Arts & Culture

Funding Art is Important: A Defense of Cornell Cinema

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Cornell is not a university specifically reserved for the STEM disciplines. We were founded under a proud cosmopolitan banner of “Any Person, Any Study,” and we differ from MIT or CalTech in that we claim to offer the highest possible level of instruction in any field a person might choose. As a former PMA/English major I can say I was never belittled on campus, but I noticed an unquestionable lack of interest in funding arts departments and activities, compared to the hard sciences. This comes with the territory — the arts students tend to be far fewer in number than the STEM ones — but there is a very real danger that eventually, History, Philosophy, Comp Lit and Comm majors will have a far less rigorous education than the name of Cornell promises. The Schwartz Center has seen this with its extensive budget cuts passed seven years ago, and with its folding of three majors into one.

Arts & Culture

STANTON | Trump’s Rosebud

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Despite being an acknowledged and well-researched psychiatric phenomenon, panic attacks remain a tricky beast — treatable only by pinpointing their underlying causes. According to Wikipedia, approximately 11 percent of the U.S. population experiences them, putting Europeans to shame at their measly 3 percent and inviting any number of cultural critiques.  In the absence of a Nate Silver-esque trend line documenting day-to-day stress levels of the average American, one need only consult their Facebook feed to identify Election Day 2016 as a stress point of apocalyptic magnitude — the moment in which we collectively confront the bed we’ve made for ourselves. Suppressing my personal nightmare of waking up next to the GOP’s spray-tanned Frankenstein monster has proven itself a time-consuming effort, and one that shirks the comforting assurance of historical precedence. Whom can we consult to contextualize the first true reality TV election?

citizen kane

WATCH ME IF YOU CAN | 25 Things You Probably didn’t Know about Citizen Kane

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Even though Citizen Kane is turning 75 this year and I LOVE keeping up with the number of things on the list with their age, I realize that 75 things about Kane would be lowkey obsessive, even for me. But how else could I honor the best film of the twentieth century (and perhaps all time) without going a bit berserk? This one’s for all the Orson Welles fangirls out there. I feel your love. It won the 1941 Oscars for Best Writing for an Original Screenplay, but was nominated for ninth overall.

Arts & Culture

GUEST ROOM | Citizen Kane, 75 Years Later

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The year 1941 saw the release of Citizen Kane. Orson Welles directed, wrote, produced and starred in the film, which has been criticized for its resemblance to the life of the newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst. The storyline is the quintessential American Dream, perfectly arching a rise and fall for its tragic hero: Charles Foster Kane. Due to its technological advances, its interpretation of the American dream and its emphasis on the gratuitous excess that comes along with power, Kane stands the test of time, even 75 years later. The film follows the ups and downs of fictitious media mogul Charles Foster Kane (Welles) through his rise to power and subsequent loss of everything.