Arts & Culture

Lost Borders

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Titanic would be much less dramatic if right as the ship was going down, DiCaprio looked into the camera and assured the audience that what was happening was entirely performance and he was not in any real danger. There are certain expectations we have about film and art that we do not want to be questioned. One of which is we don’t want the fake characters to acknowledge they are a fake person in a make-believe reality. But what happens when real people are unsure if they are playing a character or themselves? What happens when we lose track of the border that separates real from fake?

Arts & Culture

Modern Soma

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Mustapha Mond says, “People never are alone now…we make them hate solitude; and we arrange their lives so that it’s almost impossible for them ever to have it.” I fear this is what our technology is most likely pushing us toward.

Arts & Culture

The Strange

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The strange create out of a necessity to express what is missing around them, but it turns out that once shared, the idea or emotion is often relatable to many. 

Arts & Culture

Literary Sunsets

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Spending time watching the sunset-topped slope has been a quiet moment each evening. But my phone camera fails to capture the cloud-piercing pink rays and scattered chatter of the people on the hill. Throughout literary history, writers have been particularly active in the long lineage of people trying to capture the feelings of sunset. Given how visually overwhelming sunsets can be, representation through words can often tell far more than photographs. 

In H.E. Hilton’s The Outsiders, a shared sunset is used to break down socioeconomic barriers. In a town split between two opposing social groups, the “Socs” and “Greasers,” the interactions between them are violent and hateful.