1/31/2017 0 Comments Currently...January.
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1/27/2017 0 Comments life: happy anti-versary365 days and I still have ANTI on constant rotation. I can’t recall an album ever making that kind of space for itself in my life. I feel like every time I stray from it— get really into Anderson .Paak or even Frank Sinatra for a minute—I still always have to go back to ANTI. Why doesn’t it get old?? Anderson .Paak and Frank Sinatra are really great, but trust me you can only listen to “Fly Me to the Moon” so many times before you start seriously aging yourself. ANTI, on the other hand has never had me feeling the need for a switch up. Every time I press play on “Needed Me”—I feel it in my toes. Don’t know if that’s an indicator of much but I think it should be. I could pick out the first seconds of that echoing intro anywhere… and I often do. That girl you saw scream “RIHANNAA” in public? Ya, that was me. I think maybe that’s ANTI’s secret. The visceral reaction it demands. Every song demands an emotional response. And it's not because a songwriter strung some pretty words together, actually the words are fairly sparse and simple. “Goodnight Gotham” is a minute and a half of “night, night, for a night,” with the occasional, “only if” cut from Florence and the Machines “Only if For A Night”. Not a lot to work with as far as searching for meaning. But still, instinctively you know what the song is about. It reaches beyond the cognitive space of words and fastens meaning onto gut reactions. When I listen to “Goodnight Gotham”, it’s a mess. It’s frantic, it’s relentless, it's haunting, it's frankly kind of scary… but at the same time invigorating? There are probably a multitude of instances where one would feel that clusterfuck of emotions. Do I know which instance she’s getting at? No. But I don’t think that is necessarily the point. I am a firm believer that creative content released into the world gains meaning only upon its interaction with us. There can be no concrete tangible meaning sitting latent in anything. Creators can have intentions— what they hope for you to conclude from their work, but depending on the varying experience and background of those consuming this work, the reactions and conclusions drawn will be equally diverse. When I hear ANTI I have a visceral reaction to the sound. I read my own experiences into every drawn out, exhausted vocal on “Love on the Brain”, the anxious technological chaos of “Pose”, and the desperate drunk sound of “Higher”. Rihanna leaves the space to do this wide open, and that’s why I don’t think I can get sick of ANTI. I draw this album's meaning from the empathy of emotion it evokes, and I celebrate it for its ability to raise these emotions, not through logic and words but through sound. FUCKING BRILLIANT RI RI CANT WAIT TO SEE WHATS NEXT -Leah Maybe it’s sadistic, but I love a good unhappy ending. Give me the bittersweet love story, the missed messages, the bad timing and even the tragedies. I guess I look for realism? To me, real is sloppy, unpredictable, and unfair. It can’t be succinctly summed up, and you don’t get every detail. It doesn’t necessarily mean every costume is authentic down to the pantyhose. Or every accent is perfectly sourced. It just means it is aware of the conventions its genre lives within and finds a way to messily evade those, thus recognizing the messy situation we all call life. In this way--La La Land is all about real. And no, I don’t think breaking into song and dance is real. Nor do I think by-chance encounters with the same person season after season is very real. But this is a show that revels in its romanticism and therefore shocks with its realism. It is so strongly aware of its musical genre it even shows an ‘alternate ending’ that exists purely in the musical element of this strained musical vs. realist world it has established. A world in which all conventions are followed, cumulating in the two lovers finding happiness together. It is this awareness that causes the antithetical ending to be so satisfying. The movie itself is aware of the impossibilities of its limitless genre. It parallels this world of the musical with ‘great love’, raising the question of whether this love can only exist in such a world. In the real ending Mia leaves Sebastian in order to follow her dream. The implication being, she cannot give her entire soul over to this passion if he takes up a part of it. He was her ‘great love’, but eventually she finds different love with a caring husband and a beautiful baby. I think if you’re lucky you get one or two ‘great loves’ in your life. But then I think you get a whole lot of different love too. Do I think it’s realistic to expect those one or two ‘great loves’ will be the person you spend the entirety of your life with? No I don’t. But I also don’t think that takes away from their magic. This is what La La Land does. It reminds us of the honest reality of ‘great love’ while reminding us the wonder of its very existence. It gives us an unhappy ending while reminding us we don’t live our lives for the ending, we live them for the messy wonderful limitless middle. -Leah 1/19/2017 0 Comments Life: Trump in the HouseWhen I fly, my palms get really sweaty. I over-analyze every single jerk of the plane, every dip and every shift through the sky. I am constantly scanning the faces of the flight attendants for any signs of impending danger. I can quite definitively assure you that I am not the greatest flyer that has ever sat squished in a middle seat on a late-night flight from Toronto to Vancouver. However, there was something so pacifying about turning my phone onto airplane mode as the plane pulled away from the gate on December 19th. That was the night the Electoral College would cast their official votes in determining the presidential pick, and there was the faintest, slightest, glimmer of optimism that maybe, somehow, the White House would not be transitioning into the "Orange House" come January 20th. While I do not claim to know the intricacies, or really any more than the basics, of the Electoral College, I do know that it is a 200 year-old, antiquated system that appointed Donald Trump as the commander-in-chief of the United States, regardless of him being the less popular of the two major candidates in the November election. And that is absolute nonsense. Mr. Trump was able to convert the right demographics, and capitalize on poisonous voter suppression, so that he came out victorious in key states, which shifted the teetering balance away from a qualified, strong (nasty) woman, to an actually nasty, horrible, vile man. It has been roughly two years since the campaigns began and despite copious satirical jokes and shared dinner-table laughs, the man who no one ever believed would make it, has effectively made it. That is more than absolute nonsense; it’s outrageously ludicrous. There are entirely too many people, and bodies, and organizations to blame for this incensing turn of events, and thus it is not possible to pinpoint a single reason, however the fault lies straddling the bipartisan line, that is for sure. Obviously, the acute responsibility can be assigned to the majority of Republicans, and a small portion of disgruntled, frustrated Democrats. Their decision to check the box for DJT instead of HRC, is the small-picture reason that the Electoral College elected Donald Trump (also known as America’s official tanning bed spokesperson) onto the throne of the most powerful country in the world. But that is such a tertiary, downstream justification for the catastrophe that we have witnessed. More comprehensive explanations might include: voter suppression, white privilege, the very problematic Democratic National Convention, and ingrained systemic sexism and racism, just to name a few. Turns out, 53% of white females voted for You-Know-Who, paying no heed to the multiple allegations and lawsuits against him for sexual assault and aggressions, or his track record of heinously racist comments and stances. I cannot claim to know anything about those particular white females, without employing an erroneous fallacy, but I do know what I don't understand. How could the majority of White American females disregard all qualms or fears of a sexual predator rising to power? How was an overqualified female with years of political experience not enough to sway them? During his whole campaign, was there genuinely nothing off-putting enough to conclusively reject him? Of course, there is an absolute necessity to acknowledge the privilege of that particular vote: white women have infinitely more protection in the American justice system than women of colour. They were less at risk; they had less to lose. Which is, I guess, maybe why they were able to cast their vote for a man who ran on a tyrannical, misogynistic, xenophobic platform. Or why 58% of white voters overall voted for him. I’m not saying that Hillary was the perfect candidate, as she has engaged in some fairly disturbing displays of power in her past, but she was undeniably a better alternative. In the same way that it is impossible for me to ever truly grasp the fear that black men and women might feel when they see flashing lights in their mirrors, there is a painful part of Hillary's loss that men may never fully understand. Even for me, who was won over by Bernie very early on, my heart was twisted and crushed when I groggily rolled over on November 9th at 6am, swiped open my phone, and tapped on the CNN App. Putting aside all the politics and promises, a woman lost to a man, and that, on its own, is sufficiently disheartening (read: the US still won't have had a female president after 225 years). But then you start comparing their experiences, their qualifications, and their skills, and it is a slap-in-the-face, punch-to-the-gut, stab-in-the-back kind of loss. It says to me, and many other women, young and old, that no matter how hard we try, there will always be a man there to beat us. Everything that happened in this election period is unfathomable and outright insane, so for those five hours in the air on the night of the Electoral College’s decision, I embraced ignorance, in all its bliss. I fantasized that upon touchdown, I would switch off airplane mode and be greeted with a thunderous influx of electronic notifications to let me know that decency had reigned. I knew it was a far-fetched dream: that the slight political protestation against the functioning of the Electoral College would change anything. But I held onto that dream-- as a woman, and as a human being, who fears for all those who do not benefit from white heteronormative supremacy (which is pretty much everyone in the whole world, white cis-men included!!) More explicitly, I fear that Trump’s election will create an America where hate and ignorance dictate its citizens’ everyday decisions. I fear an America where women lose access to reproductive health services. I fear an America where mass incarceration of black men continues to be the norm. I fear an America where the intolerance of Islam, and its false synonymy with terrorism, persists in its growth. I fear an America where conversion therapy creeps back onto the table. I fear an America that intensifies its second-class treatment of Indigenous peoples. Ultimately, I fear an America that moves backwards instead of forwards. Now, it is the eve of the inauguration, and a month since Trump’s fate was sealed. And although, he will still be sworn in as the 45th President of the United States tomorrow, there is a new emotion brimming inside me, and inside so many others across the world. It is something I neglected to consider while flying through the air on December 19th, in my spiraling pessimistic state. Today, and tomorrow, and far into the foreseeable future, there is hope. The Women’s March on Washington is slated to have more attendees (not to mention better performers!) than the inauguration. Countless elected officials have voiced their dissidence with Trump’s rhetoric and his campaign promises, and have avowed they will work to create a safe, thriving America. Needless to say, it will take an enormous amount of work to stand-up to Trump’s presidency, and his conservative cabinet picks and appointed staff. It will require commitment, collaboration, open minds, and consistent conversation, on the part of activists, lawmakers, business-people, artists, and government officials alike. For every late-night gibberish tweet, for every dismissive comment, and for every attempt to apply his oppressive, harmful views onto the government, we will have to put in the extra hours, and truthfully it doesn’t scare me at all anymore-- in fact, it is honestly invigorating. And then, four years from now, in January 2021, after all that hard work, I ardently hope there is someone a little less self-tanner, and a lot more powerful-female, placing their left hand on the Bible, ready to start anew. - Amy I spent the entire first season of Jane The Virgin, waiting for Jane to ‘lose it’. Virginity is positioned as the story's central conflict as soon as you read the title, and persists throughout the entire first season as the main cliffhanger you binge to resolve. However, somewhere in the second season I stopped caring when Jane was going to lose it. Every romantic encounter did not leave me on the edge of my seat wondering if this was ‘the moment’, and if he was ‘the one!'. Instead, I was lost in the crazy telenovella style drama, the poignantly funny humour, and the dynamically flawed characters—Jane’s virginity no longer felt like a conflict, and it was certainly not my reason for watching. The way the shows handles sex and virginity is exceptional. It causes audiences to acknowledge our expectations by shoving them in our faces. It dangles her virginity right in the title and demands we see it as the show's central conflict, and then refuses to satisfy our need to ‘resolve’ it. Jane has been taught to wait until marriage by her grandmother, who demonstrates the fragility of virginity by having Jane crumple up a flower and then attempt to put it back together. Of course, she cannot, and this lesson stays with her up to present day. However, contrary to popular belief— virginity is not a flower. It's actually nothing more than a socially constructed state of being, so naturally I was a bit taken aback by the show's portrayal of it as such. But it wasn’t until I forgot to be waiting for her to ‘lose it’, that I realized the brilliance in providing such an overtly traditional stance so early in the show. Once I had forgotten--and then remembered that I had forgotten Jane's virginity, I was forced to combat why it had felt so important that she lose it earlier in the show. The show begins by forcing you to recognize virginity as a conflict. A conflict in which the ‘loss of’ resolves it: happily or otherwise. This effectively reduces the personal choice of how to conduct oneself sexually, into a problem to tick off a to-do list. However, Jane refuses to ‘resolve’ her virginity. If Jane’s virginity is truly a conflict plot point, it’s been dragged out for three seasons now. But the thing is, nothing about Jane The Virgin feels drawn out. The pace of plot is so fast that one minute Petra is marrying her long-lost crazy ex, and the next she’s having Rafael’s babies. In the midst of all the action, Jane’s virginity fades from central conflict, to a background aspect of her personal life. There is something revolutionary in the sense that Jane’s virginity is the title purpose for the show, and yet not at all important to the over arching plot of the series. The show points to how trained we are to view sexuality as the biggest source of conflict in female lives, and then retrains us to see it as a non-issue. It points out how women are constantly scrutinized for their sexuality, or lack there of, and this paradox forms a huge and central conflict in the life of every woman: real or fictional. This female paradox of sexuality is nothing new, but it is refreshing to have it spelled out so plainly. We are taught that women’s sexuality is a marker of their personality. Jane the Virgin is even subject to falling into this as they have Petra the promiscuous villain contrasted with Jane the good girl virgin. But it doesn’t let itself fall too far into this stereotyping as we see further into Jane’s reasoning for abstinence, which is complex and ever changing. It is not an innate aspect of her personality, but merely a decision she makes. Jane being a virgin eventually is about as important as Jane deciding grilled cheese is her favourite food. The writers make it unavoidably obvious and give it a weird sense of importance, but then make you forget all about it as soon as you find out the first major plot twist. Jane the Virgin is essentially a show about a virgin that forgets it cares about her being a virgin. If only the world worked like that. -Leah Leah: How can you reconcile content that you love but also doesn’t always align with your beliefs? Is it possible? Amy: When Audre Lorde said that “the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house”, she was most likely not prophesying a reality TV show about finding love, readily consumed by millions of Americans every Monday night. However, her statement is a succinct way of explaining that watching The Bachelor is inarguably not the most effective course of action to undo the patriarchal, and increasingly capitalist, society to which a sizeable proportion of the world subscribes. Without pause, I can think of many reasons why the The Bachelor should be banned from TV, starting with the fact that it depicts only heteronormative relationships and ending with (but not limited to) the fact that these "relationships" are between almost exclusively White contestants. Further, the issue is certainly not magically resolved by creating The Bachelorette, a version where women get to play the title role in a still indubitably harmful show. I expect Lorde might shake her head at the TV industry’s attempt to right the tipped scale and give both men and women an “equal chance” to participate in the kyriarchy. This dilemma does not end in the realm of reality TV. The Big Bang Theory is problematic in how it portrays women as dichotomously either dumb and pretty, or smart and ugly. 30 Rock has used, on multiple occasions, black-face as a comedic device. And Homeland makes many stereotypical errors in its portrayal of Islam and the Middle East. It is further replicated in other forms of consumable content, from movies to clothing to electronics to who you follow on Instagram. How many movies did I watch in 2016 that would pass the Bechdel test? How many pieces of clothing in my closet are made by companies that practice completely cruelty-free labour? Is the metal in my cellphone ethically sourced? Did my favourite actor say something sexist in their last press conference? So why do I enjoy ingesting the material when it is so obviously wrought with fundamental ethical issues? And moreover, should I cease watching, or can I continue my conflicted consumption? If I was perfect, I would turn off the TV the moment I heard Chris Harrison’s opening lines of The Bachelor. But I don’t. And as hard as I try not to shop at Walmart or Forever 21, sometimes I fall for the cheap prices and crappy quality. Honestly, I’m not certain if I will ever be able to completely detach myself from the problematic media and materials which fill my environment so wholly— some of it is just too good. However, critically appraising the TV and movies I watch is the first step, and a very important one, in easing away from a flawed system. There is a required, consistent monitoring of all material we take in; it is necessary that we are constantly aware of if, and how, our entertainment and possessions may be misaligned with our values. And the more I critique the content I am consuming, the less enchantment and interest I have in said questionable content. Gradually, I am searching out more meaningful, more diverse, and more socially conscious TV, movies, and companies, and they are becoming what fulfills me and inspires me to reject the norm and pursue the tools that will “dismantle the master’s house”. 1/8/2017 0 Comments In defence of: fluffFluff /fluef/ noun 2. Entertainment or writing perceived as trivial or superficial. So first I want to highlight the most important word in that definition. Perceived. Anything value based is always perceived and therefore can never truely be fact. So pretty much that means perception is either an individual’s opinion, or a societally ingrained bullshit opinion. In this case, fluff is perceived as being unimportant. Anytime something is perceived as unimportant I think it is always important to ask for facts as to why. If there are no facts and merely perceptions, that is probably bullshit. So what is fluff? Fluff to me is the T.V. your mom got mad at you for watching when you were supposed to be doing your homework. It’s Jersey Shore, 90210, The Bachelor. It’s also Archie Comics, Cosmopolitan magazine, and Twilight. It’s Princess Diaries and it’s the Kardashians. It’s also disproportionately female content. Fluff does not include action movies, sports, or Call of Duty-- all traditionally male subject matter. Which is really no surprise as female interests have always been perceived as trivial or superficial. Fancy a round of needlework anybody? The mistake this definition makes is in perpetuating this perception of female content as trivial and superficial. I would argue you could learn as much about our world watching one episode of Keeping up with the Kardashians, than through reading half the high-flown novels I read for my English degree. The heavy emphasis on femininity in Keeping up with the Kardashians often leads it to be construed as both trivial and superficial. The show is made up of mostly women and documents their everyday lives including going for lunch, choosing their outfits, and updating their instagrams. What's percieved as more trivial than that?! But where one person might see fluff as superficial, I see an archive of our current pop culture reflecting society in 2017. I see women exploring interpersonal relationships through fictional characters. I see women just enjoying this content, and that has got to stop equating to trivial. That seems pretty important to me. -Leah |