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Issue 11
September 2016 |
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Contents
Welcome to The Insiter Monthly! And we’re back to university at long last. As much as we did not miss working our behinds off on assignments, we did miss the buzz that university life brings with it - queue the sighs of relief. We’re so very excited for the coming Freshers’ Week from the 3rs-7th October. Make sure to visit us on our stand to get to know more about what Insite can offer you whilst you’re studying on campus!
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In this month’s article series make sure to get your hands on the book The Kite Runner reviewed by Sophie Claire Coudoux, take a look at two vacancies by jobsinmalta.com in anticipation to the launch of a vacancies section on our website and finally read Jessica Arena’s article on absurd adult cartoons including Bojack Horseman and Rick and Morty. Have a great Freshers’ Week everyone! Nicole Borg Executive Editor
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Flying higher than a kite
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Vacancies from jobsinmalta.com
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Life, Death, and the Futility of Existence in Technicolour
8 Executive Committee:
Writers
Johann Agius Kristina Saliba Manuel Xuereb Nicole Borg
Sophie Claire-Coudoux jobsinmalta.com Jessica Arena
Administrative Team Jessica Arena Cyreille Delmas Charlene Arapa Matthew Debattista Sara Ezabe Matthew Charles Zammit 2
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Media Team Nicole Borg Andrea Said Charles Mercieca Federico Barbaro Sant Daniel Galea St John
Cover Photo © Pascale Spiteri 2016
Magazine Design Pascale Spiteri Siobhan Vassallo
Review
The kite runner by Khaled Hosseini
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Sophie-Claire Coudoux Following a call from his homeland, Amir, an Afghanistan writer, who lives in California has to return to the region he and his father fled during the war in Afghanistan. Amir recounts the story of his childhood and friendship with Hassan, the son of his father’s servant before the country they grew up in was torn apart. Their passion for kite running attaches the two boys until the winter of 1976. From that memorable year, Amir has been struggling for redemption, and when he thought his life could not get worse it did. This book made me cry so much I had to stop reading for a couple of days, so I could recover from my sadness. Let’s start with the writing style which is incredible. It feels like reading an open letter. Every word is carefully chosen and brings on a wave of emotion. The narrative carries the reader into the characters’ happiest as well as their devastating moments. One day I was floating
for you a thousand times
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Review on a warm sea of sublime words and the next, storms came crashing when I least expected them. The remarkable writing style skyrocketed the author to the number one slot of my top 10 favourite books so far this year. The story is heartbreaking in the sense that, even though it is fiction, it mirrors life and human nature. Part of the plot is set during the war and I could not be more horrified to “witness� humans at the lowest level of their existence. At times I felt like I was locked up in a dark room with all my hopes shattered. The protagonist is not portrayed as a hero. There are times when you resent and pity him while at others you end up rooting for him. The other characters are an imaginary extension of ourselves. The novel deals with family relationships and friendships in an environment marked by ethnic discrimination, political tensions and the end of the Afghan monarchy. The Kite Runner is a black diamond. No wonder it was adapted as a motion picture.
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Afghanistan’s Ministry of Culture banned the film from distribution in cinemas or DVD stores because of its controversial portrayal of the Taliban. I strongly recommend this book to everyone, even those who do not like to read.
Vacancies Review
Vacancies from jobsinmalta.com Social Media/Content Writer (MT 8065/16) Our client provides different marketing and web-based campaigns and have established themselves as one of the leading branding companies within the industry. They are currently seeking to recruit a Social Media/Content Writer to join their young and dynamic team. As a Social Media/Content Writer your responsibilities will be for assisting in outlining social media strategies for clients, along with creating social media plans and implementing the plans by scheduling and publishing posts. You will also be recommending advertising budgets. You will be required to contribute towards generating topical, creative, achievable and engaging ideas for social media content. Writing content for other channels including: web, press releases, tag lines, adverts, TV/Radio scripts, brochures, advertorials, articles, blogs, presentations etc, whilst ensuring content is on-brand, consistent and in the right tone of voice. The successful candidate will have previous experience of content writing and the branding world. You will also have an excellent understanding of social media trend and platforms. Fluency in both written and spoken English is an absolute must, Maltese would also be preferred. To apply send your CV to careers@konnekt.com quoting reference MT 8065/16.
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Vacancies Advertising Sales Executive (MT 7675/16) Our client is a leading company in Malta who is involved in the media sector. They are currently looking for an Advertising Sales Executive to join their growing team. As an Advertising Sales Executive you will be reporting directly to the Head of Sales and be responsible for finding advertising partners for the growing company’s portfolio of projects and clients. This will include establishing and maintaining a strong relationship with current and prospective clients. The successful candidate will be ambitious and have excellent communication and interpersonal skills. You will need to be a resilient and determined person, customer centric and target driven approach to work. You will be self-motivated with the ability to work under pressure and to tight deadlines having local business acumen. You will be working in a dynamic environment, where you will be expected to work on various projects. Excellent command of both Maltese and English languages is a must. The successful candidate can expect an attractive salary package in line with his/her performance. To apply send your CV to careers@konnekt. com quoting reference MT 7675/16.
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Features
Life, Death, and the Futility of Existence in Technicolour
jessica arena
Dark humor and animation have long developed a strange yet interesting relationship with each other. From the on the nose political commentary of South Park to the dreary witticisms of Daria, animated television aimed at adults has long thrived and carved a prominent niche for itself for over two decades. Undoubtedly owing its ticket to mainstream fame thanks to the enduring popularity of the Simpsons, adult animation today seems to be lingering in that space between the abysmally dark and the bizarre, with animation serving as the tool that bridges these potentially contrasting concepts into something fascinatingly watchable. So why animation in the first place? A good concept and a good script, theoretically, should be objectively good, without being married to the medium. Jury is still out on whether animation is costlier to produce
than live action (there are too many variables factoring into overall production costs that are unique for each project to compare), but it’s a certainty that animation takes far more time to produce a completed project. From a practical perspective, there is no particular reason to prefer animation over live action, but the arts have never been particularly good at utilitarianism. What animation does afford, I find, is completely customizable control over the tone and design of the overall project that allows for the birth of these quirky dark-alley comedies that really aim to defy the conventional. You can appreciate the intense ugliness of the design of Ren and Stimpy that makes it stand out from any other show attempting satire through sexual innuendo and gratuitous violence; arguably to the point that the medium allowed these concepts to be explored in such an extreme and controversial manner. The same September 2016 |
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goes for the inexplicable yellowness of The Simpsons. The elements of the bizarre were being translated without the limitations of portraying those characters and settings with the limitations of live action visuals.
An outstanding contribution of recent years that springs to mind is a strange little Netflix show by the name of Bojack Horseman. Bojack is, again, a frank and bizarre introspective look into narcissistic hollowness of Hollywood life and the dangers of using fame as a substitute for genuine human intimacy. The main character is an anthropomorphic horse, and the premise of the entire show rests on the fact that its universe is shared by anthropomorphic mammals and humans alike. Such a prima facie eerie scenario takes shape in the form of its bright and colourful sets, and a and series of impossibly funny visual jokes always lurking in the background of the main action, which are what give the show its charm as well as a tone that keeps a smooth balance between bizarre comedy and dysfunctional drama. The first season drags a little and takes some time to find it’s feet: upon first watch the first season focuses a little too much on narcissism, promiscuity and general hedonistic excess that might make it seem gratuitous even in context, however these depictions merge into something profoundly introspective for both the characters and the audience, without falling into the trap of being an outright morality tale. Bojack himself is oftentimes deplorable, he’s an alcoholic addict and hedonism are bound to get the better of him in pretty much any situation. At times you’ll 8
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think him incapable of empathy and impossibly selfish to the point that he should be completely unlikable as a protagonist. However Bojack turns out to be more than a two dimensional hedonist. He is constantly anxious and perfectly aware of the abjectly terrible morals of the society he lives in, and yet he participates in it because it is the only way he knows how to live. This, coupled with a troubled childhood, is likely the source of Bojack’s crippling depressive disorder. Depression is always a prevalent theme no matter what Bojack happens to be doing, he is constantly searching and doing things he hopes are going to make him happy and yet happiness is always just out of his grasp. Well into the first season you can easily find yourself identifying and pitying Bojack throughout his exploits because despite not being human, he manages to display qualities that make him so infallible and intrinsically human. The animation that provides these nonhuman qualities to Bojack’s character (as well as other non human characters in the show) create a defamiliarization between what we as an audience know and what emotions we are experiencing through viewership which allows kinship to be felt and empathy to blossom. Desensitization is another issue with live action performance that can interfere with immersion (if you know they’re actors, there’s only a certain level of believability you’re going to be able to reach), however through the use of animation, particularly the employment of the absurd and the bizarre in tone, style and concept, the application of human qualities to nonhuman characters could achieve a greater
empathetic response than if the characters were actually recognizably human. The Adult Swim show Rick and Morty achieves something similar, albeit with actual human characters as protagonists. Based loosely on theories of quantum mechanics, albeit heavily fictionalized, in an unholy marriage between Back To The Future and Lovecraftian literature, Rick and Morty is a science fiction adventure show which operated under the assumption that the many worlds theory is a steadfast fact. Thus, the titular Rick and Morty have the ability to jump in between universes and come face to face with alternate versions of themselves, as well as many other intergalactic characters. Think of a mix between Futurama and Doctor Who on steroids, married with fart jokes and alcohol problems. And again, animation plays a wonderful part in Rick and Morty through its rich and colourful world building, whereby the freedom of infinite possible universes yields a creative, grotesque and infectiously funny final product. While the design of the protagonists themselves is pretty simple and by the numbers, the creative team does not hold back in creating distinct and interesting design for alien races and newly discovered planets alike. The comedy in Rick and Morty is undoubtedly rooted in its embrace of nihilism, framing the intricacies of the universe as just a big coincidence that just keeps on happening. At it’s core, Rick and Morty prays on the common anxiety that pits determinism against free will and
plays it off like an elaborate joke. As best summarized by Morty, “Nobody exists on purpose, nobody belongs anywhere, everybody’s gonna die. Come watch tv?”. In its essence, the basic principle of the theory of the absurd is present in both of these shows. In both Bojack Horseman and Rick and Morty we see characters often struggling with the concept of meaning, but failing miserably to ascribe it to any facet of the life they’re experiencing it. While Bojack accepts and stews in his misery, Rick hops from one universe to another, hoping to evade it into it infinity and never come into graps with facing it. Both shows portray different outcomes and attitudes to this concept which makes them interesting and distinct in their own right. So is there a direct link between animation and the absurd? Well, possibly, but the material at hand is far to varied to say for certain. Certain qualities of animation make it a perfect vessel to depict the absurd in a way that both challenges and engages human interpretation. In order for it to standout, adult animation has always needed that extra edge that developes into a distinct quirk, and contributions like the ones mentioned previously are where we’re at today. But to undertake the task to determine with certainty that the two share a direct link, pardon the liberty, but the task would be sisyphean. Nevertheless, one can easily ascertain the transmission of a related message using variations of the same medium, and in itself that is very much a pause for thought about the past, present and future of such artistic conveyance. September 2016 |
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