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The Cornell Daily Sun (https://cornellsun.com/2005/01/24/class-of-09-will-read-achebes-fall-apart/)

January 24, 2005

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Class of '09 Will Read Achebe's Fall Apart

By | January 24, 2005

Isaac Kramnick, vice provost for undergraduate education, announced on Saturday that Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart will be next year’s selection for the New Student Reading Project.

The announcement was made at the annual meeting of the Association of Class Officers in New York City.

“It’s a very provocative and interesting choice,” said Tommy Bruce, vice president for communications and media relations.

Things Fall Apart was Achebe’s response to Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, according to the Nigerian author. The tragic novel is read in multiple courses at Cornell and is a part of the curriculum in many high schools across America.

Archived article by Freda Ready
Sun Managing Editor

Fishing for Detergent

By January 25, 2005

As the communications industry gets more homogenized and the same syndicated sitcoms run rampant across every basic cable channel, viewers are understandably besought by anxiety. Are we all just mechanical observers, faceless hordes without any discernible interests or attention spans? A spate of more specific channels has tried to redress this problem in recent years: The History Channel for nebbish pseudo-intellectuals; the vintage DisneyToons channel for 25-year-olds still going on about 1989’s Tail Spin Christmas spectacular; The Agriculture Channel for farmers and livestock. But audiences barely know their own traits, let alone what channels would appeal to them. It’s too much to ask all viewers to go through each facet of their personality. No one wants to pontificate on how ironic or introverted they are before they can watch TV. All we ask for is flashing lights, celebrities, and something, anything, to get our attention away from that goddamn divorce that crippled my life two years ago. Three channels have come to the rescue to simplify this procedure. On one side, the Oxygen Network. On the other, Spike TV and the Outdoor Life Network (OLN). It’s no longer a matter of considering one’s own interests. Have a seat. Grab your crotch and figure out your gender. Shut up and watch. This vastly superior method eliminates all the guesswork. All I need to know is that I’m male and not blind, and the TV will take care of the rest. So I made it my duty to watch Spike TV and OLN for an entire week in an effort to determine what sort of things I enjoy. Apparently, I am quite fond of rivers, soft porn and detergent commercials. Familiar to all male college students, Spike offers essentially two types of shows on any given day: reruns of Blind Date and MXC, a dubbed Japanese game show in which contestants literally blast their brains down their throats by falling face-first on large rocks. In the case of the former, balding, unemployed geezers try vainly to solicit blow jobs through incomprehensible speech impediments. For the latter, let’s just note that it’s both the end of civilization and the funniest show ever. When taken as a whole then, the message to young males seems to be something like, “Hey, we’re all just going to turn into lonely, dull, impotent struggling actors anyway, so we might as well just start literally cracking our skulls on stepping stones.” Which is actually a very good point and one that young men often forget. In fact, one could argue convincingly that Spike TV is a worthy successor to C
Take One

By January 25, 2005

Deckhead:
Looking Closer at Mike Nichols' Edgy Masterpiece
Body:
Closer’s ensemble cast of Natalie Portman, Clive Owen, Jude Law and Julia Roberts displays extraordinary versatility in acting. Nevertheless, behind those dynamic, raw performances is a brutally honest and intelligent script, written by Patrick Marber, who also wrote the play of the same name. Marber uses a deep understanding of people to write one of the best screenplays of the year. Some have found parts of the film vulgar and inappropriate. While there are no sex scenes, the dialogue is often jarring. I saw people walk out of the movie theater. The film is not merely about miserable people making other people miserable. Rather, the film precisely illustrates the vulnerability that people experience in relationships because of their shifting dynamics. The story is sincere and profound, and the characters are captivating and believable. Marber intimately focuses on four individuals, Dan (Law), Alice (Portman), Larry (Owen) and Anna (Roberts), all of whom have severe difficulties connecting with, and getting closer to, one another. We are led to believe that Alice is the only pure character of the four, but this assumption is challenged at the end of the film, when it is revealed that Alice’s name is really Jane, and that she had been living a fantasy during her time in England. There is clear foreshadowing of this event; earlier in the film, Alice tells Larry that “everybody loves a big fat lie,” and later, that “lying is the most fun a girl can have without taking her clothes off.” Jane picks the name Alice from one of the plaques on the wall of a London memorial garden; the plaque, which is shown at the end, says that a woman named Alice Ayers died saving three children. In the play, the character of Alice (i.e. Jane) also dies at the end, but not in the film. Nevertheless, the illusion she had created does die. One could argue that she ironically saved the other three characters in the film, not in any sort of conventional way, but in a way in which she made them more awake and curious. Dan, who writes obituaries, Larry, who would rather chat on the Internet than in person, and Anna, who uses her camera to see the world, are all isolated before Alice arrives. At least for a short while, Alice saves them from their misery. By showing them the intricacies of love and relationships, she saves them from themselves. Alice initially inspires Dan, in particular. Marber portrays Dan’s character as if he is a child. At one point, Anna sarcastically asks him if he’s twelve. Perhaps more significantly, Dan is still mourning over the death of his mother, and is searching for a nurturing figure. After all, he seems to fall in love with Alice when she cleans his glasses at the hospital, and with Anna when she fixes his tie during a photo shoot. Alice’s relationship with Dan is based on an illusion, and at the end of the film, Dan threatens this by his insistence on the truth about whether or not Alice and Larry slept together. Whether they actually did is brilliantly left up to interpretation, but Dan cannot learn to trust Alice, and in the final hotel room scene, Alice ironically tests him by saying, “This is the moment of your life.” Indeed it was, and seconds later, he ruined it. “I would have loved you forever,” Alice then tragically tells him, “but now it’s too late.” Alice returns to New York, and we see her walking confidently down the street in the final shot, with heads turning and staring at her. They can’t take their eyes off of her. This time, however, she does not make the mistake of returning their gazes, as she did with Dan in the film’s opening scene. This final shot also illustrates that lust is not the same thing as love, something that Anna, Larry and Dan were never able to understand. Closer is an absorbing dialogue-driven film. The metaphors are smart, such as smoking reflecting the characters’ inability to overcome their struggles with loneliness, and they seem to constantly create conflict for themselves. They are unfaithful to one another, but they are almost always truthful. Sadly, even the truth isn’t enough for them to get closer. It is an art film that tells a timeless story of how relationships can shift from uplifting to tragic in a moment’s notice. The film is not for everyone, but it can be, if you look close enough. Archived article by Avash KalraSun Staff Writer