarace/socialsignificance.htm Brooks, S., & Conroy, T. (2011, January). Hip Hop Culture in a Global Context: Interdisciplinary and Cross-Categorical Investigation. SAGE Journals, 4-8. Guirgis, S. A., Luhrmann, B. (Writers), Bianchi, E., & Williams, M. (Directors). (2016). The Get Down [Television Series]. USA. Karvelis, N. (2016). Reapproaching Hip-Hop. Music Educators Journal. Lynskey, D. (2018, April 22). From Street Kid to Pulitzer: Why Kendrick Lamar Deserves the Prize. (Guardian News) Retrieved April 23, 2018, from The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/music/2018/apr/22/kendrick-lamar-wins-pulitzer-prize-damn-album Mead, R. (2015, February 9). All About the Hamiltons: A New Musical Brings the Founding Fathers Back to Life - with a lot of Hip Hop. (Condé Nast.) Retrieved April 23, 2018, from The New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/02/09/hamiltons Patton, D. U., Eschmann, R. D., & Butler, D. A. (2013, January 18). Internet banging: New trends in social media, gang violence, masculinity, and hip hop. Elsevier. Price, E. G. (2006). Hip Hop Culture (1 ed.). Santa-Barbara, CA, USA: ABC-CLIO. Schneider, C. J. (2011, October). Culture, Rap Music, “Bitch,” and the Development of the Censorship Frame. SAGE Journals, 36-56. Washington, A. R. (2016, October). Integrating Hip-Hop Culture and Rap Music Into Social Justice Counseling With Black Males. Journal of Counseling and Development, 97-105. Appendix A

[seanmcroberts-blog]

Essay: Draft 1

Sean McRoberts WRIT1133 Professor Taczak May 15, 2018 Introduction Hip-hop culture began in the 1970’s and has sustained a level of relevance and popularity over decades. Beginning with DJ Kool Herc, the culture has remained a staple of both a staple of the music world and in popular culture, living on today through musicians like Kendrick Lamar and Kanye West. However, the culture as a part of society has not remained stagnant, and has transitioned through several unique phases in terms of music, social relevancy and motivation. The early phase of hip-hop was comprised of DJ’s, emcee’s, graffiti influences, and b-boys. These early characteristics of the culture have changed over time into a new brand of hip-hop, focusing on social commentary, political influences and a re-branded style of rap music. In this essay, the fluid evolution of hip-hop as a culture and rap music as a popular musical genre will be discussed, and will attempt to dive deeper into the reasons and influences that have caused this drastic evolution. The first and most prevalent aspect of hip-hop culture was that of motivation. In the subject of rap music and hip hop, motivation has two very distinct implications. There are the motivations for the pioneers of hip hop to begin creating the culture from the ground up, and also the motivations of artists and rappers throughout hip-hop’s lifespan to create the music that they have produced, and are still producing today. Motivation seems to be a principal topic in the research field of hip hop culture, and it starts with the roots of the culture and what motivated those people to raise hip hop from the ground. The first source that motivation came up in was in Emmett Price’s Hip Hop Culture, where he said, “Artists were simply motivated to articulate their despair and celebrate their self-determination through the foundational elements of DJing, graffiti tagging, b-boying/girling, MCing, and later beat-boxing and producing” (Price, 45). This statement allows readers of the research to identify some of the main reasons people wanted to produce this new culture, a yearning to express themselves and tell about their struggle. Not only were there motivations to create a new medium of expression, but another aspect of the culture is the motivation that drives artists to create music. Noah Karvelis says in his article that, “this circular path of musical travel is typically designed with the goal of allowing for dancing, singing, intricate rhythms, or the layering of all three” (Karvelis, 13). Artists are motivated to make music so that people can enjoy themselves, dance and sing, and like the original motives, express themselves in ways that they normally cannot without rap music. This idea is contradicted by one of the most prominent rappers in modern hip-hop, Kendrick Lamar, and in a quote from an article by Dorian Lynskey, Lamar says, “There’s actually some real shit going on out there that people can relate to more than any singalong I can bring to the table” (Lynskey, 4). To Lamar, his motives for making music are not solely to make listeners sing along, but to be conscious of real issues in the world that affect the majority of people. This disagreement on motives to create rap music is perfectly related to my research question, as it allows me to view rap from two different spaces in time, and that there are in fact different motivations in these two spaces. Influence, like motivation, has played a crucial role in the development of hip-hop, and give small distinctions as to why the culture has changed so much over the years. There has always been a distinct difference between the influences of rap music between early rap and rap today. First, Becky Blanchard states that, “Violence in rap, and in other forms of self-expression, is the manifestation of a feeling of hopelessness and discontent in America’s working class” (Blanchard, 4) which both identifies the influence of violence of the culture of rap and the subject matter of lyrics, and the discontent in America’s working class. These two issues at the time were big influences on the culture and key concepts in the subject matter of rap for years to come. Another source that picks out a key influence on hip-hop is from an article by Siobhan Brooks and Thomas Conroy, where they identify punk rock as an influencer, saying that “each developed an influence on an ever-increasing set of practitioners and audiences” (Brooks, Conroy, 5). Punk rock had a big influence of the development of hip hop because they both emerged out of New York at about the same time.  Violence, punk rock, and the “discontent” of the American working class were all influences over the entire culture of hip hop at its beginnings, but from the research I have done, the influences have slightly altered since then. There are some influences in rap music today that have carried over from the 1970’s but also some more recent developments. In Lynskey’s article on Kendrick Lamar winning the Pulitzer Prize, he says that there is “the moral responsibility that come with success…” (Lynskey, 4) and pairs this with the example of “Geraldo Rivera on Fox News making the absurd claim that ‘hip-hop has done more damage to young African Americans than racism in recent years’” (Lynskey, 3). We can see the connection between these two quotes, because Lamar has been such a successful artist that he now has the moral responsibility to discuss and oppose these negative influences. Lamar was definitely influenced by what Gerald Rivera said, because he actively used and discussed the quote in one of his songs, DNA. Along with the negative influences that affect hip hop, Blanchard says that, “rap’s potential for political advocacy stems from the function of its predecessors…” (Blanchard, 2), leading the readers to believe that rap has been influenced by both itself, as it takes from aspects of hip-hop in the past, and political issues. Hip-hop has become one of the most identifiable genres of music in today’s rotation and that is because of its extremely unique identity. In the Netflix series The Get Down, hip-hop was characterized primarily by graffiti culture, b-boys and girls, and the Black community in 1970’s New York (Luhrmann, Guirgis). A quote from Emmett Price’s book compliments this very well, where states that the question of “Who is hip-hop?” (Price, 46) was very common at the start of hip-hop. These both touch on the identity (or lack of identity) built up at the conception of hip-hop, which is where the majority of its identity comes from. In Internet banging: New Trends in social media, gang violence, masculinity and hip-hop, the authors use quotes from Bakari Kitwana, who states that “urban Americans born between the years of 1965 and 1985… he terms this generation the Hip-Hop Generation” (Patton, Eschmann, Butler, A57). This only reinforces the idea that the pioneers of hip-hop were the ones who solidified the identity of the culture for years to come. Also in this source, they characterize “hip-hop identity as the rebellious, assertive voice of predominantly urban youth, males in particular… hip hop identity has rejected the values and norms of the mainstream, while embracing and substituting oppositional values…” (Patton, Eschmann, Butler, A57), further defining hip-hop identity as rebellious and rejecting the mainstream culture. As I have discussed before, much of the influence for hip-hop came from punk rock music at the same time, Brooks and Conroy also say that “What punk and hip-hop mostly share is an attitude, one of detachment, and of some degree of opposition to mainstream, polite, co-opted society” (Brooks, Conroy, 5) which only adds to the rebellious identity of hip-hop. This collection of previous research is very helpful to my own research as when I do my primary research, I can now compare the identity of early hip-hop to what people believe it has become lately. Turning to hip-hop today, the major changes have led to new applications of rap music and the culture as a whole. The dominant application of hip-hop music today has been in education, and I have found two different examples of this. Noah Karvelis is a teacher who has begun to use rap music as a learning experience, saying that he was “quick to notice the interest that many students have in hip-hop and the rich educational opportunities that lie in it” (Karvelis, 13). One of the opportunities that lies within the use of rap music in the classroom is that students “…are extremely excited that something very musically and culturally relevant to them is being used in their classroom” (Karvelis, 14). Rap music has evolved into something that is more than just music but can be used as an educational tool also because of the conscious lyrics and social issues that are addressed. Along with teachers, “counselors and counselor educators were initial forerunners in the Hip-hop therapy movement. More than 30 years ago, Lee and Lindsey endorsed the use of rap music during group counseling with Black elementary school students” (Washington, 5). In this quote from Ahmed Washington, it is evident that rap has more applications that it once did, and because of its connection both emotionally and realistically to the Black community, it can be used as a tool in counselling. Not only is rap music now used in education, but in different ways of entertainment as well. Lin Manuel Miranda, a well-known composer and performer, wrote the musical Hamilton, but instead of implementing normal show-tunes, he wrote a rap show. In an article by Rebecca Mead, she says that “it was, he thought, a hip-hop story, an immigrants story” (Mead, 2). Hip-hop has shown the world, through musicals or education practices, that it has evolved into something totally new, while still drawing from its origins like immigration or social motivations. Although hip-hop has become something entirely new, and could be seen as a beneficial turn for the culture, it is still being scrutinized by the public as being violent and a bad influence. The connotation that it has with crime and gang violence seems to be concrete in the make-up of hip-hop, but has grown many different branches that touch many different parts of our society. The rap “boy band” BROCKHAMPTON advocates for gay acceptance, Kendrick Lamar addresses the similarities between gangs and the political system of America, and Logic begins to bring suicide and mental health into the rap discussion. However, before the discussion of what rap has become today can be brought up, the details for why it has become what it has must be addressed. Methods The public has played a very distinct role in the development of hip-hop, it seems appropriate to use them as the subjects to help dissect how hip-hop has evolved. To do this, I used a mixed method approach, meaning I used both qualitative and quantitative methods to receive opinions and answers from the public. These methods included an online survey, an interview, and observations over time. The survey that I constructed was completed by more than 100 respondents from a variety of age groups. The interview (not done yet, I’m in crisis mode) was done with an up-and-coming rapper out of New York, Fresh the Prophet to acquire his thoughts on the culture and music of hip-hop. Finally, I conducted my observations with two different techniques. First, which is the physical side of my observations, I listened to what other students around campus were listening to in terms of music. The second set of observations I did were digital, and I used the YouTube comments section to data-mine for opinions on different phases of rap music. I created my survey on a website called SurveyMonkey, which was an easily accessible platform for respondents to use. The survey was made up of 8 questions, one asking the respondent’s age and another asking their race. After creating it, it was sent through different group messages, sent to friends and family, and posted on Facebook to reach a wider group of people. I reached over 100 responses, ending with the ages of the respondents spanning from 18 to 65, which helped to give opinions from very different generations. One thing that I did not ask in the survey was the respondent’s gender, as I did not think that it would be relevant to research. However, there was a very limiting factor to the responses of my survey, in that 79% of the respondents selected the White or Caucasian race. Interview section cannot be done, as I have not done it yet.  As mentioned before, my observations were done in two ways. First, I took 3 weeks and actively listened to what my friends and other students around campus were listening to in terms of music, either at parties or just hanging out in their dorms. Mainly, I was focusing on the rap music that was being played, and if rap was the most popular music being played at parties or in the dorms. Also, I tried to distinguish what types of rap were being played, more traditional, or modern rap. I would take notes on my phone and describe the type of music that was being played, the artists, if the majority of the music was rap, and peoples’ responses to the music. The second type of observation I did was data-mining on YouTube videos. The videos that I mined were popular music videos of rap songs from different phases of hip-hop culture. For example, the most recent video I mined was This is America, by Childish Gambino, and I would compare the comments on that video to comments from a video like The Notorious B.I.G’s,  Juicy. This would help to determine public opinion of people during that time, and allow me to compare opinions from different time periods.

[certainalpacasweets]

Thought Bubble Daily Help - Dealing With Bullies

I know a lot of you do enjoy reading my thought bubble posts, idk why when really they’re just my boring thoughts throughout the day lol. But I thought I’d start this new thing where I give you advice on the daily, seeing as a lot of you are quite young and I do get people asking me for advice a lot, so I thought this would be a good way to help you guys out :)

Today’s topic for advice is how to deal with bullies. I myself was very badly bullied, all the way from junior school up to college, so I have some experience in how to handle certain situations. Well, I say “experience” but at the time I really had no idea how to handle them, it’s only now that I realise what to do and what not to do when it comes to bullies. I only wish I’d have had a guide book or something back then, to tell me the stuff that I know now. But sadly that was not the case, which is why I came up with this idea to write a post every day to help you lovely lot, who are possibly going through similar situations yourselves at this time, and this can be your guide book in a sense, aren’t you lucky? I was inspired by a book called ‘All I Know Now’ by the lovely Carrie Hope Fletcher. Thank you for inspiring me!

Well, shall we get to the point of today’s post? How to deal with the bullies. I was bullied in primary school, secondary school and college, but the time that stands out the most is secondary school. That was when it was particularly bad, I was tripped in the playground, had my pants pulled down in the middle of PE in front of everyone (including cute boys), had my clothes stolen in the PE changing rooms and had to walk around the locker room in a towel searching for them, called many names, spat on, etc. You get the point, it was bad. But I’m going to talk about a time that stands out the most to me. Usually when the bullying happened I just turned my back and ignored it (until I got home at the end of the day where I’d go into my bedroom and cry until I felt better), but this one time I didn’t ignore it, I acted (not in a bad way, keep reading)

So I wasn’t having a particularly good day, the only one friend I had in school wasn’t in that day, so I was very worried to be on my own with the bullies. During registration I got called to the head of year’s office, so I quickly darted out of the registration room unnoticed, leaving my bag behind. The head didn’t want much, I had been to him earlier that week (after that one friend I mentioned earlier convinced me to talk to him about the bullying), he was just checking in really, to see if I’d had anymore trouble. I mentioned that there had been some, but not quite as bad (I will actually talk about something rather unexpected that happened a bit later on), he dismissed me back to registration and when I returned I found that my bag, books and homework planner had all been thrown about all across the room, pages torn out of the books, my most prized possession (my original Apple iPod) was resting on the windowsill outside of the classroom (yes, it was sitting OUTSIDE for anyone to just take) and when I came back inside to take a seat, sharp glances and snotty giggles could be seen and heard from pretty much every kid in the room (the teacher wasn’t there at that moment, which I guess is how they managed to get away with this)

Now, if I hadn’t made my one friend and I was still the shy loner girl who got very upset about bullying, I’d have ignored my bag, lonely iPod and ruined books and sat down in the corner alone, probably covering my face so I could cry a bit. But this friend had given me strength, she had made me feel much better about myself and made me more confident. I didn’t confront the kids, all I did was kneel down on the floor in front of everyone, picking up my bag and torn books. It was actually kind of horrifying, as the class all just sat in silence and watched me gather up my things, but I didn’t say anything nor did I really care, I picked up my stuff with pride. To my surprise, two young lads who were sat nearest to where my bag had been dropped started helping me pick it up, and after that a few of the other kinder kids helped too, a girl even opened up the window and fetched my iPod back inside for me. When I sat back down in my seat the girl in front of me leaned to me and said “the boys in this class are dicks, just ignore them, we’re not here for much longer” (we were in year 10 at that point) That obviously made me feel better but it also shocked me quite a bit. The kids were suddenly being nice to me! But I knew that nice girl in front of me was right, the boys in our form class were, in fact, rather big meanies. And I’d had enough of them, quite frankly. There were three boys in particular who bullied me more than anybody else (one of these boys was actually my first school girl crush, even though he was pretty mean to me for most of our school years, but girls he was honestly a very gorgeous boy, a bit TOO gorgeous for a 14 year old British school boy) and up to that point I hadn’t given our head of year any names on who had bullied me, so at break time I decided to return to him and give him the names of those three boys.

Later on in the week, myself and the three boys were called out of registration by our head of year and taken to an empty English class room “for a talk”, I was actually quite worried, was this going to make things worse? Were these three boys going to bully me worse than before? What happened next shocked me, our head of year said “these three boys have something that they would like to say to you” The first boy pulled out a letter, and he began reading aloud a fully fledged apology. The second boy handed me a box of chocolates and hugged me, apologising as he did so. The third boy (this one being the boy I had a gigantic and disgusting crush on) handed me a sweet Winnie The Pooh card, inside it read “I’m very sorry for what I did to you, I know how it feels to be called names and I really regret doing what I did” this came as a huge surprise to me, obviously after I had given names the head of year had a word with the boys, but to this day I still don’t know if he had told them to write letters, cards and give me chocolates, or if that part was off their own back, but either way after that, things calmed down. There was still the odd name calling every now and then, but it wasn’t nearly as bad after I had come forward and told somebody, and it also wasn’t the same three boys who I had turned in! They were much nicer to me after that, in fact at one point a boy in registration started calling me names, and the boy I was crushing on who had given me the Winnie The Pooh card shouted at the top of his voice “LEAVE HER ALONE!” The entire classroom fell silent, and the boy just whispered “sorry” and walked away, the cute boy gave me a smile and we had a nice conversation. So, shall we get to a point here? Please, if you are being bullied, don’t shy away and cry at home alone, try to make friends, maybe you’ll be lucky enough to find a friend who will give you the courage to stand up and tell someone what’s been going on, and maybe you’ll keep that friend many years down the line, that one friend I had is still my best friend to this day, over ten years after we have left school. I know it sounds a little silly, the whole concept of “if you don’t stop I’m telling!” But really, look what happened when I finally did it! I got some heartfelt apologies, some free yummy chocolates and even made friends with the cute blonde boy (did I mention he was blonde? Yeah… that part is quite important, he had blue eyes as well), please guys and gals, if you are being bullied, step forward and tell somebody. A teacher, preferably. Though it may not seem like it they can actually help you, and you may find your final year of school being relatively stress free and you’ll have more friends than you can count with your fingers.

Don’t suffer in silence, folkes! Step up and let somebody know, and you may be surprised. I mentioned earlier too (sorry, this is dragging on a bit, I’ll make these next parts shorter I promise!) that I was also bullied when I got to college, the first day is always scary, but you have to know that basically everyone else in the room is feeling just as scared as you are. I came to find that my class was all girl, so naturally there was a lot of drama, but I myself was the target girl. I was picked on a lot by the others, which is never good, but this time I didn’t sit in silence for three and a half years before finally speaking up, I stood up for myself, but at this point I upset one of my bullies greatly and then I was the one who got into trouble. So, in this situation, we have learnt that the best thing you can do is just tell somebody that you’re being bullied. It will more than likely lead to better things for you, and maybe even a new friend!

University was different, as I mentioned before, first days (well, first anything, really) are quite nerve-racking, and in university you’re sent to a large lecture hall on your first day, with various different groups of students all there to study different subjects. It’s not like your average school classroom with about twenty other students in the room, it’s a huge room with about double that, so it’s doubley scary, but don’t let that put you off! Our professor got us to do an exercise where we had a sheet of paper with different things written in boxes like “I was born in 1991” or “I enjoy reading” that sort of thing, and we had to go around the room asking different students if they were into books or born in 1991 (and a lot of other different questions), and we had to get them to sign in the appropriate boxes, this activity really helped calm my nerves, surprisingly, and I met quite a lot of nice people.

I made friends with a really nice girl at university almost instantly and I stuck with her a lot of the time, but one day she wasn’t in as her young daughter was quite ill and she had to take her to the doctors (she was alright, she was only three years old and got colds quite a lot), but I was in a state of panic, much like that one day in school when my one friend wasn’t there and I was scared to be alone, but this time it was much different. Two nice girls sat beside me in the lecture hall and we had a nice chat, at lunch time they invited me along to the library to join their study group who were all also very nice, so it wasn’t quite as scary as I’d imagined it was going to be.

I guess my closing point is this; speak up if you are being bullied, you may find things getting much easier for you in the long run. Also, if you are planning on going to university, I can assure you that the students there will be much more mature and it will be a lot easier to make some friends.

[ihtspirit]

Macomber teacher Teresa Mahjoory shines in SEL challenge

Macomber teacher Teresa Mahjoory shines in SEL challenge Originally published May 12, 2019 in The Herald News. By Linda Murphy As Alice A. Macomber Primary School physical education teacher Teresa Mahjoory proves, there’s more than one way to bring social-emotional wellness to her students. https://ihtusa.com https://ihtusa.com/macomber-teacher-teresa-mahjoory-shines-in-sel-challenge/ Originally published May 12, 2019 in The Herald News. By Linda Murphy As Alice A. Macomber Primary School physical education teacher Teresa Mahjoory proves, there’s more than one way to bring social-emotional wellness to her students. In fact, Mahjoory slipped social-emotional wellness initiatives into just about every facet of the school day, handily landing the school in first place for the 8th annual Greater Fall River School Fitness Challenge. With the $500 prize, she plans to bring another element to the school that will promote social-emotional wellness: an outdoor classroom in an unused grassy area adjacent to the building. [caption id="attachment_18921" align="alignright" width="550"] LInda Murphy photo[/caption] In one of her initiatives, students had the opportunity to convey how they were feeling that day by choosing to walk over one of three colored tape blocks on the floor as they entered the gym. Green indicated a good day, yellow, was a bit more challenging and red meant they weren’t having a good day at all, giving Mahjoory an indicator that she should check in with those students. In the Integrated Hallway, she created a hopscotch-style pathway where students with sensory needs can get the input they need to refocus as they travel from classroom to classroom, and for those students who do something extra kind, there’s the Helping Paw award. Mahjoory cleverly decided to use recycled donated trophies to give to the recipients of the Helping Paw award. “Throughout the challenge, I was able to showcase kids who were going out of their way,” she said. In an unused nook of the school, Mahjoory did a bit of “remodeling” to make the Wildcat Zen Den, a cozy spot where kids dealing with social-emotional issues could go for some quiet meditative time. And in the gym, she established a Conflict Corner, a safe place where kids can work out conflicts among themselves, thus learning an important life skill. She also created a Social Emotional Learning book bank with special education teacher Amy Sousa. The bank is stocked up with books addressing an array of SEL issues for teachers to use with their students. Mahjoory selected some of the books to use in her PE classes where she read the book and then incorporated the concept into a PE lesson. “Emmanuel’s Dream,” about a boy who wanted to play soccer his despite being born with a deformed leg, led to a lesson in which the kids played scooter soccer, but they were only allowed to use one leg. “They were able to see the struggle that he went through so I was able to relate it back to the book,” said Mahjoory. “To be able to integrate that into PE has been super fun.” Another SEL book, “The Juice Box Bully,” turned into a lesson using recycled juice boxes. One of the promises in the book, she said, was to “take care of ourselves and others.” That promise turned into the students signing a message against bullying that Mahjoory placed into a bottle that was tossed into the ocean. In her classes, Mahjoory created lessons in which kids who wouldn’t normally play together had to work in partnerships, and she added jobs and leadership roles to boost kids’ confidence. “They loved it; having a sense of responsibility,” she said, adding she plans to keep that initiative now that the challenge has ended. She also brought SEL worksheets into the PE classes so kids could think through issues they may be having, and she established a positive character attribute of the week such as “responsible” that the kids explored as it related to the PE class.

For the first seven years of the school challenge, the January through March initiatives centered around some kind of physical activity that goes beyond the programs and activities that are already taking place in the physical education classes. “This year we wanted to take it to another level as well as show others that PE is lots more than simply playing games and shooting baskets. With that in mind, this year’s challenge to PE teachers was to come up with proposals focused wholly on the social-emotional wellness of students,” said Marcia Picard, school wellness coordinator Greater Fall River Partners for a Healthier Community.

Picard said they were blown away by the proposals they received from the teachers, and especially the one from Mahjoory. While most were a couple pages, Mahjoory’s was a 10-page proposal that took the concept from the PE classroom to the entire school. Mahjoory, said Picard, is “the absolute best physical education teacher I have ever seen in my 60 years of being involved in education.” Some of the other initiatives Mahjoory brought to her classroom include You Are, in which the students conveyed positive things they thought about each other and the #IwishmyteacherknewIwasgoodat initiative, in which the students shared things they’re good at outside of PE classes on a slip of paper in a jar. “I couldn’t believe how many kids wanted to tell me what they’re good at, from archery to drawing. I learned so much about them,” she said. “It helps me build relationships with the students.” Principal Cheryl Greeson and the teachers also embraced the SEL challenge. Greeson issued daily kindness challenges and the teachers added lunch book talks, yoga and mindfulness practices, morning teambuilding meetings and an SEL collaborative art project, among many others. A native of Fall River, Mahjoory worked at the Sylvia School in Fall River before taking the position at Macomber Primary School this fall. The kickoff to the challenge at Macomber started on Feb. 6 with Global School Wide Play Day. And this year, Greeson gave them the “green light” to scrap the regular lessons to engage in play. “She’s a huge supporter of learning through play. Dr. Greeson understands the importance of play, and all the social-emotional issues,” said Mahjoory. After Macomber, the following schools placed in this order in this year’s challenge: Westport Elementary School, Edmond P. Talbot Middle School, John J. Doran Community School and Joseph Case High School. This year’s School Fitness Challenge served over 3,000 area students.

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