When the universe wants to tell you something, it will tell you a few times. I take the same attitude with phone calls. Unless you call a few times or leave a voicemail, I’m not calling back. Late last night, when I was falling asleep to an episode of S-Town, I realized that I’ve been learning the same lesson for about a year. I will graduate in almost exactly a month, and I’ve been pleasantly surprised by the lack of despair I feel about that fact.
I have always believed that hip hop saves lives. As Kendrick Lamar once stated in an interview, “People live their lives to this music.” Hip hop is a form that allows marginalized members of society to express themselves and let other marginalized people know they are heard. This, I have always known. But not until I heard the name Travis Karter did I come to understand that hip hop music has the ability to quite literally physically prevent people from dying. After hearing his newest album Phase III, there was only one way to understand this rising star’s intentions, to have a conversation with him.
I have been looking forward to this movie for months. Since Isle of Dogs’ first trailer dropped last September, I have waited with bated breath. So much intersected here: not only is it a stop-motion animated film, but it’s a Wes Anderson film, AND it’s a PG-13 animated film. That last one stuck out the most to me. We see family animated films and adult animated films all the time, but nothing in the middle.
On April 7, 1993, one day before Macedonia joined the United Nations, history was made: David Mickey Evans’ The Sandlot was released in theaters across the United States. It’s been one score and five years since its release, so let us celebrate why this film still stands. 1. The shoes: There is still nothing better than seeing canvas Converse Chuck Taylor All-Stars or PF Flyers striking the dirt diamond and trampled plates. 2.
Trying to adapt Ernest Cline’s novel Ready Player One was going to be a challenge for any director, even a veteran one like Steven Spielberg. Released in 2011, Cline’s debut was filled with pop culture references that were indicative of the decade it was written in, though he also sprinkled in a plethora of ’70s-’90s references as well. Yet because the film adaptation is gracing screens seven years later, what was seen as contemporary back then is now outdated. Spielberg thankfully does not force characters from 2018’s popular zeitgeist to interact with the characters Cline used in his novel. Ready Player One is surprisingly able to revel in the nostalgic excess that made the novel so popular in the past, yet it explores thought-provoking themes about virtual reality, climate change and escapism present in today’s society.
Despite the proverb, I shamelessly judged To Die But Once, Jacqueline Winspear’s latest novel in her Maisie Dobbs British crime series, by the cover. With its ominous opaque figure front and center, surrounded by airplanes, and the catchy title, I was already hooked. As the fourteenth novel in the series, To Die But Once reads almost mechanically. It’s as if there is a formula to the prose and all Winspear has to do is fill in the plot. But the ease of the novel is not to be construed as pedestrian or uninspired.
Considering America’s current political climate and the media’s obstinate fixation on criminal motive, it’s not surprising some people might suggest that the U.S.’s broken conception of masculinity could have something to do with recent mass shootings. While attempting to link the two is a causal leap, and in the wake of tragedy comes the risk of sounding a bit tone-deaf, I believe it’s as good of a time as any to begin discussing masculinity’s modern definition. Further, we can use art as a lens to determine masculinity’s place in society. While many people would argue that women in the U.S. face far more pervasive disadvantages than men and, as a result, conversations on masculinity are subordinate to those of femininity, there is no implication that I am arguing that men face systematic disadvantage. Moreover, many of those who would argue that American women face systematic oppression would also argue that masculinity (the patriarchy, toxic masculinity, etc.) is at least in part to blame.
There is a psychological theory that half of our “experienced lives” are over by the time we are 19 years old. This is not to say that everyone will die at 38, but that a person who lives until the typical old age would sense that their life prior to 19 elapsed a similar duration to their life thereafter. This asymmetry is believed to be the outcome of our constantly-increasing familiarity with time itself. To a 10-year-old, a year is a monumental 10 percent of their life. For my grandparents, a year is often how long they go without seeing some of their grandchildren.
Before entering the space, it is as if the exhibit still has yet to be curated. A space that is normally bursting with artwork appears startlingly bare to the passing gaze from the exhibit’s periphery. Yet examination is almost always a generative process of exposure and uncovering — in terms of both the viewer as well as the viewed. The exhibit in question, Estudios de Tensión, meaning “studies of tension,” is a study of the relational and symbolic interactions that shape and constitute the world. A product of the artist Nicolás Robbio, the works can be found in the John Hartell Gallery in Sibley Hall until April 19.
