NOV 09 – VOL 20 – ISSUE 9
In this issue...
Pirates, Princes, and Players
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Editor’s Note
FEATURES
Dear Readers,
Facade and Soul
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– Chen Ye
“I’m starting to think that this is the last season of America and the writers are just going nuts,” tweeted out comedian Jake Flores on February 13th, 2016. Amidst a wild presidential election, that was the day
A Solitary Nature
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– Nicole Fegan
Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia died, but it could just as well be the epigraph for the first year of the Trump Administration. Sean Spicer lied about Inauguration crowd sizes and Trump threatened nuclear war with North Korea. The Muslim travel ban stranded hundreds, and Puerto Rico was swallowed by the sea. The Republican plan to kill thousands by repealing Obamacare failed, but the plot to cut taxes for the wealthy marches on. The Wall is still a blueprint and
5 LIFESTYLE
every day, Scott Pruit and his fossil fuel executives repeal another environmental regulation. “We have to fight hard, though I do not yet know what that fight looks
Rogue’s Island
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like,” wrote Roxanne Gay in The New York Times the morning after Trump’s victory. A year later, the fight has been waged on all fronts.
– Anna Harvey
Streets filled with pink hats and feminist slogans, and airports were
The Fall of the Amazing Human Lobster
clogged full of protests. Richard Spencer got punched in the face, and
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Robert Mueller is hot on the tail of Trump and his Russia-tinged associates. A brave Twitter employee deleted the President’s account and, just on Tuesday, Democrats struck back with sweeping gubernatorial
– Charles Stewart
victories in Virginia. Just when this long running show of America appears it can’t go on, it
7 ARTS & CULTURE Space Oddity
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must go on. Donald Trump, retire bitch.
Enjoy this week’s Post- ,
Josh section editor
– James Feinberg
Mario’s New Kingdom – Joshua Lu
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This Time in Ages Past...
Hot Post- Time Machine “How did we just elect a mon who names his son fucking Barron?” — Joshua Wartel, Turn off the Trump TV 11.17.2016
Post- Staff Editor-in-Chief Saanya Jain
Creative Director Grace Yoon
Features Managing Editor Jennifer Osborne
Head of Media Claribel Wu
Lifestyle Managing Editor Annabelle Woodward
Features Editors Anita Sheih Kathy Luo
Arts & Culture Managing Editor Joshua Lu Head Illustrator Doris Liou Copy Chief Alicia DeVos Layout Chief Livia Mucciolo
Lifestyle Editors Amanda Ngo Marly Toledano Divya Santhanam Arts & Culture Editors Celina Sun Josh Wartel Copy Editor Zander Kim
Layout Assistants Eojin Choi Julia Kim Gabriela Gil
Natalie Andrews Sonya Bui Sydney Lo Veronica Espaillat
Media Assistant Samantha Haigood
Staff Illustrators Caroline Hu Erica Lewis Harim Choi Kira Widjaja Nayeon (Michelle) Woo
Staff Writers Andrew Liu Anna Harvey Catherine Turner Chantal Marauta Chen Ye Claire Kim-Narita Daniella Balarezo Dianara Rivera Eliza Cain Emma Lopez Jack Brook Karya Sezener
Cover Illustrator Erica Lewis
Facade and Soul Brown’s Changing Architectural Landscape
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lad in glass panels and metal fins, Brown’s new Engineering Research Building is unmistakably a product of our times. Aesthetically, it is in the same family as other neomodern works on campus, but details such as the ventilation systems on its brow, or the laboratories which glow softly within, highlight the building’s function as a space for high-tech research. The building as a whole recalls corporate modernism, but its metal-framed windows are subtly industrial, nodding to Brown engineering’s dual focus on business and science. The prominent fins work to improve the building’s energy efficiency year-round, radiating heat and blocking direct sunlight in the summer, and mitigating chilling winds in the winter. Natural lighting shines through the glass facade to the interior, where collaborative spaces are interspersed throughout. The building adheres to the principles of modernism, with form following function, but couples it with a new focus on eco-friendliness and humanized space. Together, this is a hallmark of contemporary architecture, leaving no confusion as to the era in which the building was constructed. The new building presents a striking contrast to its compatriots and neighbors on the corner of Brook and George Streets. Today the eastern edge of Brown’s campus, this portion of Providence’s East Side was once largely comprised of expansive estates. That era is embodied now in the Henry and Elizabeth Pearce Estate at 182 George St., the oldest of the three APMA buildings. Built in 1898 in an extravagant Neo-Romanesque style, the building was acquired by Brown in 1952. The neo-classical Computing Laboratory at 180 George St. followed in 1961. Built before brutalism and modernism came into full vogue, the building synthesizes contemporary construction techniques with aesthetics informed by classical architecture in an intentional effort to blend in with its surroundings. This idea would be discarded
a couple of years later in the late ’60s with the construction of the Prince Lab and Barus and Holley, monolithic proto-brutalist slabs created to unify the physics and engineering departments, then scattered across 11 disparate locations. Now the conjoined siblings of the Engineering Research Building, the two buildings’ opaque but monumental exteriors reflect attitudes about the sciences at the time. Finally, the most recent addition is the Applied Math Building finished in 2015. Situated in what was once a parking lot, 170 Hope St. marks a return to contextualized architecture, integrating a modern rectangular form with a bronze-tiled exterior, an interesting inversion of the roof shingling on its Victorian neighbors. It’s into this eclectic microcosm that the new Engineering Research Building is placed, meaning that while it is stylistically distinct, it is by no means the odd one out. Unlike Harvard’s brick, UChicago’s neo-gothic, or Dartmouth’s green, the University has never hewed to a particular unifying aesthetic, let alone architectural style, amongst its buildings. Walk outward from the Main Green, and you can witness the story of Brown’s growth and expansion, told first in brick and stone, then in concrete and cinder block, and now in glass and steel. The result is an architecturally interesting campus that tells an authentic story, one that has largely avoided the excesses of any one particular style—the stifling, intimidating qualities of brutalism, for example, or the subtly racist undertones of Collegiate Gothic. What is new, however, is the rate at which Brown is refurbishing and constructing new buildings. In the past six years alone, six buildings have been constructed or drastically repurposed: Granoff in 2011, IBIS (formerly known as BERT) in 2013, 170 Hope St. in 2015, and the Engineering and South Street Landing buildings this year. Still in progress are the Watson Center expansion and Wilson Hall refurbishing. Take a look at Brown’s 2017 Institutional Master
Plan and you’ll see several more proposed projects, from a new performing arts center in the middle of the Walk to a rebuilt Sharpe Refectory. While drastically different in function, most of these buildings adhere to a similar general form—elaborations on a rectangular prism, four or so floors in height, taking up about half a block in size. As it turns out, this uniformity in size is intentional on the part of Brown. The 2013 Handbook for Physical Planning defines the concept of the “Brown scale”: an intentional focus on mid- to largesized academic facilities, as well as a “consolidation” of the campus core by densifying the areas supported by Thayer Street and bracketed by the Rockefeller and Engineering complexes. The handbook also highlights the concept of adaptive reuse: a preference for refurbishing and repurposing existing buildings, rather than demolishing old structures and constructing entirely new ones. But while Brown is increasingly committed to this concept, the demolition of four historic houses for the Engineering Research Building, and the impending destruction of five more, including the Urban Environmental Lab, for the new performing arts center, speak to the realities of the policy: It is subordinate to the idea of building to a specific size and density, and only buildings that already fit within the criterion of “Brown scale” are being reused. As a result, the guidelines suggested by the Handbook for Physical Planning, while generally supportive of good design practices, mark a shift in University policy toward constructing buildings of a more homogenous nature. These constraints—perhaps unwittingly—end up largely defining the nature of new architecture on campus: dense, rectangular buildings whose integration into College Hill’s historic fabric is only skin-deep. It’s telling that new projects such as the Engineering Research Center look like they could belong on just about any college campus, an unfortunate byproduct of the
modernist ethos. Coupled with the rapid rate of new construction, these policies are gradually transforming campus from a mix of building styles, scales, and uses, into a relatively uniform composition of large-scale academic buildings. The question is, does it really matter? Is designing to the everyday needs of students and faculty enough, or should buildings embody some more fundamental identity? The new buildings are generally well-received and necessary to accommodate the expansion of the student body and evolution of Brown’s academics and research; they are not only consciously designed for their intended purpose, but also created to be adaptable to future use. And while the new pace of expansion is fairly extraordinary, it isn’t exceptional—the prefab-style dorms on the Pembroke campus are a testament to the rapid pace of construction at Brown after the post-WWII GI bill brought an influx of new students. By contrast, the growth taking place now is much more thoughtful than in previous eras. It’s worth thinking about the concept of “placemaking,” the idea that urban planning and architecture don’t just address needs and desires in isolation, but instead contribute to a greater whole of “place.” There’s meaning in considering the character of a campus as a whole, rather than in its component parts. While individual buildings will (and should) be celebrated for the new opportunities and functionality they bring, it is ultimately important to consider how the aggregate of changes made in this era will reshape campus. Brown’s aesthetic integration into College Hill and East Side is largely anchored by the colonial houses and traditional academic buildings interspersed throughout the campus core. The proportion of these buildings to newer structures has steadily declined as Brown has expanded but has never been in danger of zeroing out until now. I suspect that replacing the last of these houses with large academic buildings will create a strong demarcation between on-campus and off-campus, making Brown feel less like an integrated part of East Side than an enclave from it, only exacerbating Brown’s bubble-like quality. By a combination of luck and chance, Brown’s lack of architectural standards have resulted in a diverse, varied campus. But perhaps an intentional policy is required to keep it that way.
Chen Ye
staff writer
Doris Liou
he ad illustr ator
A Solitary Nature
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verything about autumn feels like a slow exhale. Summer is the stress of shoulders up to my ears: a time of constant social obligations because no warm night can go to waste, renewed body image issues, and summer job responsibilities that consume life for three months until they disappear in my mind where memories go to die. Autumn releases me from all of that. It is going outside without being
In Between Lives
form of exclusion. It was the exhale of my life once more becoming my own, the tension of a summer defined by constraints suddenly fading. As a high school senior, I used to hear from college students that college would finally release me from the overbearing eyes of my parents, which is true. But they neglected to mention that I am now outside the gaze of anyone at all. Sometimes, if I play my cards right,
“Being nothing means I can be anything, or everything.” oppressed by the sun, lying on the grass without a jacket on yet. It is a sense of prolonged purpose. It is sitting in my room on the first day back at school, hearing a group of people in the hall, and smiling softly because I am not a part of the conversation. The falling leaves inspire within me a strong sense of isolation. It is the opposite of “fear of missing out”—happy about missing out? It is the wash of relief from being free of social obligations on a Saturday night when I am too exhausted to go out. My freshman year, I had brief stints in at least three different social groups before slowly fading out until I was left with only vague tethers to one or two people in the groups. Each time, it felt liberating, a welcome
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I can sit in Jo’s alone at 1 a.m. on a Friday night and realize, this is my life that I control. No one is watching out for me. No advisor is telling me what classes to take. No group of people is judging me for eating a mini container of cookie dough ice cream at a table by myself, and being alone has never before felt like such a beautiful thing. I suppose it’s hard, sometimes, when the social aspect of college is emphasized and even studied on this campus every day. Since we’ve arrived on campus, the Class of 2020 has been followed by the Squad 2020 Survey, a social sciences study conducted by Brown to track how our social interactions over the past three semesters have affected our health-related behaviors.
In one section of the survey, you are asked to list the people who have had a presence in your life in the past 30 days. The survey gives you 10 spots to list the most influential people you know, and during freshman fall, filling them in was an easy task. Between ice cream socials and classes and too many clubs, you can acquire more acquaintances than you would ever want. By freshman spring, you may know who your friends are; the list shortens, but you feel confident about it. That was my trajectory, at least. Coming back this semester, my sophomore fall, I struggled to come up with even four people who have been around enough. It seems woefully antisocial, I know. My mother reminded me on the phone to “not isolate myself,” to find people to fill my days with. I can’t blame her—she’s probably my number one fan and thinks I deserve a whole crowd of other people. But that’s not what I came here for. I, like many students at Brown, am here to be released from adolescent constraints, namely academic ones. It is no coincidence that the application to this school now asks “Why the Brown Curriculum?” Students come here to feel like they are their own selves—to be their own bosses, their own decision-makers, their own everything. I am here for the same reason, to be my own boss not only in my academics, but in every facet of my life. College is the one time I am
allowed to be peacefully shrouded in anonymity, and I intend to seize that. I am existing in the interim of years between public schooling and public life, between seeing the same people in the halls every day and working with the same people for maybe the rest of my life. In between lives where I am destined to be a part of something, right now, I am a part of nothing. Simply a blip in the center of chaos. An unaffiliated dot with maybe three friends, struggling my way through a survey, but holistically okay. That’s what all of those “nihilist memes” on Facebook miss: Being nothing does not mean you should give up now or long for death. Being nothing means I can be anything, or everything. It could feel lonely if I let it. My circle is so small that it could suffocate me if I never poked holes in its fabric. But instead, on a muggy Tuesday morning, I can walk peacefully across campus while listening to Julien Baker, tap my hands on my thighs to the beat, look straight into the air, and exhale.
Nicole Fegan
contributing writer
Katie McLoughlin illustr ator
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Rogue’s Island
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n May 4, 1776, Rhode Island cemented itself as a colony of contrarians. A full two months before the official signing of the Declaration, the few inhabitants of this tiny scrap of land in a yet-unformed nation declared independence from the British crown. Though 12 other colonies were soon to follow, Rhode Island was notorious for its independent (and perhaps reckless) streak. Critics called it “Rogue’s Island,” though the famed Boston preacher, Cotton Mather, preferred the more colorful “sewer of New England.” Rhode Islanders weren’t particularly well liked by their colonial neighbors. Puritans and pirates didn’t tend to get along, and in the case of Lil’ Rhody, it seems many settlers were just more devoted to grog than they were to God. Pirates had ported near the state’s larger towns (Newport in particular) for nearly a century before the Declaration of Independence. In fact, the Italian pirate Giovanni de Verrazano spent 15 days exploring and making maps in Newport as early as 1524 and compared the area to the Isle of Rhodes in the Aegean sea upon his return to Europe. When New England magistrates John Clarke and William Coddington purchased Aquidneck Island in 1638, they called it “Rhode Island,” likely inspired by Verrazano, and the colony blossomed. Piracy flourished in the ensuing decades, partially as a way to support the fledgling settlement’s economy. Pirates could obtain a “privateering” license from local officials that allowed them to capture enemy ships and sell the looted goods out of the hulls of their vessels, the “catch” being that a portion of the profits would go to the government. This program kickstarted
A Short History of Piracy in the Smallest State of the Union a steady stream of government income that didn’t rely on taxing citizens, so even the most God-fearing skeptics soon welcomed pirates into their communities. At least two pirates were founding members of Newport’s Trinity Church, and several others married into prominent families to become leading citizens in their own right. Economics aside, no pirate story is complete without mention of buried treasure. Captain William Kidd was one of the most famous pirates to use Rhode Island as a pit stop during his voyages. On one of these journeys, from 1697 to 1698, he captured The Quedah Merchant, a vast ship belonging to the ruler of the island of Madagascar. Replete with “$500,000 worth of rare silks, silver plates, jewels, and gold,” the Merchant acquisition so thrilled Kidd that he abandoned his original ship, The Adventure Galley, in the middle of the ocean. Newly rich (and by default, a little reckless), Kidd sailed to the West Indies, hoping to trade some of his bounty and turn an even greater profit. Unfortunately, his privateering license wouldn’t transfer, and his name had been conveniently omitted from the 1698 Act of Grace, which granted amnesty to pirates frequently more bloodthirsty and notorious than the comparatively mild Kidd. In other words, Kidd was declared a pirate, and piracy was a crime. If he wanted to keep his loot, he needed to clear his name. What better place than New England to become a new man? Kidd swiftly set sail for the American coast, or at least as fast as one could on a boat weighed down with countless pounds of precious metals. All of this wealth mysteriously disappeared upon his arrival,
which has fueled centuries of speculation that Kidd’s treasure is buried in a number of locations from Long Island to Block Island. Rhode Island Governor Samuel Cranston caught wind of Kidd’s voyage. Still bitter about having been captured by pirates as a young man, he was prepared to do anything in his power to prohibit more from entering his shores. Cranston arranged for 30 armed men to apprehend Kidd, but Kidd fired two cannon shots and scared them off before they got the chance. Anticipating his imminent arrest, Kidd hastily sought to hide his wealth on land, distributing it among trusted confidants so that he could reclaim it upon his release. A retired Rhode Island privateer, Captain Thomas Paine, reportedly received the
tion ready to compete with the motherland on the world stage. The growing merchant class welcomed this crackdown, as the low prices pirates charged for stolen goods posed a major threat to reputable business. These tensions came to a head in 1723, when 26 pirates were hanged at Gravelly Point, one of the largest neighborhoods in Newport, in the largest public execution in colonial history. Whether you prefer Captain Hook or Captain Jack Sparrow, there’s no question that pirates are a ubiquitous part of contemporary pop culture. More interesting, however, at least if you’re a history geek like me, are the real ones, whose stomping grounds are not too far from the ones we frequent every day. Looting may be more
“Whether you prefer Captain Hook or Captain Jack Sparrow, there’s no question that pirates are a ubiquitous part of contemporary pop culture.” most gold, which he buried near his home in Jamestown. Kidd was convicted of piracy and hanged just a few years later. His treasure has never been found. The story of Captain Kidd reflects the shift in attitudes toward piracy in the early 18th century. As settlements developed and the seeds of independence began to take root, local officials became increasingly concerned with crime in the colonies. If they were to separate from England, they had better fashion themselves a worthy na-
exciting than the library, that’s for sure, but who’s to say treasure can’t be found in both? In a pinch, there’s always Newport and the rest of the Ocean State to explore. Just remember to pack a shovel.
Anna Harvey staff writer
Seo Jung Shin illustr ator
The Fall of the Amazing Human Lobster
“It’s Fine, It’s Fine”
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rt Room 004 smelled. It had two distinct funks: weed and Febreze Air Effects (strawberry and fig), sprayed indiscriminately by Noah in the hopes of covering up the smell of weed. It was 8:15 a.m., and the air already stank of summer fruits. Sam, second only to Noah as the highest and least productive art student in the room that morning, giggled nervously to himself. He placed the boxcutter he’d used to clean his nails on his table and leaned across onto mine. “She found my Grindr,” he said, holding up his phone to show a series of increasingly lengthy texts from ‘MUM’. Another buzzed as he put it back in his blazer. “She’s writing in Korean,” Sam, born Hyun-Ho, said, massaging his temples, “that’s how I know she’s angry. Spiky alphabet.” Sam’s parents had recently joined the Catholic Church near New Malden. “It’s a bunch of old Koreans,” Sam told me, “they don’t even get wine, just lager. Asian Flush. It’s like a box of lobsters.” Modern Family had mysteriously disappeared from the family TiVo. “She said it would turn me gay,” Sam shrugged, “and I didn’t listen and here we are.” At least once a week Sam would meander into the studio and stretch out on the sawdusty floor. “She’s crazy,” he’d say, throwing his arms straight up in the air. “Mum and dad just disappeared to France with their church all half-term.” Sam let his black fringe sit over his eyes for a moment, before turning to me. “I ate satsumas and cereal for five days,” he hissed, shaking his hands in exaggeratedly trembling half-fists. I snorted. “Why didn’t you just make pasta?” He paused. “That’s hard.” Sometimes he’d lie there the entire lesson. “What’s the plan?” I asked on the morning of the Grindr incident. “I’ll tell her it’s a virus. I’ll run away. I’ll kill a man and go to jail where she can’t get me, then when I get out I’ll live in a hole like Saddam.” “I’m not sure that ended great for Saddam.” Well-kept shoe heels clopped down the hallway. “Freshen your breath before Hooper arrives,” I said, flipping my art book open. The page was a Giacometti painting. A thin-faced man sat in the center of whirling gray lines. Wide eyes looked up at me as if I’d walked in on him in the bathroom. The door opened. Tom Hooper was our art teacher, and our head of year. Tall, pushing fifty, white hair buzzed nearly to the scalp—the youcan’t-fire-me-I-quit of male pattern baldness—three daughters, two from a previous marriage, spoke with a Brummie accent with a hint of childhood Afrikaans, and harbored a love for David Bowie and Frankie Goes to Hollywood. He was a man, despite his sense of humor, who was disliked by most students for his strictness. We were among the few who saw his good side. He’d come to 004 in the mornings, joke with us, talk about our art, tell me my work needed to be
more punk, tell Sam his work needed to be more existent, and leave us to it. Like most teachers, he liked me. I was never trouble, I spoke in class discussions, I never missed a deadline. “Charles is a model student,” went my reports. Sam came out to me near the start of that year. “I’m gay,” he’d said. “Huh.” I’d paused. “That’s a bit gay.” “It is,” he’d agreed. He was half a year older than me, but Sam had missed his matriculation grade, and was repeating year 12 when I entered my final term. The minimum grade requirement was two Bs and one C. He had one B and two Cs, the difference between a single correct answer and another. Everything had rested on our performance in our final exams—we went to a grammar school, selective but non-private. University, freedom, had slipped between Sam’s fingers. Two more years of intense work loomed before him. With too few students to justify dividing the class by year, the only time he was with people his own age was in the art room. There were four of us. Noah smoked after school, during lunch break, in the toilets, between lessons, during lessons. “If you could live in a machine that gave you pleasure but nothing else,” I asked, thumbing through my philosophy homework, “would you do it?” Noah paused, but only briefly. “Obviously, Downton Abbey.” I was from South Croydon, land of leafy suburbs and lawn-signs reading ‘I’m voting Chris Philp!’ Noah was from North Croydon, land of the occasional riot and signs reading ‘foreclosed.’ “I just want enough money to buy five kilos of weed at once,” he grinned, rocking back on his chair. “Then what?” “I’ll smoke it.” The biology teacher next door
told us to shut up. Though artistic in a pinch, Noah was an entrepreneur at heart. He’d buy chocolate bars at a local corner shop and sell them from under the fire escape when we were twelve. Aged eighteen, I saw him convince a drunk man outside a pub to trade him a fistful of cocaine for three cigarettes by assuring the mark that the powder he had was mostly diluted with flour. As soon as the man was gone, he turned to me, held a sample to his nose and went wild-eyed. “Fuck me,” he’d said, “it’s pure.” He ran home. After being held back, Sam took up smoking anything with even greater frequency than Noah could supply. He spent half of the school day bleary-eyed and giggly. “It’s fine, it’s fine” became his catchphrase. That December, Sam wore a red jumper with a reindeer on it one lesson. “That’s a nice top,” I said. I have horrible taste. “Want it? It’s a bit big for me anyway,” Sam said, taking it off before I replied. Someone approached me in the canteen later that week asking why I was wearing their jumper. Kleptomania was added to the list of things that were “fine.” I grew up straight in a secular household. I’m as pale as you can get without risking translucency. I’ve been labeled a good child without ever having been presented the stress, pressure, or opportunity to do anything a school or parent would see as particularly bad. Noah’s dad, a drug dealer, had died before he was born. His mum was mute on the topic; he wasn’t sure what race he was, only that he wasn’t white, and without confirmation refused to be labeled. Like Sam, he had come out to me earlier that year when I’d walked in on him in the art room blasting “Dancing With Myself,” the Glee cover. “We need to do something about Sam,” said David, the fourth corner of
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004, as straight-laced as me. Noah, a libertarian by trade and a trader by ethos, could not be convinced to stop selling to Sam. David had architectural ambitions, had smoked twice to his immense guilt, liked ‘50s Italian music, and was openly distraught about his virginity. His studio wall was covered in renaissance-style drafts of a blurry-faced figure in a crucifixion pose. “He’s faceless because he could be anyone – we all project ourselves onto him,” David had declared. “You can’t draw faces, can you?” said Hooper. “No sir,” murmured David. David and I had approached Sam before. “It’s fine, it’s fine.” “After exams?” I offered David. “After exams,” he agreed. I built a statue made from newspaper based on that Giacometti painting, a twisted figure rising out of the ground and held together with chicken wire—the head fell off during evaluation. I’d left a sheet of wire out and, in one of his moments of melancholy, Sam had lain down on the floor, catching his shirt on the metal. He rolled over on the floor trying to reach his back until the wiring had wrapped him into a cylinder. Noah and David jumped up, and ran over to twist the wires at the end, trapping him. “You’re trapped!” I laughed, “it’s like a lobster cage for Sams!” “Sam Lee the Amazing Human Lobster!” cried David. “Roll up!” said Noah, “I’m adding that one to the list.” Noah produced a red marker and wrote “the Amazing Human Lobster” on the wall under ‘Sam’s Nicknames’ between “Satsuma Sam” and “the Spider-Man of Porn,” the stories for which I’ve forgotten. Sam wriggled free out the tail-end of his cage and looked down the list. “I preferred Hung-Low Lee”. The trouble with Febreze Air Effects was that it made the classroom smell suspiciously nicer than the rest of the school. Sam trudged in one
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day, and sat down at my station. “Me and Noah are suspended,” he said. “Shit,” said I. “Yep,” said Sam, pausing. “Maybe I needed this. A kick up the arse.” A month later, Sam was expelled. He’d left his wallet in the art room, and a well-meaning caretaker had gone to hand it into the school’s lost and found when a small packet of pills fell out. Study drugs. Strike two. Sam was out. He was invited into Mr. Hooper’s office in Art Room 003, and
Space Oddity
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lenty of Marvel movies have dealt in the art of the quip, but Taika Waititi’s Thor: Ragnarok is only the second to effectively weaponize irony. The first was James Gunn’s Guardians of the Galaxy (2014), in which a newly buff Chris Pratt stood out in front of the action, mugging for the camera like Jim Halpert but with a laser gun. In Waititi’s film, it’s not any particular character that draws attention to the conventions and contrivances of the superhero movie; rather, the movie seems, in the best possible way, a parody of itself. Thor: Ragnarok is ridiculous, and no one is more aware of that than Thor: Ragnarok. The story, by screenwriters Eric Pearson, Craig Kyle, and Christopher Yost, is largely irrelevant. There’s a baddie, Hela, played by Cate Blanchett, who seems to recognize that she can deliver a decent performance just by phoning it in. But the stretches we spend with her, establishing the urgency of Thor’s (Chris Hemsworth) vaguely defined mission to defeat her, are the weakest
told to empty his locker. I was sitting outside, painting. A small, circular mirror was propped between my knee and the canvas stand. I heard Hooper yelling from the small office room. The door was thick, but not thick enough. I heard the voice that joined with us most mornings: “many warnings”, “disrespect”, “pathetic.” I sat quietly. Sam emerged. I watched him make the long walk through the room, down the corridor, across the courtyard to his locker. The office door was open. Mr. Hooper stood
in the doorway. I met his gaze. A few moments later the rapping of Noah’s shoe-heels clattered up the hall. We three, in a triangle. Noah looked between us. Hooper gave him a sympathetic half-smile. I turned back to my painting. My incomplete reflection stared back at me. The form was there, but I was struggling with the color-mixing. The lips were too red, the eyes slightly too blue. A portrait of a model student, captured in a moment, still.
Charles Stewart
contributing writer
Harim Choi
staff illustr ator
At the Movies: Thor Ragnarok of the film, even though they’re the only ones that are really plot-based. That’s because Ragnarok isn’t really a movie in any traditional sense. At this point, we’ve reached peak Marvel Cinematic Universe—every new installment by definition assumes full familiarity with every one of the innumerable strands of Marvel’s vast, vertically integrated storyline. Not episodic, but miles away from standalone, Ragnarok both demands the audience’s full attention and cheekily flouts it. In the first fifteen minutes of the film we zip by, then abandon, Benedict Cumberbatch, as Doctor Strange, and Anthony Hopkins, as Odin, plus cameos from, among others, Luke Hemsworth, Sam Neill, and Matt Damon. Blink-and-you-miss-it? Sure. But Waititi seems to reassure us that that’s okay. Waititi is the manic Kiwi filmmaker who gave us 2016’s Hunt for the Wilderpeople, and now, as then, he has mastered cheerily busy pep and bright colors with a flair that goes beyond kitsch and comes out the other side. The film’s strength, then,
is visual, a gonzo pop sensibility that aims no deeper than the surface. This trope is deployed nowhere better than in the film’s framing of the glorious Jeff Goldblum, who first appears, face filling the screen, in garish neon blue makeup, his hair arranged into an approximation of a bouffant. The powers that be will have you believe his character is a sort of a warlord called the Grandmaster, but any fool can see he’s playing himself. Late in the action, projected as a gargantuan hologram, he orders the citizens of his planet not to let Thor escape, wagging a finger and warning, half hesitatingly, half scoldingly, “Don’t let him leave this planet!” It’s the best line reading in the film. The rest of the movie is mostly an accumulation of small pleasures. Mark Ruffalo finally hits his groove as Bruce Banner by playing him as a twitchy neurotic. Thor and Hela trade punches to the face inside a rainbow wormhole in a Kubickian joyride of a sequence. The director himself voices an alien rock monster with a chirpily sweet Flight of the
Conchords accent. No one could argue that the result is anything meaty or viscerally satisfying; for Marvel, nothing since Iron Man (2008) really has been. But the film offers an experience democratically aligned between the tastes of the casual viewer and the diehard Marvel fanatic. There are consequences to Thor’s arc in Ragnarok: He suffers loss, permanent and jarring, that interrupts his world. But missing the film, while ill-advised, is consequence-less, even in a comic-book cinema landscape where skipping an episode is increasingly impermissible. Pop in and see how Thor’s doing, Ragnarok seems to suggest. But if you’re busy now, don’t worry, he’ll be back again soon enough.
James Feinberg staff writer
Nayeon Woo
staff illustr ator
“At this point, we’ve reached peak Marvel Cinematic Universe — every new installment by definition assumes full familiarity with every one of the innuumerable strands of its vast, vertically integrated storyline.”
Mario’s New Kingdom
N
intendo can’t help but switch things up. Look at its recent console history: The Wii, the first console to properly implement motion controls, was a commercial hit that bore no similarities in shape or design to the predecessor, Gamecube. The Wii U, a console that included a clunky, awkwardly sized gamepad necessary for playing, was similar to the Wii in name only and unfortunately differed massively in commercial performance. And now the company has released the Nintendo Switch, a console that can be plugged into your television and can also be taken with you on the go. But even though its consoles are always different, only in recent years has Nintendo seemed to begin upending the rules for some of its most beloved franchises. Pokemon Sun and Moon, released at the end of last year, featured no gym battles and no HMs; in their stead was a compelling storyline, a more challenging game, and literal alien Pokemon. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, released this year for the Switch and the Wii U, is barely even a Zelda game, set in a massive open world where you must fight hordes of enemies to get to the destination. There are no traditional dungeons for Link to find or explore; instead, Link has the ability to scale mountains, swim up waterfalls, and jump his way across harrowing cliffs—quite a step up from previous installments, where he couldn’t even jump on command. Super Mario Odyssey, Nintendo’s latest installment of the Mario series, similarly does away with the past to create something entirely new and exciting. There are no lives—which is an outdated concept from the arcade era anyway—and there are no powerups. Instead, Mario has the ability to take control of certain enemies and objects simply by throwing his hat on them, after which they sport Mario’s hat and a lovely, bushy mustache. You can become traditional Mario enemies like a Bullet Bill or a Goomba, and the capturing mechanic becomes hilarious when you possess, for instance, a massive slab of meat and press “A” to twitch about. While weird in concept, this mechanic is refresh-
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Nintendo’s Odyssey into the Unkown
ing and also deceptively complex: If you throw your hat on the frog, you become the frog. But what can you do as the frog? The core components of the Mario franchise remain in Odyssey, but they still feel new. Peach has been captured by Bowser who plans to marry her, and so you must save her. You explore vastly different worlds, called kingdoms, which are all uniquely crafted areas much like in Super Mario 64 or in Super Mario Sunshine. Each kingdom has its own theme and is designed like a tourist destination; each has a travel brochure for a map and cute souvenirs to purchase. These kingdoms have all been pillaged by Bowser in some way; one kingdom themed after food has had its stew taken by Bowser to be served to his wedding guests. Another kingdom has had a beautiful wedding gown stolen. Another has lost a massive engagement ring that’s larger than Peach herself. In exploring these kingdoms, your overarching goal becomes not just to save the damsel in distress, but also to help these kingdoms retrieve what has been stolen from them. These kingdoms are, for all intents and purposes, rather small. Most of them are smaller than the areas from Super Mario 64, which was released over 20 years ago. But these smaller maps make for more engaging gameplay because you don’t need to run to the other side of the kingdom to get to the interesting part if the entire kingdom is interesting. You’re encouraged to explore every part of the kingdom by being constantly rewarded for poking around. The overall objective of the game is to collect energy sources called pPower mMoons, and there are a whopping 880 of them crammed into the game. They densely saturate every map, and just a casual perusal through the level will grant the player enough mMoons to at least progress forward with the game. The process is undeniably fun: It feels good to, say, capture a fish and uncover a pPower mMoon in a crevice, or compete in a footrace and earn a pPower mMoon for getting first place. Collecting all of the mMoons, however, requires an absurd amount of exploration and
a willingness to think outside of the box; one particular pPower mMoon can only be found if the player takes control of a pair of mechanical binoculars, looks up into the sky, and stares at a taxicab flying through the clouds. Somehow, inexplicably, that produces a power moon that you can grab. The sheer number of moons means that the player is always rewarded for investigating every nook and cranny of the map. There’s a parallel here to Breath of the Wild, which features 120 shrines—short, puzzle-based rooms—and hundreds of other collectibles a player can optionally obtain if they wish to make Link stronger. Both games ride on the principle that exploring is fun, so these games should feel like massive explorations. The principle stands; running around the map is indeed fun, and being rewarded for doing so makes for a good game. But while in Breath of the Wild, you spend 30 minutes running from one end of the map to anoth-
er hoping to find a shrine along the way, in Odyssey you spend 30 minutes running around the same condensed area looking for more secrets to uproot. There are a lot of other aspects of Odyssey that I could go over, which are a mix of old and new trends. You can customize Mario’s outfit, whether it be a flowing dress or just his boxer shorts. There are numerous sections where you can play as a 2D 8-bit Mario, presumably just to satisfy the nostalgia of older players. But the core gameplay of Odyssey is its most exciting aspect.
Joshua Lu
managing editor
Jess Fleming illustr ator
Where have all the Joshes gone? Josh was only the 50th most common boys’ name in 2017, it’s lowest popularity since 1972.
Top 10 Joshes 1 Just Joshin’ 2 The Josh from Drake and Josh 3 Josh Peck
e “I thought the LSATs wer the Spanish SATs.”
4 Josh Wartel 5 Joshua Lu 6 Josh Groban 7 Joshua from the Bible 8 Josh Hutcherson 9 Josh Dun (of Twenty One Pilots) 10 Josh Un- Dun
“The r aske e was no d the m to food at t h ta k e me o e meetin gs ff the listse , so I rv.”