#this show was such a good opportunity to explore the other dynamics within the crows

[romantichopelessly]

no because you’re telling me that Jesper and Nina were present for Kaz’s final confrontation with Rollins, where he discusses his past and NEITHER of them talked to him about it later?

sure, Nina barely knows him here. I can get that. But Jesper? His best friend Jesper? Nosy Jesper?

But of course, why would they spend time on a scene between Kaz and Jesper, one of the most interesting dynamics in the series, if there wasn’t some romantic undertone. Obviously Kaz can only have solo scenes with Inej and Jesper can only have solo scenes with Wylan.

[aion-rsa]

Lovecraft Country Episode 1 Review: Sundown

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This Lovecraft Country review contains spoilers.

Lovecraft Country Season 1, Episode 1

We’re introduced to Atticus “Tic” Freeman (Jonathan Majors) in a dream sequence. What begins as a straightforward black and white scene of Tic in the trenches morphs into a colorful panorama of the fantastical, a smorgasbord of sci-fi hors d’oeuvres. Overhead, flying saucers hover, while creatures of unknown origin fly about the sky. A red woman (Jamie Chung) descends from a spaceship, and alerts our hero to the imminent threat of a rising Cthulhu. Before the Elder God can raise hell, Jackie Robinson smashes it to shit with a single swing of his bat. Tic abruptly awakens.

In real life, Tic is on the back of a greyhound. As the bus crosses yet another bridge named after a dead racist, Tic flips the bridge the bird, a final fuck you to the Jim Crow South. Unfortunately, the bus breaks down. Tic reads A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs as they wait for help, which makes sense of some of his dream imagery. When help arrives and begins to load the stranded passengers, it becomes immediately clear to Tic and the only other Black passenger on board that there will be no aid for them. Tic helps the woman with her bags and they walk.

This scene works on multiple levels. First, the dream sequence gives us insight into who Tic is. He’s a war hero out of his depth, surrounded by things too big and unknowable to fight against. His dream is a manifestation of his hopes and fears, and explores both how he sees himself and how he wants to be seen. Second, the scene establishes the setting. Tic is out of the South but not away from its pervasive anti-Blackness. There isn’t a county line that racists stay behind, that once you cross, you’re safe. A fact that is reiterated later in the episode. In its first few minutes, “Sundown” tells us a lot about the world our characters occupy, and their place within it.

Tic finally makes it home to the Southside of Chicago, where he’s reunited with his Uncle George Freeman (Courtney B. Vance), aunt Hippolyta (Aunjanue Ellis), and cousin Diana (Jada Harris), before looking further into his father Montrose’s (Michael K. Williams) disappearance.  After some investigating, he decides to travel to Ardham, Massachusetts (aka “Lovecraft Country”) to find Montrose. Uncle George insists on coming along, take the opportunity to add more information to his atlas and the Negro Motorist Guidebook he publishes.

One of the jobs the pilot episode has is to introduce us to characters and make us care about them. We have to have a sense of who these people are and what their motivations might be and, crucially, we have to be invested in their journey. This is something “Sundown” does exceedingly well. In just a few lines of dialogue, a few minutes on-screen, we not only know who these characters are, we want them to win.

We meet Leticia “Leti” Lewis (Jurnee Smollet) for the first time, when she joins her sister Ruby (Wunmi Mosaku) on stage. Their dynamic is clear even before they have a conversation, and their dialogue together says so much about both of them. Ruby is the responsible one of the two, always looking for an opportunity to advance. Leti is a free-spirit who doesn’t plant roots, so it comes as no surprise that she would randomly decide to join Tic and Uncle George on their trip.

We don’t meet Montrose in this episode, but so much of who he is can be extrapolated from the conversations people have about him. We know he drinks heavily, that he was abused as a kid and abused Tic in turn. We know he, like Tic and George, is well-read. I care about and am invested in Montrose, even though he doesn’t appear on screen.

Another thing Lovecraft Country does well in its premiere is establish stakes. Once Tic, Leti, and Uncle George set off, we see them pass through town after town. Eerie string chords backdrop otherwise innocuous scenes of the trio driving down main streets, or filling up at local gas stations. Where traditionally those audio cues might be used to alert the audience a killer is nearby or an evil entity is wreaking havoc in sight of a nanny cam, music in “Sundown” clues the audience into the fact that the trio are constantly under threat. The ever-present enemy is racism.

Racism isn’t just insidious, though. Tic n’em narrowly avoid being gunned down by white townies after stopping at a diner Uncle George was misinformed about. If not for Leticia Fucking Lewis’ superb driving and an assist from a mysterious white woman (Abbey Lee) in a silver Bentley, they mightn’t have made it. They regroup at Leti’s brother’s and receive his intel on the town of Ardham, including a dossier on the county’s top kkkop.

The group spend all of the following day driving around, looking for a road to Ardham that can’t be found. While pulled over to reassess, they’re approached by the same sheriff they’d been warned about, and he immediately threatens to hang them if they’re caught after dark. With mere minutes until sundown, Tic n’em have to drive out of the county, fast enough to beat the setting sun but not so fast they get pulled over for speeding. They make it over the county line in a knick of time, and are allowed a moment of relief before they run into more deputies.

Tic, Leti, and Uncle George are taken into the woods and forced to the ground, with the deputies’ shotguns aimed directly at them. Before the monsters in uniform can pull the trigger, they’re beset upon by many-eyed, tentacled beasts who dismember a deputy in a single bite. Chaos and carnage ensue, and the sheriff— who was about to execute innocent folks in the forest and who is missing a good chunk of flesh from his person—says, without a hint of irony, “monsters aren’t real.” The cognitive dissonance. Freemans and Leti have God and anime on their side and outmaneuver both the monsters with guns and the ones with fangs. They survive the night and stumble bloody and exhausted into Ardham, and the large manor that fronts the estate. When they approach the front door, it opens and they’re greeted by a vision of Aryan perfection, who says to them: “We’ve been expecting you, Mr. Freeman. Welcome home.”

“Sundown” sets the tone for the season and answers the question of what the audience can expect. This episode tells us, plainly, that racism is a horror of its own, equal to and separate from the things that go bump in the night. But it also makes it clear that monsters are real. We know our heroes are walking into something strange and dangerous, and the fun comes from watching that weirdness unfold. Lovecraft Country holds nothing back in its premiere, and if this episode is anything to go on, the show will only get wilder and better.

The post Lovecraft Country Episode 1 Review: Sundown appeared first on Den of Geek.

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[ladystylestores]

Black Models See Rising Representation in China – WWD

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LONDON — While the Black Lives Matter movement is spurring swift change across the fashion industry, and society as a whole, in the U.S., the demand for Black models in China is also on the rise because of a new wave of designer brands that see inclusivity as an integral part of their DNA, and a more open-minded social environment that champions Sino-African relations.

China has a very different dynamic and history with Black people compared to the U.S., where the majority of African Americans were brought to the continent as a result of the slave trade. Most Black people living in China are there to do business or study by choice, and the majority of the population in China holds a neutral-to-friendly view toward them, as China’s history books would describe how its “African brothers” helped the country regain its seat at the U.N. in 1971.

On a diplomatic level, China is the biggest supporter of many African nations. It has pledged more than $150 billion in loans to the continent between 2000 and 2018 as part of the New Silk Road initiative, and in June, Chinese President Xi Jinping pledged to cancel the interest-free debts owed by several African countries as part of Beijing’s move to help the region during the coronavirus pandemic.

China also built the first electrified railway from Addis Ababa to Djibouti in 2018, based on China’s high-speed railway, and many other huge infrastructure projects that previous colonial rulers considered unworthy to invest in.

Chow Tai Fook’s campaign for Children’s Day. 

Still, Black representation in the Chinese media is rare, and when it appears it can raise eyebrows among some more conservative observers.

Hong Kong jeweler Chow Tai Fook, for example, posted three campaigns featuring the hands of a Black model playing a game with an Asian model for China’s Children’s Day on June 1 on Weibo. This kind of interracial depiction from a Chinese brand generated heated debate, with more than 19,000 comments and 300,000 likes on the post.

Some expressed their extreme and nationalist views, but the majority of the comments defended and praised Chow Tai Fook’s inclusive casting. One user said: “Thank you Chow Tai Fook, this is the right attitude a Chinese brand shall have, respecting different races and values equality.”

For a long time, fair skin has been associated with beauty, wealth and prosperity in China. Skin-whitening products are some of the bestsellers for beauty brands, from Lancôme’s Blanc Expert range and Estée Lauder’s Crescent White series to Chanel’s Le Blanc skin-care and makeup lines. While Unilever and L’Oreal have dropped any references to white or whitening on skin-care labels in response to the Black Lives Matter movement, the majority of luxury beauty brands have not yet taken a stance on this issue.

But with more Chinese traveling around the world and staying connected via social media receiving information from all sorts of cultures, the country’s ideal of beauty is changing. Leading Chinese models like Liu Wen, Lina Zhang and Chu Wong are some of the most in-demand faces in fashion at the moment, and their success is shifting the country’s decades-long obsession with Western facial features, such as double eyelids and a sharp jawline, toward more a progressive and diverse beauty standard.

Ajak Deng on the cover on Modern Weekly in 2012. She is the first Black model to be on the cover of a Chinese fashion publication.  Courtesy Photo/John-Paul Pietrus

This kind of open-mindedness is helping the fashion industry in China to become more inclusive toward Black models.

John-Paul Pietrus, a photographer who has been working with Chinese fashion publications for more than a decade and shot the first Chinese fashion magazine cover featuring a Black model — Ajak Deng wearing Comme des Garçons in 2012 for Modern Weekly produced in China (Vogue China put Naomi Campbell on the cover of its January 2009 issue, but it was not photographed in the country) — said he can feel there is an increasing demand for Black models in China.

“The first time I shot a Black model in China was in 2004 for Jalouse, when Elite was having their international model competition in Shanghai,” he said. “I wanted to do a big portfolio that showcased cultural diversity. I didn’t want the cliché of having a white girl in front of a concrete jungle sort of colonial thing. Instead, we shot Aye Tounkara all around Shanghai.

“People on the street were curious. They stared at her as odd. They hadn’t seen anyone like her at that time. People might have seen Naomi Campbell or Tyra Banks kind of Black models, but not her kind — shaved head and super dark skin and she was wearing super glamorous designer clothes. A car drove by, and the driver was so amazed by her, the car crashed into a lamppost,” he added.

Model Aye Tounkara on the street in Shanghai.  Coutresy Photo/John-Paul Pietrus

From the 2010s, as international brands began to bring more diverse models to their China shows, local fashion publications began to have more opportunities to work with Black models. Pietrus photographed Ajak Deng for Modern Weekly and Numéro China when she was in Shanghai for an Hermès show.

The Chinese editions of Vogue, Elle and Harper’s Bazaar have occasionally featured Black models in their editorials, but not as frequently as they want to. Editors and stylists cite the challenge being there simply aren’t that many Black models based in China, not even for a few months. Pietrus said he had never even seen a Black model’s card in China back in the day.

Men’s wear designer Feng Chen Wang said she had to fly Black models to China for her shows when the local agency couldn’t provide enough options. Having lived in London for more than a decade, Feng believes any brand should make inclusivity a part of its core values. She uses a diverse cast of models every season and in special projects she does with Converse and Levi’s.

A look from Levi’s 501 jeans x Feng Chen Wang campaign.  Courtesy Photo

Fiona Lau of Ffixxed Studios, a Shanghai-based label, said if an emerging brand wants to reach the same level of casting diversity as in Paris or London, it will have to search hard within its limited budget.

“We are both originally from Australia and one of the fortunate things about growing up in Australia is living in a really multicultural society, so diversity is something that has always been an important part of what we do,” she said of her and her co-creative director Kain Picken. “With regard to the situation here in China, to be honest, we have not had that many options for Black models when casting our shows or look books, compared with the Paris shows.”

Beginning last season, the designers began to scout models through their personal network. “We used a Black male model for our look book who is actually our friend Daniel Magunje. He is really interesting, a Chinese speaking fashion blogger from Africa, now based in Hangzhou, and we wanted to work with him. It was a similar situation when we worked with Boubou the Crow, a French hip-hop dancer based in Shanghai. We sought him out ourselves. We need to be more proactive in finding our own models if there is not enough diversity provided through traditional agencies. It’s something we can continue to work on in the future,” Lau added.

Daniel Magunje in Ffixxed Studios’ 2020 fall look book.  Courtesy

For big brands, the demand to have diversity of models in a show in China is on the rise, but very slowly, observed Tina Steele, communication director at event agency K2 in Shanghai.

“Diversity is not a priority. Very rarely have clients requested or accepted Black models in China. They wouldn’t say it directly, of course,” she said. “On average we’ll have either 50 to 70 percent Asian models and 30 to 50 percent Caucasian models. So far this year, for our shows we are only going for Asian models since most ex-pat models are unable to come in the country.”

The lack of Black models in China could also be attributed to economics, since for an agency to bring a model from overseas they need to be able to provide a certain amount of sustained commercial work to make it viable for the agency as well as for the model, although Haitian-American model Christina Rateau argues otherwise. She has been seeing more Black models working in Shanghai in recent years, mostly from Brazil.

A regular at Shanghai Fashion Week and an international business graduate from Shanghai’s Donghua University, Rateau has had a good career in China, walking for brands like Sirloin, Private Policy, Yirantian and INXX, and appearing in campaigns for Puma and the Bosideng x Jean Paul Gaultier capsule.

She said there is little competition when a brand wants to cast a Black model in China, and she can count all the Black models in Shanghai on her fingers. Rateau has been in Indianapolis with her family since the COVID-19 outbreak started in China and, based on the portfolio she built up in China, she has signed with an agency in the U.S. to explore the international market and creative roles behind the scenes.

Christina Rateau poses for Vulkan.  Courtesy Photo

Rateau thinks Black models are getting more representation in China because Chinese clients are trying to mirror what high-fashion brands are doing — increasingly putting an emphasis on racial diversity. “With LVMH after Virgil Abloh came on board, you see his fashion shows and it’s like, ‘This is what it could be, man!’ And China is trying to mirror a lot of foreign trendsetting in that way. It’s like, ‘If Black models are cool abroad, we have to get that going here,’” she added.

At the same time, she acknowledged the complexity and wider implications of her modeling in China. “We’re also just not the beauty standard here. That’s a fact. It is weird, too, to impose someone else’s beauty standards onto China’s thousands of years of beauty standards. That said, I still think it’s still important to accept any and all kinds of beauty,” she said.

Magunje, 23, who came to China in 2014 to study accounting at Hangzhou’s Zhejiang Gongshang University, said he found self-confidence by modeling in China. “In Zimbabwe or South Africa, you have to be strong and muscular to be a model. I didn’t really fit in. After I got here, I was just shopping in a mall, minding my own business, and this very well-dressed guy just approached me and said he wanted me to model for his Taobao brand,” he said.

Since then, Magunje has an average of three modeling jobs a month while running his own cross-border business, helping Chinese companies to enter the African market, and promoting African designers and textiles in China. He said he never goes to a casting — jobs come to him from word-of-mouth recommendations — and he has discovered that there is, in fact, a hidden demand for Black models, who are often overlooked by professional modeling agencies, which tend to prefer Asian and Caucasian faces.

“I am thinking about starting a modeling agency to represent Black models in China,” he said. “Lots of my friends ask me how I started and they are looking for jobs in modeling in China, and I truly think I am in a good place to help. “

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[ozsaill]

Cruising the Bahamas: beauty at our back door

Hard won miles to windward from the cerulean blue of our last Bahamian anchorage, some perspective on our months in the islands is sinking in. I went in with a mixed bag of expectations: friends who have sailed around the world claim it’s among the best cruising to be had (don’t we all love our first major destination?). Other cruisers who don’t have that far-reaching basis for comparison rave about it (was there narrower base of comparison at play?). It put me on guard: were we REALLY going to like it that much? How could islands so close to the USA possibly offer that kind of exceptional experience?

Confession: I spent too much of our time there being jaded and just needed to get over it. So what if the Bahamas didn’t measure up in discrete specifics to more exotic locales? On its own merits, the islands are a spectacular cruising ground, and there is a lot to love. These are the reasons it stood out in our experience.

Beautiful water

It’s spectacular. There is almost nothing more to say. We’ve seen a lot of mesmerizing water on our way around the world, and the Bahamas (tie: Bermuda) is at the top of the heap. It’s as though it is lit from within: and it is, in a way, as sunlight reflecting off a white sandy bottom is what lends the vivid blues. Stunning shades of aqua in the winding inner channel of the Exumas are now my benchmark. A gift for cruisers starting out from the US east coast: their first international step can transport them to some of the best! UNDERwater is another story, but we’ll save that for later.

Photos can’t do the colors justice, but offer a suggestion

Close to home

It’s a DAY trip! Sure, there is a meaningful bit of water to cross and the Gulf Stream deserves all the respect and planning you can give it. But at the end of the day, well… at the end of the day in which you depart Florida, you can be relaxing on the hook in Alice Town or West End, and rightfully feel like you have transported yourself a world away to an island paradise where you can beachcomb for intricate shells, paddle in turquoise water, gawk at mountains of conch shells, maybe even swim with dolphins (all features of our point of arrival, Bimini).

How to describe the feeling of being approached by a playful dolphin?

This proximity also helped when Jamie and I had to fly out. I was gone a week for the Annapolis spring boat show; Jamie hopped around Florida and the Caribbean checking out boat listings with a few of our coaching clients. Even in what felt like relatively remote islands, flights were easy to book on relatively short notice and fares weren’t terrible. What a great way to cruise in a place that’s relatively easy to have visitors! And if you’re sailing back to the US, it’s likely to be with the wind at your back…and an easier task to find a date to cross the Gulf Stream in comfort.

Access to stuff

If you came for the sand you’ll be in paradise. If you came for the avocados to make guacamole to go accompany nacho chips that cost $11/bag, then carry on to Puerto Rico!

Sure, you may want to provision up anything you must have; you might not find it and it will cost more when you do. But it’s a corollary of “close to home,” these islands aren’t in the middle of an ocean. They’re regularly supplied by mail boats (or planes). Costs can be eyepopping (especially for our hungry crew…wow the kids were easier to feed when they were little!), but that’s if you’re trying to recreate your Publix shopping cart at a market on Eleuthera. Mitigate expense with advance provisioning or switching your diet to local style: market rates or government subsidy keep many staples affordable. Get out the fishing gear. Shift your habits. Eat on board instead of ashore.

Conch at a pier on Eleuthera: 7 for $10

Ultimately, availability wasn’t as bad as I expected from reports. In George Town, it as possible to get everything from kale to mushrooms and shallots. Markets in Staniel Cay had surprising breadth: asparagus anyone? (thanks I’m sure to the higher-end charters frequenting the area and providing a ready market to supply.)

Bounty after the mail boat: George Town, Great Exuma

If you need boat parts, it’s a little different. People don’t need diesel mechanics the way they need food. But help is there, and parts are just a DHL shipment away. Many corners of the world are a lot more complicated, and lot slower / more costly, if it’s necessary to source and deliver boat bits. So you may have to wait a bit…there are few places that wouldn’t be lovely to be required to wait around!

Easily connected

We started out by using our existing US T-Mobile plans. T-Mobile’s customer service crowed about the 4G we’d be living in the Bahamas, leveraging the BTC cellular network that’s already in place. Well, there was broad coverage. That’s incredible, really, considering the dispersed islands and thin population. But the service was throttled back to 2G. Fine if you’re just checking email, but really not good enough for what it cost. No problem: swapping our T-Mobile SIM card for a BTC SIM was affordable and easy. $15 for the SIM, and during our stay, 15 gigabytes cost only $35 – much better value than our paused T-Mobile plan and about the cheapest per-GB rate yet.

Social scene

Despite being entirely off pace with the seasonal flow of the Bahamas, the islands lived up to their reputation as a social hub for cruisers. Our timing meant that we experienced it on a smaller scale (George Town peaks with more than 300 boats; there were maybe a dozen transients when we came in). But we were able to meet up with “internet friends” passing on the way to the states, and make new friends who, like us, had plans to point to the Caribbean for hurricane season.

An overdue meetup with the Tookish crew, plus friends

But your draft!

US east coasters in particular seem to make a big deal about shallow Bahamas water limiting access to all but shallow draft boats. Depths require attention, but it is NOT a big deal. Shallower draft boats can anchor closer to the beach. Once in a while they can take a shortcut that we can’t, or skip waiting for higher tide. Repeat: it is not a big deal. We draw 6’; we spent time with a boat drawing 7’, neither of us felt compromised in our anchoring or locked out from cool spots.

Siobhan peeks under Totem’s keel: at times we only had a few inches at low tide

Uncomplicated cruising

The Bahamas was largely a straightforward place to cruise. Same language, much of the same cultural context, it’s safe, there are oodles of blogs and other resources to help plan a trip. Currency is 1:1 with the US dollar, and US currency is accepted everywhere. It really does not get much easier! But I can appreciate that for cruisers who are reaching beyond the US coast for the first time, it may feel …not easy. And of course, it’s Not America, and with that may creep in some uncertainty. The cure for that is the Waterway Guide. Updated annually, it includes exhaustive detail to relieve any worries a new cruiser (or, newly international cruiser) might have from the clearance process (an overall view and details what to do / where to go at each port of entry) to understanding the unique dynamics of the tide in the Bahamas (they have a great description that helped it make perfect sense to me) – along with all that normal logistical guide stuff of places to go, conch shacks to patronize, and reefs to snorkel. It’s the only book you need.

Late-season flock anchored off Monument Beach, George Town

The same folks who think you need shoal draft boats to cruise the Bahamas warn about bad charts and currents and tides and dragons. Dunno about the dragons but just like depth, current/tide merely requires attention. It’s not unduly complicated, but may be new for boaters accustomed to channel markers wherever you might need them and aids to navigation for any hazard. Possibly that’s why the Explorer charts have developed an otherwise puzzling cult following. After being at the receiving end a mountain of FUD, we finally conceded to buy a set. They WERE good charts, but along our winding path from Bimini through the Exumas to Great Inagua, Navionics charts (used with the iNavX app) were pretty much spot on (save a few places where we found more depth than they indicated). And speaking of FUD, that’s what Explorer throws at boaters who just want to anchor. In one anchorage after another Explorer reported bad holding where we set the hook very well, thank you. They also advertise a lot of marinas…

We maxed out the three months we were granted on entry to the Bahamas. What we didn’t max out where the opportunities to explore. Always good to leave something wanting? One aspect is certain: the further away from the US we got, the better we liked the Bahamas. Had our earlier plans not relied on pauses and airports while Jamie and I took care of business, I kinda think we might have tipped over into full-fledged the Bahamas cheerleaders. There were just a few things that held us back, though, and that’s the next post.

Drones-eye-view to the north at Stocking Island, Exumas

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