Arts & Culture

Where is Wendy Williams? It’s None of Our Business.

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Wendy Williams is a former daytime talk show host, infamous for being unabashedly controversial. Her show ran for almost 14 years before abruptly ending in June 2022 due to concerns about her health, leaving fans of the show with many questions about Wendy’s wellbeing, whereabouts and the future of her career. In February, Lifetime released a four-part docuseries called Where is Wendy Williams? which attempts to answer some of these questions.

Arts & Culture

Priscilla Speaks!

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Until now, Priscilla Presley’s story has mainly been told as a part of Elvis’. With Sofia Coppola’s Priscilla, we now have a special opportunity for an intimate look at her experience, separate from the eye-catching distractions of her husband’s stardom. The movie is unwaveringly tied to Priscilla’s perspective — unsurprising, since Presley served as an executive producer. We follow her as a 14-year-old girl who gets invited to 21-year-old Elvis’ house for a party. We feel the excitement of the pop star’s interest and find ourselves skeptical about what business a grown man has with a child.

Arts & Culture

Cat Person and the Horrors of Dating Over Text

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Warning: this article contains spoilers as well as discussion of sexual assault 

Cat Person, a movie which recently showed at Cornell Cinema, is based off of a short story written in The New Yorker by Kristen Roupinian. This thriller perfectly represents what it feels like to be a college girl dating in the smartphone era. The movie opens with a quote from Margaret Atwood across the screen: “Men are scared that women will laugh at them. Women are scared that men will kill them.” This sentiment bleeds through the whole film as the main character, 20-year old Margot, questions the intentions of an older man she meets while working at a movie theater. They see each other in person a few times, but their relationship exists mainly over text.

Arts & Culture

Is ‘The Golden Bachelor’ Something Old or Something New

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As a former Bachelor franchise addict, I was very intrigued by the concept of The Golden Bachelor. The Bachelor is one of the original, most popular dating shows which is premised around one seemingly perfect man who has 20 seemingly perfect women competing for his love. This year, ABC created The Golden Bachelor, which is this exact premise, except all the contestants are elderly. I started watching out of curiosity, but was pleasantly surprised at how invested I became. 

From a perspective that judges purely based upon entertainment value, I think the show is very good. Every week, I get excited to watch the new episode, though the elderly kissing is a bit uncomfortable.

Arts & Culture

Javelin Brings Together Sufjan Stevens’ Musical History

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Sufjan has a very broad discography, having released 13 studio albums, three soundtracks, 13 EPs, two mixtapes and more since 1999. He has a beautiful habit of making music to cope with tragedy. In 2015, he released Carrie and Lowell, inspired by the death of his mother, and in October, he released Javelin, dedicated to his late partner, Evan Richardson, whom he lost in April. The album takes us through his grief, which reveals itself through his tired voice and intricate lyrics that wax and wane through the hopelessness and hopefulness of losing someone you love too early.

Arts & Culture

Beach House’s Become Puts You in a Little World of Your Own 

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Listening to Beach House’s new extended play feels like being underwater or alone in space, in the best way possible. It was perfectly consistent with the dream-like sound of their older music, and subverts the typical structure of a song into something new. It isn’t quite an absence of structure, but it definitely is not typical. 

The first song,“American Daughter,” has a really unique melody that clashes slightly with the instruments behind it and is very satisfying to listen to. The same simple vocal melody repeats for the first two minutes of the song, layered over synthesizer and electric guitar. There’s no clear distinction of chorus, verse or bridge.

Arts & Culture

Big Red’s Next Icon: After Six

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Cornell recently held its annual Big Red Icon to determine which student band will get to play on Slope Day as an opener. I spoke with Josh Sokol, the saxophonist of this year’s winning band After Six, about their musical style and what makes them unique. 

The Sun: How would you describe the type of music that After Six makes? Josh Sokol: I feel like we have a diverse style. We also change what we’re going for depending on the event, but we keep it centered around what After Six is. A mix between neo soul, funk and hip hop.

Arts & Culture

BeReal Reveals the Impossibility of Authentic Social Media

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The creation and rapidly developing popularity of BeReal, an app that seeks to embody the idea of authentic social media, proves that authentic social media is an oxymoron. BeReal sends users a notification once a day at a random time, prompting them to take both a front-facing and back-facing photo of whatever they’re doing at that moment. The mission statement is: “Your friends for real. A new and unique way to discover who your friends really are in their daily life.” What started out as a new concept for social media that heavily nudges users to be genuine soon became another highlight reel under the guise of authenticity. 

When BeReal first began to get popular in early 2022, it was mostly within very small circles. Back then, it was much easier to comply with the concept by taking the photo on time, rather than repeatedly deleting and retaking it.

Arts & Culture

The Un-Understandability of ‘Last Year at Marienbad’

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Cornell Cinema recently showed the 1961 film Last Year at Marienbad, a French film about an old hotel populated by wealthy guests. It focuses on an unnamed man, the narrator, who aggressively insists that he had met the female protagonist, an unnamed woman, one year ago and she promised to give him an answer as to whether or not they could be in a relationship. She, however, has no memory of ever meeting him. Most of the movie consists of the man trying to convince her that his memory is accurate and hers is inaccurate. He wants her to leave the second unnamed male character who may or may not be her husband, which, at the end of the movie, she does.