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isitandwonder · 3 years

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Prepare for Chalamania! Why Timothée is Hollywood’s ultimate new-gen golden boy

PEOPLE Don’t underestimate a pretty boy. As he blesses us with two new blockbusters, Timothée Chalamet is the real deal, says Susannah Butter

London Evening Standard

21 Oct 2021

FROM the moment Timothée Chalamet appears on screen in Wes Anderson’s new film The French Dispatch, the message is clear; never underestimate a pretty boy. Chalamet plays Zeffirelli, a chain-smoking, thoughtful young man who is leading a fired-up group of student protesters sending the government into a frenzy. We meet him when Frances McDormand’s character, a journalist, pulls back a shower curtain and finds him having a cigarette in the bath, naked but for an artfully styled towel turban.

It is an impeccably choreographed scene and sure to delight Chalamet’s cabal of fans, taking Chalamania to new heights. They have been in overdrive this week with not one but two new movies out starring Chalamet — as well as The French Dispatch there is Dune, director Denis Villeneuve’s $165 million adaptation of the sci-fi novel (also made into an ill-fated film by David Lynch in 1984) in which Chalamet plays the central character Paul Atreides and submits to so many close-ups of his sweaty upper lip that it may cause some kind of earthquake. If that is not enough, he is here in the UK filming Wonka, the chocolatier’s origin story.

He started this week at a London Film Festival party with his Dune co-star Zendaya, spectacularly suited in a blue mushroom print Stella McCartney number. Chalamet has form on fashion — he co-chaired this year’s Met Gala and reinvented smart casual, looking elegant dressed as a modern day knight in white satin; a tuxedo jacket, polo neck and Converse. Chalamet, 25, has been acting professionally since he was a child. But his trajectory hasn’t been smooth — he lost out on the role of Spider-Man to Tom Holland

and Dune’s director previously rejected him for a role in Prisoners. So how did Timmy, as his friends call him, become the man of the moment? “He feels authentic and bridges male and female sensibility, which speaks to current culture,” says Jessica Ronane, who cast him in 4,000 Miles at The Old Vic, which the theatre is trying to reschedule due to the pandemic. “He has innate charisma and his appeal is enhanced by the fact he exudes thoughtfulness, with a gentle, open quality, plus an inquisitive eye and that draws us in. His beauty is delicate and he has an easy physical style; the girls admire him!”

Yet after his role in 2017’s Call Me by Your Name, he is also an LGBTQ+ icon. For Art, a Chalamet fan who broke the internet when he spotted the actor filming Wonka in Dorset

this month, the actor inspires a very particular type of adoration. “He brings an electrical level of energy, shining a light on a different kind of masculinity in a way that feels long overdue; I know it makes me and a lot of others feel like we have a place in the world, and I think that’s why he has such a huge audience of young people, queer people and people who feel like they’re slightly outside. It’s become such a thing to talk about his androgyny as a fashion moment but behind that there’s a lot of people who feel enabled to make bold choices and embrace a less rigid approach to gender expectations, and still be embraced and celebrated for that, because of him.”

But this goes beyond beautiful bone structure. Casting director Jill Trevellick says: “He is an extremely good actor with a great deal of integrity as a performer. He is charismatic and unpredictable; a one-off.” He has also made shrewd choices. Trevellick says the roles he has picked show that he can take on a broad range of parts and make it impossible to predict how his career will go, “which is a good thing”. “Also, when market forces are at play, directors will want stars who have shown they can draw a big crowd.” There is a virtuous circle; Chalamet has more than 14 million Instagram followers, who comment adoringly under his often gnomic captions, and these numbers are attractive to directors.

The Standard’s film critic, Charlotte O’Sullivan, says: “Not getting Spider-Man gave him the opportunity to take the road less travelled. As demonstrated by Call Me by Your Name. Playing a trilingual teen who falls for an older man sounds niche. Chalamet isn’t scared of niche. He’s chosen his roles carefully, appearing in few generic movies. And even in so-so stuff (Hot Summer Nights or A Rainy Day in New York) he adds his own blazing spin to drab lines. His two best performances (Call Me by Your Name and Lady Bird) combine aloofness with openwound sensitivity.”

Chalamet grew up in Hell’s Kitchen, New York. His mother, Nicole, is half Russian and half Austrian and started out as a dancer on Broadway before going into real estate. His father, Marc, is from Nimes in France, was a journalist and worked at Unicef. He has an older sister called Pauline who is also an actor — she starred in Judd Apatow’s The King of Staten Island — and has a lively Instagram feed, sharing book recommendations about ethical banking as well as clips of her dancing. They are close and Chalamet says he is lucky to have a sister who has taught him about feminism.

They spent their summers in France and Chalamet is bilingual, he “dreams in French”. He went to LaGuardia, a performing arts school, where he briefly went out with Lourdes Leon, Madonna’s daughter. Then he studied cultural anthropology at Columbia, but dropped out after a year because his acting career was taking off. He started out playing people’s sons, first the vice president’s spoilt child Finn in Homeland in 2011 and then Matthew McConaughey’s son in Interstellar in 2014.

Call Me by Your Name was the role that changed everything. He was Bafta and Oscar-nominated for his emotionally intelligent performance, and launched a thousand memes for the scene where he does unspeakable things to a peach. From there came a partnership with Greta Gerwig and Saoirse Ronan — they worked together on Lady

Bird and Little Women. It was Lady Bird which made Wes Anderson want to cast Chalamet in The French Dispatch. He told GQ Magazine that he was impressed by how thoughtful he was while filming, “he would pause and find a new

angle… and surprise you with something new, completely unexpected and perfect”. Chalamet bonded with Frances McDormand and went for steak with her and her husband Joel Coen, grilling him about film. He seeks out the wisdom of industry elders, going for lunches with Larry David and bonding with Oscar Isaac while making Dune.

Wonka has been his most controversial film yet. He follows in the footsteps of Johnny Depp, who starred in a remake in 2005 (back when Depp was an uncomplicated actor). Chalamet went out with Depp’s daughter, LilyRose, in 2019 after they were in a film called The King together. He was upset when they were photographed by the press on a boat in Capri and people said their relationship was a PR stunt. Last year, he was linked to the Mexican actress Eiza González, who was in I Care a Lot and Baby Driver, but is believed to be currently single.

What’s next? O’Sullivan says “it’s hard to say if Chalamet is getting better as an actor. He’s been flawless from the beginning. It’s maybe truer to say that a prestige blockbuster like Dune doesn’t blunt what makes him special; that he is (as yet) incapable of appearing ubiquitous.” Dune is already the toast of the box office, making nearly $130 million so far, and there will be a sequel. He’s also filming a project with Succession director Adam McKay, co-starring with Jennifer Lawrence and Leonardo DiCaprio. But Londoners are looking forward to when 4,000 Miles is rescheduled at the Old Vic. With Chalamet on board, it will be the hottest ticket in town.

#timothee chalamet #timothée chalamet

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lastsonlost · 4 years

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Oh my God Elon said something we don't agree with. God I hope Apple and Starbucks disagrees with you too.

Elon Musk, the bombastic head of Tesla and SpaceX, exhorted his 34 million Twitter followers on Sunday to “take the red pill.” The comment was quickly embraced by his followers, including Ivanka Trump, President Trump’s elder daughter, who announced that she had taken the pill already.

The exchange referred to a scene from “The Matrix,” the 1999 science fiction action film. But the meaning of “red pill,” and the idea of taking it, have since percolated in online forums and become a deeply political metaphor. And with Mr. Musk and Ms. Trump, the phrase is now lodged more fully into the mainstream.

So Tesla owners are having to grapple with a car that carries a few new connotations.

“Honestly, Musk is becoming a liability and the Tesla board needs to seriously consider ousting him,” wrote Markos Moulitsas, author of “The Resistance Handbook: 45 Ways to Fight Trump.” “And I say that as a proud owner of a Tesla and a SpaceX fanatic who truly appreciates what he’s built.”

So what is the red pill?

[ I hope your fuckings Tesla explodes. You don't have to be in its but you should be forced to walk everywhere.]

In “The Matrix,” the movie’s hero, Neo, played by Keanu Reeves, is given the option to take a pill that lets him see the truth.

The world he thinks is real turns out to be an entertaining lie; his body is actually trapped in a farm where people are being used as human batteries. Taking the blue pill would let him return to living in the ignorant but blissful lie, while taking the red pill would launch him into an arduous journey through a brutal but fulfilling reality.

The idea of taking the red pill later grew to mean waking up to society’s grand lies. It was embraced by the right, especially by members of its youngest cohort who organized and spent their time in online forums like Reddit and 4chan.

The truth to be woken up to varied, but it ended up usually being about gender. To be red-pilled meant you discovered that feminism was a scam that ruined the lives of boys and girls. In this view, for a male to refuse the red pill was to be weak.

Red Pill forums were often filled with deeply misogynistic and often racist diatribes. The more extreme elements splintered into groups like involuntary celibates (“incels”) or male separatists (Men Going Their Own Way, or MGTOWs). Conferences like the 21 Convention and its sister convention, Make Women Great Again, sprang up to gather red-pilled men. Being red-pilled became a sort of umbrella term for all of it.

As these conversations seeped into the mainstream, pulled along by a host of other internet language from message boards to establishment Republican conversations on sites like Breitbart, the meaning broadened and got watered down. To be red-pilled can now mean being broadly skeptical of experts, to be distrustful of the mainstream press or to see hypocrisy in social liberalism.

What’s going on with Elon Musk?

Most recently, Mr. Musk has been a prominent skeptic online of the coronavirus, calling the response to it a “panic” and “dumb” and wrongly predicting close to zero new cases by the end of April. As of Tuesday, there were more than 90,000 deaths from the virus and more than 1.5 million cases in the United States alone.

The night before Tesla’s earnings were released last month, Mr. Musk tweeted an anti-lockdown rallying cry: “FREE AMERICA NOW.” He had a showdown with local lawmakers, threatening to move Tesla headquarters out of California and deciding to reopen a Tesla factory in Fremont, Calif., despite the local county’s restrictions to prevent the virus from spreading.

When State Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez objected on May 9 with an obscene tweet, Mr. Musk responded, “Message received.”

Defending his reopening of the Tesla factory, Mr. Musk wrote on Twitter that he would be on the factory floor and offered himself up to authorities. “I will be on the line with everyone else,” he posted on May 11. “If anyone is arrested, I ask that it only be me.”

This month, he and his girlfriend, Claire Boucher, the musician known as Grimes, had a child and named him X Æ A-12. And Mr. Musk announced that Tesla shares were too high and that he was selling almost all his possessions to the point of owning no house.

“We have a phrase, it’s E.M.M. — Elon Moves Markets,” said Bill Selesky, an analyst at Argus Research who tracks how Mr. Musk’s messages impact Tesla’s stock price. “People want to listen to him no matter what he says. He tends to be thought of as a great visionary.”

Mr. Selesky said even Mr. Musk’s detractors parsed every tweet and utterance. “Plus, if you have a Tesla, nobody can ever complain about you because you’re good for society,” he added.

This leads back to Mr. Musk’s message on Sunday, telling his followers to take the red pill.

Do ‘The Matrix’ creators like this?

No. Lilly Wachowski, a “Matrix” co-creator, told Mr. Musk and Ms. Trump in colorful language on Twitter that they could take a hike.

Is ‘red pill’ a Silicon Valley thing?

To some extent.

There has long been a strain of men’s rights activism in Silicon Valley, exemplified by James Damore, a former Google engineer who was fired after writing a memo arguing that the reason there are fewer female engineers is biological differences rather than discrimination.

Mr. Damore became a folk hero for a simmering movement in the technology industry of people who thought the efforts toward 50/50 representation at tech companies were absurd. Cassie Jaye, who calls herself a former feminist, made a 2016 documentary about the Red Pill community and said it had flourished in the tech world.

But the more common phrase in Silicon Valley to signal contrarian thinking is “narrative violation,” which is often used to describe an event that cuts against the mainstream media’s consensus on a topic. The idea is that there is a story being told about the world and how it works, but that the story is too simplistic to be entirely true and an event occasionally pops up to remind people of that.

Why does any of this matter?

Few products today are as deeply entwined with a person’s brand as Tesla is with Mr. Musk, and so his comments can feel personal for Tesla drivers.

“As a Tesla owner, a 47-year-old male recovering from Covid-19, and someone very concerned simultaneously about the environment, the economy, my kids’ and my parents’ future, this ain’t great,” said Jeff Guilfoyle, a product manager at FireEye in San Diego. “This disease is no joke, and the long-term health impacts are unknown for survivors.”

Many have implored Mr. Musk online to stop.

Raja Sohail Abbas, the chief executive of an outpatient psychiatric clinic in Allentown, Pa., wrote: “I am a Tesla owner and love the company. You have to stop being an idiot about this.”

“Tesla owner and Fan here, but this was a disappointing tweet despite the frustrations of and holdups,” added Alex Goodchild, a D.J. in Brooklyn. “Words are weapons especially when used during situations like the one we’re currently experiencing. You sound just like Trump in this tweet.”

The debate has riven the Tesla community.

“The last two months, there’s been this polarization in the Elon Musk fan club,” said Paula Timothy-Mellon, a technology consultant who moderates that LinkedIn-based fan club, which has 22,000 members. “There are those who are believers in these California guidelines and there are those in favor of his push to re-open Tesla.”

Many have implored Mr. Musk online to stop.

Raja Sohail Abbas, the chief executive of an outpatient psychiatric clinic in Allentown, Pa., wrote: “I am a Tesla owner and love the company. You have to stop being an idiot about this.”

The debate has riven the Tesla community.

Driving a Tesla often carries great symbolism for the owner (and observers).

“If you own a Tesla, you feel you are directly connected to Elon Musk and people think that Tesla owners are directly connected to the politics of the C.E.O.,” said Sam Kelly, a Tesla owner and investor based in Spain who posts under the name SamTalksTesla.

He added that he did not think the red pill comment meant any big new political awakening from Mr. Musk.

Asked to explain his thinking, Mr. Musk pasted an image of the Urban Dictionary definition of red pill in an email. It read:

“‘Red pill’ has become a popular phrase among cyberculture and signifies a free-thinking attitude, and a waking up from a ‘normal’ life of sloth and ignorance. Red pills prefer the truth, no matter how gritty and painful it may be.”

Seriously get a refund, buy a prius and

GET THE FUCKS OVER IT!

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louiseisfucked · 5 years

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A “masculine” product under fire for going against toxic masculinity

You may have seen this image going around the internet as a meme since last year. This ‘Bro! Not cool’ meme surfaced ever since January 14th, 2019 when the Gillette YouTube channel uploaded a short film titled "We Believe: The Best Men Can Be". In one scene of the video, a man tries to approach a female passer-by only to be immediately stopped by another man. But, why exactly did this 1 minute and 45 seconds long video become famous?

On contrary to the advertisement that Gillette released back in 1989 titled “The Best A Man Can Get”, the video starts with images of remarkably troubled looking men as a narrator refer to bullying, sexual harassment, and toxic masculinity. Instead of showing clips of masculine men’s dreams like how the old advert did, this one depicts a series of very ugly and negative behaviors, including bullying, fighting, sexual harassment, and blatantly interfering with a woman speaking in the workplace. The ad goes on to state it is time for men to stop making excuses and to renounce the idea that “boys will be boys.” Gillette concludes that by calling for and showing images of men holding other men accountable and emphasizing that the boys of today will be the men of tomorrow.

It took me on surprise when I saw that the new advert received a lot of backlashes. It currently has 1.5 million dislikes on Youtube and not to mention thousands of hate comments. Because it has been 31 years since the old advert was released and changes have been going around our society, it was expected that people would’ve agreed that gender norms should no longer exist. But apparently, I was wrong, and to be honest, it’s understandable.

Men have been expected to be masculine, physically strong, and dominant for as long as humanity can remember. Wrongdoings in which included violence and actions that degrade women have been normalized around our society. Simply, because ‘men will always be men’. It is also true that movements have been made to be going against this standardized society but, they were mostly by women and human rights activists or what the conservatives would call ‘leftists’ Therefore, for a well-known profit-oriented company, with their product being marketed towards masculine males, telling them what it is to be masculine or to scolding them for not doing enough to address an issue, might cause an issue.

Some of the responses on Twitter caught my eye,

I could understand Candace and Piers’ points of view. Sometimes it is hard to see the bad in things if you’ve been projected by it your whole life. But, let’s discuss what they might see as what shouldn’t be an issue in this video:

1. Scene of two young boys wrestling (0:33) It is safe to assume that Candace thinks kids wrestling is normal because it’s normal for young boys to have physical fights as that’s what they were born to be anyway, to be tough. Or probably those two young boys were just playing around and no one could get hurt. In my opinion, it is never okay to include violence, whether it’s playing around or not. Even though games and movies do play a part in depicting violence to youngsters, it does not justify them to do it in real life as it would be rooted in their young minds that it is okay to hurt others.

2. Showing dominance to hinder women (0:28) There’s this term called ‘mansplaining’. Wikipedia defines mansplaining as: “(of a man) to comment on or explain something to a woman in a condescending, overconfident, and often inaccurate or oversimplified manner". They often repeat what the woman had to say just to show they’re righteous or would be heard more. Frankly, a woman could tell you just how many times they had to deal with this in their workplace or environment. This habit and many other things are not universal flaws of the male gender, just the intersection between overconfidence and cluelessness where some portion of that gender gets stuck. Therefore, by acknowledging this flaw, it is possible to prevent this from happening to our generation.

3. Sexually teasing women (0:25) Do I need to explain the wrong in this? It degrades women, it causes women to be easily targeted for sexual harassment, and it’s one of the many reasons 78 women are getting raped each hour, and that is in the U.S alone.

Despite all of that, there had been a discussion about whether a company like Gillette must address this issue. Quoting relevantmagazine.com, “But the second is that giant corporations are not to be trusted with the moral development of society, and the best thing they can do to correct our culture’s much-needed shift away from consumerism is get out of the way.”

Yes, having a profit-oriented company to be discussing this issue is like skating on top of thin ice for them. Some even speculated that this was a way of their marketing.

I’ll let a quote by Mark Borkowski answers this one, “It is no longer enough for brands to simply sell a product, customers are demanding that they have a purpose – that they stand for something,” he said. “Masculinity is a huge part of Gillette’s brand, and there is a recognition in this ad that the new generation is reworking that concept of masculinity, and it is no longer the cliché is once was.”

Toxic masculinity, bullying, and sexual harassment exist. These issues should be left in 2020. But it won’t be happening soon if nobody’s starting the conversation.

As Pankaj Bhalla, Gillette’s North American brand director said "We expected debate. Actually, a discussion is necessary. If we don't discuss and don't talk about it, I don't think real change will happen.”

"Because the boys watching today will be the men of tomorrow," I shivered as a voiceover said at the end of the ad.

#gillete #feminism #toxic masculinity #masculine #society #analysis #essay #why we need feminism

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kashif1550 · 4 years

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Post 1 - Multicultural America

1.What is the subject of your film, program, or internet/social media selection? Provide a brief summary, describing your selection and how it relates to our course topics, readings, and screenings.

For the first post, I picked the movie District 9. District 9 is 2009 Sci-Fic action movie that is set in South Africa. The story starts off with a UFO, filled with aliens inside, touching base in a major city in South Africa.

Naturally, the entire world does not react well to the new arrivals. However, as the movie progresses, it becomes obvious that the aliens are a metaphor for a marginalized race. The location for the film couldn’t have been perfect enough, given the history of South Africa. Apartheid ended in 1994, a mere fifteen years before the start of this movie. It was not that long ago where segregation was a reality for South Africans.

The reality for the aliens in the movie is not a far cry from the discrimination the South African government expelled on to their own citizens. Aliens aren’t allowed to enter certain areas, aren’t allowed to have intercourse with humans, aren’t allowed to eat in the same locations, and many other inhuman restrictions as well.

The movie tries to end on a positive note, showing us there is a way for oppressors to understand the oppressed. Unfortunately, it was only because a human was mutating into an alien and subjected to the same discrimination.

In a dark, pessimistic way, it is saying that perhaps we cannot see the true harm in the unfair power dynamic unless we’re no longer benefiting from it. It shows how things won’t change until those with the privilege step up and decide to dismantle the system they gain from.

Comparing this movie to something from my reading, I would have to connect it to the Jim Crow laws in the United States. African Americans were faced with harsh treatment at every front. Obtaining a job was difficult, dating a white person could lead to being lynched and legal troubles, and the creation of a mixed-race child was a crime.

Both the movie and the harsh factors of segregation show that the reason for their hatred, for their inhuman actions, and unjustifiable behavior came from ignorance. False narratives and stereotypes were used to justify the nature of the oppressive system they created, thinking that would bring order in their world. In the end, it only caused disorder until justice was served.

2. Referring to related and appropriate readings and screenings from the course, describe how your selection represents racial and ethnic identities (and if applicable, intersectionality). In what ways does your selection for each of the journal entries generate a conversation regarding race, ethnicity, and cultural diversity?

For the movie I picked, you can see how it relates to racial and ethnic identities through the science fiction element of aliens. In their world, the grievances usually associated to immigrants and minorities is pigeonholed into one singular group: the new extraterrestrial life form. They are written off as violent, lazy, rampant in childbirth, and destructive in nature. The humans question their intelligence often, though ironically want the high-tech guns the aliens have brought along with them.

The way newcomers, arriving to the United States, have been treated throughout history has shown that it isn’t always pleasant. For Chinese immigrants, many faced push backs from gold miners, essentially forcing them into the laundry market because of the over taxation placed on the mines. A more comparable experience would be with indigenous people consider, for most of the plot of the movie, the South African government is trying to relocate the aliens to a new reservation. Similar to that outcome, Native Americans were also uprooted from their land and told to move to another plot of land. In the movie, the South Africans do not believe they can live in the same area as the aliens. And for President Andrew Jackson, he felt the exact same way about Native Americans.

“In Jackson’s view, Indians could not survive living within white society […] Drive by ‘feeling of justice,’ Jackson declared that he wanted ‘to preserve this much-injured race.’ He proposed a solution—the setting aside of a strict west of the Mississippi ‘to be guaranteed to the Indian tribes as long as they shall occupy it.” (Pg 81, Takaki)

Andrew Jackson saw the relocation as essential for Native Americans for them to intergrade into American culture. He offered land for the Natives to farm on, believing that somehow that would encourage them to opt to a farming lifestyle like white settlers. What Andrew Jackson and the South Africans in this movie both struggle to grasp is this: consent.

No one asked Native Americans if they wanted to be uprooted from their homes and forced on to reservations. And same for those aliens, they were not given any say on their relocation. When it comes to the opinions of minorities and other marginalized groups, it’s common to see the trend of dehumanization and removing the ability of choice.

When you strip a human from the ability to make choices on their own and use their voice, then do you even see them as an equal at all? No, of course not. People you make choices for are children, meaning that was what they saw in these individuals. They saw them as incapable, but not because they actually were, but because of ignorance and racism. For the movie, specism.

3.How does your selection relate to the course readings, screenings and discussions? Reflect upon the representation and circulation of racial and ethnic identities in popular visual culture. Your reflections should be attentive to the intersectionalities of race, ethnicity, sexuality, religion, socioeconomic class and gender.

As I have stated above, the movie District 9 connects to Jim Crow laws, segregation, and Native American removal. Aliens were limited from participating in activities humans were allowed to and prevented from prospering. They were negatively depicted in the media and rarely shown in a positive light. Media, as history has shown us, plays a vital role in perception.

In the earlier stages of Hollywood, the depiction of minorities was played by white actors, making a mockery of the ethnic group they were portraying. Due to years of boxing people of color into outrageous caricatures, it has left a lasting impression in media—even to this day. Some may brush off media as a fleeting set of pictures, unable to capture and captivate our lives, but one should not be so dismissive of the images that come their way.

“People who have never interacted with a black family in their communities more easily embrace what the media tells them. […] In worst case scenarios, black boys and men actually internalize biases and stereotypes and, through their behavior, reinforce and even perpetuate the misrepresentations. They become victims of perception.” (Donaldson, The Guardian)

Naturally, since we were children, we internalize the images we see. There’s a great deal of impact on the content we consume. Because of redlining, it has made communities just as closed off to diversity as they were before. To this day, someone could live their life not truly being friends with someone from a particular ethnic or racial background. What exactly will that person think of said individual if all they have to learn about them are bad depictions from movies? The result is detrimental. That is why representation of all groups, races, religions should be embraced. When you show a narrow view on something, you are only hurting the viewers in the long run.

For me, speaking as a Muslim, it’s surprises me how often people misrepresent my faith. It’s even more upsetting at how closely connected my own religion is to those who try to dismantle its existence. I have lost count of the amount of times I’ve heard my friends get shocked that I believe in Jesus, Abraham, and the same biblical stories they heard of growing up. The thing is, if they would only open their eyes and not accept the first negative thing they heard about us, then maybe they could see more similarities than differences. In the end, that is what everyone in a marginalized group hope for—acceptance and inclusion.

Sources:

Page 81, Takaki

A Different Mirror: A History of Multicultural America

Takaki, Ronald

The Guardian

Donaldson, Leigh

Title: When the media misrepresents black men, the effects are felt in the real world (https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/aug/12/media-misrepresents-black-men-effects-felt-real-world)

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fuckyeahevanrwood · 6 years

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Evan Rachel Wood and Julie Taymor on Why Across the Universe ‘Scared the Shit Out of People’

The Beatles have always had a cinematic presence, from the 1964 faux-documentary A Hard Day’s Night to the experimental shorts of John and Yoko. But no director has ever used the Beatles’ music as inventively and audaciously as Julie Taymor, whose 2007 film Across the Universe is being rereleased in theaters for three days by Fathom Events. Using 33 Beatles songs and minimal dialogue, Across the Universe tells the story of three young adults in the late 1960s: Lucy (then 17-year-old Evan Rachel Wood), an all-American girl who wants to change the world; her brother Max (Joe Anderson), a rebel who gets dragged into Vietnam; and Jude (Jim Sturgess), a working-class artist from Liverpool who follows his dreams across the ocean. Their stories coalesce in New York City, where they befriend blues musicians, acid heads, radical extremists, a closeted lesbian, and Bono in a ridiculous mustache. Fictional characters become entangled in real events (the Detroit riots, the Columbia student protests), using songs from every Beatles era to express a nation’s political and psychedelic awakening.

Taymor’s film is as visual as it is musical. The magical-realism elements Taymor brought to her Oscar-winning film Frida and her Broadway hit The Lion King are blown to epic proportions in Across the Universe. “I Want You” becomes a nightmare ballet about Max’s recruitment and subsequent dehumanization in Vietnam, ending with an image of soldiers carrying the Statue of Liberty as they crush villages underfoot. “Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite” is a psychedelic circus featuring collage animation and 20-foot puppets. “Because” scores an underwater love-in. Even in more traditionally constructed scenes, the scale is breathtaking; the entire film was shot on location and, according to Taymor, employed 5,000 extras.

Across the Universe also runs well over two hours — not a big deal in this age of bloated superhero adventures, but in 2007, the length of Taymor’s cut alarmed Sony executives. Without her approval, the studio test-screened an alternate cut that eliminated much of the film’s political content and minimized the nonwhite supporting characters. Taymor fought back hard, and while she won final cut, she was smeared in the press (industry publications used words like “ballistic” and “hysteria”) and, she says, torpedoed by Sony’s marketing department. The film polarized critics (Roger Ebert loved it, Ann Hornaday hated it) and opened to limp box office, failing to recoup its budget.

And yet — in the past decade, the audience for Across the Universe has grown, its inevitable cult-classic status realized. At the present moment, the film’s portrayal of ’60s activism and art as weapons against government oppression seems especially resonant. In the lead-up to the Fathom Events release, Vulture had a candid conversation with Taymor and Wood about the unusual process of making the film, the bizarre logistics of Wood’s first nude scene, the ongoing challenges facing female directors, and the potential influence of Across the Universe on millennial activists. (Given the timing of the interview, we also threw in a few Westworld season-finale questions.)

There’s no film quite like Across the Universe, so I’d imagine making it was a unique experience. Evan Rachel Wood: It was one of the best experiences of my life. I was 17. Once I heard Julie was making a Beatles movie, I remember just thinking, “There’s nobody else that can do this. And I won’t let anybody else do it!” It just had to be. And then I got the part and we all spent about seven or eight months in New York together.

Julie Taymor: We rehearsed it like a normal musical in theater … and it bonded everybody. I’ll never forget Evan walking in the hallways with this Bowie T-shirt, because at one point we’d asked David Bowie if he was going to play Mr. Kite. And I think that at the moment Evan was really like, “Bowie, Bowie!”

ERW: Well, yeah, I mean I’m always like, “Bowie, Bowie.” But I was also all about Eddie Izzard. I was always doing Eddie’s stand-up in the hallway.

JT: One of the things that I remember profoundly — this was during the Iraq War right? And it was really touchy subject. When we did the march down Fifth Avenue to Washington Square, the anti-Vietnam War march with the Bread and Puppet Theater puppets — everybody thought they were marching against the Iraq War. Now this is what I wanted to say: When Across the Universe came out ten years ago, it was right before Obama. And maybe this is just my own feeling, but I feel that this movie was very popular amongst young people. And I think people were very inspired by what the youth of America did in the 1960s, how they really made things change.

ERW: I even remember that a lot of people in the neighborhood wanted us to leave up the peace signs and protest signs, because it wasrelevant.

I have a vivid memory of going down to the Lower East Side when you were filming and seeing a whole block transformed into a ’60s fantasy of New York City. It was magical, like stepping into a dream. Were there any moments that felt like that to you as you were making it? ERW: Oh my God, all of it. Certainly the scene where we stumble upon the puppets and the blue meanies and Eddie Izzard started coming out and singing. That was when I was really on a different planet.

JT: We shot that in Garrison, New York, and all of those were papier-mâché handmade puppets, giant puppets. There is almost no CGI in that section. It’s all real.

ERW: I think “I Want You” is one of my favorite numbers in the movie.

JT: I was walking on a beach in Mexico when I came up with the idea — I’d done the Haggadah at the Public Theater years before, where the slaves are carrying the pyramids across the sands of Egypt. And I got the idea of all the young boys in their underwear and their army boots supporting [the Statue of] Liberty, and the image of Liberty charging through the jungles of the Third World, mashing and stepping and destroying all the trees. You know, the irony of us being this country that says we’re bringing Liberty, at the same time we’re bringing it at the expense of many people.

Evan, what was involved in the scene where you and Jim Sturgess are singing “Because” and making out underwater? ERW: Speeding up the songs, and then learning how to sing them really fast. So the scenes were like, [sings] “becausetheworldisrounditturnsmeon…” And then she slowed it down so that it looked like it was in real time. So we filmed underwater all day. We would just take a deep breath and dive under and then try to get the song out as quickly as possible.

JT: And she also had to work hard to hide her breasts, right Evan?

ERW: Oh, I always had to hide my breasts. I could only show one boob because it was PG-13. Two made it an R but one was fine! And that was my first nude scene.

Julie, you fought the studio to get final cut on this film, when Sony wanted to shorten it. I was reading some of the press from that time, and I was noticing how gendered the language is when they write about you and this movie. There’s a Variety article that says, “She went ballistic to save her child.” JT: Thanks for reminding me. I’d almost forgotten how awful that was.

I’m sorry to bring it up! But I think it’s important to acknowledge that double standard. JT: You know, for me, I’ve been through it. Being a successful director on Broadway brings out all kinds of knives and hatred. But the misogyny business is true. And I put blinders on and just tried to do the work. I think every director, male and female, has babies, you know what I mean? It’s not just women. But you’re right. It is sexist dialogue. We loved our movie. And it wasn’t that it wasn’t working. It was working. They just smelled the money and thought if we dumb it down, literally, and get rid of the politics — I saw a cut where they got rid of the Detroit riot. There was no black child who was killed.

ERW: Prudence wasn’t even gay!

JT: Yeah, they cut “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” so many of the things that I knew young people and everybody would love. Evan had a line — this was one of the first signs of the kind of difficult road that would come. Lucy, who’s 16 or 17, is walking home from school and her best friend says that one of their friends got pregnant. And Lucy says, “I’m never having children. Having children is narcissistic, like putting out carbon copies of yourself.” I remember my best friend, when I was 16, telling me that. I mean, that line came from experience. But the studio said at the time, “Oh, Lucy can’t say that, it will make her so unlikable.” No, will make her likable! Because you have that sign that when she’s a high-school student, that she will become someone like Gloria Steinem or Jane Fonda, that she’s going to become an activist.

The other thing is the poster. The poster that we’re releasing it with now is the underwater poster, the psychedelic poster of them kissing. The one that they put out, the strawberry, everybody who made this film hates. Well, if we’re being honest! [Laughs.] The problem with it is, I think what happens in Hollywood is they think that you can only market to 14-to-15-year-old girls. And we always said this movie, even if it’s PG-13, will appeal from 10-year-olds up through the parents. I mean, the Beatles appeal to all ages. If you watched the karaoke James Corden video with Paul McCartney in Liverpool, all these people in the bars were from 16 years old up to 80. And I’m hoping that with this rerelease this summer, we’ll see the teenagers and the young adults, and also the families.

Evan, you tweeted recently that you’ve been struggling to sell a movie that you will direct with a script written by women. ERW: Oh my goodness, the responses are just breathtaking. I mean, split down the middle: Some people totally get what I’m saying and some people are so angry with me! But the thing is, what I was trying to say was not a sense of entitlement like, “I should have this,” even though I do believe that I could make a really great film. It was just to expose what these rooms are like that you walk into over and over and over again. And until you have the more inclusive pitch rooms with women and people of color and LGBT representation, then you’re not going to see this movie.

And I hear people saying all the time, “Why aren’t there more female directors, why aren’t there more stories about women?” So I wanted to say, “Hey, just so you guys know, I’m really trying. And nada.” I’m starring in the film, I co-wrote it, I’m directing it, I had an amazing cast, I had amazing DPs, an amazing crew. So everybody that read it was like “absolutely,” but the only people that are wishy about it are financiers, because it is very female-driven. And I do believe that they just don’t understand this film. So that’s what I was trying to say.

You did get a number responses that are just people saying, “ I want to see that film.” ERW: And I did get a lot of inquiries after that tweet. But also lot of people saying my idea is probably not very good, and you’ve never directed anything, and how dare you. I do believe that if I was a man with 25 years’ experience in the industry, who’s worked with some of the greatest directors in the history of film, and who’s lived and breathed it since I was a child — to say that I would have nothing to offer, when I know there are other people with a penis, with less than I have backing me up, that get green-lit, that’s where I’m taking issue. [Laughs.] Because it does seem like there’s an imbalance and it’s unfair. And that’s what I was trying to call out.

Julie, do you have any advice for Evan in this situation? JT: Listen, I’m going through the same thing after 40 years. Evan knows, there’s a movie that I wanted to make with her, a female-driven epic love story. Haven’t been able to do that one. I mean, we still try, and I’m doing [a film adaptation of] Gloria Steinem’s My Life on the Road that will be extremely female-driven! And we will be making it this fall. But I have a number of films that have not gotten off the ground and things that I’ve wanted to do. And it probably has a lot to do with the ballistic-baby concept. Even if people realize that the press has misogynistic writing or fear of a powerful woman, unless they meet you personally — and then I often get people being so surprised! [Laughs.] But I work with a lot of the same people over and over and over again, so I have a very good team and very good friends and collaborators. Evan and Jim, all of the kids on Across the Universe, we’ve stayed close.

Quite honestly, ten years ago, when women were in big positions, they were not supporting other women. They were terrified of losing their job and they had to support the boys’ films. I don’t need to name names, you can all go look at it, but it wasn’t necessarily better that women were at the top because they were frightened of making a mistake and that they would then be called out for having supported chick flicks or women’s things. It was fear. For me it’s more. I have the scarlet letter of “A” on me — not “adultery,” but “art.” Even though The Lion King is the most successful entertainment in the history of all entertainment. [Ed. note: Broadway’s The Lion King has grossed $8 billion to date, more than all the Star Wars movies combined.]

ERW: And Across the Universe is a masterpiece.

JT: And it’s also been very, very successful without a whole lot of press. I mean, Frida didn’t get press either.

ERW: We even said that when we were making it: “This is going to be a cult classic, this is going to be something that throughout the years will continue to grow and grow.”

JT: The studio is all new people now, and they love it. And they’re very supportive. But I think it’d be great if they would just rerelease the film completely, because it didn’t go out enough as a movie. But they’re dipping their toe in with Fathom. If it does really well this summer, maybe they will do a real rerelease, which would be amazing because I do feel like it’s time. The success of La La Land — well, that had two very big stars in it, but it really comes on the heels of what Across the Universe did ten years ago.

ERW: I want to add about Julie, that she has such a strong vision and she holds true to her conviction. She’s a real artist. And yes, that does scare the shit out of people, because they don’t understand.

JT: Well, they think I’m not interested in commercial success. You gotta be kidding, of course I am!

ERW: Exactly. They underestimate what people want and how art moves people. I mean fuck, look at the Beatles, they changed the world. But I’ve worked with male directors that are complicated and have the same kind of conviction and they’re kind of hailed for it. But when you’re a woman, and you say, “I’m not going to do that, it’s not right,” they’re like, “Well she’s crazy. She’s difficult.” Julie is not crazy or difficult. She’s an artist. And I’ve worked with male artists that are similar that don’t get any shit for it.

JT: Well, thanks Evan. The thing is that we all knew what the movie was, and we presented it all. Maybe the falling Vietnamese ladiessurprised the producers because that was the first day of shooting. That I can understand, kind of gulping for a moment. But the rest of it, we did what was on paper and what we rehearsed. I didn’t change anything. I just did what I intended to do. I remember Amy Pascal jumping up and down in the first screening at Sony, just going, “It’s the best thing I’ve ever seen.” And the marketing woman was thrilled. Somebody else got in there and just smelled the money. But at any rate, you heard that already. And yes, I have gone through it and I will continue. But there’s enough great people wanting the kind of films that I want to make and the theater that I want to make. So you know, I’m not dying here.

All right, I know I can’t wrap this up without asking some Westworld finale questions. Evan, is that okay with you? ERW: Ha! Of course.

How much time did you and Tessa Thompson spend practicing Dolores together? ERW: That is so funny. You know it’s hilarious because we became really good friends at the beginning of season two, and then we started hanging out, and then all of a sudden we realized that we were gonna be the same person [laughs] and it was very strange! This show is so funny. Because they didn’t tell us anything.

But I thought she did an amazing job. I would send her recordings of myself doing the dialogue, and then she really sold it. I thought it was great. But you know, we weren’t really doing scenes together and I was basically playing a different character this season. So when she found out she had to kind of be me, she came to me and said, “Wait — what have you been doing?” [Laughs.] I’m like, “OH! Oh right! Yeah, I’ve got to do the voice for you and everything!” So I just made recordings and she really made it her own, it was good.

Ed Harris told us he has no idea what’s going on in the showwhile he’s making it. Have you had a similar experience? ERW: I had no idea what was happening in season two. At all. And we shot out of order, so most of the time — I mean, it was insane to be an actor on season two. I don’t know how I feel about it. [Laughs.] But it was a ride. We stopped reading the call sheets. We would show up and Jeffrey and I would ask what episode we were in. It was kind of that level of — we just lived in the moment in whatever scene that we were doing, and that’s how we made it.

#evan rachel wood #interviews #across the universe #vulture #julie taymor #interviews 2018

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transboygenius · 6 years

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Closet Case (Nick and Betty fic)

Nick Dean and Betty Quinlan walked into the Candy Bar establishment, hand in hand together like a couple. As a matter of fact, they were a couple. The two preteens only dated for about a week now, getting along perfectly fine. They even had fun, such as talking and holding hands, but so far they never kissed. The closest their lips had ever met was during their acting rehearsals for MacBeth In Space. These last couple of days haven't been so bad, like, Nick hasn't broke his leg while skating ever since. Jimmy and Cindy didn't seem to mind their relationship with each other, except maybe all of Nick's heartbroken groupies. Any of them would've had a chance with him, but of course, the prettiest girl in school got to him first.

Before they had became an item, every kid speculated that Cindy would be the lucky one. 'Fortunately, Nick never had any interest in Cindy at all. She was obnoxious, bratty, demanding, and physically harmful. From what Nick recalled a couple days back, he did witness Jimmy covered in ace bandages, with a very angry expressive Cindy walking besides him, on the day their little "date" took place. Breaking his leg every now and then is better than having Vortex as his girlfriend. The reason why Nick had always been nice to her was because his mother always told him to be a gentleman towards females. All the girls that swooned over him greatly annoyed him to a degree, but he'd never tell them to "piss off," or give any rude remarks.

Betty was more understanding, and respected his personal space. Aside from her questionable beauty, she was kind. Needs a little work on personality, but kind. If there's anything to contrast between Cindy and Betty, Betty can be beautiful and nice at the same time. That would explain Cindy's bitter jealousy. While Nick isn't exactly the nicest kid on the block, he's still someone you could easily make friends with. These two were a dynamic duo, based on how people looked at them. They were both good looking and popular. So far, that's the only things they have in common. If that's the case, what had started the relationship in the first place?

Nick and Betty sat at a table reserved for two, and Sam handed them their menus. Nick opened his and browse through the selections. He took a quick glance at Betty, who's still staring at him, and Nick gave a shy grin in return. He lifted up the menu so he could hide his face. Nick was nervous about the whole thing. No, it's not date jitters, it's not butterflies in his stomach, it's only the thought that he may be making a mistake here. This whole week, with Betty as his girlfriend, had been boring. All they do is talk, and nothing else. Rumors have been flowing that the more juicer stuff happens when no one's looking, but that doesn't happen neither. They don't flirt, kiss, anything out of romantic games. They do hug, however. Lucky for him, Betty never pressured him into those things, nor has she bothered asking. Maybe she's just shy. After all, Nick is her first real boyfriend, so she's not ready for anything physical.

Betty is a real sweetheart, and no boy would ever deny a date with her, but why does Nick feel so miserable? Their interactions are quite bland. They don't have any chemistry at all, just similar high standards. No matter how drop dead attractive Betty might be, Nick just doesn't feel it. The truth was Nick had no interest in Betty at all. The reason for this relationship in the first place was a different purpose, but that's personal matters. He could end it right now if he wants, but he wouldn't want to break Betty's heart. She seems happy with them being together. She believes they make a perfect pair. Whenever the two reunite with each other, Betty is the one to run towards him with opened arms, and then hug him like he was her only comfort zone. Being in his presence was ecstasy to her. There was nobody else she'd rather be with than him. She even told him at some point that he made her the happiest girl alive, even if their relationship was made up of the most simplest things but romantic. He's never seen anyone so happy.

He didn't wanna ruin any of that for her. He must continue being a gentleman to the opposite gender. But, if Betty's gonna be happy, what about him? Eventually, she will loose patience for that much waited kiss. If Nick keeps this up, for let's say a couple of years, they'd probably get married too. Imagine forcing yourself to settle with someone you didn't return feelings for. Could Nick continue to live like this just for Betty's own sake? On second thought, it's Nick's life, so he should decide how to live it. He needs to tell Betty, but let her down gently. Maybe she'll understand like any civilized human, maybe she won't. If she doesn't take it well, Nick swears on his grandfather's grave that he'll do anything to make it up to her. It could take months, and he wouldn't give up until she's completely over him. Maybe he could hook her up with another nice boy. Carl needs someone that isn't Neutron's mom. Just because Nick can be a jerk, doesn't mean he's a bad guy.

Their orders arrived to the table; a sundae and a milkshake. While Betty was spooning ice cream into her mouth, she noticed Nick just twirling the straw around in his drink, looking depressed, despite being happy moments ago. She asked if anything was bothering him, but however, Nick ignored her question. He was gonna break it to her now, but then regretted it afterwards. He fears that if Betty receives the news at this moment, not only will she be torn, but he'll have to live with guilt on his conscience. Thinking about it right now made him sweat. Betty hated seeing her current boyfriend like this, so she asked again. Nick just shook his head. Betty knew he was lying, so she tried one more time. Nick took a deep breath, but still refused to look direct eye contact with Betty. She's got him cornered. This is gonna take all day unless he says something.

"Betty, don't take this personal, okay? I mean, you have every right to be angry with me, and heck, you can even hit me if you like. I don't know how long I can live like this." "What are you saying?" "I don't think... ...I'm..." "Go on." "I don't think, I'm attracted to you. ...in any form."

Nick got his response alright, but not what he hoped for. She stood up, planted both hands on the table, then her voice carried across the room. It sounded like relief.

"It's about time you said something!"

The yelling caught everyone's attention, leaving the couple frozen. A public eatery isn't the best place to discuss this. To save them from any further embarrassments, Betty grabbed Nick's arm, pulling him with her out of the Candy Bar.

"YOU BETTER HURRY BACK AND PAY! YEAH!" Hollered Sam.

Betty took Nick into the alleyway of the Candy Bar, where they can have their conversation in private.

"What is this?" Asked Nick. "I don't feel attracted to you either." Betty replied. "Huh? Wait a minute, is it because I'm not good enough for you?!" "NO. It's just that... Something else." "Is that something else a someone else?" "Probably, although there's plenty of fish in the market." "Could you just make sense already?" "You see; Boys aren't my preference." "Then why did you just say there's plenty of fish in the sea?" "Market." "Whatever!" "Nick... I'm gay." "What?" "I like girls, okay!" "So, so you're what we call... ...'lesbians.'"

Betty cleared everything for Nick. She never set her eye on any boy. All the attention young men give her, such as flirting and catcalls, although from the outside she looks like she's amused, on the inside she just wants to scream. These male species annoyed her. She doesn't want them, she'd rather have a girlfriend if it weren't for her parents' homophobic nature. Jimmy wasn't any worse from those disrespectful pigs, but he still got under her skin. The poor clueless genius use to be infatuated with her, going through any measurements just to win her over. Even though she's nice to him, she always mocked him behind his back for his lovesick antics. Betty told Cindy she could have Jimmy just so she'd get him out of her hair. The day Nick asked her out on a date, she told him she'd think about it. At first she wanted to reject him, until her mother found out the proposal came from the most handsomest kid in Retroville, so she pestered her daughter into accepting the offer. Next thing she knew, she got stuck with, of all things, a boy.

"So, now that you know, I guess you'd rather not be around me anymore. The fact that I'm... ...gay." "Wait, Betty, you don't understand! We're in the same boat together!" "You mean you're gay, too?" "*Deeply sighs* Yes. I like guys. Just as you like girls. That doesn't mean I'm looking for a boyfriend." "If you're gay, why did you asked me out?"

Nick had been gay all his life, since he was five, but of course he never knew at the time. It was his emotionally abusive father that drove him into the bad boy facade he's best known for today. Not to mention his dad was heavily homophobic, and would mentally scar his son with degrading words that put him into an insecure state. Nick never allowed himself to show any affection towards the same gender. He knows he'll get judged, it'll ruin his reputation, and like his father said, "Society doesn't want f*gs, they wanna burn them!" What makes Nick question his existence more is the lack of people, people like him, on television/movies. He’s never even met another gay kid (up until now). According to adult "logic," being gay is gradually an explicit thing. So instead, he adapted this "ladies' man" image as a method of convincing people that he's straight, but it always leaves him unhappy in the end. Nick Dean; the king of cool, and macho extraordinaire, likes boys. How ridiculous it sounded. If this secret ever came out, his friends would turn against him, girls would cringe whenever they saw him, and every boy would start avoiding him. He'd be a bigger outcast than Jimmy Neutron. He just wants to be himself.

Since that day Betty and Nick rehearsed their parts for MacBeth In Space, and almost kissed, rumors spread throughout the school about them being secretly into each other. Nick likes Betty, but in a more platonic fashion. Repeatedly for months, Nick has denied his feelings for Betty to be romantic. Everybody began to get suspicious. Nick thought they were all thinking, "If Nick isn't into a hot fox like Betty, then he must be gay!" "Ewwwwwww, you mean he dates boys?!" "If that's true, then we finally found someone worse than Nerdtron!" To keep his true identity from slipping, it was about time he'd give them what they wanted.

"You know, Nick, you really didn't have to go through that trouble." "What was I suppose to do?! I panicked!"

Nick slouched down against the wall, and buried his face into his knees. Betty joined him. She could've sworn she saw a tear drip from his eye.

"Look, Nick. It's hard for me just as it's hard for you." "No shiz, Sherlock." "And, having to deal with the same experience, I don't know how to help you with this problem. There's nothing I can do to make you feel any better." "I feel SOOOO much better now. Thank you." "But, I do know one thing. We're stronger than we are. What our preferences mean doesn't make us any different from anybody else. It's bigotry that makes people think otherwise. Maybe someday, we can stop caring how people would judge us, and just be happy as ourselves, and maybe even fight for our rights just to show how strong we really are. We should learn to not fear everyday, and be comfortable with who we are. Just remember, there are still kids just like you. Take me, for instance."

Betty's speech wasn't the most inspiring, but it did help him feel a little less awful about himself. She's right. He shouldn't let his own insecurities drag him down, and just feel proud in his pride. If Nick ever wants to come out, he needs to make sure he's ready for it, maybe in a few years. Not only that, but he'll also talk his friends into understanding him better. Just in a matter of time, there will be no more hiding. His father's no longer around to tell him what to do. Everyone is free to be themselves.

"It's... nice having someone to talk to. I appreciate it, Betty." "The least I can do for another gay buddy." "Say, what do you say we call this whole relationship off and stage a breakup, in front of the whole school?" "Hmmmmmm, maybe tomorrow. That'll give me time to rehearse it. I'm gonna miss you buying me stuff." "Don't push it. Well, I'm gonna go pay off our orders." "Oh, and Nick? One more thing may I ask?" "Yes?" "Did you ever had a crush on Jimmy?" "Please, there's plenty of nerdy boys I'd rather kiss, and Neutron ain't one of them." "Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight." "Him, and Sheen."

#Jimmy Neutron #Boy Genius #TVverse #TVEE #Nick Dean #Betty Quinlan #FanFic #Story #One Shot #Alternate title: Nick Dean Vs. The Homo Sapiens Agenda

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ladystylestores · 4 years

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Why gay-friendly Taiwan is a creative haven for LGBTQ art

Written by Oscar Holland, CNN

Around this time last year, Taiwan was gearing up to host Asia’s largest ever Pride parade having just become the first place on the continent to legalize same-sex marriage.

More than 4,000 gay couples have since taken advantage of the landmark legislation. But beyond being able to tie the knot, the island’s LGBTQ communities are feeling the positive effects of the law in various other ways.

For Taiwan’s LGBTQ visual artists, for instance, the past year has heralded new forms of creative expression, according to photographer Su Misu, whose explorations of gender identity, sexuality and bondage range from candid nudes to fantastical subversions of religious imagery.

“More and more people are exhibiting their own self-identity, using their creative voice to express individuality,” she said over email. “People are also beginning to construct the histories of the LGBTQI movement in Taiwan, calling for others to participate and study it. All this can help the gay community, which focuses on different issues, to thrive.”

“I am a fake but my heart is true,” a 2016 image by Taiwanese photographer Su Misu, whose work explores gender identity, sexuality and bondage. Credit: Su Misu/Chi-Wen Gallery

Even before the marriage legislation, LGBTQ artists in Taiwan enjoyed a level of creative freedom denied to their counterparts in many parts of Asia.

Beyond the legal rights of expression enshrined in its constitution, Taiwan ranked 34th in the world (and 2nd in Asia, after Thailand) in a gay happiness index based on the experiences of 115,000 men from around the world. A recent report on workplace equality by the island’s oldest registered LGBTQ organization, Taiwan Tongzhi Hotline Association, found that the territory’s art sector was among the industries in which respondents felt “most comfortable” about coming out to co-workers.

Coupled with the island’s generous public arts funding, this atmosphere has produced a welcoming environment for LGBTQ art. And in 2017, just months after Taiwan’s constitutional court paved the way for the marriage law by declaring same-sex marriage a legal right, the gay art scene was afforded rare mainstream attention with the exhibition “Spectrosynthesis — Asian LGBTQ Issues and Art Now.”

Ku Fu-Sheng’s 1983 “The Room at the Top of the Stairs,” on show at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei, in 2017. Credit: Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei/Sunpride Foundation

Billed as Asia’s first major LGBTQ art show, the program featured over 50 works by 22 artists (from places including Hong Kong, mainland China and Singapore, as well as the Asian diaspora) addressing a range of topics, from forbidden love to sexual violence. Staging the show at a large public institution, Taipei’s Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), meant that LGBTQ art had a rare opportunity to reach mainstream audiences, according to Patrick Sun, founder of the non-profit organization behind the show, Sunpride Foundation.

“If we do a show at a private gallery then I’m sure all my friends would come,” he said in a phone interview from Hong Kong, where he’s based. “But we want to talk to the general public.”

A ‘political victory’

For one of the show’s participants, 44-year-old avant-garde filmmaker Su Hui-Yu (no relation to Su Misu), the show represented a “political victory” that proved especially heartening for young artists.

“In Taiwan, it represented the changing of the wave (that) even a public museum would love to curate the show. It’s more symbolic in a political dimension than in (an) artistic one. But I think it encouraged art students a lot.”

A still from “Nue Quan” by Su Hui-Yu, an artist who explores LGBTQ issues and themes in his work. Credit: Su Hui-Yu / Double Square Gallery

For Su’s generation, however, the gay art scene has long been flourishing. Although straight, his work has often explored LGBTQ topics. One of his most recent projects saw Su film unrealized scenes from “The Glamorous Boys of Tang,” a homoerotic fantasy movie featuring orgies, killings and an exorcism, that was released without parts of the original screenplay, as Su believes they were deemed inappropriate in conservative 1980s Taiwan.

“There was already a strong tradition of queer study (and) queer art in Taiwan since the 1990s (and) since the lifting of martial law,” he said, over email, of the repressive military rule that formally ended in 1987.

A still from filmmaker Su Hui-Yu’s project “The Glamorous Boys of Tang,” which was based on unrealized scenes from the screenplay of a 1985 homoerotic fantasy movie of the same name. Credit: Su Hui-Yu

It was this decade that saw the opening of LGBTQ-friendly venues like IT Park and the Gin Gin Bookstore, which has housed a gallery space in Taipei for more than 20 years, alongside an explosion in gay literature, nightlife and academic discourse. But while gay artists were free to practice their art, conservative attitudes persisted.

When same-sex marriage legislation was first proposed in Taiwan in the early 2000s, it faced vociferous opposition. So-called conversion therapy, a pseudoscience that attempts to “treat” homosexuality, remained prevalent (it was only formally banned in 2018). Organizers of a 2003 exhibition of works made by gay artists during consensual art therapy even felt it necessary to clarify in the show’s notes: “This exhibition is not to show LGBT people need to be cured.”

Participants at Taiwan’s annual gay pride parade pictured outside the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall in Taipei in October 2019. Credit: Sam Yeh/AFP/Getty Images

In the euphoric aftermath of the passing of the same-sex marriage bill in 2019, it was easy to forget that 67% of voters had, in fact, rejected the idea in a referendum a year earlier. The Taiwanese government pressed ahead with the law, though some rights enjoyed by heterosexual couples, such as cross-national marriage, are still prohibited.

A scene from digital artist Wang Jun-Jieh’s “Passion,” which was screened at the “Spectrosynthesis” show in Taipei in 2017. Credit: Wang Jun-Jieh

For 36-year-old photographer 526 (a pseudonym pronounced “five two six”) it was family pressures rather than societal ones that stopped him from openly practicing his art, which includes intimate portraits of trans and LGBTQ subjects taken in their own bedrooms (pictured top).

“Even today, my parents are still afraid to tell their friends what I am doing,” he said over email. “It’s frustrating that even your parents can’t see your value, or tell others that their son is gay. I hope they can be brave, because … we need stand out and let all the people know: We are here.”

Nonetheless, he said that visibility of LGBTQ art is getting “better and better,” and that Taiwan’s progressive environment “makes it a good place to make art.” He pinpoints the legalization of same-sex marriage as not only a landmark in his artistic identity, but in his life more generally.

“I couldn’t have imagined that (the law) would happen in my lifetime,” he said. “If I’d known this would happen, I would probably not have stayed in the closet for 31 years.”

A beacon for Asia

The relative freedoms of Taiwan’s LGBTQ artists come into sharp focus when compared to their Asian neighbors. In Japan and South Korea, there are no real legal restrictions, though conservative attitudes prevent their respective scenes from thriving in quite the same way. At the other end of the spectrum, homosexuality remains a punishable crime in parts of Southeast Asia, including Malaysia, Brunei and some areas of Indonesia.

In between, there are a number of places that ostensibly allow gay art to be displayed, but where censorship remains a significant barrier. In mainland China, for instance, authorities have been known to periodically close down LGBTQ exhibitions without explanation.

Meanwhile in Singapore, where artists are permitted to exhibit LGBTQ-themed work despite the fact that gay sex is illegal (a law that is rarely enforced), censorship is also common. In 2016, authorities removed a number of items, including sex toys, from artist Loo Zihan’s exhibition “Queer Objects,” at the Institute of Contemporary Arts Singapore, due to obscenity laws. (A few years earlier, Loo responded to an age restriction placed on one of his shows by photocopying visitors’ ID cards and incorporating them into the displays.)

The idea that Taiwan can serve as a beacon for the rest of Asia was a key idea behind “Spectrosynthesis.” Speaking to CNN at the time, curator Sean Hu expressed his hope that the Taipei show would have “a ripple effect across Asian society.”

Installation view of Hou Chun-Ming’s “Man Hole” at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei, for the show “Spectrosynthesis.” Credit: Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei/Sunpride Foundation

Indeed, a second edition of the show has since been held in Thailand — again at a mainstream, publicly-funded venue, the Bangkok Art and Culture Centre — featuring almost three times the number of artists. A third is planned for Hong Kong in 2022, with Sun expressing hopes for them becoming a “new normal” in other Asian cities.

With Taiwan attempting to establish itself as a commercial arts destination (the launch of the Taipei Dangdai art fair in 2019 signaled that the island may hope to challenge Hong Kong’s domination of the Asian market), the island’s gay artists could, in turn, benefit from the growing international profile.

One such artist, Tzeng Yi-Hsin said she experienced an uptick in international inquiries after two of her images were featured in “Spectrosynthesis.”

“I didn’t get a lot of response or feedback from inside Taiwan, but right after the show, I received more interest and approaches from people outside,” she said, citing interest from Japanese collectors and Western media.

Tzeng Yi-Hsin’s “Olympia,” based on a Édouard Manet painting of the same name, is one of a series of pictures that saw the artist and photographer reenact famous paintings from art history. Credit: Tzeng Yi-Hsin

Another shot from Tzeng’s series recreates Manet’s “Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe” (The Luncheon on the Grass). Credit: Tzeng Yi-Hsin

However, Tzeng also expressed reservations about the exhibition’s heavy focus on male artists. Only three of the 22 participating artists were female, with just one identifying as transgender. (Sun welcomed the critique, saying he “took it to heart” and is ensuring that his foundation makes “a conscious effort to include female and transgender artists.”)

For the 41-year-old artist and photographer, this curatorial decision represents a wider problem facing the arts in Taiwan: That gay male artists continue to take a disproportionate chunk of the limelight.

“The majority of curators and collectors are male, and, from my perspective, they are more interested in gay male art,” she said, adding: “We all notice that there are a lot of gay artists (in Taiwan), but if a curator asks, ‘Who’s a lesbian artist?’ No one knows.”

Eschewing labels

According to Su Misu, an oversimplification of LGBTQ issues is another obstacle facing Taiwan’s gay artists. She identified a variety of difficult or challenging topics that remain hard to address in mainstream forums.

“Issues deemed ‘taboo’ need more visibility, including drug abuse, AIDS, sex workers, transgender people, disabled people and BDSM practitioners,” she said, adding that exploring these topics could help challenge “inaccurate stereotypes about sex and gender.”

Art that conforms with the public’s existing ideas about LGBTQ communities will, she said “only reinforce labeling minority groups.”

Pride 2020: A history of the rainbow flag

Even the concept of LGBTQ art itself may be a generalization said Tzeng, who doesn’t recognize the existence of a gay art “scene,” per se, in Taipei. While some of her work directly addresses LGBTQ themes, much of it is unrelated to her sexuality, such as her iconoclastic images defacing classic paintings or photographs of pop cultural and political figures like former Taiwanese leader Chiang Kai-shek.

“I never identified myself as a gay artist. I know my identity, but I’m just doing my own work.”

Tzeng’s “My Dear Lovers” series saw her “defacing” various images and photographs. Credit: Tzeng Yi-Hsin

It’s a point also raised by Sun who, despite organizing LGBTQ-themed exhibitions, said that artists’ primary concern is “not to be labeled in expressing what they want to say.” But whether that means organizations like his might, in an ideal future, no longer need to exist, is a moot point given the widespread challenges facing Asia’s gay artists, he said.

“In the next 10 or 15 years we have a lot of work to do,” he said. “So we can worry about that when the world has changed!”

Top image: An intimate portrait by Taipei-based photographer 526.

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thecinephale · 7 years

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Best Movies of 2017

I’m so excited that many of the great films this year did so well at the box office and are such a big part of the awards conversation. I’m grateful that every year brings great works of cinema, but it’s even better when a bunch of people actually get to see them.

This is the first year I’m not counting miniseries. The lines are becoming too blurred between TV and film and also nobody needs me to say again how much I love Jane Campion and Top of the Lake: China Girl.

Still need to see: All the Money in the World, Berlin Syndrome, Graduation, Happy End, In the Fade, Loveless, Lovesong, Prevenge, Princess Cyd, Professor Marston and the Wonder Women, A Quiet Passion, Slack Bay, Staying Vertical, Thelma, Woodshock

If your favorite movie isn’t on this list maybe I didn’t see it because a sexual predator was involved or maybe it was just a really crowded year with a lot of really good movies!

Honorable Mentions: -Battle of the Sexes (dir. Valerie Faris and Jonathan Dayton) -The Beguiled (dir. Sofia Coppola) -Call Me By Your Name (dir. Luca Guadagnino) -Colossal (dir. Nacho Vigalondo) -Columbus (dir. Kogonada) -A Fantastic Woman (dir. Sebastian Lelio) -Good Time (dir. Josh and Benny Safdie) -Landline (dir. Gillian Robespierre) -Lemon (dir. Janicza Bravo) -Logan Lucky (dir. Steven Soderbergh) -Parisienne (dir. Danielle Arbid) -Phantom Thread (dir. Paul Thomas Anderson) -Wonder Woman (dir. Patty Jenkins)

15. Planetarium (dir. Rebecca Zlotowski)

The first two movies on this list got fairly bad reviews so take my opinions as you will. And I get why many struggled with this film. Not only is it dealing with a wide swath of issues, but it’s also doing so with a variety of different tools. It dabbles in the occult, but it’s not a horror movie. It’s a period piece, but feels of the present. It suggests romance, suggests betrayal, suggests familial tension, yet… But here’s what’s great. It’s gorgeous. With some of the best cinematography of the year (Georges Lechaptois), some of the best production design of the year (Katia Wyszkop), and easily the best costumes of the year (Anaïs Romand) it’s compulsively watchable. Combine that with Natalie Portman’s incredibly grounding performance and I was more than willing to go along with Zlotowski as she explored the history of images, the power of images, and the danger of images without committing to a conventional structure.

14. It’s Only the End of the World (dir. Xavier Dolan)

I don’t know how anyone could love Dolan’s other films and dislike this one. It’s such a perfect embodiment of Dolan’s career thus far. Dolan’s films are operatic because he understands that for individuals their problems are operatic. Pretty much every family has conflict, disagreements, scars, but that can’t be dismissed so easily when they are OUR conflicts, OUR disagreements, OUR scars. I love how much respect Dolan always has for that truth. The cast is filled with French cinema royalty and they fully live up to the material’s grounded melodrama.

13. The Lure (dir. Agnieszka Smoczynska)

There’s one key reason this vampiric Polish horror-musical retelling of The Little Mermaid works in a way that other adaptations fall short. Sure, the sheer audacity of that genre mashup makes for a fascinating and unique viewing experience. But what ultimately makes it work emotionally and thematically is that it’s about two mermaids. This was always intended as the initial concept was a horror-less, mermaid-less musical about the Wrońska Sisters (who wrote all the songs in this). But still Smoczynska and her screenwriter Robert Bolesto really manage to keep all that’s wonderful about the source material while contextualizing its complexity. I’ve softened on the Disney version over the years, but it still can be painful watching Ariel change herself for a man (especially when one of those changes is not speaking). Here the presence of her sister, sometimes judging, always worried, creates a circumstance that allows this film’s “little mermaid” to make the realistic mistakes of a teen girl in love with a boy and in hate with herself, without the filming giving its seal of approval. There’s no judgment one way or the other. It’s just real. All that aside this is a vampiric Polish horror-musical retelling of The Little Mermaid. Like, come on. Go buy the Criterion edition!!

12. The Rehearsal (dir. Alison Maclean)

This is the only film on this list that isn’t available to watch. I was lucky enough to see it at the New York Film Festival two years ago, then it had a one week run at Metrograph, then nothing. The real shame is that this isn’t some avant-garde headscratcher to be watched in university classrooms and backroom Brooklyn bars. This is a deeply humanistic, very accessible movie that almost demands wide conversation. And given its setting at an acting conservatory I especially wish all the actors in my life could watch it. Well, hopefully it pops up on some streaming site someday. But until then check out this early Alison Maclean short film that’s equally wonderful albeit wildly different in tone (this one is more like feminist Eraserhead): Kitchen Sink (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lt58gDgxy9Q&t=1s).

11. Novitiate (dir. Margaret Betts)

The history of cinema is a history of queer subtext. But it’s 2017 and while it may be fun to speculate whether Poe Dameron is gay and I’d be the first to say “Let It Go” is a perfect coming out anthem, it’s no coincidence that the best queer allegories of the year ALSO had explicitly queer characters. This film in particular is so special because it’s both the story of a young woman’s repressed sexuality and a story about how faith of all things is comparable to said sexuality. Sister Cathleen’s mother does not understand her affinity for Jesus the way many parents do not understand their children’s sexuality or gender. While coming out stories are a staple of very special sitcom episodes, I’ve never seen one that captures the pained misunderstanding the way this film does. Part of this is due to wonderful performances by Julianne Nicholson and Margaret Qualley and part of it is that religion is oddly the perfect stand-in for queerness… even as it represses queerness within this world. The movie begins with a series of flashbacks that feel stilted and conventional in a way that’s totally incongruous with the rest of the movie. It’s unfortunate because otherwise this would’ve been even higher on my list. But this is Betts’ first film and the majority of it is really special. And while I do think she’ll make even better films in what will hopefully be a long career, this one is still really worth checking out. I mean, I haven’t even brought up Melissa Leo’s frightening and absurd (yet somehow grounded?) performance that makes Meryl Streep in Doubt look like Amy Adams in Doubt.

10. The Florida Project (dir. Sean Baker)

As marketing extraordinaire A24 has managed to spread this film to a wider audience, they’ve made a lot of fuss about this film’s political depiction of Florida’s “hidden homeless,” Baker’s approach of mixing professional and non-professional actors (shout-out to Bria Vinaite who deserves as much awards attention as Willem Dafoe), and how the film “feels like a documentary.” And while I’m glad this strategy has worked, I tend to balk at the tendency of marketers and critics alike to call any movie with characters who aren’t all rich and/or white “like a documentary.” But regardless of its realism which I feel in no position to comment on, it’s certainly a great film about childhood and fantasy and how sometimes it’s easier to be a parent to everyone except your own kids. And not to build it up too much if you haven’t already seen it, but the ending is truly one of the best endings in recent years, not only in and of itself, but how it contextualizes and deepens everything that came before.

9. Whose Streets? (dir. Sabaah Folayan)

This is an exceptionally well-constructed film. I feel like most documentaries in this style have great moments but show a lack of restraint in the editing room and/or struggle to find a clear narrative. But this film moves along at an exceptional pace while still feeling comprehensive. Every sequence feels essential even when the scope expands beyond the two central individuals. This can be credited in part to the editing, but the succinctness wouldn’t be possible if it weren’t for the footage captured. The intimate moments we’re able to watch are stunning and enhance the already high stakes of the surrounding film, the ongoing narrative of the country. This is an essential reminder of the humanity behind activism, the sacrifice behind news stories, and that for many people political engagement is not something to do with an open Sunday afternoon but a necessary part of survival.

8. Their Finest (dir. Lone Scherfig)

Easily the best Dunkirk-related film of the year, this is the rare movie about movies that doesn’t feel self-satisfied, but instead truly captures the joy of cinema and storytelling. It’s odd to me that romantic melodrama, a genre so celebrated when it comes to classic film, is often written off as fluff in contemporary cinema. Yes, this movie is romantic. Yes, this movie is wildly entertaining. But it’s also painful, it’s also telling a story of women screenwriters we haven’t heard before, it’s also showing how powerful art can be as an escape and a mirror in difficult times. If you’re interested in filmmaking and/or British people, check this out on Hulu. Gemma Arterton is really wonderful and Sam Claflin is good eye candy if you’re into that sort of thing.

7. Starless Dreams (dir. Mehrdad Oskouei)

This documentary about a group of teenage girls living in an Iranian “Correctional and Rehabilitation Center” is proof that sometimes the best approach to the medium is simplicity. Oskouei pretty much just lets the girls talk. But it’s truly a testament to his abilities as a filmmaker (and person) and the girls’ vulnerability and storytelling prowess that the movie remains compelling throughout. As the girls tell their stories it becomes clear that the center isn’t simply a prison, but also almost a utopic escape from the daily horrors they faced outside. Both options are so completely insufficient when compared to the lives these young women deserve this realization is enraging. And while the film takes place in Iran it doesn’t require a lot of effort to realize young women have similar stories and circumstances all over the world. This movie is on iTunes and I really, really recommend checking it out. The subject matter is heavy, but because the girls are allowed to determine the narrative it never feels maudlin or unbearable and at times is even quite funny and joyous.

6. Raw (dir. Julia Ducournau)

I really appreciated how Marielle Heller’s The Diary of a Teenage Girl captured the all-consuming lust of teenagehood. So, um, think that movie, except cannibalism. A lot of cannibalism. I feel torn between being honest about how truly gross this movie can be and pretending otherwise because I really don’t want to scare anyone away. I’ll put it this way. It’s really, really worth it to watch this through your fingers if you even maybe think you could handle it. Because it’s just a really great movie about being a teenage girl, discovering sexuality, being away from home for the first time, having a sister, having a first crush, a first sexual experience, feeling completely out of control of your desires and needs. Hey, even Ducournau insists this isn’t a horror movie. So don’t eat anything beforehand, but definitely check this out.

5. Get Out (dir. Jordan Peele)

I hardly need to add any analysis to what has easily been the most talked about and written about movie of the year. But I just need to say that it makes me so happy that a socially aware horror movie (the best subset of my favorite genre) not only made a huge amount of money but is also considered an awards frontrunner. That is so wonderfully baffling to me and a testament to the greatness of this movie. Many great horror movies capitalize on people’s fear of otherness, but those who are othered in our society are much more likely to be victims than villains. That Peele managed to show this without ever feeling like he was exploiting real pain is truly an accomplishment. The tonal balance this film achieves is certainly something I’ll study when I make a horror movie writing back to Psycho, The Silence of the Lambs, Sleepaway Camp, etc.

4. Faces Places (dir. Agnès Varda, JR)

Agnès Varda has spent her entire career blending fact and fiction, opening up her own life for her art. But there’s something different about this film which is likely to be her last. While so much of her work places her vivacious spirit front and center this film feels almost like a cry of humanity. Oddly enough I’d compare it to Mike Leigh’s Happy-Go-Lucky in that it seems to say, “Don’t fetishize my happiness, don’t mock my joy, don’t infantilize me, just because you can’t enjoy life like I can.” I look to Varda as the kind of artist (and person) I want to be in how open she always seems to be. But what this film made me realize is that part of that openness is how sad she can be, how angry she can be. Varda is often called “the grandmother of the French New Wave.” I guess this is the only way the film community knows how to contextualize a woman being the one to start arguably the most influential film movement. Varda is the same age as all those guys! She’s not the grandmother! She just happened to make a bold, experimental film about five years ahead of the rest of them. By ending with Godard, and pairing up with JR who is basically an incarnation of Godard and friends as young men, Varda is really exploring her place in film history and the world, and how difficult it is to be to be a pioneer. No country has more contemporary films directed by women than France and this is in a large part due to Varda. But being the one to create that path is exhausting. I realize I’m making what’s easily the most life-affirming, humanist film of the year sound like an angry, self-eulogy, but I think this aspect of the film and Varda’s career should not be ignored. If you’ve never seen anything by Varda, this film will read very differently, but still be wonderful (and honestly more joyous). I recommend seeing it, watching 20 of her other films, and then seeing it again.

3. The Shape of Water (dir. Guillermo del Toro)

The trailer for this film shows the main character, Elisa played by the always wonderful Sally Hawkins, doing her daily routine. Alarm, shining shoes, being late to work, etc. But even the redband trailer leaves out one of her daily activities: masturbating. Maybe it’s odd to associate masturbation with ambition, but the choice to show that early on and then repeatedly seems like a perfect microcosm of why this film is so great. It’s not afraid. Guillermo del Toro has made a wonderful career out of celebrating “the other” through monster movie pastiches, but this to me is his very best film because of how willing it is to be both clear and complicated. This movie is many things, but one of those things is a queer love story. And even though human woman/amphibian man sex is maybe even more taboo to show on screen than say eating a semen filled peach, this movie just goes for it. I’m not sure if this movie succeeds in everything it tries to do but I so deeply admire how much it tries. Not only is one of Elisa’s best friends gay, but we spend a significant amount of time getting to know that character and see that maybe his obsolete career hurts him even more. Not only is Elisa’s other best friend black, but we see how being a black woman affects her specifically in what is expected of her versus her husband. Fantasy and sci-fi often use real people’s struggles as source material for privileged protagonists, and while this film certainly does that, it works because the real people are still shown on screen. Also del Toro is a master of cinematic craft so this is really a pleasure to watch.

2. Lady Bird (dir. Greta Gerwig)

Before diving into this specific film it’s worth noting that this is one of six debut features on this list. It’s so exciting that we’re hopefully going to get full and illustrious careers from all of these people. But when it comes to Gerwig it feels like we already have. She has been proof that if the film community is going to insist on holding onto the auteur theory, they at least need to acknowledge that actors and writers can be auteurs. Gerwig is known for being quirky, but this really sells her talent short. She is clearly someone who has a deep understanding of cinema and, more importantly, a deep understanding of people. Part of being a great director is casting great actors and then trusting them and it’s so clear that’s what happened on this film (let me just list off some names: Saoirse Ronan, Laurie Metcalf, Lucas Hedges, Tracy Letts, Stephen McKinley Henderson, Lois Smith, I mean come on). They really make her wonderful script come alive. This is a great movie about female friendship and a great movie about mother-daughter relationships, but more than anything it’s a great movie about loving and hating a hometown. Even though I’ve only seen the film twice I think back on moments in the film like I do my own adolescent memories. They feel familiar even when I don’t directly relate to them. This movie feels big in a way only a small movie can.

1. Mudbound (dir. Dee Rees)

This is when my penchant for hyperbole really comes back to bite me in the ass. I use the word masterpiece way too much. But when I say Mudbound is a masterpiece I don’t just mean it’s a great movie I really loved that I recommend everyone see. I mean, it’s The Godfather. It’s Citizen Kane. It’s the rare movie that has a perfect script, perfect cinematography, perfect performances, is completely of its time, and will stand the test of time. If we ever get to a place where art by black women is justly celebrated it will be in the 2070 AFI top 10. It’s that good. Part of what sets the movie apart is its almost absurd ambition. It breaks so many movie rules (not only does it have heavy narration, but it has heavy narration from multiple characters), and yet it always works. I love small movies, I love weird and flawed movies, but there is something so spectacular about watching something like Dee Rees’ third feature. I’m so excited to watch this movie again, to study it, to spend a lifetime with it. I feel like it really got lost in the shuffle by being released on Netflix, but that also means right now it’s on Netflix and you, yes YOU, almost certainly have or have access to Netflix. So you could watch it. Right now. Watch it. Stop reading. Turn the lights off. Find the biggest TV or computer screen you have so you can really appreciate Rachel Morrison’s cinematography and watch it. It is perfection wrapped in a bow of perfection and I really must insist you watch it.

Television!

Still Need to Catch Up On: The Girlfriend Experience (S2), Queen Sugar (S2)

Honorable Mentions: -Big Little Lies -Broad City (S3) -Girls (S6) -Insecure (S2) -Master of None (S2) -One Mississippi (S2) -Orange is the New Black (S5) -Search Party (S2) -Shots Fired

10. Twin Peaks: The Return 9. Jane the Virgin (S3/4) 8. Transparent (S4) 7. Better Things (S2) 6. I Love Dick 5. The Good Place (S1/2) 4. Sense8 (S2) 3. Crazy Ex-Girlfriend (S2/3) 2. Top of the Lake: China Girl 1. The Leftovers (S3)

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fandomsandfeminism · 8 years

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When Yuri!!! on Ice was first beginning, it was compared endlessly to Free! Iwatobi Swim Club, but now that both shows are completed, does that comparison hold up?

Text Transcript under the cut

Hey, so do yall remember in the build up to the Spring 2013 season when Kyoto Animation announced that THE SWIMMING ANIME was going to be a full series and the internet, particularly Tumblr, lost its collective shit? I do. I definitely do.

And I’ll be honest, I watched both seasons of Free! Iwatobi Swim Club, and I enjoyed it immensely. I’d probably enjoy the movie too if it EVER GOT A NORTH AMERICAN RELEASE. (Come on Crunchyroll, funimation. Why are yall like this?) I liked the pretty boys and the pretty animation and the fun opening and ending and holy. Shit. the fanservice.

So when, in the build up to the Fall 2016 season, Studio Mappa announced Yuri!!! On Ice, I was pretty excited. It seemed to promise a lot of the same things that Free had: Cute boy sports anime with fanservice and pretty animation. It promised to be like Free! But the Pool is Frozen, the Boys are back in town 2.0 Winter edition. Hell yeah.

Now, those qualities don’t inherently mean that I was going to love the show. Heck, 2016 Summer’s attempt with Cheer Boys was boring as hell. I don’t think anyone even watched it.

But never, really, in a thousand years, did I think that Yuri!!! On Ice was going to be BETTER than Free. But, let’s be honest. Yuri!!! on Ice is better than Free. Much, much, better than Free.

*Please note: Spoilers ahoy!*

So here is my thesis, if you will: Free! Iwatobi Swim Club and Yuri!!! On Ice, despite their obvious similarities, have 3 very distinct differences which cause Yuri!!! on Ice to be more enjoyable and satisfying for me personally: their treatment of same-sex attraction, the development and variety of their secondary characters (particularly women), and the maturity and realism of their emotional depth.

How the shows treat same-sex attraction. For this section, we need to talk about Queer Baiting. What it is, how to spot it, and why, as a queer fan, it kinda sucks.

So definition first. In general, queer baiting is a term used to describe an attempt by canon creators to woo queer fans and/or slash fans by hinting at LGBT+ characters and/or relationships but with no intention of actually making it canon. This is done either by introducing a character who is coded as queer in some meaningful way, or by hinting that two same-sex characters might be attracted to each other but never confirming these things. Worst yet, these HINTS tend to be explained away as jokes, as humor. Often, instead of getting same sex couples, the idea of same sex couples is made into a joke.

Now, the term Queer Baiting comes from a very western context. It is a concept developed in the West to talk about western media, and there is some debate about whether or not that specific term can be applicable to anime and eastern media. Especially since a lot of anime that engage in this aren’t trying to bait QUEER fans, but are specifically trying to bait straight women who like watching hot guys make out. (But then, that could be argued as being partly true in the west as well.) Regardless of whether or not the specific term Queer Baiting is the best to use here, or if we should go with Fan Baiting, or some other alternative, the underlying concept is the same: A show deliberately hints at a queer relationship and then never delivers in order to appeal to a wide variety of fans but lacks real representation.

So, does Free! Iwatobi Swim Club bait? Hell yes it does. It very intentionally seems aimed at Japanese Fujioshi, Japanese straight female fans who like slash and yaoi, and, to an extent, queer fans, who are incredibly interested or invested in seeing same-sex relationships in media. (There’s a whole conversation to be had about fujioshi culture and how it objectifies queer men, but that’s for another day.)

And let me be clear: Baiting doesn’t inherently make a show bad. If nothing else, it can lead to a very vibrant fan community. And as a queer anime fan, I fall for this shit hook line and sinker every damn time. I’m basically helpless when it comes to this stuff.

But make no mistake, baiting isn’t a good thing. It isn’t progressive writing. It isn’t diverse writing. It isn’t writing that helps positive minority representation in media. The goal of baiting it to titillate fans with emotional fan service, but not actually commit to writing lgbt+ characters.

And make no mistake, anime as a whole does not have a GREAT track record with representing lgbt+ people in positive ways. There are exceptions, naturally, but as a whole, there isn’t a lot there that is positive and well done. And if you are invested in seeing that kind of representation, constant baiting can be frustrating and disheartening.

So Free! Baits. The characters flirt and look at each other longingly and splash in the water together and take random spur of the moment vacations to Australia to meet each other’s foster families and all their emotional stakes are tied to each other and nothing. Ever. happens.

Yuri!!! on Ice though?

Yuri!!! On Ice came through for us. I think the fandom is still a little bit in shock. I’m in shock. Because like...this shit doesn’t happen. It just doesn’t happen. But here it is! It happened. They flirted. And blushed. And kissed. And rings. RINGS. YALL. ENGAGEMENT RINGS. And holy shit, the pair skate?!

We have professional figure skaters tweeting about this show and the creator talking about how Yuuri and Victor can’t live without each other for real, and how so many fans got on twitter to thank her for the kiss in episode 7 because this kind of thing just….never happens.

I...I’m sorry. It’s just so, so incredibly rare for us to get healthy positive depictions of same-sex relationships outside of the very narrow genres of Boys love (and Girls love) in anime (which can and do have their own issues). And while Yuri!!! on Ice may not always be EXPLICIT with the romantic elements of the show all the time, they are far from subtle. The repeated declarations of love, how Yuuri is skating to show his love, their love, how meeting Victor has taught him about love, how Yuuri has taught Victor about life and love, only the most hard hearted adamant could try to no-homo this pair. And since the finale strongly implied a sequel, and Kubo has said she would like to continue the story, I think it’s safe to hope for even more romantic development in the future. (Like….a wedding? Please?)

So for those of us for whom seeing depictions of same-sex relationships done well is very important, this is like, a big deal. That’s not to say that Yuri!!! on Ice has perfect same sex relationship representation and is the sole standard bearer without flaw. It certainly has pros and cons, and has it’s own place within the Japanese media landscape. But it’s certainly good, and certainly more satisfying than Free! For me as a queer fan.

But it is not all I’m going to talk about. Baiting VS canon may be the most obvious, and important, difference between these shows, it is not the only one.

2. Side characters! Are like, a thing! There are girls in this show too!

Quick! Name all the female characters you can from Free!

Who all could you think of? The teacher- Ms. Amakata, and Kou, right? Maybe you remembered that Kou has that friend, but I bet you forgot her name (It’s Chigusa). Maybe, like, the wife that Rin stayed with in Australia? Makoto’s little sister? It’s pretty scarce. 2 secondary characters, and maybe 3 tertiary ones.

And it is understandable why this is. It’s a cute boy sports anime. Any amount of time we spend giving Kou screen time is time we aren’t watching Nagisa and Rei flirt. Makoto, being total husband material, is the only one of the boys who we really see their family. Rin and Kou rarely interact. Nagisa’s family is only talked about but never seen. Haru? Was ...born from the ocean, I guess.

Amakata and Kou do have personality, and I love them. But they are only two secondary characters. Makoto’s sister only exists to characterize Makoto. You can’t describe any of her thoughts or likes or personality beyond that relationship. The wife in the couple Rin stayed with? I can’t even find her name on the internet.

Now, name all the female characters you can from Yuri!!! on Ice.

So, there’s Minako. And Mari. And Yuko. And the triplets. And Mila. And Sara. And Yuuri’s mom, Hiroko. And Yurio’s ballet teacher Lilia. All of these characters are seen multiple times, have speaking roles, and have some thought written into them beyond just what their presence tells us about the men. Yuko was the star of the ice rink when she was young. She’s a young mother who still loves skating. Minako was a dancer and owns a ballet studio, loves drinking too much and wants to meet famous skaters. The triplets are young girls who are skating otaku, are over zealous and like being on social media. We can describe nearly all of these characters in meaningful ways without even mentioning their relationships to men.

And look, It’s not a secret I’m a feminist. I like seeing well written female characters. But more than just my preference for some female characters, a lack of women can make a story feel a lot narrower, the world less fleshed out and believable. This gender disparity doesn’t break Free! By any means, and plenty of anime are incredibly girl heavy with almost no boys. We know WHY this happens too: It’s done to more aggressively market the show to an intended gender demographic. But to see a Sports anime able to include a decent number of developed female characters, I think, is a testament to the strong writing of the show and its wide appeal.

3. The emotional maturity.

The last meaningful difference between the shows is probably the most nebulous to describe. The best I can do is this: Free! Tries to capture how emotional teeangers feel about their inner conflicts in exaggerated and juvenile ways. Yuri!!! on Ice shows adults navigating their inner conflicts in more natural and healthy ways.

A lot of this can be boiled down to the character’s ages, and the assumed age of the intended audience, but I think the quality of the writing affects it too. So when the entire swim team has a melt down because they secretly suspect that Rei is cheating on them with the track team, or when Nagisa runs away from home forever because his parents want him to focus on school and not swimming, or when Rin breaks down crying all the goddamn time in season 1 because of...sexual tension with Haru? Or when Rin has to kidnap Haru for a vacation to Australia to save him from an existential crisis we all kinda...roll with it, and post gifs about all our feels, and accept it because they are TEENAGERS in ANIME so everything is really dramatic.

Now, Yuri!!! on Ice is a sports anime about ADULTS. Yuuri is 23. Victor is 27. That doesn’t mean they don’t have problems or deal with drama. But it does mean that problems are met with a sense of realism. Look, Yuuri’s dog died and he bombed his tournament and ends up crying in a bathroom stall. It’s sad, but he doesn’t try to run away and live in a tent. Macchin gets sick and might die, and Yuuri is afraid Victor leaving might make his performance suffer. But they talk about it, and Victor goes to be with his dog, and Yuuri does his best. Yuuri has anxiety that flares up, and Victor does his best to support him. When Victor is overwhelmed at Yuuri’s anxiety and messes up at being a good coach, Yuuri and him talk about it. THEY TALK. LIKE PEOPLE DO. The most emotional drama we get in the series is when Yuuri is considering retiring and cutting things off with Victor in the finale- which gets resolved by the end of that episode. But no one has to bottle up secret career ending injuries for an ENTIRE SEASON from their best-not-boyfriend because they are over dramatic high schoolers.

Ultimately this last point probably matters a lot more to me than most people. Anime as a whole is so super saturated with teenagers with hyper melodramatic emotions that having a sports show where the characters react in reasonable and healthy ways is just really nice.

So what am I saying? What’s the point? Am I saying Free! Is a bad show? No. If you like cute boys doing sports things and can stand or even enjoy the baiting, then hell yes. Watch the hell out of it. Go nuts. Draw fan art and write fic and fight about Makoto/Haru vs Rin/Haru vs Rin/Souske (RinHaru 4lyfe).

But I think it’s important that we appreciate when a show is pretty good and pretty fun like Free, and when a show goes above and beyond. When a show has real canon representation for same sex relationships, and a decent gender balance, and well conveyed emotional depth, I want us to care. I want the difference between a 7 out of ten anime and a 10/10 anime to matter. I want us to recognize when a show makes history.

So yeah. Yuri on Ice isn’t “Like Free, but the pool is frozen.” If anything, Free is “Like Yuri on Ice, but lukewarm and tepid.’

Thanks for watching this video! This channel is brand new, so any likes or comments are super appreciated. I’m really new making video essays instead of just tumblr posts, but I had a lot of fun working on this, and I hope to make more videos like it. If you enjoyed listening to a millennial feminist with a BA in English ramble about stuff I like for a while, feel free to subscribe. I will be trying to make more of these soon.

#yuri on ice #Yoi #victuuri #Free!#free iwatobi swim club #free eternal summer #Anime

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planbeeeee · 8 years

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2017 Oscar Predictions

Oscar (the statuette) is valued at $700. If a recipient goes broke and wants to sell him, they absolutely can. It just has to be back to the Academy, and for nothing more or less than $1.00. Are McChicken sandwiches still $1.04 with tax? Well, there goes poor Daniel Day Lewis’s shot at eating dinner tonight. Sell it in the open market and they’d be in over their head in legal trouble since it is illegal to sell your Oscar. “Denzel Washington, the Academy is honored to LEND you this award for your outstanding work as a lead actor.” The red carpet alone is valued at $30,000!

But let me stop pretending like Oscar isn’t valuable. Oscar winning actors and actresses go on to immediate pay increases. Male recipients can increase their value by around 81% after winning an Oscar. Female recipients don’t get as significant an increase (what else is new?), but their value goes up around $500,000 in their next movie.

So that 24-karat (magic…..couldn’t resist), $700-worth statuette does make a difference.

On to the picks…

Bee’s 2016 Best Picture Rankings & Predictions

This is the 4th straight year I’ve set out to watch each of the Best Picture nominated movies (Worth it!). Last year I had my worst Oscar predictions ever, going 3/6 in the major categories. Yet, my confidence remains unshaken.

Best Picture:

Will Win & Hope Wins: Moonlight- Some films transcend the screen. America needs to digest this film in 2017.

Lead Actor:

Will Win & Hope Wins: Denzel Washington (Fences)- No actor can dialog for that long and still captivate. The role was made for him.

Lead Actress:

Will Win & Hope Wins: Emma Stone (La La Land)- I’ll be honest, I didn’t see any of the other actresses’ performances but it’s hard to imagine beating out Emma’s singing and dancing.

Director:

Will Win: Damien Chazelle (La La Land)

Hope Wins: Denis Villenueve (Arrival) or Barry Jenkins (Moonlight)

Actor in a Supporting Role:

Will Win & Hope Wins: Mahershala Ali (Moonlight)- Just had his first baby by the way. What a weekend this could be. Go ahead and crown the man if we’re awarding his entire 2016. Killed it for Netflix as Remy (House of Cards) and Cottonmouth (Luke Cage). He and Janelle Monae also have roles in both Moonlight and Hidden Figures. Going to be a busy night for them.

Actress in a Supporting Role:

Will Win & Hope Wins: Viola Davis (Fences)- Viola Davis losing this Oscar to anyone else will put Beyonce losing to Adele at the Grammy’s to shame. There’s never been a surer Oscars bet. I’d have given her best lead actress over Emma Stone if she was nominated for it.

Can’t wait to see how it plays out tonight!

______________________________________________________________

If you have some extra time in the bathroom, here’s my breakdown of the Best Picture nominees (ranked from least favorite to favorite):

9. Hell or High Water- Just overall quite boring. No idea what makes it stand out over some of the other hits of 2016. Zootopia or 13 Hours come to mind as better films in 2016.

8. Manchester By the Sea- Don’t really get why Casey Affleck is in the conversation for Best Lead Actor here. Manchester didn’t move me in the way it was supposed to.The film didn’t sensationalize a very real, yet odd family circumstance, and I appreciated that, but I just didn’t care enough for any character to care for the film.

Now we’re getting to the nominees I actually liked.

7. Hidden Figures- Hidden Figures is a film about black women and the power of persistence. Gender and race play a role in discrimination, not just 60 years ago, but even today. The empowerment of the qualified, regardless of skin color or gender, is truly what can Make America Great Again.

6. Lion- The movie captivated me from beginning to end. Just a great mix of storytelling and visuals. I didn’t learn much from the film, other than to maybe show my mom more love, but it’s the best way of showing you that home is truly where the heart is.

5. Hacksaw Ridge- Faith is a verb. The film showed me that true Christians check their privilege at the door. If your theology prevents you from loving those that persecute you or those that are different than you, it’s time to re-examine your theology. Following Jesus means you’re never content with ‘good enough.’ Seeking to affect the life of “just one more!” until the day you die. A little cookie-cutter in its delivery but the story and performance by Andrew Garfield carried the film.

4. Fences- Fences is such a unique film driven by its acting. The deep character development goes a long way because by the end of the film I was able to see through the eyes of multiple characters. Denzel and Viola Davis were PHENOMENAL! Deserving of every accolade they get. With an all-black cast set in the 1950s I defaulted to assuming it was about the struggle. At times it was. The baseball on a rope symbolizing the fact that the disenfranchised can swing as hard as they can yet still see no progress. But more than that I saw the film speak to the heart of a family. Of relationships. Of Love Languages. “Some people build fences to keep others out, others build fences to keep people in.” Just powerful stuff.

3. La La Land- Films like this don’t come by every year. A musical that builds a bridge between fantasy and reality. Drawn in by the charm of Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling but actually moved by the reality that some dreams aren’t made up of the perfect love story ending. Ten years from now you’ll still be humming “City of Stars” and visualizing their first dance sequence. For it’s uniqueness, I won’t be mad if it wins it.

2. Moonlight- Remember Boyhood? Boyhood gave us a story we wanted to hear, Moonlight hits with a story we need to internalize. The title of the play it is based off tells the story. “In Moonlight, Black Boys Look Blue.” Every life is unique. We live in different situations, with different reactions, and different support groups. Moonlight taught me that people are not always what they seem. Outside perception is not reality. As much as it is a commentary on the struggles of a gay, black kid in the hood trying to figure it all out, it is a call for love. A love from a parent, mentor, or friend that takes the time to touch the life of another.

1. Arrival- Let my tombstone read: Life is more about the journey than the destination. This is Arrival in all its non-linear transcendence of time. It begs to ask the question: If you could view your life laid out before you, would you change it? Arrival says to do your future-self a favor, LIVE LIFE NOW like you’d never want it changed.

#oscars2017 #bmdb #movies

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lodelss · 4 years

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Irina Dumitrescu | Longreads | August 2020 | 5,406 words (21 minutes)

When I was a teenager I read James Thurber’s Secret Life of Walter Mitty. I fell in love with this story of a meek, middle-aged Connecticut man whose daydreams afford him temporary escape from a dreary shopping trip with his overbearing wife. Maybe it was because I was an incorrigible daydreamer too. Or maybe I read in his fantasies of being a fearless Navy commander, a world-famous surgeon, or a brandy-swilling bomber pilot a sense of my own opportunities in life, at that point still wide open if you left my gender out of it. Unlike Walter Mitty, I could still learn anything, be anyone.

With time I found a calling, studied for a doctorate in medieval literature, published a book only a handful of people would read, and gained a longed-for professorship. But new desires arose. I discovered I want to write books for more than five readers, and that doing so is remarkably hard. I started to feel afraid of being trapped in one role for the rest of my life. That sense of endless possibility I once had was slipping away.

One day, when MasterClass sends its millionth paid ad into my Facebook feed, I decide this is the answer to the Walter Mitty lurking inside me. MasterClass seems to offer everything: from writing seminars with over a dozen famous authors to celebrity-driven inspiration to take my hobbies further. Clearly, all I was missing were the right teachers, filmed professionally and beamed into my living room. I may not become a surgeon or a pilot, but what if the renaissance woman I’d hoped to be is just a $200 subscription away?

* * *

It’s October 2019, and I begin with Malcolm Gladwell. The funny thing about these courses is that you have a relationship with the teachers already — or at least with their reputation. Gladwell has a host of detractors. He’s been reproached for oversimplification and vast generalization, for illogical arguments and a lack of critical thinking. A book reviewer once wondered why Gladwell didn’t “hold a tenured professorship at the University of the Bleedin’ Obvious.” But nobody questions Gladwell’s ability to write. He is the small-town Canadian boy who made it to the New Yorker on the strength of catchy ideas, brilliantly told. I have been reading his books, sometimes despite myself, for years.

Gladwell teaches his class in a cozy space that looks like a cross between a bar and an apartment. A chess set on a low table behind him suggests something intellectually challenging could happen, but no worries, strong drinks will be served. Ever the model pupil, I open a fresh notebook and write down every other sentence Malcolm says, intent on letting no insight or bon mot slip my attention. I spend so much of my life teaching that it feels like a treat to be a student again, waiting to be filled up with wisdom. It helps that Gladwell is wry and quietly charming, his self-effacing good humor belying a deep seriousness about the calling of writing. More importantly for me, he offers a lot of practical advice — nitty-gritty tips for conducting interviews, structuring articles, and building characters.

I may not become a surgeon or a pilot, but what if the renaissance woman I’d hoped to be is just a $200 subscription away?

Having so much concrete information about how he goes about his work makes me feel confident that I could do it too. Suddenly, this all seems possible. I will become a fantastic writer! I will publish features in the New Yorker and give entertaining talks to sold-out auditoriums! David Remnick will invite me to dinner and I’ll have everyone in stitches with my anecdotes! Pass the butter!

Most exhilarating for me is Gladwell’s approach to imperfection. “What you find interesting is not perfection,” he explains. An imperfect moment in an essay irritates readers just a little, like “red pepper,” but keeps them thinking and talking about it. Gladwell appears generous, providing his audience with surprises and space to draw their own connections. But he’s also happy to make promises he won’t keep, or to force an unwieldy argument together with writing. His way of working is wildly unlike my good-girl academic mindset, but it seems suited to getting things done. “The task of a successful writer,” he says while arguing for bad first drafts, “is to lower the bar.”

Of course, it is one thing for your writing buddy to tell you to embrace your imperfections and slam out a crappy draft, and another for Malcolm Gladwell to do it. Success creates its own truth. This is the MasterClass formula: once a person is famous enough they acquire a charismatic glow. Their counsel is prudent, their past decisions are justified, and their jokes are funnier, too.

* * *

Gladwell’s MasterClass leaves me energized. Writing seems more manageable now, simply a matter of the right tools and attitude. I decide to work on one of my weak areas. Due to a series of curious life choices, I trained to become a scholar and teacher but wound up spending much of my workday carrying out managerial tasks. MasterClass is ready to help me, however, with a course by Anna Wintour on “Creativity and Leadership.” There is a cheekiness to offering advice on how to deal with employees when a hit movie has been made about your notoriously demanding — if not outright callous — management style. Then again, maybe I could use a bit of that Wintour ruthlessness, or what might be called “decisiveness” if she were a man.

The course introduction confirms my suspicion that its appeal is as much about offering a glimpse of the woman behind the mysterious sunglasses as it is about learning how to deliver negative feedback. Sitting in a discreetly lavish apartment, and wearing a stunning green dress with bulky statement jewelry, Wintour describes her vertiginous rise to the top — from somewhere remarkably close to the top. She learned the ropes from her father, Charles Wintour, editor of the Evening Standard in London at the time. (She leaves out the part where he arranged her first job at Biba, a trendy fashion store.) Much of the course revolves around Wintour’s comfort with risky decisions, even if they are wrong. She deals with her mistakes by owning, acknowledging, then moving briskly past them. It sounds like excellent advice for people cushioned by money and an astounding network of connections. By the time Wintour says, “act like no one’s telling you ‘no,’” I want to ask her if anyone ever did.

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The most depressing thing about Wintour’s advice is that it is not wrong. “Own your decisions,” she says, “and own who you are, without apologizing.” It’s just that most people do have to apologize at some point in their lives. (If they are Canadian, like me, they will apologize to complete strangers simply for disturbing the air in their general vicinity.) I want to see a visionary describe how they wrestled with mistakes that had real consequences. Wintour’s suggestion to give direct feedback does give me the courage to have a frank conversation with an employee, and we are both better off for it. But I wonder how her life lessons could possibly translate to someone else’s reality.

The name MasterClass also increasingly bothers me. I remember when I first saw the term (as the two-word “master class”) on a poster in graduate school. A musician friend explained that a visiting eminence would work with one of the students on stage, correcting and training them right in front of an audience. It sounded horrifying, but my friend said it was an honor to be chosen for this kind of specialized attention.

Was there a more sinister urge that made “master class” such good branding for a course? I suspect that the name appeals to people because it promises not just expertise, but power.

Over the years, I began to see all kinds of things called master classes, not just intensive live workshops for people who already had a thorough grounding in their field but online introductions to topics like social media marketing and meditation. Why couldn’t people just take classes, I wondered, especially when they knew nothing about the topic? Were they worried about feeling like a child again, afraid of admitting their own ignorance? Was there a more sinister urge that made “master class” such good branding for a course? I suspect that the name appeals to people because it promises not just expertise, but power.

* * *

It seems easy to turn into a success story when you start out young and privileged. I want to watch a self-starter, someone who had to figure out how to practice their craft on their own. Enter Werner Herzog, who materializes on a dark, empty film set, wearing a green Bavarian-style jacket with elbow patches. Herzog begins with his childhood: the bombing of Munich, his escape with his mother to the mountains, living with no running water and only occasional electricity. “I did not see films until I was eleven,” he says, “in fact, I was not even aware that cinema even existed until I was eleven.” I know there is some legend-polishing here, especially when he mentions the bombing again in the second video, but it’s a more appealing myth than the well-connected London girl who becomes editor of Vogue in her thirties.

Herzog has the air of a professor who has cultivated his eccentric persona for so long that he can now let it do most of the work. His voice alone, at once hypnotic and foreboding, brings me back to evenings in grad school when my German boyfriend did his best to introduce me to the highlights of the Herzog film corpus. Lessons of Darkness, Fitzcarraldo, Grizzly Man — we watched these masterpieces on his laptop in bed. I usually fell asleep after about 20 minutes, occasionally waking up just enough to be confused by a burning oil field or a screaming Klaus Kinski. Still, that boyfriend became my husband, so I have a soft spot for old Werner. I don’t need him to make sense or teach me anything practical. I’m not going to make a movie. I’m just hoping to absorb some of the unflinching resolve of a man who once ate his own shoe after losing a bet.

Although the course is aimed at budding filmmakers, much of Herzog’s advice applies to making art in general. It helps that he speaks in enigmatic aphorisms: “you have to know, you have to know, that you are the one who can move a ship over a mountain.” It also helps that he cares very little about the standard ways of doing things or about the rules of a particular medium. Herzog’s advice is to search for inspiration in a wide range of music and books, to gather nuggets that can be reshaped into a snippet of dialogue or an unusual camera angle. I love this, probably because it confirms so many of my own beliefs. “Read, read, read, read, read, read, read!” he intones, and laments all the prestigious film-school students he meets who do not read and are doomed, as he puts it, to be “mediocre at very best.” Could I make my own students watch this? Could I show them Herzog reading the opening of the Poetic Edda out loud, explaining how its laconic description of the creation of the world and the birth of the gods helps him edit his scenes?

There is a gossipy appeal to watching famous people play an avuncular version of themselves, but I’m not sure what I can really learn from them.

My semester is shifting from intense to overwhelming, so I watch much of the course while folding laundry or cutting vegetables for dinner, chuckling at reliably absurd Herzogisms. My notebook and pen are always close by, but my notes wind up as cryptic as his movies. What is the iguana? The Swiss chocolate? Why have I written down “20 milking cows”? Something penetrates my distraction, though: the intensity of Herzog’s belief in his own films, and by extension, in the power of great art. Although I teach literature for a living, I rarely hear my fellow scholars talk about why creative work matters. And seldom does anyone venture a judgement about the quality of a book or a poem. It seems like it would be overstepping our boundaries to call something “excellent,” or “middling,” or even “bad.” We are deft at dissecting novels and plays, pinning down their references and ideologies and unresolvable tensions, but not particularly good at putting things together. I realize at this point how ill-suited years in the academy have made me for making art.

My husband walks into the room at one point and watches a few minutes with me. “With Herzog you get the feeling that he absolutely does not censor himself,” he says quietly, “No self-doubt. He totally trusts his own judgement.” Mired as I am in endless discussions with my inner critic, I find something beautiful about Herzog’s assurance in the brilliance of his own work — even when it is, let’s be honest, kind of awful. A deep belief in my writing would give me the freedom both to make a mess on the page and to edit it ruthlessly. Herzog seems to be speaking directly to me when he says that “there’s something much bigger than your own quest for perfection: your own quest for inner truth.”

* * *

Three months in, the MasterClasses are beginning to frustrate me. There is a gossipy appeal to watching famous people play an avuncular version of themselves, but I’m not sure what I can really learn from them. Am I ever going to be the editor of a fashion magazine? No. Am I ever going to direct a movie in Antarctica? Actually, come to think of it, even that’s more likely than the fashion magazine. I want something within reach, I want a celebrity to teach me something I can actually try to do. I have spent untold hours watching Gordon Ramsay tell people what they’re doing wrong in the kitchen — now it’s time for him to show me how to do it right.

In order to do Gordon’s cooking class full justice, I prepare a full dinner spread and bring it to the couch on a tray. I have baked frozen miniature spring rolls and jalapeno poppers in my oven, which at this point has had a broken thermometer for about four months. For a touch of class and nutrition, I also have fresh radishes. And a cold beer. It is some sight.

The class is set in Gordon Ramsay’s kitchen, which is spacious, sunlit, all marble and polished steel, and filled with jars of fresh herbs. Through the window we catch a glimpse of a manicured lawn, a backyard pool, and behind it a gently rolling Cornish hill. This kitchen is possibly the most pornographic thing I have ever seen. I try not to think about my own kitchen, which my husband and I outfitted in a hurry when we moved into our bare apartment, as you have to in Germany. The cabinets were the cheapest available from Ikea, and we bought them second hand. We got our fridge from someone who had used it to store raw meat for his dog. All of it began falling apart immediately.

Ramsay is annoying at first. He repeats himself a lot. Everything is “unbelievable.” At one point he demonstrates how to choose good produce, picking up flawless baby vegetables from a tray in front of him and showing them to the camera. (“Unbelievable!”) I think about how I could not buy those vegetables even if I had the time to seek them out in my city. But as I let the videos roll on, I start to find him charming. I have watched Ramsay play a dour taskmaster in a series of television shows by now, but here he has the enthusiasm of a labrador retriever. He explains how to lovingly brush carrots with toothbrushes instead of peeling them (confession: I will never do this), and describes herbs as being like “a lady putting perfume on.” Then he demonstrates how to sharpen knives and I’m off to the races.

I have a decent set of knives — a remnant from my childless twenties, when I did footloose things like take the free knife-skills classes offered at Williams-Sonoma. The day after beginning Gordon’s course, I go on a hunt for my knife sharpener, which finally appears behind an entire regiment of mismatched tupperware. I spend a meditative afternoon sharpening my knives, testing each one by slicing it through a piece of paper I hold up in the air. At one point my son and husband walk into the kitchen, see me with all the knives, and quietly slink out again. I feel powerful. My knives are sharp. I can cut things again. I resolve to use my honing steel every time I cook, with the exact up-and-down movement Gordon taught me. It gives me the feeling of being a kitchen warrior.

I have come to suspect that MasterClass will put any celebrity in front of a camera for a few hours and call it a course.

Gordon’s is the one course I don’t watch in order. Instead, I pick the recipes I think I can manage given the state of my oven. I decide to attempt the poached eggs and mushrooms on brioche. To my surprise, my local discount supermarket carries brioche buns, most of which my delighted son eats before we make it to breakfast. I get up on Sunday morning, make myself a pot of coffee, review the recipe, and cook alone for an hour. The result is not perfect. I oversalt the mushroom-and-bacon mixture. My eggs come out a bit harder than I would’ve liked. It has been so long since I have poached an egg that I’ve forgotten how to do it.

But the time spent in the kitchen, learning some new techniques and remembering others, brings me back to the early days of my relationship to my husband. There was a time in our lives when we would spend an entire weekend day trying out a new recipe, or experimented with poaching eggs three different ways to see which method was best. Now we put eggs in water with a tiny mechanical device that plays “Killing Me Softly” to let us know they are soft-boiled. You could say our standards have fallen. But on this particular day, we eat so much brioche with protein on it that we are unable to move for hours. I’m not sure what makes me feel younger, trying out a new recipe or spending an entire day doing nothing afterwards.

Emboldened, I take on experiment number two: lobster ravioli. Fresh lobster would be impossible to get, but I look up a vegetarian filling with spinach, ricotta, and pine nuts. Nor can I find the correct Italian flour, so I settle for the most promising alternative. But life intervenes, and by the time I have a few hours to make fresh pasta, most of the eggs have disappeared from the fridge. I decide to make a smaller batch, with the wrong flour, just one egg, and a bit of oil and water — after all, I think, surely an Italian nonna could make do without the ideal number of eggs? The dough turns out tough, and my wrist hurts trying to soften it, which seems far from the sensuous experience Gordon is having as he expertly kneads his pasta dough in the video.

My son comes to the kitchen to see what I am doing, and I convince him to join me. He tries to knead the pasta with his little hands, helps me roll out the dough and run it through the pasta machine. Sometimes he loses interest in the work but likes staying close to me, and I find it comforting to feel this small, curious creature by my side. At one point he insists on making a dough of his own out of flour and water, which I am to fry for him. After three hours of labor, we manage to produce a grand total of ten ravioli filled with spinach and ricotta; in all the excitement I forgot to add the pine nuts. We supplement our small dinner with my son’s fry bread, cut in half and smeared with cream cheese. Making and shaping the dough has been so pleasurable that we don’t mind that we got almost every part of the recipe wrong and had very little to show for our efforts. In the weeks that come, my son and I make pasta again, screwing it up even more thoroughly, and having even more fun.

* * *

The idyll does not last long. My life is increasingly taken over by work. In January, I am part of a grant renewal application that involves a two-day inspection by a crew of visiting scholars, a process in which millions of Euros of funding are at stake. I remember that I am, in fact, expected to demonstrate mastery at my job. In my morning shower and before I fall asleep at night, I practice answers to potential questions, working out what impressive German abstract nouns I need to survive this experience. I try to cultivate an air of confidence, but worry it might be coming out more Herzog than Wintour. But the questions we get are not the ones I practiced, and by the end of the ordeal my project is booted out. I travel to my hometown to teach for a few months, and the hassle of settling in helps me put the failure out of mind. Then, a few weeks later, I learn that someone I trusted has spread a damaging lie about me. My stomach drops. I feel rage. Then I feel as though I have left my body altogether. A day later, my lower back spasms. I wind up immobile in bed.

I had planned to learn tennis with Serena Williams or do barre with Misty Copeland, but here I am in a rented house in a rented bed, moaning in pain if I turn as much as an inch. Propped up against pillows that do little more than fix my body in the least excruciating position, I have little patience for books or even television. Then MasterClass sends me one of its emails, and I can barely believe my eyes: it’s RuPaul.

I have come to suspect that MasterClass will put any celebrity in front of a camera for a few hours and call it a course. This particular class is only nominally about drag: it claims to be about “Self-Expression and Authenticity.” This is convenient, because covered with heating pads and smeared with a variety of pungent salves, I’m not in much of a position to try and look fabulous. Still, I would watch RuPaul explain the finer points of installing drywall, so I click the button to join.

By this point, I have realized that there are two kinds of teachers. Some focus on transmitting their skills. They seem to be saying to the student: “this is how to do what I do.” Others offer themselves as models to be imitated: “this is how I became who I am.” Many MasterClass instructors pretend they are selling the former while in fact delivering the latter. RuPaul doesn’t even pretend. Dressed in a carmine suit and seated against a black-and-neon set reminiscent of Studio 54, RuPaul talks about some of the most basic challenges of growing up in the world. He describes the course of his career, the role artistic inspirations played in his life, the challenges of addiction, criticism, and just plain being ignored. I take no notes — I physically can’t. But I am moved by RuPaul’s vulnerability, a refreshing change of pace after the unrelenting cockiness of the other teachers. Instead of presenting himself as magnificent from the get-go, brave and destined for greatness, he comes across as a human being who had been broken but helped along his way by kind mentors, friends, and a lot of therapy.

Here is something bracing to think about: it is hard to learn how to be yourself.

The other MasterClass teachers seemed impervious to criticism, able to brush it off with a knowing smile. But what do you do when you are not born that way, or if you have been brought up to value the opinions of others, sometimes to a fault? In one episode, RuPaul describes the unquenchable hunger of bullies to feed their fragile egos: “The only time they feel visible is when they create pain.” I reflect on how attached I still am to what people think of me, and how hard this makes it to distance myself from the hurt they cause even when I know they act out of their own self-loathing. RuPaul’s answer is to focus on finding what he calls “your natural frequency, your natural energy source.” Incapacitated, I can muster little of my usual cynicism about talk of “energies.” Besides, I like what he seems to be getting at. Maybe the secret to freedom is not to emulate the bravado of a few wildly successful people, but to tap into what feels true. According to RuPaul, doing so will draw other people with a similar energy to yours, but, “like a garden, it takes managing. You have to cultivate it.” Here is something bracing to think about: it is hard to learn how to be yourself.

I binge-watch RuPaul’s MasterClass late into the night. I am only half-focussing when a story breaks through my daze. RuPaul recalls his parents divorcing when he was seven. His father had custody on the weekends, and every weekend, little RuPaul would sit on the front porch waiting for his father to pick him up. His father never came. RuPaul looks straight into the camera and speaks softly now, to the child he somewhere still is: “Baby, that had nothing to do with you.” I think of my father, who left my life eight years ago, who is now just an hour’s drive away, and who I know I will not see. I think about the grandson he has never met. I am fuzzy on the details, but this may be when I begin weeping like a baby. Ru breaks down too as he describes his own journey to sobriety. And there we are, two people separated by a screen, crying together in the dark.

* * *

Half a year after starting my MasterClass adventure, I am a different person from the eager pupil who scribbled down every pearl of wisdom from Malcolm Gladwell’s lips. I am disappointed in other people and — in a distant way I cannot quite place — also in myself. I wish I were stronger, or easier to transform. My back still hurts. And if that were not enough, I have returned home to voluntary quarantine. Now, instead of a fun distraction from everyday life, the computer is my only point of contact with the rest of the world. I cannot bear to see more people talking on the screen, but there are not too many other places to go.

As the global pandemic unfolds, MasterClass shifts its offerings with uncanny acumen. Instead of promising me greatness, the ads in my inbox invite me to take what seem like a humbler course: gardening. The instructor, Ron Finley, is a fashion designer turned urban-gardening advocate. MasterClass pitches him as a “gangsta gardener,” and he offers fresh, zen koan-like takes along the lines of “Air is gangsta as fuck” and “When Bambi dies, or some shit… no one buries it.” At first, I ignore the ads. I have no green thumb. My rap sheet includes a long list of potted herbs, houseplants, and even cacti that I have, by some amazing level of neglect, managed to dry to death. In the past 20 years I have moved through a variety of dorm rooms, house-sits, and rental apartments in three countries. How could I grow something when I have barely put down roots myself?

The ads keep coming. One night, I have a dream about planting a garden. Then I get flashes of another version of myself: a teenager tending to the front and back yards of my family home. I had the boring chores of raking leaves and mowing the lawn, but I also grew flowers and pulled weeds and cared for a bed of strawberries. I remember now how I used to pore over seed and bulb catalogues, calculating the amount of sun each part of our yard received, imagining how I could replace our lawn with a glorious cacophony of color, if only my parents would fund the project. I never did manage to plant the garden I dreamt of. One bad spring my mother spread grass seeds all over my flower bed, and in my anger I gave up gardening altogether.

I start the course.

Finley is charismatic and funny and, wouldn’t you know it, down-to-earth. He’s not precious about gardening, a point he makes by showing how to turn a wooden dresser drawer into a makeshift planter. The course itself is not so much a master class as a basic introduction to keeping a plant alive. Finley stands behind his big wooden table and rubs different kinds of soil between his hands to show how to recognize the good, loamy kind that plants will flourish in. He gently eases seedlings out of their pots and pats them into the ground, pokes holes with his finger, and pops in sugar snap peas. Given that I haven’t touched a bag of soil in over two decades, this is what I need.

Between little jokes like “size does matter… in a garden,” Finley slips in an entire philosophy of being in the world. He describes building a relationship to plants as a way of connecting to one’s body, one’s environment, to life itself. Learning to care for plants, he says, is a way to learn to care for yourself. As he shows how to loosen the roots of a nursery plant or divide a sprouted sweet potato, Finley calls attention to the creative force deep inside all living things. “Plants want to grow, they wanna live, they wanna thrive,” he says, and I’m enchanted by the potential of survival he sees in a part of life I had wholly overlooked. I can’t remember looking at a plant and not seeing a future reproach.

In my happiest moments of creation, I have experienced this sensation of standing by as a mysterious energy unfolded itself according to a plan all its own.

Watching these videos makes me want to nurture something. I run to my kitchen and pick up a pot of fragile supermarket parsley. I pick off the dry leaves, then water it. A few days later, it has perked up. I gain courage. That weekend, I go with my family to a garden center, where we don our masks and look through fogged glasses at a bewildering variety of soils. We spend hours on our balcony, mixing soil with fertilizer, planting a cut-off wine barrel full of kitchen herbs. In other pots, we give a tiny strawberry seedling and a tomato plant a chance next to some sprouted onions from the pantry that I have learned how to divide on YouTube. In the days that follow, the three of us are stupidly happy. We go out on the balcony, stare at the plants the way parents watch sleeping newborns, call each other to witness how quickly they have grown. Then, what begins as an experiment turns into a minor obsession. Flowers and a miniature olive tree join the herbs. We plant peas and potatoes, and my son and I try germinating seeds for herbs we could not find in the store. There is no special talent here: it is an ordinary hobby, but that does not dull its wonder.

As I observe our seedlings take root and flourish, it dawns on me how little power I have over their growth. I can provide them with a fertile space to be. I nurture, prune, and guide them as necessary. I can destroy them through neglect or poor decisions. But I do not make them what they are. In my happiest moments of creation, I have experienced this sensation of standing by as a mysterious energy unfolded itself according to a plan all its own. It is what being pregnant felt like. It is also how some essays have come to me, in full bud and pressing to be written down.

More often than not, though, making things in the world feels like slamming dead clay on the ground, hoping that enough force might shape it into something beautiful. It occurs to me that what I have to learn in my little balcony garden has nothing to do with mastery. As I watch the cilantro and the basil and even the sad supermarket parsley take root, I feel that I am coming back to myself, to a part of me I had forgotten. Here it is at last: something new.

***

Irina Dumitrescu is an essayist and scholar of medieval literature.

Editor: Ben Huberman

#IFTTT #Blogger

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bigyack-com · 4 years

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Tesla Owners Try to Make Sense of Elon Musk’s ‘Red Pill’ Moment

Owning a Tesla, the luxurious electric car, is a major liberal status symbol. It signals nothing more than good taste — the perfect balance of wealth with care for fossil fuels. But the man behind the brand is crafting a very different persona online that may now prove to be a challenge for his fans.Elon Musk, the bombastic head of Tesla and SpaceX, exhorted his 34 million Twitter followers on Sunday to “take the red pill.” The comment was quickly embraced by his followers, including Ivanka Trump, President Trump’s elder daughter, who announced that she had taken the pill already.The exchange referred to a scene from “The Matrix,” the 1999 science fiction action film. But the meaning of “red pill,” and the idea of taking it, have since percolated in online forums and become a deeply political metaphor. And with Mr. Musk and Ms. Trump, the phrase is now lodged more fully into the mainstream.So Tesla owners are having to grapple with a car that carries a few new connotations.“Honestly, Musk is becoming a liability and the Tesla board needs to seriously consider ousting him,” wrote Markos Moulitsas, author of “The Resistance Handbook: 45 Ways to Fight Trump.” “And I say that as a proud owner of a Tesla and a SpaceX fanatic who truly appreciates what he’s built.”

So what is the red pill?

In “The Matrix,” the movie’s hero, Neo, played by Keanu Reeves, is given the option to take a pill that lets him see the truth.The world he thinks is real turns out to be an entertaining lie; his body is actually trapped in a farm where people are being used as human batteries. Taking the blue pill would let him return to living in the ignorant but blissful lie, while taking the red pill would launch him into an arduous journey through a brutal but fulfilling reality.The idea of taking the red pill later grew to mean waking up to society’s grand lies. It was embraced by the right, especially by members of its youngest cohort who organized and spent their time in online forums like Reddit and 4chan.The truth to be woken up to varied, but it ended up usually being about gender. To be red-pilled meant you discovered that feminism was a scam that ruined the lives of boys and girls. In this view, for a male to refuse the red pill was to be weak.Red Pill forums were often filled with deeply misogynistic and often racist diatribes. The more extreme elements splintered into groups like involuntary celibates (“incels”) or male separatists (Men Going Their Own Way, or MGTOWs). Conferences like the 21 Convention and its sister convention, Make Women Great Again, sprang up to gather red-pilled men. Being red-pilled became a sort of umbrella term for all of it.As these conversations seeped into the mainstream, pulled along by a host of other internet language from message boards to establishment Republican conversations on sites like Breitbart, the meaning broadened and got watered down. To be red-pilled can now mean being broadly skeptical of experts, to be distrustful of the mainstream press or to see hypocrisy in social liberalism.

What’s going on with Elon Musk?

Mr. Musk has been pretty wild online for years now, which has made him a major internet celebrity with devoted fans who call themselves Musketeers. There are fan pages like Musk Memes with nearly 100,000 followers, and a Reddit page with 200,000 members in constant, extremely active conversation.The night before Tesla’s earnings were released last month, Mr. Musk tweeted an anti-lockdown rallying cry: “FREE AMERICA NOW.” He had a showdown with local lawmakers, threatening to move Tesla headquarters out of California and deciding to reopen a Tesla factory in Fremont, Calif., despite the local county’s restrictions to prevent the virus from spreading. When State Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez objected on May 9 with an obscene tweet, Mr. Musk responded, “Message received.” Defending his reopening of the Tesla factory, Mr. Musk wrote on Twitter that he would be on the factory floor and offered himself up to authorities. “I will be on the line with everyone else,” he posted on May 11. “If anyone is arrested, I ask that it only be me.”This month, he and his girlfriend, Claire Boucher, the musician known as Grimes, had a child and named him X Æ A-12. And Mr. Musk announced that Tesla shares were too high and that he was selling almost all his possessions to the point of owning no house.“We have a phrase, it’s E.M.M. — Elon Moves Markets,” said Bill Selesky, an analyst at Argus Research who tracks how Mr. Musk’s messages impact Tesla’s stock price. “People want to listen to him no matter what he says. He tends to be thought of as a great visionary.”Mr. Selesky said even Mr. Musk’s detractors parsed every tweet and utterance. “Plus, if you have a Tesla, nobody can ever complain about you because you’re good for society,” he added.This leads back to Mr. Musk’s message on Sunday, telling his followers to take the red pill.

Do ‘The Matrix’ creators like this?

No. Lilly Wachowski, a ��Matrix” co-creator, told Mr. Musk and Ms. Trump in colorful language on Twitter that they could take a hike.

Is ‘red pill’ a Silicon Valley thing?

To some extent.There has long been a strain of men’s rights activism in Silicon Valley, exemplified by James Damore, a former Google engineer who was fired after writing a memo arguing that the reason there are fewer female engineers is biological differences rather than discrimination.Mr. Damore became a folk hero for a simmering movement in the technology industry of people who thought the efforts toward 50/50 representation at tech companies were absurd. Cassie Jaye, who calls herself a former feminist, made a 2016 documentary about the Red Pill community and said it had flourished in the tech world.But the more common phrase in Silicon Valley to signal contrarian thinking is “narrative violation,” which is often used to describe an event that cuts against the mainstream media’s consensus on a topic. The idea is that there is a story being told about the world and how it works, but that the story is too simplistic to be entirely true and an event occasionally pops up to remind people of that.

Why does any of this matter?

Few products today are as deeply entwined with a person’s brand as Tesla is with Mr. Musk, and so his comments can feel personal for Tesla drivers.“As a Tesla owner, a 47-year-old male recovering from Covid-19, and someone very concerned simultaneously about the environment, the economy, my kids’ and my parents’ future, this ain’t great,” said Jeff Guilfoyle, a product manager at FireEye in San Diego. “This disease is no joke, and the long-term health impacts are unknown for survivors.”Many have implored Mr. Musk online to stop.Raja Sohail Abbas, the chief executive of an outpatient psychiatric clinic in Allentown, Pa., wrote: “I am a Tesla owner and love the company. You have to stop being an idiot about this.”“Tesla owner and Fan here, but this was a disappointing tweet despite the frustrations of and holdups,” added Alex Goodchild, a D.J. in Brooklyn. “Words are weapons especially when used during situations like the one we’re currently experiencing. You sound just like Trump in this tweet.”The debate has riven the Tesla community.“The last two months, there’s been this polarization in the Elon Musk fan club,” said Paula Timothy-Mellon, a technology consultant who moderates that LinkedIn-based fan club, which has 22,000 members. “There are those who are believers in these California guidelines and there are those in favor of his push to re-open Tesla.”Driving a Tesla often carries great symbolism for the owner (and observers).“If you own a Tesla, you feel you are directly connected to Elon Musk and people think that Tesla owners are directly connected to the politics of the C.E.O.,” said Sam Kelly, a Tesla owner and investor based in Spain who posts under the name SamTalksTesla.He added that he did not think the red pill comment meant any big new political awakening from Mr. Musk.Asked to explain his thinking, Mr. Musk pasted an image of the Urban Dictionary definition of red pill in an email. It read:“‘Red pill’ has become a popular phrase among cyberculture and signifies a free-thinking attitude, and a waking up from a ‘normal’ life of sloth and ignorance. Red pills prefer the truth, no matter how gritty and painful it may be.” Read the full article

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theconservativebrief · 6 years

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If there is an age when Kidz Bop is cool, I was never that age. Kidz Bop’s mission is to make “kid-friendly versions of today’s biggest pop music hits,” which translates to compilation albums of kids covering popular songs stripped of obscenities and suggestive language. As a kid, an ensemble of nasal voices singing castrated covers of the most overplayed songs on the radio was always upsetting to me (even in the condensed form of a one-minute commercial between Spongebob episodes). Now it’s something I forget exists unless I unfortunately stumble on it during one of the few times a year I have access to cable.

Yet somehow Kidz Bop has proven to be an enduring brand. As of this year, it has released more than 38 albums. The Kidz Bop Kids were Billboard’s No. 1 kids’ album artists from 2011 to 2017 and have had 22 Top 10 albums on the Billboard Top 200 chart — more than Madonna or Elton John. Since its genesis in 2001, the brand has expanded to live music, merchandise, and brand partnerships. The rotating roster of Kidz Bop Kids have gone on six national tours, serenading audiences across the country. There is a Sirius XM channel that plays Kidz Bop music 24/7 (something that seems specifically manufactured by the Bad Place).

What makes Kidz Bop such a confusing success is that it fails in its primary mission: Though it sanitizes popular songs, the music that results could not fairly be called “kid-friendly.”

A 2017 study on the effects of censorship in Kidz Bop found that replacing phrases does not actually wipe lyrical recognition from children’s minds if they have already heard the original song. Even if it did, what Kidz Bop is enforcing is also not kid-appropriate: The study says the music perpetuates the sociological phenomenon of “kids getting older younger” (KGOY), which claims that marketing is pushing kids out of their childhood earlier and earlier. The study says that repackaging adult music as kids’ music doesn’t eliminate the adult messages, even though some words and phrases are changed.

One source quoted in the study is Christopher Bell, an associate professor of media studies at the University of Colorado in Colorado Springs who is an expert on how race, class, and gender intersect with children’s media. He has hosted a TED talk on female superheroes, is currently consulting on an upcoming Pixar movie (which he cannot talk about because of a very long NDA), and is an avowed Kidz Bop hater.

He sees the product as both lazy and emblematic of our mistaken views on what censorship accomplishes. Kids’ media may take out “bad words,” but it doesn’t fix the problem of violence and oversexualization of women in media and pop culture. I asked him about how what is censored, in Kidz Bop and otherwise, can affect what children learn. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Aditi Shrikant

We all know Kidz Bop censorship to be kind of odd and annoying, but is it actually insufficient?

Christopher Bell

Kidz Bop is an abomination because it censors language but it doesn’t censor content. I don’t need a sanitized version of “Despacito” — I need 8-year-olds not to be singing “Despacito” because that [song] is super dirty. And Kidz Bop doesn’t always make that distinction. Fundamentally, I don’t understand why Kidz Bop has to exist. It’s like censorship of the most banal kind.

It’s very gender conformist and racial conformist. You’ve got kids posturing in ways that I don’t know if they understand what they are doing, but the people filming definitely understand. Kids are doing dances that are sanitized but sexual at the same time because no one understands content; they just understand form.

“We are weird about what we censor and weird about what we care about”

Aditi Shrikant

Do you think kids can recognize context even with the censors Kidz Bop applies?

Christopher Bell

I believe they can. People don’t give children enough credit for cognitive development. I think it’s lazy parenting. I think it’s listening to a song where someone says a quote-unquote bad word and then taking the bad word out without ever being like, “What is this song about?” I think it’s super lazy.

Aditi Shrikant

Do you think what Americans censor in general align with what Kidz Bop censors?

Christopher Bell

Well, look around: Our culture prioritizes censoring language over violence. Take a movie like The Avengers: Black Widow shows up in a skintight black latex outfit for the visual, sexual pleasure of the audience. She engages in horrific physical violence — kicks the holy shit out of eight guys on the screen. Tasers them, electrocutes them, kicks them in the face, throws them across the room. That is a PG-13 movie, but if it had said the word “fuck” once, it would have been rated R. That’s the nature of our society.

We are weird about what we censor and weird about what we care about. And violence is always at the bottom of that list. With language, say two “bad words” and you have to be rated R, but go ahead and shoot 15 people in the face. We censor words and we censor explicit sex, but we don’t censor sexual content and we absolutely don’t censor violence.

Aditi Shrikant

Does this lack of censorship when it comes to sexual content and violence affect boys and girls differently? Especially when it comes to KGOY?

Christopher Bell

I do think it’s geared toward girls. Particularly in terms of this whole getting older younger thing. We have the exact opposite effect when it comes to boys, and if you don’t believe me, you haven’t been paying attention for the past two weeks. This whole idea that “boys will be boys” — no, grown-ass men will be responsible for their actions. It’s a complete double standard in our culture.

Aditi Shrikant

So boys don’t have the pressure to grow up faster?

Christopher Bell

Our boys are getting older younger, too, but it manifests itself differently. With girls, it manifests itself with sexualization. With boys, it manifests itself with violence and this sort of never-ending stream of violent content and the ideology that violence is an acceptable means to solve your problems.

For girls, adulthood is tied to their sexuality; for boys, adulthood is tied to the ability to win. And winning, in our culture, almost always has the baseline that is violence.

“At the end of the day, no culture in our society gets produced if it can’t sell”

Aditi Shrikant

Pixar hired you to consult. Are you seeing a change in companies wanting to learn how to craft more conscientious kids’ content?

Christopher Bell

I think a generation of people who have been in charge of things for a very long time are slowly moving out of those positions of power, and the people coming in after them have a different sensibility.

If you look at the acquisition of Lucasfilm, for example, the way George Lucas runs that company is not the way Kathleen Kennedy is running that company. We see the direct result of what happens when there is a woman in charge and not a man. We get The Force Awakens, we get Rogue One, we get Forces of Destiny, we get all these great things.

When you look at things like Moana, that couldn’t have been made 25 years ago. We know Moana couldn’t have been made 25 years ago because 25 years ago they were making Pocahontas, which is an incredibly horrific film. We live in a time where they’re contemplating canonizing the fact that Elsa from Frozen is a lesbian. They had to redesign the Transformers series because it got too Michael Bay violent for no reason and people stopped going because it had no soul.

It’s showing that there’s a market for inclusiveness. There’s a market for dealing with sex and violence differently in our culture. It can be profitable. And at the end of the day, no culture in our society gets produced if it can’t sell.

Aditi Shrikant

How are the effects of companies not understanding what should be censored felt today?

Christopher Bell

This whole cultural concept of boys will be boys is one of our most problematic core ideologies that we are literally, in real time, witnessing the cultural backlash against. We are literally witnessing our society evolve for the better. It’s going to be Brett Kavanaugh [on the Supreme Court], and that’s going to be sad for everyone, and it’s Trump right now [as president], and that’s sad for everyone, but I honestly believe that’s because we are watching the death throes of this ideology, and our culture reflects that as more women and more people of color are put into positions where they are the ones telling the story. The main thing I teach my students every day is if you control the means of production, you control the narrative. Who gets to tell the story matters the most.

Aditi Shrikant

That’s a very optimistic view.

Christopher Bell

Well, you know, it’s either that or I not get out of bed tomorrow.

Original Source -> Kidz Bop’s “censored” songs aren’t just annoying — they’re problematic

via The Conservative Brief

#IFTTT #The Conservative Brief

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gigglesndimples · 7 years

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2017 Canna-Women Impact List: Eight Female Movers and Shakers

DR. DINA BROWNER

Cannabis consultant, Disjointed; owner, Alternative Herbal Health Services

• On being a cannabis consultant for TV shows and movies: “It’s fun and exciting, but representing the industry I love can be stressful. Working on Disjointed required me to be present in the writers’ room to help guide them along, using my 15 years of cannabis-industry experiences. I worked with wardrobe, set designers and the prop department to make sure everything on set felt as authentic as possible. I was on set during rehearsals and tapings to work directly with the cast. It’s so important for the actors to feel comfortable, which is why I had them all spend time inside my real dispensary in West Hollywood.”

• On making the move to recreational sales: “We’re lucky to be located in a very progressive city. West Hollywood gave us a business permit back in 2005, so we’re one of the only four licensed dispensaries in all of Los Angeles. We’re ready for 2018, just in time to celebrate Season 2 of Disjointed on Jan. 12.”

• On women in cannabis: “Sorry boys, the ladies are taking over! Traditionally, men grew and sold cannabis while the women stayed home with the kids. If there was a bust and the man was arrested, the kids still had at least one parent to care for them. Once medical marijuana became widely accepted and legal, more and more women began working as budtenders. Now we’re entrepreneurs, growers and dispensary owners. Not only are women more nurturing, we’re the ones who purchase most of the items for their households. It only makes sense to start marketing to us. We’ve made huge strides in a short amount of time, and I’m so happy to be part of this groundbreaking industry.”

“For decades and decades, we’ve understood that prohibition doesn’t work.”

CAT PACKER

Executive director, Los Angeles County Office of Cannabis Management

• On achieving equality in cannabis: “Equitable to me means just fair. The policy up until now has been prohibition. For decades and decades, we’ve understood that prohibition doesn’t work. It hasn’t curbed the availability or consumption of cannabis. But, nonetheless, we’ve spent millions and billions of dollars incarcerating people for a plant and substance that now, under California law, is not a drug. As we move forward, we want to make sure that those community members and individuals impacted disproportionately by marijuana prohibition and its enforcement have an opportunity to participate in the legal industry.”

• On her own cannabis use: “I shy away from the question of whether or not I consume, because for some folks that’s a medical question. When we’re having these conversations, I remind folks that it might not be polite all the time to ask people about their medical history or their medical practices.”

“Cannabis has been used practically since the beginning of history.”

SHALEEN TITLE

Commissioner, Massachusetts Cannabis Control Commission

• On becoming a cannabis activist: “My roommate at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana, Danielle Schumacher, wanted to start a chapter of Students for Sensible Drug Policy. You needed two people to start a chapter, so I said, ‘Fine.’ At one of our first meetings, someone from the ACLU came and said, ‘If you’re black in Illinois, you’re 57 times more likely to be incarcerated for a drug offense.’ That number just blew me away. It became our mission to change that.”

• On her parents: “I would tell them about how, in Indian culture, cannabis has been used practically since the beginning of history.”

• On her government job: “I’m trying to be authentic. I know a lot of people are looking to me. I believe we can make the marijuana industry not just any industry, but a better one, and that we can make this a really open and transparent agency that takes people’s needs into account.”

“I’ve had a prescription for some time for chronic pain. I’ve really become a believer.”

KATHY BATES

Actress, Disjointed

• On medical marijuana: “I’ve had a prescription for some time for chronic pain. I’ve really become a believer. I find it just as effective, if not more, than other pain relief. Originally, when I was going through breast cancer, my oncologist prescribed some, because my recovery was painful. The marijuana was a tremendous help.”

• On vape pens: “Pot is so much better now. Now they have these vape pens. You control your intake. It’s like: function, not function.”

• On shooting Disjointed: “At the end of the week, after we’ve had the show, you get the new script. I go home, take all my makeup off, climb in bed, get stoned and read the new script. They’re hysterical.”

“The world definitely needs more cannabis journalists who know how to cover the space fairly and accurately.”

MONA ZHANG

Founder, Word on the Tree

• On her career before cannabis: “I covered tech and media, and managed social media for publications. My last full-time job was social editor at Adweek, and before that, I was an editor at Mediabistro. I wasn’t happy with the direction my career was going and decided I wanted to focus on a beat I was passionate about: weed!”

• On Word on the Tree: “It’s a daily newsletter and website that delivers everything you need to know about cannabis. My goal is to highlight the best cannabis journalism, with a focus on criminal justice. It’s going well, though it certainly hasn’t been easy. I’m also a freelance journalist and a part-time student. There’s been a proliferation of marijuana media outlets in recent years and mainstream publications have been increasing their cannabis coverage. The world definitely needs more cannabis journalists who know how to cover the space fairly and accurately.”

• On women in cannabis: “The cannabis industry is a great opportunity for women. But I think a lot of the coverage of how the industry is welcoming to women is misguided. Plant-touching sectors like cultivation and extraction are very male-dominated and misogynistic. Ancillary sectors like finance and tech bring in sexism from those industries. There have been gains, just don’t come in with the notion that the industry is particularly welcoming to women. For instance, a cannabis company held a party at a strip club in Las Vegas during the Marijuana Business Conference and Expo in November. We still have a ways to go, but the more women in the industry, the better.”

“There’s a lot of space in the industry for people of any gender, as long as you know your stuff and are willing to work hard.”

JYL FERRIS

Creative director, Tikun Olam

• On the work she does: “I’m responsible for branding, packaging and marketing for both web and print, event and display design, and video for a multistate cannabis brand. I’m returning to my entrepreneurial roots and working as an independent agency. I look forward to taking Tikun Olam to the next level while expanding my clientele.”

• On Woman Grow: “We’re evolving. I hope the organization comes out stronger. There’s a lot of space in the industry for people of any gender, as long as you know your stuff and are willing to work hard. That’s what Women Grow encourages. Opportunities are available if you show up and know what you’re doing. The most important thing is to know what you want to do and pursue it with all of your energy. Women have a huge impact. We purchase health products. We’re movers and shakers.”

“Kansas City didn’t have an active NORML chapter, so I decided to start one.”

JAMIE KACZ

Executive Director, NORML KC

• On becoming a NORML activist: “I’d been a cannabis supporter for a long time, but I’d never used my voice to make a difference. After losing loved ones to conditions that could’ve been helped by cannabis, I no longer wanted to remain silent. As a woman, I wanted to contribute a female perspective to the cause and also encourage other women to get involved. Kansas City didn’t have an active NORML chapter, so I decided to start one.”

• On decriminalizing cannabis in Kansas City: “A small group of dedicated individuals worked tirelessly to put our decriminalization measure on the ballot. The NORML KC chapter was responsible for writing the language, gathering signatures and building coalitions within the community. By leading the Yes on 5 campaign to an overwhelming 75% victory in April, we showed what a small group of individuals can accomplish with passion and tenacity.”

• On women in cannabis: “Women are truly leading the way in creating a more diverse and sophisticated industry. In the past, cannabis consumption has been viewed as male-dominated. It was lacking a female point of view. Now that there’s a larger legal market in the U.S., more women are coming out and helping to shape this new industry.”

“The marijuana media is a crowded space, but by targeting only the financial news, we set ourselves apart.”

DEBRA BORCHARDT

Owner, Green Market Report

• On GreenMarketReport.com: “We focus on the financial news of the cannabis industry and leave advocacy and political reporting to other sites. Our goal is to be a central hub for the industry by presenting analytics and research from a variety of companies. The marijuana media is a crowded space, but by targeting only the financial news, we set ourselves apart.”

• On 2018: “We’ll continue to see industry numbers explode, especially as California begins to record and report hard data on cannabis sales. It will be the year of Cali cannabis. With midterm elections at the end of the year, there could be some improvements in the political landscape.”

• On women in cannabis: “Women got off to a good start in the early years of the industry and then things seemed to slow lately. Perhaps the original female entrepreneurs sold their businesses, or more men started businesses, and that brought the percentages down. Creating their own networks and supporting each other will bring the numbers back up. Women are seeing that by starting these networks, they have a nonjudgmental place to ask questions and get help. We’re stronger together, and by supporting each other we will grow together.”

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