Arts & Culture

CHARI | On “Coraline”, Self-Reflection and Our Favorite Childhood Media 

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I got my first tattoo last year. It is a small button, only slightly larger than a quarter. When consulting with the artist, I specified that I wanted a button with four holes in it, like in Coraline. “Oh, you also want one of that movie?” He gestured over to a heavily tattooed man sitting in the front of the shop. “Jake, show her your leg.” Jake (I think his name was Jake, I honestly don’t remember) pulled up his left pant leg to reveal a full color portrait of Coraline’s titular protagonist, complete with blue hair and the top of her yellow raincoat.

Arts & Culture

PONTIN | Is Less Really More?

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For me, scrolling through Netflix typically follows something of a pattern. I’ll spend about 20 minutes looking for something new to catch my eye, then make a last ditch effort to understand why people enjoy Gilmore Girls, quickly turn it off and then enter the uncharted waters of the documentaries section. 

Arts & Culture

PONTIN | Here We Come A-Caroling

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Holiday music seems like the perfect place to start; Christmas caroling is a tradition that has been largely foregone in the name of mass-produced, chart-topping radio hits. These days, finding anything other than an Amazon package at your doorstep is typically an unwelcome sight — salespeople seeking to rope you into a knife-selling pyramid scheme, religious zealots looking to share their views on salvation or flyers from a local political representative urging their stance on the education budget. 

Arts & Culture

PONTIN | Goodnight Moon

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What could be more peaceful and more innocent than the process of wishing goodnight to the very fixture of nighttime itself, without whom our night sky would remain stuck in a perpetual state of new moon? 

Arts & Culture

YANG | Yassification: Contestation of the Extremes and the Binaries

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This experience of “yassifying” myself made me rethink what this internet trend reveals about our culture. While playfulness is core to the “yassification” memes, there’s nonetheless an eerie feeling of revealing the uncanny valley of our reality that’s not far removed from the simulated extremes.