Intercut Issue Eleven by Intercut

ISSUE ELEVEN

INTERCUT | Issue Eleven

INTERCUT SPRING 2022

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Hannah Carroll

MANAGING EDITOR Sloane Dzhitenov

FINANCIAL MANAGER Anne Kiely

EDITORS

Sloane Dzhitenov Jake Gale Sophie Gilbert Abby Glassman Samuel Goodykoontz Eden Ho Umi Ito Philip Keith Anne Kiely Nicole Lee Maxwell Levy Kiana Low Kate Sherman Nora Sherman

ART DIRECTOR Megan Perkins

WRITERS

Andres Angeles-Paredes Casey Epstein-Gross

ILLUSTRATORS

Sophia Flynn

Haden Embry

Abby Glassman

Sophia Flynn

Sam Goodykoontz

Lucy Rossi-Reder

Nicole Lee Maxwell Levy

PHOTOGRAPHERS

Aldo Lopez

Bella Arrese

Kiana Low

Milly Berman

Skylar Moehs

Hannah Carroll

Ava Nederlander

Vadim Gorbaty

Danielle Nodelman

Milly Hopkins

Natalia Ruszkowski

Adelina Rodriguez

Amanda Schenkman

Lucy Rossi-Reder

Kate Sherman

Natalia Rueda

Nora Sherman

Nora Sherman Yasemin Schmitt

LAYOUT & DESIGN Milly Berman

Tuong Nguyen Yasemin Schmitt

CONTENTS TO BUILD A WOMAN: CONSTRUCTION OF THE FEMALE NARRATIVE

IN RELATION TO A GENDERED PRESUPPOSITION OF POWER Natalia Ruszkowski

VEEP’S AMY BROOKHEIMER AND THE CURSE OF ‘STRONG FEMALE CHARACTERS’: PRESTIGE TELEVISION’S DEVOTION TO PUNISHING WOMEN WHO DON’T “DO GENDER RIGHT”

Casey Epstein-Gross

LLORAR Y LLORAR: A PERSONAL JOURNEY INTO MEXICAN CINEMA

LOVE LETTERS: AN ODE TO ROMANTIC COMEDIES

THE INNOVATIONS AND IMPACT OF I LOVE LUCY

EUPHORIA: THE POP CULTURE CRAZE

THE SHOW MUST GO ON, BUT HOW? A LOOK INTO THE

Aldo Lopez

Sophia Flynn

Ava Nederlander

Danielle Nodelman

BEHIND-THE-SCENES DRAMA OF EUPHORIA Samuel Goodykoontz

QUEERNESS AND THE CLOSET IN THE SEX LIVES OF COLLEGE GIRLS

Kate Sherman

ATTENTION IS THE RAREST AND PUREST FORM OF GENEROSITY AS

IT RELATES TO MOTHERHOOD Abby Glassman

MORE IS MORE IS MORE IS MORE

THE QUEER FILMOGRAPHY OF KON SATOSHI: CONFIDENCE,

Maxwell Levy

SELF-EXPRESSION AND THE BATTLE BETWEEN PERSONAL IDENTITY AND THE OUTSIDE WORLD Skylar Moehs

THE MARVEL CINEMATIC UNIVERSE: INTIMIDATION, ADDICTION,

AND ENTERTAINMENT Amanda Schenkman

TRUE REPRESENTATION IN STUDIO GHIBLI: MORE THAN JUST

TOTORO

Kiana Low

SCOOBY-DOO! AND THE MYSTERY OF CAPTURING CARTOONS ON

THE BIG SCREEN

Andres Angeles-Paredes

ANDROGYNY, OR WHY YOU SHOULD WATCH ANIME

SISTER, SISTER: PARALELLS IN RIOT GAMES’ 2021 ANIMATED

Nora Sherman

SHOW, ARCANE Nicole Lee

A LETTER FROM THE EDITOR DEAR READERS, Thank you for taking the time to read Issue Eleven of Intercut. It has been a pleasure to oversee the formation of this particular edition of the magazine. Over 100 pages, it is, by a long shot, the longest issue of Intercut ever published. I am so thrilled for you to read these sixteen articles, which span a wide array of topics across the broader entertainment industry; there is truly something for everyone to peruse, learn from, and enjoy. Issue Eleven contains the work of writers both old and new to Intercut, as well as contributions from editors, artists, and the rest of our wonderful staff – who all bring their own unique passions and perspectives on all things film and television to share at the proverbial table. I would like to thank each and every one of them for their hard work and dedication this semester. In particular, I would like to express my gratitude to

Sloane Dzhitenov, Megan Perkins, and Anne Kiely for their tireless efforts; this issue, in all of its many, many pages, would not be what it is today without their invaluable assistance. As campus begins to return to its pre-pandemic ways, I hope this issue serves, in part, as a testament to the ability of Wesleyan’s creative community to unite, collaborate, and persevere – and to astutely comment on the seemingly evershifting landscape of the entertainment world. So, on behalf of the entire staff, I sincerely hope you enjoy this semester’s issue of Intercut, whether you find yourself skimming through a few articles before an in-person class or reading this issue cover-to-cover out on Foss one gloriously sunny afternoon.

ALL MY BEST, HANNAH CARROLL

HANNAH CARROLL

TO BUILD A WOMAN: CONSTRUCTION OF THE FEMALE NARRATIVE IN RELATION TO A GENDERED PRESUPPOSITION OF POWER NATALIA RUSZKOWSKI 1

INTERCUT

IN PERIOD FILMS, it is

rare for women to be intentional; they are not allotted that agency. Their character expression is largely restricted to some concoction of haughty and superficial, or fragile and naive. These character boundaries are reinforced by the conception of power as inherently masculine–power as a gendered idea. Marie Antoinette engages in this theme; The Favourite refutes it. Both conceptions are valid, but influence the female narrative in markedly different ways. Marie Antoinette’s engagement with the theme of gendered power, while historically significant, can be misunderstood as a simple reproduction of misogynistic ideas of femininity. The Favourite, on the other hand, cannot be misunderstood – it clearly challenges traditional relations of power and the subsequent characterization of femininity that emerges from that structure. Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette traces the marriage of Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI,

from their initial betrothal to their demise during the throes of the French Revolution. Yet, as the title suggests, the film is centered around Marie Antoinette and her struggle to adjust to the new expectations she faces as future, and then actual, Queen of France. Marie Antoinette reflects the trope of a ‘woman in a man’s world’; it engages in the masculine presupposition of power, that is, power as inherently derived from and within men. This derivation is clear for Marie Antoinette, who exists in a servile position to both Louis XVI and greater France – her purpose is to produce an heir to the throne. Her societal status depends on this provision; Marie Antoinette is repeatedly reprimanded, her status as future Queen of France made precarious due to her inability to affirm the Austrian and French alliance by birthing a child. She alone bears the criticism of their failure to consummate the marriage, despite the fault privately laying with King Louis’s own reluctance to do the deed.

Marie Antoinette’s only tether to her home country, Austria, are letters expressing disappointment from her mother and brother; her correspondence with them is restricted to these condescending conversations. Yet, she cannot show public disdain because her power – her title and wealth – is not her own; King Louis alone maintains ownership of this power because he can take it away. The theme of power is thus dealt with in a historically contextualized fashion, for 18th century France was definitively a man’s world. Marie Antoinette has no agency, no control of her own life lest she risks dishonoring her family, voiding the alliance between Austria and France, and subjecting herself to a life of subsistence because she has no means of acquiring individual security, as a woman. And, in turn, she is criticized by the two people meant to provide her unconditional emotional support. In essence, she has no power to claim as her own, and no support system to help her rec-

oncile with this fact. The film embraces ultra-femininity; its color palette is vibrant, dominated by bright shades of pink, blue, and green. The hedonistic characterization of Marie Antoinette, her materialist nature and fascination with extravagance, is a response to her lack of agency – her appearance is her vessel of independence. Her ceaseless spending on jewelry, clothes, and parties, while extraordinarily frivolous and wasteful, is an effort to retain a semblance of her true self, an identity uninfringed upon by a masculine system of power and duty. This is how Coppola gifts Marie Antoinette agency;

the frivolous nature of this agency is proof of the limits imposed on female expression, the few outlets that exist under a gendered system of power. The film is ultimately a reproduction of this prominent feminine experience – the unavoidable dependency on men because they are the sole means through which power can be attained. The Favourite, directed by Yorgos Lanthimos, reconfigures this gendered system of power that tends to dominate the female narrative in period films. The story follows three women: Queen Anne, Sarah Churchill, and Abigail Masham. The latter two women are cous-

ins engaged in a battle for the favor of Queen Anne, this favor consisting of prestigious status and subsequent influence in societal affairs. The battle is vicious, the two women doing everything in their power to win the heart of Queen Anne for themselves; Sarah has Abigail whipped for a mere conversation with the Queen, Abigail drugs Sarah’s tea and, in an effort to get rid of her completely, accuses her of embezzling royal funds. The Favourite breaches the same theme of power as Marie Antoinette but adds agency to that power; power is Abigail and Sarah’s to claim from one another. They do not

INTERCUT function as ‘women in a man’s world,’ but as women alone. The film is set in the early 18th century – Marie Antoinette is set roughly sixty years later – but manages to exhibit a profound sense of progressivism in treating power as gender-neutral. Abigail and Sarah are not obstructed by men in their pursuit of Queen Anne’s favor; in fact, the film emphasizes the autonomy of the two women through their interactions with men. The women largely maintain their crass, unabashed nature. Abigail is especially flippant with men, her conversation with Colonel Masham, a potential suitor, ending with her shushing him, remarking ‘I apologize. But do ‘shh’ when I’m thinking.’ The Favourite, thus, deals with power in its rawest form; Abigail and Sarah engage in an almost animalistic struggle for what they both desire but only one can have. Abigail is the ultimate winner, succeeding in implicating Sarah

in embezzlement – the consequence of which is Sarah’s exile, an order by the Queen herself. Abigail is rewarded with the security of a high status in society; her power, while authorized by the Queen, is void of male influence. The entire struggle for power is incredibly brutal, but not masculine; Abigail and Sarah maintain mobility and agency throughout in that their actions remain unaffected by male assumptions of power. In the end of Marie Antoinette, the audience empathizes with Marie Antoinette; she grapples with circumstances she has no control over, confined under a masculine system of power that largely renders her a political pawn, a mere child-rearing machine. The film reproduces the female narrative of confinement that has historical, and current, grounds – women as dependent on men for power. Yet, this reproduction risks framing women as naïve; Marie Antoinette’s frivolous ventures could be viewed not as reactionary, because of her restricted identity, but as

stupidly wasteful. The Favourite avoids this conundrum of reproducing the very stereotype that is meant to be critiqued by challenging the masculine association with power. The narrative of a ‘woman in a man’s world’ is important and historically significant but becomes tired when appropriation of that narrative threatens meaningless reproduction. As someone who loves Marie Antoinette – I have a soft spot for Sofia Coppola, as many do – I think The Favorite’s conception of power relative to female characters is much more nuanced and effective, albeit in a different way. It illuminates that women can derive power within themselves, for themselves in a way that is completely selfish. The challenge to the gendered norm of power is an important progression in film, and one that The Favourite delivers in a beautifully menacing way.

VEEP’S AMY BROOKHEIMER AND THE CURSE OF ‘STRONG FEMALE CHARACTERS’:

PRESTIGE TELEVISION’S DEVOTION TO PUNISHING WOMEN WHO DON’T “DO GENDER RIGHT”1

CASEY EPSTEIN-GROSS 5

INTERCUT “VAGINAS ARE SO GROSS,” bemoans Amy Brookheimer (played by Anna Chlumsky) in HBO’s Veep, “I wish I didn’t have one. Sometimes, I forget I do.” Across the bar table sits Dan Egan, her rival, ex, and oftteased romantic interest, who delivers the punchline: “Yeah,” he mutters, “yeah, we all do” (Veep, 6x09). The relatively new disease of “Strong Female Characters,” which has spread virally in recent years in film and media, has often been cloaked in the language of “empowerment” and “boundary breaking.” However, these charactetrs all too often perpetuate the gendered dichotomies that structure so much of heteronormative media, or worse, even end up strengthening them. The “strength” at the heart of ‘’Strong Female Characters’’ is

an exclusively masculine concept, and for a female character to be seen as “Strong,” she must eschew all semblance of femininity.2 The trend of these so-called “boundary breaking” “Strong Female Characters” ultimately reinforces the boundary the creators claim to break by isolating characters who cross it, and punishing characters who attempt to erase it. While many works of media are guilty of participating in this phenomenon, one that often goes unmentioned is HBO’s cutting political satire, Veep, and more specifically, its treatment of Amy Brookheimer: through her character and arc, Veep “punish[es] those who fail to do gender right” with a striking maliciousness (Judith Butler, GT, 140). The character of Amy Brookheimer would not

normally be thought of as a classical female heroine: she is a whip-smart, ambitious workaholic with the mouth of a sailor and a total indifference to most traditionally feminine values. In the first four seasons of the show—before the creator, Armando Ianucci, left and was replaced as showrunner by David Mandel—Amy was a welcome anomaly in the current media landscape, dominated as it is by either “weak” and “feminized” leads or “Strong Female Characters,” who are too often made one-dimensional (and whose one-dimension is that of exhibiting masculine attributes). Despite being one of the most powerful people in Washington DC and displaying values and behaviors that seem traditionally masculine, Amy is still allowed to be feminine if she wants—her more

1. “Do gender right” is a phrase from Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble, p. 140. 2. This article frequently refers to “feminine values” and “femininity.” The “femininity” meant by these terms is the stereotypical socially constructed “femininity” that both of these shows depend upon. While there is a lot more to be written about media’s reliance on and enforcing of gendered social constructs and norms as well as what behaviors are regulated and gendered, this article focuses more on what happens to those who do not conform to such constructs/ norms. As such, when terms like “femininity,” “feminine,” “masculine,” and so on are used, they refer to the norms and constructs, the portrayals and perception of femininity structuring the world of the shows, and usually these align with “classically feminine” values, ideals, and behavior, even though the concept of “feminine behavior” and so on is entirely socially constructed.

masculine tendencies do not preclude her from dressing femininely, going on dates, and, most importantly, being viewed as a woman by the people around her. Most of the time, female characters who share Amy’s masculine worldview and behavior are found fundamentally undesirable to men and are perceived as something other than women. In contrast, Amy is established from the very beginning as desirable, with an affirmed identity as a woman. In the very first episode, a character (Jonah Ryan) tries to get Amy to go out with him, but she rejects him without sparing a glance (1x01). A will-they-won’t-they relationship is teased between her and her new coworker (but old flame), Dan Egan—but this flirtation never turns into pining, nor overshadows her ambition and competitive nature, as the pair’s professional rivalry always forms the foundation of their relationship. Amy’s disinterest in relationships is not mocked, nor is it used to turn her into an unsexy,

unfeminine old maid; the joke is instead on the peacocking of the men around her while she is so clearly prioritizing other things. It’s important to clarify that calling Amy a well-written and genuinely strong female character does not mean in any way that she’s a character to idealize or to model yourself after. She’s not loyal or kind or honorable; she’s dyspeptic, vicious, relentlessly ambitious, perpetually stressed, and not even a particularly good person. However, many women who rarely find

themselves represented in the personalities of female characters have rallied around Amy, precisely because she “isn’t saddled with the same burden that so many of her fellow TV heroines are these days… [she] has none of the characteristics that make women acceptable to society. Her maternal instincts are basically nonexistent. She’s not really into relationships” (Zuckerman). She genuinely finds purpose in her career and tries to convince those around her of her lack of interest in classically feminine values such as chil-

INTERCUT dren and marriage. As early as Season Two, she exclaims to her mother “I do not want children! Why can nobody accept this?” and when her mother says she just wants her to be happy, she insists she is “happy! Without kids!” (Veep, 2x02). The list goes on, but what’s important to note about the depiction of this character is that, at least in the first four seasons, the show never punishes or mocks her for being an unacceptable woman. All jokes on her behalf are ones that would be made about men too; like every character in the show, she’s callous, cruel, and unpleasant, and her gender is neither an excuse nor an impediment. After the show’s fourth season, however, when Armando Ianucci steps down as showrunner and is replaced by David Mandel, the show’s refreshing treatment of Amy begins to shift quite dramatically. She inexplicably begins pining after Dan, and regular jokes start being made regarding her appearance, inherent unsexiness, manliness,

and undesirability. By the last season, Amy’s appearance and perceived lack of femininity are mocked and insulted every chance the writers get. Long gone are the days when the show allowed Amy to have sexual desires and be desirable, when she was allowed to engage her femininity without sacrificing her career or values for it— or vice versa. She gets pregnant with Dan’s child and, despite insisting for six seasons how little she wants kids, inexplicably wants to keep it, settle down, and perhaps even start a family with Dan. While Amy’s decision to have children could have been a welcome one, particularly because of the rarity of Strong Female Characters and masculine-coded women who can be respected without rejecting their perceived femininity, this is undermined by the fact that it proves right every person who told her she would want and need children to be happy, to be a woman, to be a human. For women viewers who related to Amy because of her unabashed love

for her work and lack of shame for not wanting classically feminine things, this dramatic reversal felt like a sharp betrayal. The sudden shift to pronatalism is jarring enough already, but it turns out that Amy’s apparent desire to have children was never meant to be an end in and of itself—rather, it became the primary vehicle for her denigration and humiliation. For instance, when she reveals that she’s pregnant, no one believes her; they all laugh at the mere thought of her engaging in any sexual activity or being found desirable, and no one thinks she should be a mother nor have any qualms about telling her so (Veep, 7x01, 7x02). Her newfound feminine values, embodied in her sudden desire to be a mother and a wife, are used to skewer her; her femininity is not only the butt of the joke for the characters within the show, but also for the show itself and its writers. Over the course of maybe four episodes, viewers can see each part of her get beaten

and broken down until eventually she is so disheartened and convinced of the impossibility of her being a mother, or of being a woman in any societal sense of the word, that she obligingly agrees to forfeit her chance at classical femininity. Veep is, first and foremost, a satire. It is filled with gallows humor, dark comedy, and an overabundance of

foul language: it was never meant to be the pinnacle of feminist empowerment. But even so, both cast and crew have discussed the storyline regarding Amy’s pregnancy and subsequent abortion with reverence, por-

traying it as a narrative of empowerment, as a woman taking control of her own life. Even Chlumsky, who played Amy brilliantly for all seven seasons of the show’s run, describes “this journey for [Amy]” as “one of a woman learning to listen to herself” (Strause, April 2019). This is absurd— Amy gets the abortion not because it is what she wants, but because she has been demor-

we later learn that not only does she regret giving up family and motherhood, but that her decision to do so didn’t even make her more respected or successful in any meaningful capacity. The series finale shows that Amy starts and ends the show in the exact same position, despite all of her sacrifices: she started out as the youngest ever Chief of Staff to

alized and convinced that she, as the type of woman she is, should never have a family.

a Vice President, and ends up as the butt of a quip claiming that now she must be the oldest (7x07). The Amy of the series finale has unflattering, dumpy bangs and a stocky outfit, and she’s inexplicably and unhappi-

After being shamed into forfeiting that femininity and returning back to her workbased, masculine life,

INTERCUT ly married to a random character many years older than her who, when their paths did cross in previous seasons, regularly looked down on her (7x07). An interview with Mandel further clarified Amy’s fate: “every night [she tells herself she’s] really happy they never had kids and that their Greyhounds are their kids, and she’s absolutely lying to herself” (Strause, May 2019). While before the show had punished her for wanting to keep the baby, now she is punished for the abortion—no matter what, she can’t win. It seems as if we are meant to find her fate dark, fitting, just, and funny; an arguably bad person who couldn’t choose between a family and a career ends up getting neither, and isn’t leveling the comedic, critical, and satirical lens on bad people regardless of their gender what matters most? But that’s the thing— it’s not regardless of gender, not really; not if the only crime she faces punishment for is non-normative gender expression, and the only pun-

ishment she receives is strictly gendered. With Veep, HBO had the potential to do something truly interesting and groundbreaking with its female characters; despite being a cruel and cutting satire, Veep could have kept Amy as a rarity of a contemporary female heroine, one “whose greatest joy is her job, and who’s not punished for it,” one allowed to be seen as feminine while not being forced to perform that femininity (Zuckerman). But no—the ultimate fate of Amy Brookheimer suggests that access to the masculine sphere of power will always come with a price, and that price will always be women’s femininity. In the end, that is the message underlying the supposedly progressive wave of

Strong Female Characters. We watch in horror as this character is punished severely for ever entertaining an erasure of the gendered dichotomy she’s long been forced to straddle, leaving viewers who thought they’d finally found themselves on screen rattled and horrified. “Is there not a self who identifies?” Judith Butler pleads, “Is there not a self who mourns?” In the world (and writers’ room) of Veep, it is painfully clear that there isn’t, and that there won’t be. So if the shows won’t mourn these women, and if these women aren’t allowed to mourn themselves, then it is up to us to hold the funerals until, someday, somehow, prestige television gets tired of killing.

Works Cited: Bartky, Sandra Lee. Femininity and Domination: Studies in the Phenomenology of Oppression. Routledge, 1990. Bro, Lisa. “The Masculinized Female Hero: Punishing Misalignment in Battlestar Galactica and Game of Thrones.” Journal of the Georgia Philological Association, Volume 6, 2006, https://mga. edu/arts-letters/english/gpa/docs/jgpa-vol-6-2016-17.pdf. Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble. Taylor and Francis, 2006. Butler, Judith. Undoing Gender. Routledge, 2009. Fraser, Nancy. “Behind Marx’s Hidden Abode.” New Left Review, New Left Review, 2014, https://newleftreview.org/issues/ii86/articles/nancy-fraser-behind-marx-s-hidden-abode. Game of Thrones. Created by David Benioff and D. B. Weiss, HBO Entertainment, 2011–2019. Gardner, Felicity J. M. “The ‘Strong Female Character’ Paradox.” Epigram, Epigram, 11 Mar. 2019, https://epigram.org.uk/2019/03/11/strong-female-character. Kaufman, Alyssa. “The Athena Effect: Strong Womxn or Straw Womxn?” WWU Graduate and Undergraduate Scholarship, WWU Honors Program Senior Projects, 2018, https://cedar.wwu.edu/ cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1097&context=wwu_honors. Kulzick, Kate. “Veep Takes a Hard Right, Sacrificing Character to Set up the Show’s Final Arc.” The A.V. Club, The A.V. Club, 21 Apr. 2019, https://www.avclub.com/veep-takes-a-hard-right-sacrificing-character-to-set-u-1834195324. Moyce, Andrew. “Brienne and Jaime’s Queer Intimacy.” In Vying for the Iron Throne: Essays on Power, Gender, Death and Performance in HBO’s “Game of Thrones,” edited by Mantoan and Brady, McFarland, 2018, pp. 59-68. Shipley, Diane. “What a State: How Veep Went from Clever to Crude.” The Guardian, 22 July 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2019/jul/22/what-a-state-how-veepwent-from-clever-to-crude. Strause, Jackie. “‘Veep’ Boss Breaks down All Those Surprising Time-Jump Endings.” The Hollywood Reporter, The Hollywood Reporter, 16 May 2019, https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/veep-boss-all-series-finale-time-jumpendings-210468/. Strause, Jackie. “‘Veep’ Star on How Abortion Episode Begins a Final Season ‘Journey of a Woman Learning to Listen to Herself.’” The Hollywood Reporter 15 Apr. 2019, https:// www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/veep-final-season-anna-chlumsky-abortionepisode-1200934/. Veep, created by Armando Ianucci, seasons 1-4, HBO, 2012. Veep, created by David Mandel, seasons 5-7, HBO, 2016. Zuckerman, Esther. “Why Amy On ‘Veep’ Is My Favorite TV Character.” Amy Brookheimer, Veep Cast Best HBO TV Characters, Refinery29, 22 Apr. 2016, https://www.refinery29.com/enus/2016/04/108858/veep-amy-brookheimer.

INTERCUT

LUCY ROSSI-REDER

LLORAR Y LLORAR: A PERSONAL JOURNEY INTO MEXICAN CINEMA

ALDO LOPEZ

INTERCUT “PORQUE IRIAS AL cine pa’ llorar?” My late grandmother’s question rings through my head often. It was in response to my young cousin, who wanted to share with her family the emotional experience she had had watching Toy Story 4. Of course my withheld response was, “YES! That’s the power of cinema and what we all need in life and blah blah blah.” The perspective of some kid in a tiny Wesleyan bubble chasing after silly film major dreams. I was silently taken aback by my grandma’s dismissive remark. What was so important to me seemed so inconsequential to her, and I was presented with a cultural divide I felt unable to bridge. I never brought this up to her. It certainly didn’t harm our relationship, but it’s just one of those thousands of tiny things that haunt you when you lose a loved one. After she passed last spring, I was desperate for any sort of connection I could grasp. Just as I have done in many other moments of sadness,

I turned to film. This time, however, beyond getting my own tears out, I sought to understand why my grandma wouldn’t have done the same. With shaky legs, I began my long walk through Mexican film history and towards reconnection with my grandma. As is the case with most countries outside of the dominant world powers, the earliest bits of Mexican motion pictures are ethnographic films. Though sometimes anthropological projects, these tiny spectacles were usually the result of expeditions funded by film production companies in search of something new and “exotic” for their audiences to consume. French filmmaker Gabriel Veyre was the main capturer of Mexicans on film leading into the 20th century. This is where I had to start, no matter how horrible the history looks. The most exemplary and telling of Veyre’s films is the 1896 Repas d’indiens—“Meal of the Indians,” roughly—which seems to depict a natural scene of Indige-

nous Mexicans eating their breakfast. This facade quickly unravels as white men (Veyre and his crew, presumably, although differentiating and identifying each of the men is impossible) looming in the background begin to reach into the scene in what look like attempts to direct the Mexican subjects’ faces towards the camera. Before the film’s 50 seconds are up, the white arms become more aggressive, one pulling up a man’s sombrero and another violently turning a woman’s head to perfect the shot. I’m disgusted. Of course, I’m no stranger to the negative role film can play in perpetuating harmful stereotypes or promoting reactionary values. From my position and with my relationship to film, though, I figure that I have to take the good with the bad. But what good can be found here, what good is cinema that is literally inflicted upon a people? I highly doubt my grandma had ever seen Repas d’indiens. Regardless, she inherited this history along with millions of other

Mexicans. I think back to my grandma’s comment and something new stands out. A tone of anger, as if the film had actively hurt my young cousin. Even if she wasn’t deliberately invoking this lineage in the question, her aversion to a cinema of tears makes sense when you consider the ancestors who were on the receiving end of a cinema of violence. The next stop in my film travels was to be the earliest examples of Mexican popular

cinema. Interestingly, compared to other countries of similar global standing, which adopted the cinematic form in the first two decades of the 1900s, Mexico seemed to have little interest in producing fiction features until much later. Though it is far from a wholly sufficient theory, one might attribute this to a culture of revolution, since much of the film production that did happen before 1920 or so was documentary newsreels. After a mixed bag of

features through the 1920s, whose economic viability all suffered from the country’s political instability, Mexico would eventually emerge as the largest Spanish-language film producer in the mid1930s. This was due in large part to the international success of Allá en el rancho grande in 1936, what some call the first truly Mexican film. Though I can’t say for sure, it is much likelier my grandma had seen this film, one of its remakes, or any of its many cinematic

INTERCUT

offspring in her lifetime. An unabashed pronouncement of Mexican national and cultural pride, Allá en el rancho grande might have been something my grandma would offer in place of unpleasant and useless tearjerkers she seemed to take a stand against in that moment that replays in my head. In some ways, it is a pure film of entertainment

and affirmation. Watching it, though, brings me as many new puzzles as it does answers to my grandma’s original question. For a woman who always proudly displayed the Mexican flag in her home (never the US), I can see the appeal. However, a couple key features of the film’s national pride are undisputed doses of racism and sexism (especially sexism!) that solidi-

fy such cultural values and pervade the national consciousness to this day. Furthermore, these are things my grandma would have, again, been on the receiving end of, sometimes doubly; it was so weird hearing the phrase “morena pero bonita” in something this old, but that is precisely the kind of thing whose evil is diffused and stands the test of

time under the guise of cultural pride. A cinema of affirmation, yes, but still in some ways a cinema of violence. I am left to take the good with the bad, perhaps something my grandma had to do more than I appreciated in my initial response to her question. According to my tia, just a few days before my grandma passed

away, she had talked about hoping to one day see my name come up in the credits at the end of a film. Apparently, stuck in the house more than she was used to because of the COVID pandemic, she had gotten a lot more into watching movies. I really wish I knew what movies she watched. I really wish I could talk to her about them and talk to

her about this project I’m undertaking now. It’s not complete yet. It won’t ever be complete. Hopefully the two examples I have provided here shed light on the complexities that film history and specific film cultures contain. As tears fall and as tears continue to dry, my journey towards my grandma will continue onward.

INTERCUT

YASEMIN SCHMITT

LOVE LETTERS: AN ODE TO ROMANTIC COMEDIES

SOPHIA FLYNN

INTERCUT RECENTLY, I HAD COVID. I know, basic. While confined in the Middletown Inn, I clocked a tight 14 films over a ten-day stay. While reviewing my Letterboxd rushes, I realized that almost everything I watched was a romantic comedy (excluding a couple classy French silent films – shoutout Film 304: History of Global Cinema). This got me thinking—why did I fall back on romcoms in a time of such strife? Romcoms have always comforted me through bad times. A lot of my favorite movies are romcoms or romcom-adjacent because they’re straight up textbook “comfort” movies. I love that you always know what’s gonna happen, and the excitement is seeing how these specific people will go through the same events as anyone else. It’s so lovely when you see a really good romcom, and it’s so fine even when it’s bad because you always know what it’s gonna be. A few things I love about romcoms in

particular

order:

1. Everyone is so casually rich and their lives are so aspirational. Where else do you see random bookstore workers with full brownstones on the Upper West Side? 2. The tenderness with which each city is rendered—I love that romcoms can really be a love letter to a place the way non-travel movies aren’t usually. You can tell the filmmaker really cares about the place it’s set, and these movies are all about LOVE. If the director loves New York City, or Seattle, or New Orleans, or wherever, you love it too. Filmmaking is all about communicating emotion, and the lovingly rendered location actually really helps communicate the depth of feeling needed for a convincing and entertaining romcom. 3. I love that women are unabashedly weird. They definitely are weird in a cleaned-up, overly klutzy, malegaze-y way, but at least they’re weird at all. 4. I love the moment

when one protagonist realizes they’re so in love and they always have been. 5. I love the moment where everything falls into place so perfectly, and I love the moment when a disgustingly contrived third-act argument rips it all apart. 6. I love characters who are relevant for a singular scene – the sassy best friends, awkward blind dates, and bizarre famous actor cameos. 7. I love watching hot people pretend they don’t like each other. Relatedly, I love when they hate each other and then realize that there’s an ounce of humanity they hadn’t noticed before and it wins them over forever and they try not to be won over but they can’t. 8. I love an obligatory dance scene, or a karaoke scene, or even just a soundtrack with a bunch of absolutely bangin’ oldies. 9. I love watching people be in love, that’s all. These movies make me happy like nothing else. and I’ve nev-

er been able to explain why. I think even this is a bad explanation. Let’s try it one more time. Maybe something more appropriate to the genre—a love letter. This is gonna go like second grade Valentine’s cards: a little weird, a little slop-

py and homemade, and one for everyone. Please imagine as you read this that you’re sifting through a plastic sandwich bag of Valentines that got handed out in your elementary school classroom that you had no idea you still owned and you just dug out from under your bed. Dear

Sleeping

With

Other

People

(2015),

You used to be my favorite movie on this planet, until Ted Lasso. Then, tragically, I realized that Jason Sudeikis reminds me entirely too much of my father, and I am simply incapable of finding

him sexy. Sleeping With Other People, you’re a great movie, but you’re predicated on the assumption that we as the audience find the two leads devastatingly sexy. I can’t do that anymore. Honestly, I’ve failed you. It’s not you, it’s me. Sadly, Sophia

P.S. I can never concentrate on that fistfight between Jason Sudeikis and Ben from Parks and Rec because it’s outside my mom’s favorite brunch spot and I get distracted thinking about French toast. Dear Palm Springs (2020), How do you find a new moment to make me cry every time? I always think I’ve found every line that will make me openly weep, and there’s always a new one. Sometimes it’s before the hour mark, which is hideously embarrassing. Palm Springs, you’re always surprising me and that’s what I love about you. Who would have guessed J.K. Simmons saying “this is a good day” would make me cry like a little baby? Through tears, Sophia P.S. “When the Morning Comes” by Hall and Oates has been on my Spotify Wrapped for multiple years in a row. Dear Sleepless in Seattle (1993), I’m not you’re a

gonna lie, weird one.

INTERCUT But I love you anyway, mostly because every character in this movie is an absolute insane person. Every decision, every action, every conversation…simply off the wall bonkers. It’s subtle, because they all seem like such normal people. Meg Ryan has such a gorgeous sweater collection and sensible french twist in her hair – how could she hire a private detective to stalk a man whose voice she heard once on the radio? Sleepless in Seattle, you keep me guessing. Confusedly, Sophia

ly special. No great performances, no standout soundtrack, no especially memorable moments. But I love you despite, as you might say. I love your extremely bizarre Pete Davidson cameo. I love your excruciat-

ingly millennial main characters. I love your beautiful articulation of looking at your super drunk friend devouring an entire pizza pie and realizing you’re deeply, irrevocably in love with them. I

P.S. Architect and journalist are the absolute most romcom jobs ever. Ya did good there. Dear Set It Up (2018), I can’t explain why I love you so much, but I definitely do. I’ve probably watched you ten or eleven times in my life, and you always cheer me up. You’re objectively a mediocre, passable movie – I’m sorry for being harsh, but it had to be said. There’s nothing that makes you particular-

love you, and the next time I have a bad day I will be curled up in my twin XL watching you through tears. Despite it all, Sophia P.S. I’m so guilty of the over-dick-around thing. Last weekend my Uber to the train station to leave for Spring Break was 4 minutes away and I started legitimately contemplating darning a hole in my sock before closing my suitcase. Dear Pride and Prejudice (2005), You swept me off my feet. I never expected to love you as much as I do, but we’ve been having a whirlwind romance ever since October 23rd, 2021. You moved quickly from #4 to #1 on my Letterboxd favorites, sweeping ahead of the likes

of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and Disney’s Descendants. I’ve never liked period pieces before, but I love your old-timey dialogue. The emotions of the characters are so specific and complicated and yet perfectly simple and beautiful in a way that can only be communicated with words like “ardently” or “bewitched.” I love the high drama of Mr. Darcy running through the rain to ask Lizzie to marry him, and I love the simplicity of the Bennet sisters bickering at breakfast. I love how you make the story so tender and real, I love your sweeping soundtrack, I love your slightly overexposed shots. I love when Lizzie jokingly insults Mr. Darcy and he looks like he needs to leave the party to cry. I anticipate watching you about four to six more

times before the year is out. I’m so grateful you’re in my life. Most ardently, Sophia P.S. This is excellent representation for girlies with bangs and a really high step count. Couldn’t feel more seen right now. You’ve reached the end of this particular dusty bag of old Valentines, but I doubt I’ll ever stop writing them. This genre always finds a new way to surprise and comfort me, and that’s why I keep coming back. I hope you’ll take some time soon to curl up and watch your favorite weird people predictably fall in love, or at least you understand a little better why that’s absolutely what I’ll be doing this weekend. <3

INTERCUT

NORA SHERMAN

ADELINA RODRIGUEZ

THE IMPACT AND INNOVATIONS OF I LOVE LUCY

AVA NEDERLANDER

INTERCUT THE FIRST TIME I watched I Love Lucy was when I was five years old. I would sit with my brothers around a small corner table in our New York City apartment, enjoying our dinner while viewing episodes from our DVD discs. While DVDs did not exist in the 1950s, the premise of families sitting together in front of a television set to watch programming still remains. In 1948, owning a television was considered a luxury, but by the end of the 1950s, around 90% of all American families owned one. Televisions were extremely costly when they first came about, so the households that had one naturally became a neighborhood’s gathering spot. Like my own family ’s set-up, televisions have been placed in the center of the room for as long as they’ve been around. From 1951 through 1957, an average of 40 million viewers tuned in to see I Love Lucy every Monday night at 9pm; the program

was the number one in the Nielsen ratings for four of the show’s six seasons. I Love Lucy’s durability and appeal is a phenomenon. The numbers alone give a wealth of information about how popular the program was when it originally aired. Translated in 22 languages and broadcasted in 80 countries, the show quickly beat most of CBS’s other new programming. Nowadays, each episode is accessible in Spanish, Japanese, Italian, Portuguese, and French, demonstrating the show’s enduring and international appeal. The premise of the show was adapted from the late-1940s popular radio comedy My Favorite Husband, starring Lucille Ball and Richard Denning. CBS was impressed with the program and wanted to broadcast it on television; Ball, however, would only accept the offer if her real-life husband, Desi Arnaz, could play opposite her in Denning’s place. Despite the fact that Ball and Arnaz had been married since 1940,

their careers had kept them apart – with him traveling with his band and her being based in Hollywood making movies. Ball believed that if they both stayed in one area and worked on a television program together, it would help their relationship and keep them together. Unfortunately, CBS management and prospective advertisers were not sold on the concept, believing that an interracial marriage between a white woman and a Cuban man would be difficult for American audiences to welcome, even though Ball and Arnaz had, in fact, been married for over a decade. Ball’s drive to get the program on the air triumphed, and she and Arnaz took their act on the road to see if Americans would accept their marriage, as well as find their shenanigans humorous. To produce their acts as a television series, they founded Desilu Productions, their production company. After finding huge success, CBS eventually agreed to bring the show to air. Despite this, many

believed the program was a long shot when it first aired. I Love Lucy follows Upper East Side residents Lucy Ricardo, played by Ball, and her bandleader husband, Ricky Ricardo, played by Arnaz. Ricky entertains at the Tropicana nightclub while Lucy is a housewife, yearning for a career in show business. Lucy dreams of a life beyond domesticity, despite her apparent lack of talent and Ricky’s staunch opinion that a woman’s place is in the house; thus, Lucy invents amusing plans to get out of the kitchen and into the spotlight. Balls’s schemes are often presented through physical humor, with the pair frequent-

ly pulling practical jokes on one another. Ricky, who was born in Cuba, is prone to launching into quippy monologues in Spanish, when he becomes irritated with his wife. The Ricardos’ married landlords, Fred and Ethel Mertz, played by William Frawley and Vivian Vance, add to the hilarity, often by attempting to persuade Lucy out of her more outlandish schemes; the Mertzes, for context, are former vaudevillians, who sing and dance as foils – and accomplices – for the Ricardos. At the time, most sitcoms were taped on kinescope and broadcast live from the east coast, but Ball and Arnaz wanted to re-

main in Los Angeles. After the network complained about the higher costs of filming in that medium, Arnaz and Ball agreed to take a pay reduction on a weekly basis. The pilot episode was originally shot in kinescope, but was hazy and not visually appealing. So instead, I Love Lucy was shot using three cameras on 35mm film in front of a 300-member live studio audience – utilizing the available facilities and equipment in Hollywood. This filming strategy not only increased the physical humor of the actors, but it also allowed Ball to respond organically to the audience. These innovations, along with the program’s showcasing of an interracial cou-

INTERCUT

ple on television, are just some of the many ways I Love Lucy broke industry barriers. In their second year of filming, Ball and Arnaz learned they were expecting a child. This brought about concerns that I Love Lucy might be placed on hold or canceled. It was virtually unheard of for pregnant women to appear on television back then. Advertisers were concerned that focusing on the topic would upset viewers in its alluding to the more intimate side of the couple’s relationship, much in the same way Lucy and Ricky Ricardo slept in different beds on the show. I Love Lucy producer

Jess Oppenheimer, on the other hand, advocated for Ball’s pregnancy to be included in the program, believing that it could be shown in a family-friendly manner. “There is no way we can hide [Lucy’s pregnancy] from the audience,” said Desi Arnaz in his memoir A Book; “We already signed the contracts. This is the number one show on the air. There is only one way to do it – Lucy Ricardo will have a baby.” Network and advertising executives initially objected, but I Love Lucy was such a hit that they eventually obliged. Because CBS and I Love Lucy sponsor Philip Morris were so concerned about the pregnancy episode’s possible negative reception, each

draft of the screenplay was reviewed by a priest, a rabbi, and a pastor – and prohibited from using the word “pregnant”, the characters’ instead were “expecting.” Ultimately, Lucy’s pregnancy was possibly the best thing that could have happened to the show. The anticipation of the baby coming was thrilling to me as a child-aged viewer, as I felt the excitement of the characters preparing for the delivery. College history textbooks deemed it “one of the great emotional events of 1953”, when I Love Lucy broadcasted the episode “Lucy Goes to the Hospital,” in which Lucy Ricardo

gives birth to “Little Ricky”, played by Keith Thibodeaux. 44 million Americans watched the episode on CBS that night –15 million more than the number who would watch President Eisenhower’s inauguration the next day. “As a week-in, week-out TV fare,” read a 1953 article in Broadcasting, Telecasting, “the type of production surrounding President Eisenhower’s inauguration could never hope to compete with, say, I Love Lucy.” This day also coincidentally coincided with the birth of Ball’s real-life son, Desi Arnaz Jr. The familial aspect of the show brought all types of people together to watch and enjoy. There is a tangible energy that one can feel while watching the characters interact with each other – something real that audiences can connect and relate to. In a Criterion Television Classics interview, Lucy said, “Many times when we would review at the beginning of the season, they would say Viv and I ad-libbed our way

through some mediocre writing. They have since found out that that was ridiculous. They know how great our writers are because hundreds of people have copied from them. I have such respect for those kids, my writers I call ‘the kids’, Bob and Madelyn.” The love on the set of the show is eminently and tangibly displayed through the screen. “We were an eager and innocent crew embarking on a trip in a medium of which we knew nothing,” said Jess Oppenheimer. Even through all of the Ricardos’ shenanigans, their love for eachother prevailed, something represented on and off the screen. Every episode always ended in a satisfying resolution, and even if things did not play out as expected, everyone ended up happy.

From its debut season in 1951, through its sixth and last season in 1957, all 181 episodes of I Love Lucy fascinated viewers and continued to do so for the past six decades. The secret to the show’s continued popularity – aside from the fact that it is incredibly funny and never-endingly inventive – is that it held up a mirror to every married couple in America; and while the mirror was more funhouse than cosmetic in nature, it was honest in its portrayal of life. Even as a young child, I could see myself in every character, who all seemed so real, even in black and white film. This appeal, I believe, will continue to endure for many years to come.

INTERCUT

BELLA ARRESE

EUPHORIA: THE POP CULTURE CRAZE DANIELLE NODELMAN

INTERCUT

IT’S ALL THE RAGE — the drama. The iconic hair and make-up. The unique cinematic aesthetic. Did I mention the drama? The HBO series Euphoria, which aired its second season on Sunday nights from January 9 through February 20, is unlike any show about high schoolers created before: its boldness to explore subject matter that other series do not dare makes it wildly popular, placing it at the center of media buzz. Euphoria-mania has been almost inescapable, becoming the prime topic of conversation in schools, at home, and all over the internet. The series broke records such as “most tweeted-about show,” “second most watched HBO series” (only behind Game of Thrones), and its own viewership record of over five million viewers — and on the night of Super Bowl LVI, no less! After almost three years between the release of Seasons 1 and 2, with two ‘bridge episodes’ in between to tide superfans over, Euphoria has become a pop

culture craze, for better or worse. It has inspired Tik Tok trends, blown up the Instagrams of the show’s stars, and become the theme of parties on college campuses across the country. It doesn’t hurt that the show premiered shortly after the launch of the HBO Max streaming service and only months before the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, when lockdown allowed for increased time to binge-watch television. Despite the show’s incredible success, the potential triggers explored in each episode and the depictions of drug use, sex, and violence in a high school setting have sparked a debate of whether the show’s popularity is a danger to the mental health and wellbeing of young adult audiences. The social pressure to keep up with Euphoria may be detrimental to audiences for whom viewer discretion is advised. Though January-February 2022 was a time in which it was very ‘in’ to know the buzz surrounding the latest episode, many people chose

not to tune in, understanding that their own personal traumas and experiences made Euphoria hard for them to watch. Some of these triggers include sexual trauma, drug addiction, abusive relationships, and gun violence. Zendaya, who plays the seventeen-year-old lead Rue Bennett, took to Instagram on the night of the Season 2 premiere to warn her followers that the show is not right for all audiences. She said that the season “deals with subject matter that can be triggering and difficult to watch,” reminding fans to “take care of yourself and know that either way you are still loved and I can still feel your support” (Insider). Zendaya’s message encapsulates the power of the show’s popularity over teenagers and young adults who may be deeply affected by the brutally honest storylines that display these potential triggers. These triggers are central to criticisms from groups concerned about the men-

tal health of teens and young adults, including parents and organizations like D.A.R.E., an anti-drug non-profit. Many worry that the series’ depictions of drugs, sex, and violence glorify inappropriate behaviors. Arguably, the series does not encourage these experiences. The creators emphasize the care and responsibility put into addressing such topics, with the objective of making art that represents those who endure these struggles as authentically as possible. Moreover, they stress the importance of each of these purposeful inclusions as a means of serving the story and its intentions rather than a glorification of the issues that the characters encounter. Sam Levinson, the show’s writer and creator, told Entertainment Weekly, “I was just trying to capture that kind of heightened sense of emotion, when you’re young and how relationships feel.” Zendaya responds to the criticisms of these concerned groups with the assertion that the show “is in no way a

moral tale to teach people how to live their life or what they should be doing,” but rather a piece of media in which struggling people may see themselves reflected

later runs away while they chase after her in a car, nearly causing collisions along the way. The creators’ intention, as these examples demonstrate, is to show the highs as well

on screen (Elite Daily).

as the very dark lows to help audiences gain a deeper understanding of what mental illness and drug addiction is like — and not just their impact on the individual who is using, but on their family as well.

An exemplary scene from Episode 7 of the first season illustrates Rue’s depression and anxiety increasing to a point where she cannot even get out of bed or go to the bathroom, causing physical pain from a resulting kidney infection. Another scene, from Episode 5 in the second season, shows the effects of Rue’s drug use on her mother, Leslie, and younger sister, Gia. Rue screams at them, physically and verbally attacking them, and

There is also the question of whether the potentially triggering topics Levinson includes are accurate enough of a representation of the teenage experience today to justify their place in the series. Looking back at high school from a college student’s perspec-

INTERCUT tive, the drama and struggles that the characters face may seem trivial, but at the time it can feel like lifeand-death. The series’ creatives demonstrate a profound respect for this, strategically using lighting, sound, and cinematography to communicate the intensity of these situations to the viewer. Levinson acknowledges that some might be disturbed by the nudity and graphic portrayals of sexual circumstances. However, these scenes are what some real teenagers describe as honest depictions of what exploring sex in high school can sometimes look and feel like. Levinson believes that, though some might be fearful of the popularity of a show with such explicit content, “young people will be like, ‘Yeah, that’s my life’” (Entertainment Weekly). When it comes to sexual scenes, it is clear that the purpose in including nudity is not to be arousing but rather to serve the story. In an interview with Ellen DeGeneres, Jacob Elordi explained that for his character Nate, “it comes with

the territory of the character. He’s this ultra-masculine, macho jock” (Us Weekly). Eric Dane, who plays Nate’s father, assured in an interview with E! News that “it’s all got a purpose” in serving as a “cautionary tale” to young adults today. Still, the triggers are very real for many teens who have experienced, to some degree, the situations in the series yet feel the social pressure to watch. Since the series focuses on high school students, the show’s themes resonate with some college students and not with others. While some may feel detached from their high school years, they often still deal with challenges involving sex and drugs, similar to the show’s characters. Some teens have pointed out the show’s ability to capture the essence of adolescence today, and how its validation of teen emotions, depression, and anxiety is refreshing. A recent VICE article asks high school and college students if Euphoria is realistic. One teen claims that “the

party scenes… and the pressure faced by peers is not as far off and crazy as someone from a different generation would think.” Another teen who struggles with OCD, anxiety, depression, and ADHD says she has watched series that were not representative of her and her peers. She explains, “every depiction of drug abuse and mental illness I’ve seen in television marketed towards my generation is either disgustingly glamorized, completely untrue, or both. I was really happy to see that this wasn’t the case with Euphoria.” Others, however, do not believe that the show is very relevant to their experience. One teen says, “I think Euphoria isn’t necessarily an exact representation of teen life.” Another explains, “I don’t particularly like it, because I sense that it tries to be more ‘shocking’ and ‘edgy’ rather than genuine… In general, the show comes off as voyeuristic and tries too hard to turn real, serious habits into entertainment for a hungry audience looking for aesthetics” (VICE).

Regardless of how realistically these triggers are depicted, Levinson hopes that the show “at least opens up a dialogue… because it’s hard being a teenager… especially too if you’re struggling with addiction and battling those things” (Entertainment Weekly). Even if the show does not portray the teenage experience today in a completely accurate manner, part of its appeal lies in the absurdities and extremities of its storytelling. The unique aesthetic of the show and its arguably overthe-top drama are perhaps its most engaging aspects, compelling

audiences to come back and tune in each week. Despite the creators’ best intentions, Euphoria’s popularity and the social pressure to watch among young audiences are clearly potential dangers to the mental health of teens who struggle with the triggering topics addressed in the show. Euphoria culture, in many ways, has become an unhealthy obsession that makes these triggers difficult to escape, especially among those for whom the series is too intense. What does the future hold for Euphoria? Where will the series

go from here, now that it has been renewed for a third season? With so many questions left unanswered after the Season 2 finale aired on February 27, fans are on the edge of their seats as they anticipate another long stretch of time before Season 3 becomes available. Until then, the pop-culture craze will surely continue bubbling on the back burner, and will likely re-emerge stronger and fiercer than ever when the third season finally airs and Euphoria makes its bold return to the spotlight.

NATALIA RUEDA

MILLY BERMAN

THE SHOW MUST GO ON, BUT HOW? A LOOK INTO THE BEHIND-THE-SCENES DRAMA OF EUPHORIA

SAMUEL GOODYKOONTZ

INTERCUT HAVE YOU EVER performed in a school play before? Have you ever had to do an embarrassing scene, or play the love interest of someone you don’t like, or be a character you are not a fan of? It’s awkward, right? Usually if you complain to the director, you are either told “That’s show business!” or that you could just not be in the play at all. Now, imagine that the director changes some aspects of the play so you wouldn’t have to put yourself in that situation. That is the case with the hit TV show Euphoria, which has recently concluded its second season. While the show has remained entertaining, the public seems to think that this season is nowhere near as compelling as the first. The writing has been panned for being sloppy. Freshman Justin Weinstein said he thinks that Season 2 “was really inconsistent. There were moments, particularly in the episode when Rue had lost her drugs, where I thought that

the show would be taking a turn. Finally, the stakes would be raised! But the show continued to hide their lack of a sound plot under gorgeous cinematography. Other than that, I was disappointed that the writers abandoned the storylines they had developed in Season 1.” There is also the problem that the characters feel… different. Kat Hernandez, played by Barbie Ferreira, had a decent amount of screen time despite not being one of the main characters, but she is barely even a supporting character in Season 2 (with fans joking about how she has gotten more screen time in behindthe-scenes videos than on the actual show). Cassie Howard, played by Sydney Sweeney, takes center stage this season, yet she is presented as a deranged, yandere-type character obsessed with her relationship with Nate Jacobs, played by Jacob Elordi. This characterization is a total 180 from Season 1, where she learns to live her life independently from the

men around her. The story of Jules Vaughn, played by Hunter Schafer, revolved around her tense relationship with Nate Jacobs, yet this season they barely have a scene together. What is causing these changes? As it turns out, the actors’ interactions with the show’s creator, Sam Levinson, have massively influenced their portrayals this season. The most notable example of this is Ferreira’s feud with Levinson. Reportedly, Ferreira got into a major argument with Levinson on set because she didn’t approve of Kat’s direction for the second season, which led to Ferreira storming off of set. She subsequently had a drastic amount of her dialogue and scenes cut, leaving her with vapid lines, such as, “Cassie, that’s, like, really bad,” and a ridiculous storyline about faking a brain disorder in order to break up with her partner. Schafer and Elordi have also refused to film scenes together, correlating with rumors that Schafer did not feel comfortable film-

ing scenes with Elordi. This led to Sweeney’s character being thrown into the obsessive-relationship plotline that was written for Jules. Sweeney has also complained about Cassie’s excessive toplessness throughout Season 2. The sloppy,

ly a line that should not be crossed. The relationship between director and actor is a critical one that is so important for the success of any performance. Still, there are different levels to such boundary crossings.”

inconsistent writing that people have noticed seems like the result of this drama.

He explains, “Sydney Sweeney is absolutely justified in requesting fewer unnecessarily topless scenes. Most of them do nothing to develop her character, so if she feels that she’s being used as eye candy, she should absolutely go to the director,” which I agree with. She did not request any fundamental changes to the scenes, she just requested that her character wear a

What is the line between sticking up for oneself as an actor and being unprofessional? Are actors rightfully not letting themselves become the writers’ puppets, or are they just being self-centered? Weinstein believes that “there is absolute-

top. Also, considering that she had to perform a lot of other embarrassing scenes, there does not seem to be an issue with her professionalism. Weinstein also points out how “there have been rumors circulating about Barbie Fereira’s feud with the production team. While her scenes are not as exploitative as Sweeney’s, actors are entitled to grievances about their roles. If she does not want to portray a character she feels uncomfortable playing, she is justified in her complaints.” While I get his point, she is an actor, not a writer. Actors don’t write their characters. It is not their job. I am sure that there are many actors who hate the direction of their characters, yet they still follow the script because that is their responsibility. Was Levinson justified in nearly writing her out of the season? No. Was Ferreira justified? Also no. “However, I have slightly less sympathy for Hunter Schafer,” Weinstein said. “Actors

INTERCUT

have to deal with uncomfortable situations all the time. Sometimes, there will be actors on set that we don’t feel comfortable around. Something about her unwillingness to do scene work with Jacob Elordi feels less understandable. People are absolutely entitled to feel uncomfortable around others, but actors have a responsibility to the story and should not let their discomfort, absent serious be-

havior, prevent them from telling the story.” While I am sure Euphoria is a daunting show to film, and we do not know for sure what exactly went down between Schafer and Elordi, how the actors feel about one another should have nothing to do with what they do on camera unless the actors are involved in an abuse situation. Euphoria has been renewed for a third season, but if this behind-the-scenes

drama continues, it’s hard to imagine many people tuning in after this disappointing season. Maybe the new focus will be on the Degrassi revival.

QUEERNESS AND THE CLOSET IN THE SEX LIVES OF COLLEGE GIRLS KATE SHERMAN

INTERCUT MINDY KALING’S 2021 comedy The Sex Lives of College Girls is – surprise! – about college girls, their subpar sex lives, and the turmoil of your first year of college. I, Kate, am a so-called College Girl (like many of you, I presume), and as such, the HBO series called to me. What will Mindy have to say about us? Will the jokes fall flat? How will they warp internet culture in an attempt to accurately portray the sex lives of today’s youth? These questions plagued my mind as I went into the show mostly blind, knowing only that Timothee Chalamet’s sister, Pauline Chalamet, and the star of Mean Girls on Broadway, Renee Rapp, were two of the leads. For the most part, the show lived up to my mixed expectations. Like Never Have I Ever, Kaling’s Netflix show from 2020, Sex Lives features a Mindy self-insert character and many ill-advised ‘young people’ jokes (“That dress is so #fire!” etc. – things no teen has said since 2012). The dramat-

ic absurdity of both of these shows is sort of her brand: they’re about over the top, eccentric young women navigating the perils of adolescence and early adulthood. Sex Lives specifically focuses on, well, sex lives, and is a little raunchier than other Mindy projects (ha!). As such, the creators needed a bit more freedom in amping up the sexiness, and they found a home on HBO Max. It is college, after all, and the show’s title exposes its thematic focus. The four main characters, Bela, Kimberly, Whitney, and Leighton (our “college girls”) have sex! And we, as viewers, are along for the ride. But the somewhat radical claim of the series to depict the sex lives of young women, something we don’t often see portrayed in mass media, falls short. The show’s attempts at intersectionality feel forced and insincere, especially its portrayal of queerness. The girls are one-dimensional, defined by singular traits and only in relation to one another. There’s Bela (Amrit

Kaur), the young Indian girl with her sights set on comedy (hm, who could that be?), as she tries to avoid disappointing her over-expectant parents. Kimberly (Pauline Chalamet) is the poor one, painfully white in her cultural ignorance but well-intentioned as ever. Whitney (Alyah Chanelle Scott) is a senator’s daughter, forever slighted by her mother’s time in the spotlight. And then there’s Leighton (Renee Rapp), the stuck-up daughter of Republicans, always clad in tweed and withering glares, with a big secret – she’s gay. Each girl has her own struggle, and this in and of itself isn’t the problem; obviously, all of these issues are real, genuine experiences, and my goal isn’t to belittle them. But the show fails to give the girls a personality beyond these struggles, and the characters fall so neatly into stereotypes that it’s difficult to see them as full people. Leighton’s plot, in particular, stands out as a clear example. Through

Leighton’s storyline, Sex Lives attempts to tackle the complexities of queerness, for better or for worse. We’re first introduced to Leighton’s sexuality after she’s abandoned her roommates and the latest frat party in favor of a dimly lit casino. Ignoring the fact that she’s 18 years old and probably should not be allowed to have a drink alone at a casino, Leighton’s mysteriously distanced character starts to make more sense. Dramatic music fills the background as we see her pull up a dating app on her phone, only to realize she’s swiping through (gasp) women.

Leighton lands on a potential match, and we see that she’s using a pseudonym on the app, a hint that she might not be totally embracing the whole ‘being gay’ thing. The scene cuts to a steamy makeout in a hotel room somewhere, and the credits roll as we’re left with this revelation. This is the pilot’s Big Reveal, and as far as reveals go, it’s pretty lackluster. Maybe this is just because I attend this particular institution, but the fact that a first-year at a liberal arts college might be a lesbian is not particularly shocking to me. It’s likely that the show wants to suggest that it’s surprising because of what we know of Leighton’s character so far: mean, rich girls can’t also be gay, if you didn’t know. The show’s attempt at a surprising revelation falls flat for an audience that believes there’s more than one way to be queer. Leighton fights to stay in the closet over the course of the following episodes, even af-

ter she’s forced to volunteer at the campus Women’s Center and falls for the stereotypically lesbian Alicia (Midori Francis). Alicia has short, dark hair that’s always tousled just right; she wears Adidas jackets, flannels, and chains. She’s the antithesis of Leighton’s version of queer— one is feminine, preppy, and closeted, and the other laid back, a little androgynous, and accepting of her sexuality. In many ways, their relationship is shaped by this contrast, as Leighton attempts to reconcile her idea of queerness with her own identity. As opposed to the anonymous one night stands typical of Leighton’s previous sex life, Alicia represents an actual loving, caring figure in her life. The two have a pretty sweet and genuine relationship; however, its secrecy lends a fragility to the couple, and Leighton’s insecurity eventually proves to be their downfall. On a weekend trip, Leighton freaks out that her bag was in the background of a photo posted by Alicia to so-

INTERCUT cial media, essentially confirming that they are together and, in Leighton’s mind, outing her to the world. This sparks a fight, and Alicia confesses that she can’t be with someone who’s still in the closet. Leighton retorts that she isn’t ready and she doesn’t want to be labeled by her sexuality, because it might turn her image into something political, like someone who wears masculine clothing or reads poetry at a Women’s Center—someone like Alicia. This doesn’t go over well, of course, and their relationship effectively ends. Throughout the show, Leighton resents the idea of queerness that is represented by the Women’s Center. She rejects Alicia and her friends’ comfort with their sexualities as something that has taken over their individuality, becoming their entire personality and erasing everything else. Leighton refuses to accept that her own sexuality might also be a critical part of her identity; she doesn’t seem to think that she

can be herself and also be gay. We don’t know exactly where this comes from, but her conservative parents might be a hint. It’s difficult for me to evaluate the ways in which the show tackles this inner (and often outer) conflict, because it’s inherently so layered. On one hand, it makes sense that Leighton might have a complicated relationship with her sexuality: she grew up with conservative parents, and she’s worried about how she’ll be perceived should she come out. On the other, it seems like maybe we’ve moved past a need for this type of storyline. In some ways, this is Leighton’s

one-dimensionality manifesting in her refusal to accept herself; she can’t see herself as a full, complex being, and we’re encouraged to understand this restriction. Of course it’s natural to struggle with fitting in or feeling comfortable with one’s sexuality, and there are sure to be bumps along the road. But haven’t we reached a point at which someone can be presented as anything they want to be (i.e. preppy, feminine, etc.) and also gay? Again, I may have rose colored glasses on because I attend a fairly queer school (though Essex is also portrayed as pretty accepting),

and I didn’t grow up with conservative parents. But this leads me back to the main issue, in that Leighton’s only struggle for the entire season is her fear of coming out. Like many representations of lesbians in media, we hardly get to see her happy or content in her sexuality. Even her relationship with Alicia can’t last. When Leighton finally has a breakdown and comes out to Kimberly, of all people, we see her at her rawest. She’s finally portrayed with

depth and complexity, and this is the most interesting Leighton ever gets. Rapp’s performance here is genuine and impressive, and the show actually does well with this scene, trading punch lines for emotional intimacy. For all the issues I have with the portrayal of queerness in Sex Lives, I find this moment very touching. Leighton tells Kimberly how terrified she is, and Kimberly, to her credit, reassures her that she can only be happy if she’s herself.

Finally, this is what Leighton has been dancing around all season. There’s no sense in separating her queerness from herself, because they are inherently one and the same. Sex Lives leaves us here, with Leighton finally stepping out of the closet. I can only hope that Season 2 continues her growth and allows her to be happy with who she is—in all aspects.

INTERCUT

MILLY HOPKINS

ATTENTION IS THE RAREST AND PUREST FORM OF GENEROSITY AS IT RELATES TO MOTHERHOOD ABBY GLASSMAN

INTERCUT I AM NOT a mother, but I can say for certain that motherhood looks different on every mom. There is no one size fits all when it comes to raising a child; every parent and every kid is unique as is their relationship. And everything is circumstantial. Practically anything – even the smallest interaction – has the power to affect the dynamic between a child and their mother, as is the case in the recent film The Lost Daughter, written and directed by Maggie Gyllenhaal. The psychological drama tells the story of Leda Caruso, a middle-aged professor and translator, and her complex relationship with her daughters, Bianca and Martha. The movie opens with Leda, alone, attempting to enjoy a seaside vacation in Greece. But, she soon becomes obsessed with a young mother and her daughter, also on holiday. The fixation begins when the little girl, Elena, goes missing while her mother, Nina, is taking a nap on the beach. Watching Nina’s pan-

ic escalate as she realizes her daughter is gone,her favorite doll lying in the sand,triggers painful memories from Leda’s past. We watch the chaos unfold from Leda’s perspective as opposed to Nina’s. Nina screams her daughter’s name at the top of her lungs, and the next shot, a flashback of Leda reveals her screaming her own child’s name, “Bianca!” She has the same fear in her eyes that Nina does. Though we don’t know what Leda is remembering, we know that Nina losing her daughter has awakened something she’s been repressing. There is the concrete image of her looking for her daughter, Bianca, at the beach but it conjures up much more than that. Right from this early scene, Gyllenhaal presents a parent’s greatest fear: losing their child, reminding us of the fragility of motherhood. The minute you take your eyes away, things can quickly take a turn. Throughout the film, Leda’s flashbacks return us to the same period of her life: her

daughters’ childhoods. This was a time in which she was caught between chasing her passion for writing and meeting the demands of motherhood. In one flashback, Leda is at a conference where her professor quotes Simone Weil: “Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.” Leda does not absorb the true meaning of these words at the time, but through their appearance in this flashback, they haunt her now, decades later. As a young mother, Leda found the pull of her career more powerful than her desire to be a parent, something that leads to unfortunate consequences, plaguing her with guilt and the lonely life she lives today. And, in an effort to reverse her past, she tries too intensely to make up for this by inserting herself in another family’s affairs. In the present, Nina and her family are completely frantic, but Leda maintains a calm, put-together persona. She promises Nina that Elena will be found because she is wearing her mother’s gi-

ant beach hat, which no one will be able to miss. Since she does not personally know the missing girl, her perspective is not clouded by emotion. She uses this to her advantage: if she couldn’t prove to her own daughters that she was attentive and empathetic, then maybe she can prove

think of these concepts as people, sitting on either side of a seesaw. As one side weighs heavily on the ground, the other jumps up into the air; once the sides are in the pattern of swinging up and down, they are only briefly on the same level. When you trust someone too much, they may end up

it to these strangers on the beach. Leda’s attention to detail is both endearing and creepy. However, she does end up being the one to spot Elena, and this awareness earns her a level of trust in Nina’s family. They approach her with compliments and gratitude.

in a position where they feel they can bend the rules; when you trust someone too little, you don’t give them room to grow on their own. In being praised by this family, Leda begins to think she is invincible. She thinks that she can do anything when no one is watching. While Elena is swooped up in her parents arms after her brief disappearance, Leda uses this as an opportu-

In order to properly describe the relationship between trust and attention, I like to

nity to steal Elena’s doll. This is revealed only in the subsequent shotwhere Leda, in her car, removes it from her bag. She looks down at the doll in disbelief and shoves it deeper into her bag. Leda trusts Bianca to take care of her own childhood doll, so she gives it to her. Flash forward some time, and the doll has purple streaks in its hair, sharpie-markings all over its body, and eyes stuck in separate directions. “I gave Mina to you because I trusted you to take care of her,” says young Leda. This is an instance of maybe too much trust, but that doesn’t mean that Leda responds properly as she takes the doll and chucks it out her New York City apartment window. The viewer watches as its arms and legs fly off in every direction, all over the street. “Well, now she’s ruined,” Leda adds. This stealing of Elena’s doll seems to be her way of establishing a blank slate. This moment is a prime example of Leda doing too much to try and gain back her reputa-

INTERCUT

tion as a good mother. Perhaps she feels that she can re-claim this position by treating the doll like she might her own daughter. It might also be that she fears Nina will be a better mother than her, and so she steals the doll out of sabotage. Regardless of her intention, and regardless of whether she is able to keep the doll in good condition, it was never her doll to take. No matter how badly Leda attempts to erase her past and re-

define her motherhood, it would be impossible to fully let go. One major thing to take note of is the symbolism of “intrusions” on what is supposed to be a peaceful vacation but is a sign of all her emotional turmoil towards parenting. In her bedroom, she picks up rotting fruit; when she tries to relax on the beach, she finds a boisterous family; when she goes to the movie theater, she has to leave because a group of boys are being rude and disruptive; her caretaker seems nosy; she finds

insects on her pillow; and what is supposed to be beautiful weather is often stormy. Each of these complications reveal that there is much going on below the surface; that things are not as easybreezy as they may appear to be. And even in the moments that she attempts to appear at peace, it often seems forced. When offered ice cream in the beginning, she accepts awkwardly. It seems like she is forcing herself to relax. Still, the thing that keeps her

from completely repressing her emotions is Nina. She sees herself in this woman. Even in Leda’s attempt to reclaim her relationship with the doll, she discovers how they still torture her. She cannot expect the reintroduction of this toy to bring a completely new experience, just as she cannot expect to virtually forget her past while located on a beautiful beach in Greece. Memories cling in odd and unwanted ways. In one of the final scenes, Leda is holding Elena’s doll over a sink, when suddenly a worm creeps out of its nose. She immediately drops the doll to the floor. This wasn’t supposed to happen to something that she protected so carefully. Hadn’t she started over? As the doll gets more integrated into the movie, the stronger Leda’s memories become. This scene of Leda in the bathroom with the doll is interspersed with clips of her as a young woman on the day she left her children. Unlike earlier in the film, where Leda is actively suppressing

her past, it seems she is now more open to confronting it. If the doll is a catalyst for her memories, and she actively accepts the doll, then it would be fair to say she is seeking answers, even if this motivation is subconscious. At the heart of Lost Daughter is the theme of an often overlooked taboo of the “unlikely mother”—a term coined by Leda. This is a person who, upon having children, does not immediately mold to the maternal role; someone who is learning to juggle the line between being a caretaker and taking care of yourself. As Leda exits and enters her daughters’ lives at her own leisure, it is important to consider how not every mother relishes in their role; how, oftentimes, this crushing level of responsibility can quickly lead a mother toward resentment. This is something to consider but not immediately judge. It seems that even in her old age, Leda is learning what it means to be a mother—and maybe that isn’t so bad.

HANNAH CARROLL

MORE IS MORE IS MORE IS MORE

MAXWELL LEVY

INTERCUT WHEN I WAS in second grade, we were assigned to do a project on an animal of our choosing. While my friends chose monkeys and tigers and the like, I wrote about the blue whale, a behemoth whose size and scope was fully alien. There is something fascinating about the big, the maximal. I felt the same connection while watching Sion Sono’s Love Exposure (2008), a four-hour epic (shortened from its original six-hour cut), filled to the brim with those BIG issues of belief, sex, sin, need, hope, and, its namesake, love. The film draws attention to its size and scope, placing its title card an hour into its runtime, where it then begins a chapter structure before subsequently abandoning it until the movie’s final 30 minutes. It treats stepping on an ant like a cardinal sin and having a hard-on like divinity, yet the labyrinthine romance culminates in a handshake and I’m left feeling as if I’ve lived a second life. Love Exposure’s

commitment to absurdism is what makes that handshake one of the most genuine moments put to film, and it’s what convinced me of maximalism’s effectiveness, not just as an aesthetic choice, but as a thematic one as well. In the process of becoming a “film kid,” I recall maximalist films being waved off as examples of vulgar auteurism. The filmmakers that generally introduce film kids to authorial commentary (Tarantino, Wes Anderson, Edgar Wright, etc.) eventually became shunned, as students want to start creating more “artistic” films that are more “realistic.” You’re encouraged to watch films that strip away the spectacle of the medium, preferring naturalistic dialogue, long, static shots of dead time, and other techniques of realism popularized during the French New Wave. Those films with explosions, jump scares, and grand declarations of love become juvenile, while watching a blue screen for 79 minutes makes you a serious, adult film critic.

It makes sense why we revere minimalist films that try to present an objective reflection of our lives (mumblecore movies are all that film students can feasibly produce), but the inherent subjectivity of maximalist cinema (and cinema as a medium, I would argue) can be just as effective at depicting what we perceive as “true.” What cinematic realism really is is really up to interpretation, and how to achieve it is as well. Just like realism, maximalism is multi-faceted, which makes it hard to compactly define. Most say maximalism just means “more is more,” but I believe it’s best understood on a spectrum, in opposition to minimalism. Whereas in minimalism, one removes the unnecessary clutter so the fewest elements can create the maximum effect, in maximalism, the inclusion of that clutter creates the maximum effect. A minimalist may depict grief by having four adults break down in front of one another in an empty room (Mass (2021)), while a

maximalist may have that grief personified into a monumental, laser-shooting, Lovecraftian kaiju (Gamera 3: Revenge of Iris (1999)). Though Mass sounds like it would be a more accurate portrayal of the lived experiences of the grieving, Gamera 3 is able to capture how mourning can spiral into destructive despair in ways that minimalist films would struggle to. But maximalism also manifests in different ways. Maximalism can be physical (typically called “specta-

cle movies”), like with the large-scale battles of Kurosawa films, or the exorbitant wealth displayed in Cleopatra (1963). It can be stylistic, like the extensive, wide tracking shots of Alfonso Cuarón, or how Animal World (2018) splits the screen into seven moving frames at once. Finally, you have narrative maximalism, with lengthy epics, non-diegetic musicals, excessively complex plots, etc. Though many of the most popular blockbusters are enjoyed

for their various spectacles, these films are often controversial for their excesses. Names like Michael Bay, Shawn Levy, and McG come to mind as filmmakers whose maximalist aesthetics have often been written off as vapid or self-indulgent, but are their excessive stylings really misused? These films about robotic dinosaurs, sentient video games, and killer babysitters bring audiences to the theater because they indulge in the spectacle and hyperbolism of people and situations that are

INTERCUT larger than life. Tonally, these directors’ styles capture the emotions that these films want you to experience, but their styles are rarely compatible with the themes they try to depict, which can make or, more likely, break a movie’s emotional journey. Free

Guy (2021) attempts to critique the corruption, desensitization to violence, and “class disparities” caused by its anarcho-capitalist, GTA-adjacent society, but it ends up fetishizing the world of excess that it suppositively disparages. Though the movie ends with

the NPCs going on strike against the players that routinely brutalize them, its most “epic” moments involve Guy (you know, from Free Guy?) jumping from buildings, buying mansions, and driving motorcycles, so why would we want to get rid of this Randian

utopia? The film’s indulgence in the maximalist spectacle of its world ends up conflicting with its themes of the power of love, anti-violence, and our need to return to a more simple life (one that’s only ostensibly different in that it has more trees and dinosaurs).

Though Free Guy lacks the thematic cohesion to land its messaging, Moulin Rouge! (2001) pulls it off its maximalist premise in spades.

preparation for an English paper. You know, I’m sure that dubstep Lana Del Rey adds a lot to the emotional journey of a totally straight Jay Gatsby, but it just wasn’t doing it for me. While that film replaces Gatsby’s emotional vulnerability with more scenes of extravagant

I had written Baz Luhrmann off as another hack spectacle director after I watched The Great Gatsby (2013) in

parties and car crashes, the heart of Moulin Rouge! goes hand-inhand with the film’s devotion to the absurd, erratic, maximalist depiction of bohemia. The film follows Christian, played by Ewan McGregor, a writer with a resolute belief in the power of love, who falls for a thespian courtesan, Satine. The two put on a performance at the Moulin Rouge, where their love shines bright before being quickly extinguished. Luhrmann captures this intense, yet fleeting, moment through the film’s most striking montage editing. The film cuts between temporally, audially, stylistically, and compositionally incongruous shots of characters we have not yet seen, and it spends ten minutes building

a euphonious climax before catapulting the film into complete melodrama. The editing is disconsonant to heighten the narrative subversions (already foreshadowed by the film’s epilogue), as well as play with the theme of memory and how an older Christian recalls his bohemian past. Like memories of passion-filled periods of life, the film is dreamlike, surreal, jumbled, hectic, vibrant, sudden, dissociative, cinematic, self-referential, and wondrous, yet off, and more and more and more than what it really was. Memories, like love, like music, like beings, bleed into one another until what it felt like, sounded like, and was like are all one and the same. Moulin Rouge! knows that love isn’t really

singing Elton John in the Parisian sky whilst the moon operatically serenades you, but it knows the memory of love and it knows that love really does feel like “Your Song” [insert Moulin Rouge Maximalist Paris.png]. That’s kind of why we like maximalist cinema — it unabashedly presents our memories, our feelings, our dreams, our songs back to us. Because Moulin Rouge! is about the power and memory of love, it feels powerfully memorable, and emphasizing the erraticism of love in tumult makes us feel its power as Luhrmann leads our hearts on a string, from another pop song to another tragedy to another shot to another memory that will live forever.

INTERCUT

LUCY ROSSI-REDER

NORA SHERMAN

THE QUEER FILMOGRAPHY OF KON SATOSHI: CONFIDENCE, SELFEXPRESSION, AND THE BATTLE BETWEEN PERSONAL IDENTITY AND THE OUTSIDE WORLD

SKYLAR MOEHS 59

INTERCUT GROWING UP AS a queer kid can feel like being crushed in a vise, trapped between the desperation to “fit in” on one side and the burning need to be true to yourself on the other. In this situation, a near-universal experience is needing an escape route to be free from the harshness of the real world. Be it an insular group of fellow queer kids, an expressive art avenue, an athletic challenge, or an internet forum, everyone tries to find a place where they can let themselves out a little more. For me, I was able to get in touch with myself through the work of Japanese director Kon Satoshi. Seeing sympathetic transgender characters like Hana in Tokyo Godfathers allowed me to realize that I could have worth as a trans person. As well, witnessing Mima (Perfect Blue’s protagonist) struggle to assert her personhood while everyone around her tries to manipulate how she looks and acts has been a symbolic motivation in transitioning. Most of all, however, one creative and

philosophical principle of Kon’s work has inspired me most greatly as a queer person: opening up and following our deepest emotions in the real world can be the source of our greatest strength.

scious internal worlds of other characters, and is scripturally described as a deceiver, the initial message regarding Himuro is that he is a transgressive, deranged force that needs to be repressed.

Being an avid student and practitioner of cinema, Kon Satoshi uses, warps, and creatively reinterprets genre tropes to tell his narratives in a new way. Kon’s film Paprika (a thriller that inspired Inception and follows a battle between psychologists and a terrorist who has stolen their dream-entering device to hijack the world’s subconscious minds) reinterprets a notable stereotype— the queer-coded villain. Paprika’s villain is initially introduced as the jealous lab assistant Himuro, who appears only in hijacked dreams as a flamboyant, cross-dressing deviant. The haughty and over-polished scientist Osanai even turns up his nose at a stack of homoerotic porn magazines in a brief shot in Himuro’s apartment. Especially since he only exists in the semi-con-

In a single instant, occuring one-third into the movie, the morality changes completely, from punishing a deviant, as is typical in films featuring a queer-coded villain, to revealing the horror of conformity and repression. Together with his boss, Osanai is the real terrorist, and Himuro was but a puppet they forced into suicide. The pair claim that Himuro was a spiritual Icarus who was punished for trying to express himself too much in his former life. This control goes hand in hand with repression, as Paprika exposes in Osanai. When she notes that Osanai “was Himuro’s idol,” he goes wild with rage at being associated with gay attraction, which quickly turns to shame when Paprika further remarks that he “sold his body to the chairman,” and Osanai’s body is seen, to-

gether with his boss in a bathrobe, on the floor of his bedroom later in the film. This reveal turns the whole conceit of the queer-coded villain on its head. The characters who claim to be conforming and working for the natural order are the ones who have something to hide, and they require shame and violence to contain their inherent non-conforming tendencies. But there is an alternative, presented through yet another character—the detective Konakawa. His feelings of inferiority in regards to his role as a public servant and friend are only resolved when he lets them out and confronts them in the open, not restraining those feelings in pursuit of a veneer of confidence and suffering in silence. The battle to restrain queer identities, which Paprika illustrates, is not only waged through direct commands or irrational shame and self-hate; rather, those emotions are foisted upon you by a thousand small pressures from living in a still generally queerphobic

society. One only understands themselves as a man or woman after being encouraged by society towards, and being rewarded for, certain gendered behaviors and artificial appearances, and the reverse for any kind of nonconformity. This notion of coerced social performance has always been a foundation of queer studies; it famously is described as “gender performativity” by Judith Butler. Though this may seem like merely abstract philosophy, the conflict of Perfect Blue, Kon’s debut feature, anchors itself around this experience. In it, the protagonist Mima deals with a horde of people who want to control her as she transitions from being a pop idol to an actress, effectively working from the outside to crumple up the internal self that is shown to be so valuable in Paprika. Her struggle is to resist the crushing of personal identity by public life, and to put her wants and needs first. In one scene, she is asked to perform as a victim of a sexual assualt to further her ca-

reer. Acting along, she agrees to it in order to please her benefactors. In private, though, she breaks down in anguish at having to perform such a thing, revealing the construction of an outer persona at the expense of self dignity. When the toll of faking to be someone else becomes too great, Kon even shows her splitting identities, with an abstraction of her artificial pop-idol self running off and leaving her a vulnerable mess of emotion. Though this narrative is an exaggeration, it still reflects a basic struggle of queer people, especially trans women. Just like Mima, we are demanded to present in a specific feminine manner that is pleasing to others (often, but not limited to men), but so narrow that we are made to believe we are inferior (or not even ‘real’ women), when inevitably the standard set for our bodies, presentations, and social performances is impossible. Not solely through plot and writing, this oppressive subjectivity/ self-understanding of

INTERCUT Mima is also brilliantly depicted visually, especially through editing. As Tony Zhao, co-creator of the Youtube series Every Frame a Painting has remarked, Kon uses unique techniques like match cuts to create a spectacle like no other in film, animation or live-action. More than just being aesthetically superb, these edits create new thematic meaning (similar to Soviet Montage or the famous cut between the first two chapters of 2001), which in this case is an illustration of Mima’s subjectivity as she determinedly struggles to self-define. A notable theme edit is a dissolve between her former bandmates onstage and Mima locked in a bathroom after an invasive pho-

toshoot, stuck in the frame between her former friends from the previous composition. The wide audience POV and the close-up on Mima combine to demonstrate that her private life becoming publicly viewable (and thus public property) has had disastrous effects on her sense of self. Just the same way, an extremely common trans experience is for strangers to feel like they have the right to know everything about your transition history and body, especially your genitals. Not only is this rude and demeaning, but it is part of the way society degrades trans (bodily) autonomy and self-determination. Predatory public gaze is once again shown through editing when a shot of

Mima being interrogated by a psychiatrist zooms out to show that it is being broadcast on television. The scene repeats—first with Mima giving out her real emotions, and second while acting the same situation for a TV show—which further embellishes the idea that what she has been asked to perform has infiltrated her mind and started to become her reality. Furthermore, by showing the televised footage of Mima in her most private thoughts, Kon reminds us of the presence of a voyeuristic society whose consumerist and misogynistic desires want Mima, her body, and her inner life to be reduced to a commodity. While Perfect Blue may be a montage of psychological suffering, it offers up a glimpse of fighting back, again through visual matches. One of the most striking shots of the film is Mima, framed onstage inside the open hand of a stalker posing as a security guard—a shot that is closely repeated a few minutes later in a close

up of the television director’s hand reaching towards Mima. This clear imagery of control is paralleled again later in the film, when once again a close-up of a controlling hand is

a hammer to defend herself. This expresses that the tools that society uses to undermine people’s identity can be used by individuals to prop up their own identities too. So often

shown—but this time with a stiletto through it, belonging to the perverted photographer as he is murdered in revenge. Lastly, when the stalker confronts and attempts to kill Mima, claiming she is an interloper and that the artificial pop-idol is the real Mima, we see a close up of a hand on a tool belt. From the earlier shot, we assume that it is the stalker preparing to couple physical torture with his mental torture of Mima, but when we cut away it is revealed to be that of Mima, swinging

queer people are made to believe that we are only how other people perceive and think of us, but through active mental effort, we truly can change our own self-perception. Selflove and confidence really is possible, even if it only starts with

looking in the mirror and declaring out loud, “I’m proud of who I am.” Artificial masks will then start to fall away, just how the artificial pop-idol persona is also revealed to be the person most micromanaging of Mima’s life—her overprotective manager Rumi. Though Rumi psychotically believes she is the real Mima, the delusion is broken when her gaze is reversed and she sees herself in a mirror. Likewise, the moment that Mima is shown to have control of herself again is when she stares in the rearview of her car and declares, “Nope, I’m the real me.” With these final words Kon tells us that we have power—the power to break free from the performances set out for us and to see ourselves the way we desire.

INTERCUT

VADIM GORBATY

THE MARVEL CINEMATIC UNIVERSE: INTIMIDATION, ADDICTION, AND ENTERTAINMENT

AMANDA SCHENKMAN

INTERCUT THE MARVEL CINEMATIC Universe, a world not too far off from our own, tells a collective of intergalactic stories, connecting characters and story arcs across multiple worlds. This franchise has many happy endings, making these movies extremely enjoyable and somewhat predictable: Heroes tend to win, villains tend to lose, and superheroes come together to defend innocent civilians. Truly, I never used to understand Marvel. Anytime a movie was released, I had absolutely no desire to see it. From an outsider’s perspective, Marvel can be extremely intimidating, especially if you feel years behind. How is one supposed to understand any of the films if they are unfamiliar with the previous ones? When one falls behind the franchise, there is absolutely no coming back. After the release of End Game, a film that rocked the Marvel fan base to its core, I decided it was time to take on this endeavor and force myself to watch all twenty-two Marvel films. After sitting

through twenty-two movies in the span of a singular week, I noticed that Marvel, even if I still may not enjoy all the films, is truly an addicting and groundbreaking franchise that focuses both on good storytelling and quality entertainment. First off, the Marvel brand is nothing short of spectacular. Even though it falls within the category of action films, Marvel encompasses an entirely new genre. What began as a Stan Lee gimmick to sell more comics, aided in creating a world full of interconnected storytelling. Since the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), and therefore the characters, are completely tied to one another, the viewer never knows when a new plot point will become necessary, making every interaction that much more important to the viewer. For this reason, the MCU never runs out of quality stories to tell. However, this sense of newness is also the thing that makes outsiders the most hesitant about entering the franchise’s fan-

base. Because the little details matter, it feels as though an audience member cannot just start in the middle but, rather, must begin their journey all the way back at the original Iron Man. As Stan Lee states: “All I know is, the good superhero movie has got action, suspense, colorful characters, new angles – that’s what people like” (Cavna). And, as Lee explains, these films have exactly that. They incorporate colors, explosions, and character arcs in an original way, making their fan base that much more dedicated to the stories being told. On the other hand, Marvel has a similar appeal to a franchise like Star Wars, in that it crosses over multiple generations. Because the comic books date back to the 1940s and 1950s, many elders remember being fond of them when they were adolescents. By bringing it back to childhood, viewers are allowed to live out their childhood fairy tales. As Stan Lee explains, “All those things you imagined [as a kid]

are about wish fulfillment… And because of that, I don’t think they’ll ever go out of vogue” (Cavna). And since the movies premiered in the early 2000s and have continued to the present day, the younger population has also become engrossed in the MCU. They’re films that sweep across generations, linking grandparents and parents to the stories that their children have learned to enjoy. Nonetheless, Marvel is a quality, money machine. The first twenty-two films grossed about “$17 billion – more than any other movie franchise in history.” At the same time, these films demonstrate quality, keeping an “84% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes” and “receiv[ing]

an average of 64 nominations and awards per movie” (Harrison). On this point, Marvel continuously tries to expand their fan base. Despite most of their films focusing on their typical predominant cis-gender, heterosexual, white male audience, in recent years Marvel has begun to push against this standard, focusing on diversity and inclusion in a way other franchises have not been as forward about. When Captain Marvel was announced, the head of Marvel Studios, Kevin Feige, stated that this is “only the beginning” of a much larger movement focusing on diversity, equity, and inclusion (Yamato). Feige continued by expressing his love for the characters that Lee created “one of

the great things about movies is you get to showcase the world that you want to reflect and the way you want the world to be. And that’s what he [Stan Lee] did with these characters” (Yamato). To continue, these films mix realism and fantasy in a way that forces the audience to completely suspend their disbelief. Because of the dense and detail-oriented world, viewers often have to accept the rules that exist in the MCU, without any sort of questioning. Since everything and everyone is part of the same universe the heroes often collide at unsuspected times. Not only do they get to fight in battles together, but also they are forced to confront their differences. In Captain America: Civil War, the audience watches Captain America and Iron Man go head-to-head against one another, clashing their ideologies and essentially dividing the Avengers. Because there are so many films with an excessive amount of different character re-

INTERCUT lationships, the audience gets to experience dynamics that they might otherwise miss. Even within the superhero world, characters are forced to confront their differences and grow because of them. These complex dynamics make the audience really care for the characters. Instead of keeping some sort of distance between those on screen and their passionate fanbase, the MCU encourages viewers to immerse themselves in Iron Man’s witty one liners and Captain America’s hopeful sentiments. Viewers will laugh every time Starlord mentions a throwback hit and every time “I am Groot” is said in a different tone. The audience is in on the jokes being verbalized on screen, rather than just acting as another spectator watching these events unfold. The characters have this sort of human nature at their core that separates them from other superheroes. They are not perfect, but rather their flaws make them feel real and their powers make

them appear that much more unstoppable. The superheroes suffer with everyday problems: “Spider-Man suffers a teen’s social travails. Iron Man battles his demon addiction” (Cavna). The characters must face “their hopes, dreams, aspirations, as well as their frustrations” (Cavna). The MCU gives fans something to look at and admire; it immerses viewers into a world filled with personable

wit, heart, and real emotion. These characters do what heroes are supposed to do: unite and save civilians while standing up against their own problems behind the scenes. Lee specifically “wanted to write the kind of dialogue that would give the character[s] personalit[ies],” and the MCU does nothing short of continuing his legacy by creating characters worth caring for (Cavna).

Lastly, even though superhero films may be fantasy, they reflect real issues that our own society faces. In the Black Panther, the franchise looks at racism in depth. This film highlights “what it means to be black in both America and Africa – and, more broadly, in the world” (Smith). The film discusses the inherent racism that exists in America and the trauma that systematic racism instills in Black Americans. Killmonger, the antagonist of the film, exemplifies how the system can essentially change the way in which individuals act. The director of the film, Ryan Coogler explains that there are “superhero films that are gritty dramas or action comedies” but this film also “deal[s] with issues of being of African descent” (Smith). The importance of Black Panther is that it is an excellent film that also “challenges institutional bias,” while “includ[ing] prismatic perspectives on black life and tradition” (Smith). Even though Black Panther sticks out when

discussing diversity in the Marvel franchise, it is important to note that many of the other films slyly discuss important issues as well. In Iron Man 2, Tony Stark visualizes anxiety, suffering from panic attacks. The audience sees the effects of mental health even on someone even as powerful and heroic as the Tony Stark. In Avengers: Infinity War, the viewer watches as Thanos repeatedly abuses Gamora. By portraying such a toxic relationship on screen, the audience begins to understand the negative impact that exploitation can have on an individual. Lastly, in Captain Marvel, sexism is one of the major themes demonstrated throughout the film. As the first female lead, it felt anticipated that this film would focus on the power of being a female. Throughout the whole film, Carol/ Marvel is treated worse because of her gender. But, in the end, she defies those who repeatedly knocked her down, rising and using her full potential against them. All the films within the Marvel

franchise share a clear message, often hidden underneath the loud explosions and intense fighting sequences. Marvel discreetly covers up these important messages with its fun, wit, and humor, making the franchise a perfect combination of entertainmentandimportance. The MCU fuses great storytelling and crucial issues together, making films that are not just for enjoyment but also extremely crucial. Stan Lee took the idea of Spider-Man and converted it into an entire franchise full of interconnected magical stories, allowing the viewer to connect with their characters in books and then decades later on screen. As Lee explains, “Everybody has ideas. But you have to take that idea and make it into something people will respond to…” (Cavna). He took the hardest task of them all and created a world for people to easily connect to, immersing themselves in a completely different world where good defeats the bad, at least the majority of the time.

INTERCUT

ADELINA RODRIGUEZ

TRUE REPRESENTATION IN STUDIO GHIBLI: MORE THAN JUST TOTORO

KIANA LOW 71

INTERCUT FOR MANY, GROWING up with American Hollywood means that you must steel yourself. Prepare yourself for sexist jokes, racist portrayals, demeaning remarks. With this preparation comes a certain level of acceptance. It is impossible to write off every piece of offensive media – because at a certain point, what is there left for us? During my parents’ adolescence in the 1980s, most Asian characters in media (if they appeared at all) were embarrassing, perpetual foreigners, with over-exaggerated accents and accompanied by ever-present gongs in the background. Butts of the joke. My mom recalls being mortified by Long Duk-Dong in the movie theater, heat rising in her cheeks while the rest of the audience laughed at his, and inherently her, expense. But, at the end of the day, she still liked Sixteen Candles – she still imagined herself as Samantha, choosing for the film to be hers. Almost thirty years later, Pitch Perfect was released and remains

to be one of my sister and my comfort movies. The side character of Lily undeniably plays on racist tropes of Asian women being quiet, diminutive, and downright weird. But, just like my mother, we have chosen to overlook this because we refuse to lose a movie we love because of their offensive choices. As minorities, we know American media is not made for us– but sometimes, we can choose it to be. However, with Asianmade films, there is no such dilemma. There is no choosing to overlook offensive characters and remarks. In a series of hellish weeks, seeking escapism, I acted on my longtime desire to rewatch Kiki’s Delivery Service, Ponyo, and My Neighbor Totoro. I longed to see Asian faces on screen as the norm, not the exception. Having not watched the movies since I was a young child, I realized I could not remember the plots, blessing me with the opportunity to essentially watch them for the first time. I sank

into the beauty and simplicity of the animation, lulled by the calm of the Japanese countryside in Ponyo and Totoro and equally dazzled by the pan-European city in Kiki’s Delivery Service. I felt bursts of pride and belonging as I was transported to Asian worlds I’ve never lived in. I began with My Neighbor Totoro, but within a few minutes, I burst into tears. Yes, maybe the stress of exams and papers contributed to my emotional reaction. But I cried because for the first time, I saw myself and my younger sister reflected on screen in sisters Satsuki and Mei. I was thrown back into childhood, when my older-sister responsibilities, like Satsuki, included accompanying my sister to the bathroom at night. In Mei, I saw my sister’s own chubby cheeks, brown hair in pigtails, and excited giggle from when she was a little girl. Overcome with emotion, I stopped the movie and texted my sister that we had to watch it together over spring

break. When we did, she also could not stop commenting on the similarities between our two pairs of sisters. My emotional reaction to Totoro was a result of both evoked nostalgia, but also the experience of true representation. Simply watching Satsuki and Mei existing as children, not specifically as Asian children, was both a happy and bittersweet realization that this was the one of the few such experiences, at almost twenty years old. Seeing characters existing the way you think of yourself – not as statistically and visually different from the majority, but as a person– made my heart soar. Naturally, the characters are distinctly Asian in culture, language, and appearance. But race is not a differentiating factor.

While attempted racial “reckoning” in media has produced important representation that address differences in culture and realities from the majority, there is valid criticism that questions this. Minorities do not need to be constantly reminded of their own realities and obstacles, and we too should be able to turn to film and television for proper escapism where we can still see ourselves. This true representation extends beyond visual and racial aspects. Within Totoro, Miyazaki also captures shockingly accurate sister dynamics. Like Satsuki, I was the leader of our games and adventures, but with my sister as an enthusiastic participant. Both Mei and my sister, particularly as a child, are

headstrong, propelling them to deny their own fears and anxieties. I identified with Satsuki’s emotional transparency and older sister’s instinct to protect your sibling, even when they resist it. The last portion of Totoro shows these different reactions to emotion resulting in a familiar clash of personalities. Upon hearing that their mother has fallen ill again, Mei screams that she isn’t upset in a poor attempt to disguise her fear. This angers an emotional Satsuki, who is overwhelmed by her own emotions and fear that she might not be able to protect Mei should their mother die. The two fight and Mei runs away. Abandoning any anger, Satsuki frantically searches for Mei, and her special older sister wisdom guides

INTERCUT her to a lost Mei in the countryside. Miyazaki’s representation of conflicting viewpoints and overpowering love between sisters hit home. Upon finishing the film, my sister and I were actually nicer to each other for the next day or so, reminded of the pure sisterhood that still remains, but is perhaps less innocent with age. Miyazaki also portrays independent, complex women. I quickly noted that in all three of the movies, there is an absence of traditional nuclear families. In Ponyo, Sosuke notably calls his mother Lisa by her first name, deviating from customary familial respect shown in East Asia. Lisa is an effectively single mother raising her son while working at a nursing home.

Her bravery, borderline recklessness, and selflessness refute the archetype of a traditional Asian mother, rather showing her youth and spirit. When Sosuke’s father, Koichi, calls to tell her that he cannot come home from his job at sea, Lisa bursts out in anger, yelling at him for abandoning her and Sosuke, rather than accepting his maltreatment as many women are expected to do. When Ponyo appears in the form of a girl, she does not hesitate to care for her, and when a tsunami hits the coastal town, she immediately drives through the storm to reach the nursing home despite the water lapping at her car. This representation of a woman who is a mother, but still prioritizes her own needs and job, is rath-

er groundbreaking, in both a children’s movie and media in general. In Kiki’s Delivery Service, Kiki’s experience as a young witch establishing herself in a city provides several metaphors for female adolescence. Kiki initially embarks on her journey with enthusiasm, eager to participate in a sacred ritual shared by female witches. For many girls, the precipice of teenagedom is exciting, embraced or rushed into in an effort to become the women we wish to be. But this excitement is met with the emotional difficulties of growing up, and Kiki experiences common struggles to define herself, facing loneliness and loss in self-confidence. Her doubts culminate in losing her ability to fly, and she remarks to Jiji that she feels nor-

mal one moment, then like an outsider the next. While Kiki’s ethnicity is not specified, this moment and her being a witch among humans speaks specifically to the experience of being a girl of color. While many of us confront varying levels of racism throughout our childhood, teenagedom can be a particularly rough confrontation with marginalization. Kiki initially sets out with a naïve confidence, but beaten down by the world, she loses faith in herself and her self-worth. This can provide many metaphors for the female experience, but for girls of color, reminders of your differ-

ences can be crushing and alienating. However, Miyazaki’s lack of racialization returns to the idea of true representation, where Kiki is still allowed to be her own person but still providing representation for Asian girls in Western society. While my relative maturity helped me to watch these films with a more culturally analytical lens, they spoke directly to my inner child. For the first time, I saw explicitly non-racialized Asian representation that didn’t grapple with racism or cross-cultural issues within intergenerational families, as in Crazy Rich Asians

and Joy Luck Club. Despite not being Japanese nor raised in Asia, I felt wholehearted pride and connection to my Asianness, without questioning my place or feeling excluded as a member of the diaspora. Miyazaki has crafted beautiful films that appeal to Asians and Asian-Americans alike, bridging a gap I have always battled. The representation of Asian sisterhood and womanhood, touching the most important aspects of my life, healed something within me I couldn’t even articulate before. Thank you, Hayao Miyazaki.

INTERCUT

YASEMIN SCHMITT

SCOOBY-DOO! AND THE MYSTERY OF CAPTURING CARTOONS ON THE BIG SCREEN

ANDRES ANGELES-PAREDES 77

INTERCUT EVER SINCE ITS DEBUT in 1969, the Scooby-Doo franchise has produced countless cartoons and animated films about the iconic Mystery Incorporated gang. In 2002, the first live-action Scooby-Doo film (self-titled) was released in theaters, and was followed by a sequel in 2004 titled Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed. There are many elements that succeed in these films and many others that fail, but the second film does a better job of capturing the essence of the cartoons in a live-action format. The character performances are the strongest suit of the two films, and they even allow for a queer interpretation of Mystery Inc. Storylines and The Scooby-Doo Formula The storylines of most Scooby-Doo-related media follow a conventional formula: the Mystery Inc. gang stumble upon a supposedly supernatural phenomenon, they investigate and gather clues, they reveal that the phenomenon can be explained by practical means, and then they unmask the per-

petrator. This formula has remained practically the same ever since the original cartoons.

does not follow the conventional Scooby-Doo beats that makes the franchise so beloved.

The first theatrical film breaks from this formula in many ways. At the start of the movie, Mystery Inc. splits up due to infighting. They come together two years later, but the rift between them remains present for most of the movie. Such an internal divide does not accurately reflect the Mystery Inc. gang, who are known for working together and solving mysteries as a group of friends. Even though they work through their troubles at the end, there remains a disconnect between what the audience is used to and how the film presents itself. There are a few instances that align with the formula, such as when Mystery Inc. splits up into groups to look for clues in a haunted house-esque setting. While these moments echo the formula, the rest of the film

Furthermore, the first film overtly recognizes that supernatural and otherworldly phenomena exist. In most pieces of Scooby-Doo media, the Mystery Inc. gang uncovers a practical solution to a seemingly improbable mystery. While there may be hints to otherworldly forces at play, and some of the animated films even acknowledge a supernatural presence (e.g. Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island), the formula retains that the mystery be solved through some explanation grounded in non-paranormal terms. This is a main point of contrast between the film and the Scooby-Doo formula. The monsters that the Mystery Inc. gang encounters are actual monsters, and not just some guy in a mask. The film also explores concepts of soul-switching and demonolo-

gy—topics that go way beyond a classic Scooby-Doo story. For the most part, the 2002 film departs from the usual Scooby-Doo formula. The second film also diverges from the formula, but to a lesser extent. The Mystery Inc. gang stays together and follows the tropes of solving a Scooby-Doo mystery; they once again explore a variety of spooky settings in the town of Coolsville, and hijinks ensue. The antagonists in this film are reanimated monsters from the original cartoons. Such familiar faces serve as an homage to the classic era of Scooby-Doo, and they are more recognizable than the demon-like creatures from the first film, who were never featured in any prior Scooby-Doo cartoon. This classic brand of monsters does originate from a supernatural source, but it fits within the realm of Scooby-Doo much better than the

paranormal activity in the first movie. There is a mad scientist character who acts as the primary villain and was also made up for the movie, but he plays a minor role, allowing the classic monsters to take the center stage. In the end, Mystery Inc. is able to capture this perpetrator, unmask him as one of their suspects, and explain the way these seemingly impossible crimes were enacted. This customary resolution, along with a less bizarre plot, illustrates how the second film more closely follows the Scooby-Doo formula. Cartoon vs. Adult

Comedy Humor

The comedy in Scooby-Doo cartoons is typically characterized by exaggerated slapstick, comical situations that Mystery Inc. must work their way out of, and quips that the gang use as punchlines. Both films attempt to retain these comedic qual-

ities and apply cartoon logic to real people in a live-action setting. For instance, the slapstick comedy can be seen when Scooby jumps out of a window and remains suspended in mid-air for a brief second. The movies also contain several comic sound effects from the cartoons, such as the piano tip-toeing of Scooby and “boing” noises. For the most part, the films are able to translate cartoon-based comedy into live action with little trouble. However, this form of comedy is juxtaposed with jarring adult humor, which is particularly prominent in the 2002 film. On multiple occasions, the main characters spout overtly vulgar and obscene jokes that are way too inappropriate for Scooby-Doo. Most comments come from Fred, who makes sexist comments like, “Who’s the ugly old broad?” and, “Dorky chicks like you turn me on too.” Other jokes include sexual innuendos and references to alcohol and drugs, humor that is way too crass for a PG movie. The second film tells jokes like these too, but there is a notable attempt to include recurring jokes as a more age-appropriate source of humor. For instance,

INTERCUT

there is a gag where the press repeatedly takes Fred’s comments out of context, making it look like he thinks “Coolsville sucks!” This use of repeated simple comedy is effective and makes the second film stand out somewhat more than the first one, which relies too much on inappropriate adult jokes. Character es and

PerformancQueercoding

The live-action Mystery Inc. members stay mostly true to their cartoon counterparts, and they do a good job of reflecting their unique personalities. The casting of Mystery Inc. continues to be one of the strongest features of the 2000s movies, as all of the actors fit seamlessly into their roles. They’re able to accurately cap-

ture the mannerisms of their characters and portray them in a lighthearted and cartoonish way. For instance, the frightened facial expressions and exaggerated body language of Matthew Lillard really embody the cowardly and goofy nature of Shaggy. Additionally, since Scooby-Doo is completely computer generated and isn’t bound by live-action restrictions, he is able to resemble his animated persona the closest. A notable attribute of these live-action characters are the queer undertones resonant among most of their personalities. Velma may be the most distinct example of this, whose character has been queercoded since the early cartoons. In the second film, Velma is given a male love interest, whom she is initial-

ly awkward around. She refuses a date with him and claims that mystery-solving is her “mistress” and that she must “heed her sweet call,” utilizing phrasing that may allude to a lesbian subtext. Daphne later confronts Velma about “intimacy with another person” in a scene that is rife with queer subtleties. Daphne and Velma share a close relationship that can also be interpreted in a queer way. In the first film, for example, Velma reminisces on the golden days of Mystery Inc. and admires how Daphne was “so beautiful” and the “coolest girl” from their high school. While these kinds of comments may be no more than just indicators of a close friendship, it was revealed by writer James Gunn in 2020 that Velma

was originally written to be a lesbian in the first movie. This original concept sheds light on how much queerness was left in the final product. Fred is another queercoded character in the films as well. In the first film, while signing autographs for a group of girls, he notices the only boy in the crowd and compliments his looks. Velma also claims that he knows “how to accessorize,” a personality trait stereotypically associated with gay or flamboyant men. The

second film even has Fred’s character arc center around a rejection of machismo. Despite these moments, they are quickly brushed over and not meant to be taken seriously, since all of the queercoded characters end up in heterosexual relationships. The films fail to provide significant content to be considered well-done queer representation. However, there is enough that can be gleaned to allow for a viable (and much welcome) queer interpretation of the Scooby-Doo characters.

The live-action films have their many faults where they failed to represent the essence of Scooby-Doo, but there are also some notable areas where they did. The second film was particularly able to capture the iconic imagery, storytelling, and humor of the beloved cartoons. In the words of Freddie Prinze Jr. (the actor of Fred), Scooby-Doo is simply about “a talking dog, y’know what I mean… There wasn’t anything cooler than that.”

INTERCUT

NORA SHERMAN

ANDROGYNY, OR WHY YOU SHOULD WATCH ANIME

NORA SHERMAN

INTERCUT NOW, I’M NOT here to convince you to watch anime. As much as I want to, I won’t. I’m here to tell you my life’s story, or just a portion of it. And before I go any further, let me just say that I am a super chill person, despite loving anime. I swear. If you have the misfortune of being friends with me, you know that I love anime. However, this has been a fairly recent phenomenon. I took the age-old Avatar: The Last Airbender-to-anime pipeline. Flash back to spring of 2020, I watched Avatar for the first time when it was released on Netflix. Then six months later, when I finished my first semester of Covid College, very depressed and in need of a two month long distraction, I decided to dip my toes into an entirely new genre of animated shows. It didn’t take long before anime became my new hyperfixation. The first one I watched was Given, per my best friend’s recommendation, followed by The Promised Neverland, and then what really sealed the deal for me was Attack

on Titan. By the end of 2021, as much as I hate to admit it, I had seen around 30 anime. Around that same time, winter break of my freshman year, I also went through a mini gender crisis. There was something in me that wasn’t adding up. I felt like a girl, but it also felt like there was something missing. It wasn’t that I didn’t feel like a girl; it was that I felt like a girl and, in addition, a part of me felt gender non-conforming. It’s as if I consistently perceive myself as female in the back of my head, but by presenting androgynous, and not always being percieved as a traditionally feminine girl, I often get a rush of gender euphoria. Pretty soon I was researching gendered terms and the like to try to explain how I felt. I created a Reddit account to ask gender questions anonymously. I was introduced to the term “demigirl” and the idea of using multiple pronouns, such as she/they. As I made my way into the second semester

of my freshman year, I continued to watch anime obsessively, one after the other. I made it my mission to expose myself to as many anime as possible before this period of hyperfixation ran out. I knew it would eventually. This has happened to me before. But the more I continued to watch, the more my gender questioning thoughts didn’t seem to go away. I soon realized that anime was helping me explore my gender through particular androgynous anime chracters that I was introduced to. In March 2021, I started the hugely popular anime, Hunter X Hunter. There are so many reasons why I love that show: the plot and its arcs are some of the most unique pieces of writing I’ve seen in any tv show, and the characters are lovable and captivating. But one of the biggest reasons why that show struck a chord with me is because of one particular character by the name of Kurapika. Kurapika is one of the main four protagonists; his mission throughout the

show is to seek revenge on his clan who was brutally murdered by a group of killers called the Phantom Troupe, and in the Yorknew City Arc, he has his chance to fight them and seek his revenge. Despite being incredibly badass, his feminine, childlike facial features, long dress robe, and the fact that he is voiced by a woman, makes him one of the most androgynous characters in anime. I was instantly drawn to the androgynous representation in the show. Kurapika became a character I sought comfort in. I loved that his androgynous features did not put a hindrance on his badassery. In other words, his femininity did not make him weak. His androgyny was rarely, if not ever, addressed or questioned throughout the show, and proved that androgynous presentation does not have to be an integral part of the plot. Kurapika could just exist the way he was, and still kill the Phantom Troupe with style and his judgment chain. As

continued

watch anime, I made a mental note of all the androgynous presenting characters—Hange from Attack on Titan, Ed from Cowboy Bebop, Prince Canute in Vinland Saga. I found I was drawn to all these characters because of their androgyny. Like Kurapika, I admired how their androgyny was not the central plot of the show; they just happened to be that way, and their world didn’t seem to even take notice. That summer, I started the show Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure. Deserving of its name, Jojo’s is not only bizarre for its wild plot, eccentric characters, and a truly bizarre power system of “stand users,” but the world of Jojo’s is, simply put, a gender non-conforming sanctuary. Though the show’s protagonists are unmistakably men, it’s the way these men express themselves that makes the show so gender non-conforming. The show is full of men in flashy outfits, feminized poses, and no one in the show seems to take notice of their departure from gender

norms. The characters’ fashion sense blurs the lines between what is socially acceptable to wear as a man versus a woman. For instance, one of the protagonists, Giorno Giovanna, wears a pink suit with a heart shaped hole in the middle that shows off his cleavage, a feature thought of as traditionally feminine. Furthermore, each character has their own signature pose, which are not the same manly stances we see from Superman or Marvel movies, but rather play with feminine or even genderless gestures. In the world of Jojo’s, traditional gender norms and toxic masculinity do not exist in the way we understand them in our society. Rather, the heroes can wear tight fitting crop tops and lipstick, and their world will think nothing of it. I of course took note of this. I began to understand how I could present myself in a genderless manner, one where gender does not have to play a factor in my every move, every act, every gesture, and every choice I make in life. Not only has anime

INTERCUT further affirmed my gender identity and expression, but it also helped make sense of my past. As a child, I was drawn to one of the main villains in The Powerpuff Girls, HIM, who is essen-

that I was drawn to androgynous anime characters, I soon came to realize that my eightyear-old self was drawn to HIM for those same reasons. He was my earliest exposure to gender non-conformity in

gender identity? This journey also made me make sense of real life interactions and moments. For instance, the summer between 11th and 12th grade was a stressful time for me, because my

tially a devil in drag. HIM wears thigh-high heeled boots; visible makeup, such as blush and mascara; and, most obviously gender non-conforming, a poofy pink tutu. As I made the realization

cartoons, and that stuck with me as a kid without fully understanding why. Once I accepted that I was naturally drawn towards androgynous characters I began to ask why. What does that say about me? My

hair was longer than I would have liked and it was too hot to wear jeans or baggy shirts, which left me with feminine Brandy Melville tank tops and short shorts as my only options. I remember

not feeling like myself. Part of me wanted to crawl out of my skin, and chop off my long hair on the spot. I didn’t think my outer expression reflected my inner self. I learned that what I was feeling was gender dysphoria. Just a couple of simple androgynous anime characters helped me put all the pieces together. To this day, I love androgyny. I love wearing clothes from the men’s section. I like to balance masculinity and femininity in my outfits. But with that said, I’d like to make crystal clear that I still do not have everything figured out. I don’t know exactly what my androgyny means in terms of my identity. Am I a woman? Am I nonbinary? Am I somewhere in-between? Am I somewhere entirely different? Who knows where I’ll end up on this journey through gender? All I know is that I’m going somewhere. I’m moving. My pronouns are she/they, and I am in motion in whatever direction I may not have complete control

over. Gender is beautiful and stupid at the same time. It is worth further exploring and challenging every day. I know I already agreed that I wouldn’t use this article to try to convince people to watch anime, but if you find yourself beginning to question your gender in even the slightest, it might be worth giving anime a try.

INTERCUT

MILLY BERMAN

VADIM GORBATY

SISTER, SISTER: PARALLELS IN RIOT GAMES’ 2021 ANIMATED SHOW, ARCANE NICOLE LEE 89

INTERCUT ARCANE IS A show that concerns itself first and foremost with pairs in parallel. They’re what the show centers on, the axis it rotates about. Sister cities Piltover and Zaun, sisters Vi and Jinx, partners Jayce and Viktor. Each of the show’s central narratives shapes itself around a parallel pair, and, in doing so, brilliantly and cohesively showcases just what Arcane’s story is concerned with – that being the tragedy of two sister cities, continuously at odds. I’ll be focusing on the first of the three parallels mentioned above in this article, as I try to piece together just what, exactly, Arcane’s parallels are trying to tell us about the show’s message as a whole. First though, we might need to talk about what Arcane is about. Arcane is the 2021 animated show surrounding several playable characters – otherwise known as Champions – from Riot Games’ hit MOBA, League of Legends. Arcane focuses on the culmination of the conflict between sis-

ter cities Piltover and Zaun. We follow our main cast of characters, made up of sisters Jinx [formerly Powder] and Vi, Caitlyn Kirammen, Hextech founders Jayce Talis and Viktor, and season villain Silco, over the course of five years. At the center of the conflict are two things: Zaun’s fight for independence from Piltover and the power of the Hextech Crystals, mysterious arcane crystals whose explosive capabilities kickstart the chain of events that occur over the course of Arcane. So, without further ado, I’ll start talking about the pair who are perhaps most central to Arcane’s narrative: sisters Vi and Jinx. It is, perhaps, an indisputable fact that the sisters are at the very center of Arcane’s story and conflict. Out of all the pairs that exist within the story, Vi and Jinx are the ones who bear the most metaphorical weight. They are a new incarnation of an age old conflict, both between Piltover and Zaun – one city alight with its privilege, and

the other existing only to hide its outcasts – and one that splits Zaun itself in half, as its leaders grapple with how best to pursue and achieve their ultimate goal of independence. It will be easiest if we first talk about the inter-Zaun conflict, and how it is reflected in Vi and Jinx. Arcane opens on Vi and Jinx. They are wandering on a bridge, the sky tinged a bloody, burning red, and they are searching for their parents - who we soon learn have long since died. Bodies are piled up everywhere, and everywhere they look, there is death and destruction. This is where Vander finds them - in the bloody aftermath of his own battle against his exbrother-in-arms, Silco, and the Piltover police force, which sought to oppress the Zaunite uprising. Vander and Silco’s failed and fraught relationship is the background with which we, the viewers, are invited to contextualize Vi and Jinx’s destroyed

relationship during Act Two of Arcane.1 Arcane alerts us to this in a number of ways. First, the girls are visually associated with the man they respectively mirror. Vi is likened often to Vander; she is built like him, big and brawny, and thus fights like him as well. Both Vi and Vander are brawlers by nature, impetuous and quick to act. Meanwhile, Jinx is likened to Silco in a similar way. Both she and Silco are deceptively lean and lanky, clad in similar, strikingly sleek and dark clothing. Both Jinx and Silco are also very much not frontline fighters in the way Vi and Vander are; they both work best in the shadows, and fight dirty. [This is a little more of a tenuous connection for Silco, mostly because we never see him in the

midst of combat during Arcane, but his tactics otherwise all allow us to safely assume this of him.] However, the parallels run deeper than the superficial. For example, Vi is marked as Vander’s successor early on in the show, a product of both her status as Vander’s eldest (adopted) daughter, and his protege. In Act One, Vander takes Vi aside after a failed heist in Piltover results in explosions up and down the Academy District, and reminds her that she is responsible for Jinx, Milo, and Claggor. ‘They follow you,’ he reminds her, in a scene not too unlike the great responsibility talk Uncle Ben famously gives Peter Parker. Arcane establishes that Vi is who Vander aims to pass on the respon-

sibility of Leader of Zaun after he dies, and in doing so, establishes that it is Vander’s ethos of ‘do no harm, take no shit, and protect our own above all else,’ that Vi inherits, and maintains throughout Arcane’s first season. Jinx, on the other hand, is marked and molded to become Silco’s successor. Arcane utilizes Act Two to establish this relationship for its viewers, showcasing that Jinx has become someone Silco sees himself within, going so far as to project his situation with Vander – the betrayal, the loss of family – with Jinx’s loss of Vi at the end of Act One. Jinx, however, doesn’t quite fully fill the role as Silco 2.0, no matter how badly he wishes that were the case, as her frequent and violent bouts of mental instability of-

1. Arcane is split into three separate acts, all according to the show’s staggered release on Netflix. Act 1 can be considered a prologue, of sorts, followed by Acts 2 and 3, which occur 5 years after the events of Act 1. Note that Act 1 consists of episodes 1-3, Act 2, episodes 4-6, and Act 3, episodes 7-9.

INTERCUT ten cause her to muck up his operations more often than he helps them. But, still, there is a clear throughline between Jinx and Silco, both dangerously wounded and abandoned by those they once thought of as family. However, the reason why Vi and Jinx differentiate themselves from Vander and Silco, both as a relationship and as parallels to one another, is because whereas Vander and Silco’s previous relationship as brothersin-arms is over -- both men’s arcs are complete, and there is no going back -- Jinx alone stands at a crossroads. Throughout season one of Arcane, we witness her swing back and forth between fervent, desperate hope that Vi, her older sister, has actually come back for her 2, and to-

tal and utter betrayal as she witnesses Vi team up with newbie enforcer Caitlyn Kirammen, in order to figure out what nefarious deeds Silco is up to in Zaun. There can be no mistaking that Vi is firmly in Vander’s role – she is set to become Zaun’s new protector, trying her best to work alongside Piltover as Vander once had, in order to protect the interests of the undercity as a whole. However, Jinx herself is caught in a maddening push and pull between who Vi wants her to be [Powder], and who Silco wants her to become [Jinx]. Only once this transformation is complete, this final step into a new dynamic is taken, can we begin to see just how Vi and Jinx’s relationship runs parallel to the greater conflict between Piltover and Zaun. This all comes to a head during the final episode of Arcane’s third act: The

Monster You Created. With her mind fracturing worse than ever before, and all her insecurities on full display, Jinx, who feels she has no one left and no one to trust, decides to make one final appeal to Vi. She invites – well, kidnaps, technically – her to a tea party. The guest list is as follows: Silco, Caitlyn, Vi, Powder, and Jinx. Jinx creates room for her past and her present at the table in the form of two chairs. One for Powder, the child left behind after the explosion five years ago, and one for Jinx, the girl who was created by Silco in the aftermath. Jinx, desperate and half mad, tells Vi to choose which seat she’ll occupy. Will she embrace Jinx, or will she reject her and ask for Powder back? In doing so, Jinx makes her penultimate decision physical -- a literal choice laid out for

2. For a quick bit of context, at the end of Act One, before she can go back for Jinx -- previously known as Powder -- after their explosive fight outside the factory Powder explodes by accident, Vi is arrested by a Piltover Enforcer who is in league with Silco, and spends the entirety of the five year gap in prison, leaving Jinx to believe that her sister has abandoned her.

her, Vi, and the viewer to grapple with. But, of course, the ending isn’t a happy one. In the end, Jinx, in the midst of another paranoid hallucination, opens fire on the dinner party after Caitlyn manages to break free from her bindings. But, after she comes to, Jinx realizes that she’s shot Silco. Fatally. It seems, the choice is made then, right? Vi – and perhaps even the viewer – blindly assumes that it’s Silco and Silco alone that turned Powder into Jinx, his influence over her made manifest in this one, absolute way. But it’s far from the truth. The truth is, Jinx – who she is, truly – is a culmination of every experience she’s had thus far. Her mania, her abandonment, and her guilt over causing the explosion that ultimately killed her family. Powder, whoever she was, died that night in the factory, along with Claggor and Milo. There’s really only one choice for Jinx to make -- and she makes it, choosing to

sit in the chair labeled JINX. Silco is dead, and Jinx has killed him. Powder is dead, and Jinx has killed her too. In making that decision to leave her old self behind, to finally put Powder to rest, Jinx finally moves on from the crossroads she has spent all of season one within; she steps into Silco’s role, and together, she and Vi begin to recreate Vander and Silco’s conflict anew. In the aftermath of the bloody dinner party, Jinx makes one final decision to carry on Silco’s will. She fires Fishbones3 on the Piltover Council. But, of course, there’s a tragic catch to this. Just like how Silco’s intervention in Arcane’s Act One is what serves to widen the slowly mending divide between Zaun and Piltover, Jinx’s actions serve the same purpose. She fires on the council, just as they decide to give Zaun their independence. In this way, Jinx and Vi’s relationship, and the way it ruptures for what seems to be the final time, has a direct

impact on Zaun and Piltover’s own relationship. Both start off The Monster You Created in a limbo: will Jinx stay Jinx, or will she return to being Powder? Will Piltover allow Zaun its hard-won independence, or will the Council choose to stick to the old ways? This entire season, we have been seemingly following Jinx and Vi’s relationship, but the truth of the matter is that the entire time, the relationship between Piltover and Zaun has been a mirror image of Vi and Jinx’s. When the sisters’ relationship first ruptures at the end of Act One, the tenuous peace between the cities is also broken. At the very end of Act Two, when Vi and Jinx are reunited, the hope for peace between the cities is at its peak. And there, at the very end of Act Three, when Vi and Jinx are at odds, seemingly for good, any chance of peace between the cities is crushed, and this time, by Jinx’s own hands. Two sisters, two cities, and one explosive end to both relationships.

3. Fishbones is the name Jinx gives to the massive magical grenade launcher she creates for Silco over the course of Acts 2 and 3. Symbolically, Fishbones also represents Silco, as it’s made in the image of one of the symbols most commonly associated with him over the course of Arcane: the shark.

INTERCUT

HANNAH CARROLL

INTERCUT’S FILM RECOMMENDATIONS FOR LEARNING MORE ABOUT THE ENVIRONMENT: • Chasing Coral (2017) • Cowspiracy: The Sustainability Secret (2014) • Happy Feet (2006) • Honeyland (2019) • March of the Penguins (2005) • Microcosmos (1996) • Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind (1984) • Okja (2017) • Princess Mononoke (1997) • Pacific Rim (2013) • Rivers and Tides (2001) • The Embrace of the Serpent (2015) • The Lorax (2012) • Wall-E (2008)

THIS PUBLICATION WAS PRINTED SUSTAINABLY IN PARTNERSHIP WITH THE WESLEYAN GREEN FUND

THANK YOU TO: CFILM, SBC, & QUALPRINT