Arts & Culture

FATTAL | On Israel, Direction of Anger and Liberation

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TW: Genocide, Anti-semitism, Islamaphobia, Sexual Violence

Getting on the bus for a weekend out-of-town on Thursday, I was already thinking about Israel. I’d stumbled upon a Jacobin article about Ken Loach (the socialist filmmaker who comes up a lot in English-speaking Europe) defending the director against longstanding claims of antisemitism as he releases his final film. I’d only seen one Loach film, and can’t speak too deeply about him, though his subjects and labor focus are to me unambiguously commendable. As for the anti-semitism, I remained unconvinced by the specific allegations refuted either in the Jacobin article or in my due diligence “both sides” readings of his accusers. I watched The Old Oak yesterday.

Arts & Culture

Halloween Horrors: The Haunting of Hill House

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As Halloween creeps closer, so does the itch to watch a blood chilling horror show/movie. And so, this mini column is dedicated to recommending horror media to add a little bit of fright to your October! The Haunting of Hill House is the first part of a horror anthology directed by Mike Flannigan and based off of the book by Shirley Jackson. It follows five siblings through two different timelines, one in the present when they are adults, one in the past as kids, living in Hill House. The show’s “adult” timeline centers around a tragic event that befalls the Crain family and forces them to reconvene after years of physical and emotional disconnect.

Arts & Culture

Travelog: ‘Made in U.S.A’

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How to react. Going to listen to vaguely defined live music in Dublin only to experience an American accent, complete with a Southern Twang and frat house classics. The artists are Irish, but their vocal patterns are spot on: The accents are part of the performance, it is all imitation.  

The complaints here are twofold. On one hand, there’s that surface level frustration at a failure to experience authentic Irish music, an unfair expectation and frankly silly desire that still manages to worm its way into one’s head every time it remains either unfulfilled or fulfilled only in the most touristy context (that is to say, for Americans and Americans only). Legitimately pernicious though, and perhaps a more valid complaint, is that presentation of American music devoid of any cultural context.

Arts & Culture

‘1989 Taylor’s Version’ Collaborator Predictions

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With the highly anticipated release of 1989 Taylor’s Version only a little over a month away, countless theories about potential featured artists have been circulating. Unlike  previous albums, 1989 TV has an air of mystery surrounding the featured singers. For Red TV, Ed Sheeran and Gary Lightbody were obvious choices (although Phoebe Bridgers and Chris Stapleton were also included), and even for Speak Now TV, many fans were able to predict Hayley Williams and Fallout Boy. However, Taylor has recently been seen interacting with so many prominent artists that it is becoming increasingly difficult to tell the signal from the noise. For a while, fans speculated that Swift’s most recent ex, Matty Healey, would be featured, but Swift’s representatives have since shut this theory down, much to the relief of most of her following.

Arts & Culture

XU | What it Sounds Like When Men in Their Forties Pine

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I am super excited for Sufjan Stevens’ new album Javelin, scheduled to come out on Oct. 6. The New York City-based artist has an aesthetic that fits with the lush waterfalls of upstate New York; Stevens did, in fact, relocate to the Catskills for a period of time in the middle of the pandemic. Based on an interview with Vanity Fair, the move did him a lot of good in terms of creating, living and thriving. The first single from Javelin, “So You Are Tired” came out in August, followed by a second, “Will Anybody Ever Love Me?” released two weeks ago.

Arts & Culture

Album Review: Olivia Rodrigo Wears Her GUTS on Her Sleeve

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The first thing to notice about this album is that Rodrigo sounds really great. Her voice is strong and always enjoyable, even when she screams. More than that, Rodrigo is an actress, and she really commits to her songs’ theatrical elements by yelling, stomping and emoting. An album with so many shouting elements would not be pleasant to listen to with a lesser performance. Rodrigo’s singing also varies among GUTS’s ballads and helps differentiate them in style and tone. 

Arts & Culture

Travelog: In Search of Deeper Meaning (or Olivia Rodrigo in Dublin) 

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Dublin is filled with 21+ clubs. 

I say this not just to pettily express my annoyance at deliberately studying in a country with an 18+ drinking age only to discover that clubs enforce a higher standard. In fact, I’m as interested as I am miffed: Why are they doing this? Culture shock for me has come in the form of that question and its relative unanswerability. After all, I don’t know why the drinking age in the U.S. is 21 exactly, nor do I know why we drive on the right side of the street, don’t need to hail buses, play a different brand of football than either Gaelic Football or Rugby or refuse to install air conditioning in brand new boiling brick buildings. Many of those would take a Google search or more, but the little differences pile on faster than I can or care to research… Hence, culture shock. 

Wanting to integrate into my host country’s culture means trying to attain a sense of what culture means.

Arts & Culture

Cornellians Flock to Syracuse for the Stick Season Tour

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It isn’t often that big names in music make their way to upstate New York, so when folk-pop artist Noah Kahan announced that he was playing in Syracuse, just one hour north of Ithaca, Cornellians jumped at the chance to get tickets. The concert venue, St. Joseph’s Health Amphitheater, held a crowd of 18,000 people, which Kahan noted was one of his largest crowds to date, and his show did not disappoint.  

Arts & Culture

Travelog: Stuck at the Airport

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I’m obsessed with these Onion News Network YouTube videos that were released in the late 2000s/early 2010s. All two or three minutes long, they pretty expertly ape cable news personalities while still infusing that biting Onion satire. There are more recent ones, and in fact they still make some video content today, but as internet news has become more prevalent, and that cable imitation less fashionable, the form of the videos has altered, and no longer features that same charm. 

Anyway, there’s one of these videos that strikes me in a “how did the Simpsons predict X ” kind of way (or perhaps just rubs me the wrong way as a satire that isn’t quite so funny as frustrating at the moment). From how many times I’ve seen it, I’ve almost memorized “Prague’s Kafka International Named Most Alienating Airport.” My Squid and the Whale-esque pseudo-pretentious streak mixed with a love of in-your-face absurdist sense of humor makes it worthy to me of constant rewatches. I even showed it to my partner, way too early in our relationship, and watched her react stonefacedly as I cackled awkwardly. 

I just rewatched the video again, at an airport for the second day in a row, having had my flight canceled and being unable to reach anyone with my airline or get my flight rebooked or figure out how to get my new hotel stay compensated, and, maybe I’m biased, but the video isn’t *that* funny, at least in the way it originally was.