The Review in Review 2020-21

The Swarthmore

IN REVIEW 2020-21

S u b m i ss i o n s P o l i c y Longform reporting, personal essays, short stories, poetry, arts, book and media reviews, and anything else suitable for publication can be e-mailed to Eva Baron, Editor-in-Chief, or submitted through our website at swarthmorereview.com/submissions. We publish weekly on our website and in-print once a semester. Submissions should generally not be longer than 10,000 words.

Contact ebaron1@swarthmore.edu or swatreview@ swarthmore.edu for more information.

Masthead EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Eva Baron FEATURES Anatole Shukla PERSONAL ESSAYS Hope Darris ARTS Atziri Marquez Angie Kwon FICTION & POETRY Reuben Gelley Newman BOOKS Elisabeth Miller MUSIC Sage Rhys MOVIES & TV Anoushka Subbaiah CONTRIBUTING EDITORS Alexander Del Greco Annie Wixted SOCIAL MEDIA MANAGER Chase Smith LAYOUT EDITOR Yashvi Patel 2

2020-21 IN REVIEW | SWARTHMORE REVIEW

Letter from Editors

the

Dear Reader, If you’re reading this, odds are it’s on a screen. As you’ve no doubt realized, The Review has transitioned online, with all the complications that entails: biweekly Zoom editorial meetings, formatting pieces for our website, the weird reality of not meeting our authors or readers faceto-face. We miss that in-person contact, the feel of paper in our hands, opening up to an article at random when we’re lounging in Sci or procrastinating in Kohlberg. So we’ve done the next best thing: compiled a PDF of the most thrilling work we’ve seen during this crazy year, The Review in Review, trying to mimic the feel of our print issues and celebrate the creative efforts of Swatties throughout the pandemic.

Prior to the fall of 2020, The Review had been a quarterly publication—meaning we published in-print only twice a semester. We had no website and certainly no newsletter. Despite the uncertainty that has defined the past year, we nevertheless inherited the magazine with the duty of fostering a space that not only reveals but encourages reflection, artistry, and creative expression. In order to carry out our mission, we decided that a change in the frequency of publication was necessary to keep up the spirits of writers and artists. It is impossible to say what the state of The Review would have been without this change, but the fact that there is content to fill this volume constitutes an achievement we want to celebrate. After the release of a typical in-print issue, we would host a party for writers and friends to come gawk at the magazine in their hands.

We hope that everyone who is featured in this special issue will feel pride in seeing their work painstakingly transformed into the magazine you are now reading.

For the upcoming semester, we are looking forward to returning to in-print; more importantly, however, we are looking forward to being in-person again. With countless changes and tribulations affecting those around the world, what has remained constant is human resilience despite overwhelming loss, turbulence, and upheaval. We don’t need to tell you about all of the horrible circumstances that have befallen so many people in the past year, though we do hope that The Review has provided some modicum of comfort, that it helped our writers and readers feel creative and connected in a time of isolation and uncertainty. As editors of The Review, we are thankful for being able to continue to publish during such a difficult year. Thank you for your continued support and readership.

With gratitude and appreciation, The Review 2020-21 Editorial Board

In

review

2020-21

F e at u r e s The Sexual Politics Being Poor

of

By Elisabeth Miller p. 6

D e c l aw i n g

t h e fa m e

monster

By Anatole Shukla p. 11

Personal Essays

Books

9/11, My Birthday, and America’s Evolving National Memory

To the Third: The Genderless Body in Anne Garréta’s Sphinx

Fiction & Poetry

Oryx and Crake: A Manual on How to End the World and Not Save It

By Alexander Del Greco p. 20

The Harpist

By Alex Carpenter p. 24

open letter to the residents of kirkland, wa

By Raya Tuffaha p. 30

Thursday Night Zoom Call

By Tiffany Wong-Jones p. 33

Arts Anna Fruman p. 23, 42, 57, cover Nara Enkthaivan p. 29, 56 Steven Castro p. 19, 41

By Eva Baron p. 36

By Angie Kwon p. 39

Music Symphony of the Night: A Classic Inpisred by the Classics

By Peter Wu p. 43

Movies & TV Gods, Giants, and Automata: An Interview with Charles and Vlas Parlapanides

By Anoushka Subbaiah p. 46

Zoey’s Musical Catharsis

By Mariam Muhammad p. 53

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3

Piece of the Y ear 4

The Review’s Editorial Board collectively voted for our “Piece of the Year,” one that was published on our website during the 2020-21 year.

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FEATURE

The Sexual Politics of B eing P oor

by Elisabeth Miller CW: Mentions of sexual violence.

Originally published on Feb. 11, 2021.

O

ne thing that is clear at Swarthmore is how much money the people around you have. Of course, money can be seen through more than just expensive vacations and clothes. Money shows up in the way people carry themselves, how they talk, and, in particular, how they talk about others. It shows in how they treat others and how they expect to be treated. I had been aware of class growing up, but coming to Swarthmore opened my eyes to a very different world, a world complicated and defined by wealth. This became clearer when I was sexually assaulted my freshmen year. My rapist was a student who belonged at Swarthmore, who fit the bill of a wealthy, well-connected person who added more to this institution than I could ever hope to add. When it became clear that I would not be leaving the room untouched, I fixed my eyes over

his shoulder onto the standard dorm-issued dresser that matched my own. This was where our similarities ended. Later, I thought about how easy it would be to disappear from Swarthmore, as though I had never stepped foot in this place to begin with. Because in the world of elite academia I had stumbled into, I was nothing.

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y world was very small before Swarthmore. It began and ended in a divot in an Illinois cornfield that someone decided was the best place to build a town. I should say that it’s not a bad place, although I will probably still be sorting through complicated feelings about what it means to call someplace home for a very long time. I grew up not knowing that I was

poor or working class or anything much different from my friends. A quick look at Wikipedia will tell you that, according to the 2000 census, the median family income in my hometown of Paxton, IL was about $44,256. Men had a median income of $31,140 versus $23,555 for women. Only 13.4% of residents have a bachelor’s degree, roughly a third of the national average, and 4.4% have a graduate degree. I know that these numbers are from 20 years ago, but I don’t think much has changed. If anything, things have gotten worse, like they have for most rural Midwestern towns and the forgotten people who live in them.

While the signs that greet you when you enter the city boast populations of anywhere from 4500 to 4800, the Wikipedia page estimates that in 2019 the population had shrunk to 4,125. Every year the newspaper reports lower and lower SWARTHMORE REVIEW | ISSUE 28

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Successful people are respected, and so I got through school by creating a persona of a successful person, of someone who was given respect by simply being in the room. enrollment numbers for the elementary schools. I come from a ghost town in the making.

Throughout my time in school, I was able to fall in with the popular kids who sat more comfortably in the middle class bracket, with their larger homes and nicer clothes and newer cars. Even though I knew that there were differences between my friends and me, I was able to work around them. I was well liked and respected in school despite not having an important last name; I compensated for what I lacked by showing off in the classroom and asserting myself as A Smart Girl. I became a people pleaser at any cost. I loved the praise I got from authority figures for following directions, and I knew that being agreeable was the way to make friends.

Successful people are respected, and so I got through school by creating a persona of a successful person, of someone who was given respect simply by being in the room, of someone who did not have my insecurities and faults. I imagined that I would be able to do the same thing in college: I would fall in with the right crowd of people; I would learn how to dress and speak all over again based on what my peers did. I would be respected despite where I came from. If the mere existence of this essay does not make this obvious, I will warn you that this is not what happened.

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hen I came to Swarthmore, I was suddenly surrounded by more wealth and privilege than I had ever seen before. Just as in high school, I learned what parts of myself to hide and which to project, what to say when and where and to whom.

When so-called friends made disparaging remarks about another “poor” 6

student’s background and in the next breath praised me for all the work I did to get in here as a first-generation student, I didn’t bat an eye. I knew enough not to mention how large my financial aid package was or to talk about the time my mother’s car got repossessed. I knew the word poor made people uncomfortable (unless, of course, they were using it to gossip about others; then it rolled off their tongues with easy malice). So I refused to identify with it. I lived to please.

It would be negligent of me to not acknowledge that I am an able-bodied white woman. The kind of camouflage I relied on is in itself a privilege. The world views my whiteness as an indicator of a suburban, upper-middle-class upbringing, and it is only when I talk about myself that this fantasy is unraveled. While I do not benefit from economic privilege, I know I have benefited and continue to benefit from my white privilege in a world that almost always prioritizes whiteness over economic background. According to the 2000 census, the average income for white people was $45,409, about $1,000 higher than the average in my hometown. The national average for Black and Hispanic people, however, was $30,439 and $33,447, respectively. The United States average income in 2000 was $42,148, which is lower than the median income in my hometown due to systemic discrimination against Black and Hispanic communities causing a lower national average. So even though I do not come from economic privilege when compared to white peers, the numbers show a clear disparity based on race. Financial privilege certainly matters in academia, but it’s not the only thing that does. Blending into the world of elite academia is made easier by whiteness, and while class makes it more difficult, I cannot deny that my experiences are

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far different from the experiences that low-income BIPOC students have at Swarthmore.

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he women I come from are strong.

That is undeniable. Their lives have built a foundation for mine, and mine has been a largely privileged life in comparison. My grandmother did not finish high school, never learned how to drive, and raised six children on her own; I go to one of the most prestigious liberal arts colleges in the country.

My mother escaped an emotionally abusive relationship with her first husband and worked two jobs to support herself; I interned at the Smithsonian.

When I think about my assault, I inevitably think about the sacrifices of the women before me. They were able to get me to a place they never dreamed of, but they couldn’t protect me from harm. My assault feels like a caveat to my achievements, a reminder that my intelligence and drive cannot be separated from my gender, from the socioeconomic roots of my family.

My mother seemed to breathe a sigh of relief when I told her I had been assaulted, when I finally shared the secret I had been hoarding for weeks. I will always remember how her face barely changed as she registered my words over a lagging FaceTime call. She was hurting for me, but she was not surprised.

On particularly hard days, I lay in bed and think about how unfair it is. I think about how my life was not supposed to be like this. Sometimes I think about how my perpetrator should apologize not to me, but to my mother and grandmother for getting in the way of their plans of a different life for me.

Other days, I am filled with a shame

Image of the author (left) the night she was raped. Courtesy of the author.

so all-consuming that I think about how I am the cause and culprit of my experience, that I am the one who let down the ones who built me. It comes in waves.

But I do know that survival is the best way to honor them.

F

***

or my final history course at Swarthmore, I wrote about rape revenge films from the 1970s and 80s. I spent months reading film theory and watching violent depictions of rape until my eyes burned. These films, connected by themes of violence and misogyny, also focus on a particular

kind of victim: nearly all of them are respectable middle-class women. Only one focuses on a woman from a less desirable background. The 1988 film The Accused follows Sarah, a poor woman from a small town, as she tries to get justice after being gang raped in a room full of witnesses. Her lawyer Kathryn, who later becomes her staunch ally, tells Sarah that she shouldn’t take the stand because she makes a bad witness; her poverty, trashy reputation, and drug-related record make her unreliable. Because of this, and because her rapists have the resources to hire good lawyers, the rapists get a plea deal of only six months in jail.

While in the end Sarah and Kathryn are able to get the witnesses to her

rape punished, this is only through a legal loophole, not through any easy means that real-life rape victims could rely on. In fact, the real case the film is based on did not have the same ending. Cheryl Araujo, the woman Sarah is based on, experienced victim blaming from members of her community and the media. Although she won her case, she was ostracized by her community and was forced to move. Working class and poor women are told their bodies are not sacred or private or their own.

They are worth nothing, and they must be to blame for what happened to them, especially because they do not have middle-class respectability to hide behind.

The film shows that society does not SWARTHMORE REVIEW | ISSUE 28

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I am not fond of forgiveness, or forgetting, even when one day the woman I become is unrecognizable to the [one] I was.

Forgetting or forgiving would be such a waste of the excellent education I have received on the college’s dime. believe poor women have inherent worth. It must be proven, and there is no room for slip-ups.

This is an aspect of my assault that I’ve struggled to explain for nearly three years because it doesn’t seem tangible.

My perpetrator didn’t know anything about me, let alone my financial aid status. But I knew from the mug in his room that he went to a prestigious boarding school. I knew because I trained myself to note things like that, to collect information in order to protect myself.

I do not believe my assault was intentional. I believe that my assault lives in the grey area of sex and consent, an area that women are told not to be bothered by and men are told doesn’t exist.

My assault was not physically forceful.

My perpetrator was persistent and coercive—he argued and pestered until I had no choice but to give in. I was a people pleaser and, I’m assuming, he had never known a world in which he didn’t get what he wanted. If this were a scene in a novel at a Swarthmore English class, we would wax poetic for a whole class period about how the class differences between the two characters obviously created unequal power dynamics.

I

***

n the fall semester after my assault, I went to a boy’s room after a party, and he spent twenty minutes discussing all of his achievements, that he was a legacy student from upstate New York and had gone to Good Schools.

When I told him I was a first-gen student from rural Illinois, he asked me if they’d taught me how to read there. I 8

hadn’t yet learned how not to be shocked by these kinds of comments, so I stuttered and stammered and laughed. I always settle for laughter. I don’t remember exactly what I said, something to the effect of “No, that’s why I’m an English major.” Later, in the mirror or in the long minutes before falling asleep, I replayed the conversation in my head, this time asking him why he thought that was an okay thing to ask. It’s not a complicated question.

I did not have sex that night, but that was because of the lack of a condom. The lack of respect became a joke, a story to pull out at parties to show how unbothered and cool I was.

The first time I did have sex after my assault, I went home with a random boy from a party. We made small talk, during which I said that I was a first-gen student. He said that was really cool and impressive. I resisted the urge to roll my eyes. Comments like that have always made me feel like I’m under a microscope, as though now I have to show that I really am impressive in order to prove that I deserve to be at Swarthmore.

After we had sex, during which I spent the majority of my time staring at the ceiling and wondering when it would end, he made a joke about paying me. I laughed and shrugged it off because that was what I was supposed to do. That was what I was trained to do by virtue of moving through the world with very little. I went back to my room and cried shameful tears. Shameful, hot, angry tears for the world I chose to enter that would never truly accept me. A world that never failed to remind me of my place and my worth. I took multiple

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showers and stayed in bed for the whole day afterwards. But once I had gotten the majority of the self-loathing out of my system, I added the experience to my repertoire of funny stories about men at Swarthmore. I pushed it away, made jokes about it, and tried to convince myself that I did deserve to be treated better than that.

T

***

his is an ongoing story with no resolution. Perhaps it is a shout into the void about how tired I am. During my years at Swarthmore, I have become louder and angrier. When someone makes a classist post in the Facebook group, I text my friends my thoughts in paragraphs. One day I might even have the confidence to air my thoughts publicly. I roll my eyes at the way students here boast about reading theory while disparaging the lived experiences of poor students on campus, or refuse to acknowledge the economic privilege so many of them come from. I use the word poor to make people uncomfortable.

I think about my worth a lot. Maybe violence and humiliation is the price of my first-rate education, the one I thought was being paid for through generous financial aid. Maybe that is too cynical. I am trying to become less cynical about this place, to focus on the love and kindness I have found here. But I am not fond of forgiveness, or forgetting, even when one day the woman I become is unrecognizable to the scared nineteen year old I was. Forgetting or forgiving would be such a waste of the excellent education I have received on the college’s dime. u Resources Swarthmore Title IX Office 610 690 3720 titleix@swarthmore.edu RAINN (Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network) 1 800 656 4673

FEATURE

eclawing the the F F ame M M onster DDeclawing ame onster eclawing the ame onster P C W N op

ulture as ever Incorruptible

by Anatole Shukla

This article has been shortened for concision. The article in-full can be found on our website.

Originally published on Apr. 1, 2021.

What happens after pop culture dies?

T

here is a belief in Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy that through God, the bodies of certain saints and beati can avoid typical decomposition. Corpses that remain pristine long after death, even without embalming, are incorruptible.

Alyosha Fyodorovich Karamazov, one of the titular brothers in Dostoevsky’s immortal The Brothers Karamazov, is a kind, faithful novice at the local

monastery during the novel’s opening.

He faces a test in the first half of the novel, wherein his mentor, the monastery’s beloved Father Zosima, dies. All of the people who had once so highly esteemed Father Zosima are both shocked and disappointed when, just a couple of hours after his death, his body starts rotting and emitting a putrid smell. It’s highly uncommon for saints’ bodies to actually be incorruptible, but Father Zosima’s body doesn’t even decompose normally—it rots quickly and without abandon, leaving his followers

to question their faith for themselves.

In 2013, a Tumblr blog called “Pop Culture Died in 2009” emerged, documenting the unique nature of early 2000s pop culture and how celebrity gossip just didn’t exist anymore. Pre2009 pop culture was before social media made it possible for anyone to become an influencer overnight through a single algorithmically blessed post; before honest conversations about mental health, misogyny, and other forms of structural discrimination became mainstream; and, perhaps most importantly, SWARTHMORE REVIEW | ISSUE 28

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Image courtesy of @ParisHilton on Twitter.

before the glittering world of pop culture became, to garden-variety celebrity gossip consumers’ (GVCGCs’) horror, rotten like Father Zosima’s corpse.

Back then, celebrity gossip revolved around a tight pool of young starlets, some of whom, like Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan, had already made immense contributions to the entertainment industry as child stars. Some of them, like Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie, were just famous for being famous. Paparazzi photos like the famous shot of Paris, Lindsay, and Britney squeezing in the front seat of a two-seater sold for hundreds of thousands of dollars.

According to the Tumblr blog’s title, pop culture died before I was ten-yearsold. Even then, however, I remember how present these young women were in media and how their escapades transcended from gossip into news. I re10

member watching the morning news before school and learning that Lindsay Lohan was arrested the previous night for whatever fucking reason. Perez Hilton, perhaps one of the vilest fixtures of the gossip industry at the time (not the least of which is because of his repeated outing of gay celebrities and posting an explicit photo of a then-underage Miley Cyrus) reportedly hit 7 million pageviews a day on his self-titled gossip blog. His awful treatment of celebrities was normalized to the extent that Hilton guest starred on an episode of Victorious, a sitcom for children, in 2010.

The first decade of the 2000s was before the contemporary phenomenon of people getting to truly choose which media they consume and, for that reason, I hesitate to blame GVCGCs for all of the cruelty that the entertainment industry inflicted on young female celebrities during that time. I do wonder, howev-

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er, how much of the blame should go to GVCGCs and how much rightfully lies with the industry itself.

A misconception about early 2000s celebrity culture is that it marked a departure from celebrities being classy to celebrities out-trashing themselves at every opportunity. Celebrities (like all people) have always been trashy, but it wasn’t until the early 2000s they were exposed by paparazzi thirsty for drama.

TMZ is now a mainstay of the media ecosystem, but it was only launched in 2005, accumulating a whopping 10 million unique visitors per month by 2008.

In the 2021 New York Times documentary Framing Britney Spears, Brittain Stone, the photo director of Us Weekly from 2001 to 2011, said that the publication spent an average $140,000 a week just on celebrity photos, adding up to 7 or 8 million per year.

Various Hollywood industries—rang-

ing from music, to magazines, to movies—exploited these vulnerable young women by putting their entire lives on display and turning them into shallow punchlines. Primetime interviews like Diane Sawyer’s cruel interrogation of Britney—wherein Sawyer verbally harassed Britney to the point of tears about her breakup with Justin Timberlake and told Britney that the current Maryland governor’s wife wanted to shoot her— conditioned the American public into believing that these young women’s pain didn’t matter. All that mattered was that there was always something good and juicy to watch on TV. Ironically, it was perhaps the subhuman treatment of these young female stars that made them seem larger-than-life despite the obstacles that corporate media and GVCGCs threw in their faces every day.

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[Child] Stars Unraveling

n 2003, 36-year-old Rick Salomon released a 2001 sex tape featuring him and his then-nineteen-year-old then-girlfriend, Paris Hilton. This revenge porn came just weeks before the premiere of Fox’s The Simple Life, which would catapult Paris into immense stardom. Despite Paris’s public statement that the release of the tape both “embarrassed and humiliated” her, the media speculated that the uproar over the tape would attract viewers to the show if not outright saying that the release of the tape was a calculated publicity stunt.

2003 was long, long before mainstream media would even consider promoting honest narratives about misogyny, rape culture, and inequal power dynamics in Hollywood. Still, instead of treating a revenge porn victim with even an iota of sympathy, mainstream media relentlessly mocked her and treated her as if she was “asking for it.” A 2003 New York Times article by John Leland quotes a New Yorker article by E.J. Kahn in response to the sex tape’s release, stating that Paris “‘makes no attempt to curb the imaginative press,’” “even compared with her attention-seeking peers.”

By 2003, Paris was already a fixture of late 90s NYC nightlife. But after

Ironically, it was perhaps the subhuman treatment of these young female stars that made them seem larger-than-life despite the obstacles that corporate media and GVCGCs threw in their faces every day. both attention-grabbing events collided, she instantly became the prototype of the early 2000s vacuous-headed “It Girl.” The Simple Life, which aired from 2003-2007, starred Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie, daughter of Lionel Richie and fellow birthright socialite, as they left LA and attempted to live like normal people without access to their cell phones or credit cards. The producers of the show allegedly told Paris to play “the ditzy airhead,” and she embodied the dumb blonde stereotype so well on the show that she probably won’t ever manage to shake that perception.

Though “The Simple Life” itself soon faded from America’s collective pop culture psyche, it was immensely popular, its first season raking in 13 million viewers each week. This is because for the first time, it took two of America’s fixations—celebrities and reality TV—and wrapped them both up in a delectable, trashy little morsel every week. While reality TV in the past had featured regular people competing for a prize, The Simple Life was one of the first unscripted celebrity TV shows. The Simple Life was a gamble for Fox, both because it was a new format and because reality TV shows were not thought at the time to earn as much money from later DVD sales or re-syndication.

Other than technical details like its format, what really set The Simple Life apart was the arguably thin veneer of reality surrounding the series. Back then, celebrities had little control of the public narratives surrounding them because they didn’t have their own platforms to communicate with the public.

Even with their hotel fortune, the Hilton family could not change the public narrative surrounding Salomon’s release of

revenge porn of Paris. The series began the 2000s craze of GVCGCs getting to see novel glimpses of reality in celebrities’ lives instead of focusing solely on their carefully curated brands or media narratives over which the celebrities in question had no control.

The Simple Life ended in 2007 after a wildly popular five-year run, and though Paris’s immense fame (or, if we’re being honest, infamy) receded in the following years, she continued to capitalize off of her perfume line and business empire.

The media obsession over her, however, set the stage for the publicity of Britney’s breakdown in early 2007. Harvey Levin, the founder of TMZ, contextualized the phenomenon of Britney Spears in the most early-2000s way possible, stating, “We serialize Britney Spears. She’s our President Bush.”

Throughout Framing Britney Spears, people who had professional relationships with Britney pre-2007 insist that she was always the boss despite the common perception that she was a puppet being pulled around on strings. Having starred in The All-New Mickey Mouse Club before she achieved global stardom with “…Baby One More Time” in 1998, Britney emerged onto the scene as a child star with an all-American image and rapidly transformed into that girl your parents warned you about.

Framing Britney Spears argues that her transformation from girl next door to teen sex symbol was Britney making an informed choice to shed her child star image rather than the entertainment industry demanding sex appeal from every young woman who crosses its path.

But, as Tavi Gevinson wrote in The Cut, Britney was never in control. It strikes me as fallacious if not malicious SWARTHMORE REVIEW | ISSUE 28

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that anyone could insist that Britney was in control. How can anyone ever be in control when the only form of capital they can leverage is their ability to entertain? Rolling Stone’s April 1999 cover story “Britney Spears, Teen Queen” featured the adult Steven Daly following an underage Britney around her bedroom while describing her chest as “ample” and the way her shorts clung to her hips.

We’re supposed to see Rolling Stone put an underage girl clutching a Teletubby plush on their cover in a bra and hot pants and believe that the girl was in charge?

Britney survived her very public breakdown from 2007-2008, wherein she checked into rehab for substance abuse problems, lost custody of her children, shaved her head, and damaged paparazzo Daniel Ramos’s car with an umbrella after he harassed her at a gas station. Everything about her breakdown was monetized for others’ profit, including the umbrella which went up for auction (albeit much later, in 2017) and her actual shaved hair for $1 million. Paparazzi would fight each other to get pictures of Britney because the free market placed so much value on them, and the capitalist machine surrounding Britney’s every action swelled to the extent that Hollywood strategists referred to it as “the Britney economy.”

The people with active stakes in Britney’s downfall were not only paparazzi, people with stakes in gossip rags, and network executives. Journalists, too,

We’re supposed to see Rolling Stone put an underage girl clutching a Teletubby plush on their cover in a bra and hot pants and believe that the girl was in charge?

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Image courtesy of David LaChappelle for Rolling Stone. joined in the pile-on, as in this Associated Press article published on Today’s website: “On Friday night, Spears, the mother of two young sons, shaved her head bald. But that didn’t send her into hiding, as she was later seen wearing a cheap blond wig.”

The anonymous writer behind “Britney Spears checks herself into rehab” masterfully employs their journalistic skills to punch down at the princess of pop with every word. They go so far as to imply that Britney should have gone into hiding, describing her blond wig as “cheap,” a seemingly frivolous detail that, in itself, accomplishes the main goal of the article—to portray Britney as, like Vanessa Grigoriadis so acutely

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described in her 2008 Rolling Stone cover story “The Tragedy of Britney Spears,” “an inbred swamp thing who chainsmokes, doesn’t do her nails, tells reporters to ‘eat it, snort it, lick it, fuck it’ and screams at people who want pictures for their little sisters.”

It almost seemed miraculous when Britney made a comeback so quickly after her breakdown, releasing two platinum studio albums—Blackout and Circus—in 2007 and 2008, respectively.

Blackout is regarded by many as the best album of Britney’s career to date, the opening song and single “Gimme More” opening with the first iteration of the now-immortal “It’s Britney, bitch.” Despite a rocky comeback performance at

the 2007 VMAs, Britney went on to win three VMAs the following year, followed by cameos on Glee and How I Met Your Mother, a stint on The X Factor, and a four-year Vegas residency that grossed over $130 million.

After Britney’s comeback, it didn’t take long for the tabloid machine to find another similar target, a young and talented but most importantly vulnerable female recording artist who publicly struggled with substance abuse and bulimia—Amy Winehouse. Amy released “Rehab,” the song that made her an international star, in 2006 at the age of 22.

Though honest discussions about rehab and substance abuse are more common in mainstream media now, “Rehab” changed the game in that Amy was kind of the first artist to have a hit song about needing to go to rehab. She turned a clear cry for help into a bop that made people want to get up and dance. Amy died of alcohol poisoning in 2011 at the age of 27, having gone to rehab several times and accepted her Record of the Year Grammy for “Rehab” from rehab.

Amy wasn’t treated with any more sympathy or kindness by the British tabloids than Britney was by the American media. The cover photo on an issue of The Sun, a British gossip rag, showed an unaware Amy smoking out of a glass pipe with massive lettering that simply read, “Amy on crack.” In death, they treated her just as scornfully, with headlines like the BBC’s “Singer drank herself to death,” and the Washington Post describing her as a “drug-haunted British pop diva.”

It is undeniable that Amy’s struggles with substance abuse and addiction were a central tenet of her public image, one that she fostered through songs like “Rehab” and “Back to Black,” in which she sings, “You love blow and I love puff, and life is like a pipe.” The issue was that time after time, Amy fell, and she always seemed to land on her feet—except when she ultimately didn’t. As The New York Times noted in their obituary for Amy, though she always openly “flirt[ed] with self-destruction,” she kept treading water even as the waves began lapping around her neck. That bare

minimum of survival made her seem, despite every shred of evidence pointing towards the contrary, incorruptible.

Nobody realized that Amy was capable of dying.

As Asif Kapadia, director of the documentary Amy, said in an interview with NPR, “It became about [the machine surrounding Amy] and not about her, and she was one that was getting more and more lost.”

It is impossible to discuss media coverage of young female celebrities’ drug addictions in the early 2000s without addressing Lindsay Lohan, whose breakdown overlapped with Britney and Amy, and has continued throughout the last decade. It’s difficult now to imagine that Lindsay, whose name has become synonymous with drug arrests, crashing cars, and kidnapping children was once one of the most sought-after actresses in Hollywood.

Like Britney, Lindsay’s transition from picture-perfect Disney child star to adult performer was turbulent. Lindsay broke out as a veritable child star with her performance in The Parent Trap in 1998, after which she starred in the box office hits Freaky Friday (2003), Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen (2004), and Mean Girls (2004), which is retrospectively the height of her career.

In an Esquire interview in 2013, Megan Fox compared Lindsay to Marilyn Monroe. “[Marilyn] was sort of like Lindsay,” said Megan. “She was an actress who wasn’t reliable, who almost wasn’t insurable. She had all the potential in the world, and it was squandered.”

Despite the overall negativity of Megan’s assessment, it is ultimately favorable for Lindsay. Marilyn is often used as a symbol of class in the 21st century, while Lindsay has become a culturally irrelevant punchline for tabloids. Despite the polarity of their statures in pop culture, they share the illusion of incorruptibility from the media as Britney and Amy, and by so many influential women before and after them. Like Marilyn, Lindsay was one of the most desired Hollywood actresses and became a sex symbol as a young woman, whether she liked it or not. But the media attention

After Britney’s comeback, it didn’t take long for the tabloid machine to find another similar target, a young and talented but most importantly vulnerable female artist who publicly struggled with substance abuse and bulimia. ate her alive in every regard.

That’s not to say that none of Lindsay’s bad choices have been her own fault. Mental illness and growing up in a turbulent household are explanations for behavior that harms others, but never excuses. Defending Donald Trump in 2017, defending Harvey Weinstein in 2017, and attempting to kidnap children because of their perceived status as Syrian refugees are all reprehensible.

But instead of focusing on this behavior that had the potential to physically and emotionally harm people, the media only focused on the “bad behavior” (i.e., mental illness and personal struggles) that it perceived as marketable—her eating disorder and abuse of alcohol and other drugs. Media outlets “cared” about Lindsay when they could harness the public’s morbid curiosity about people’s personal low points to exploit her, not when she needed support after her then-fiancé publicly abused her.

It is ironically Rose McGowan, one of the silence breakers against Harvey Weinstein, who showed Lindsay the most grace in her entire career.

“Please go easy on Lindsay Lohan,” Rose tweeted. “Being a child actor turned sex symbol twists the brain in ways you can’t comprehend.”

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It’s a brutal statement, and in my opinion, one that almost blames the young victim of constant media attention rather than the adult abusers. Still, it’s one that every shred of evidence corroborates over and over again.

I

Whose Prerogative?

n a 2004 cover of Bobby Brown’s “My Prerogative,” in a breathy voice accompanied by tabla beats, pre-2007 Britney sang, “Everybody's talking all this stuff about me, why don't they just let me live? I don’t need permission, make my own decisions—that’s my prerogative.”

At the time of its release, critics gave the song negative reviews, Stephen Thomas Erlewine of allmusic.com even calling it a “useless remake.” Looking back on the cover, however, it feels like a chilling premonition of all of the adversity Britney would face in 2007 and her ongoing legal battle against her father Jamie Spears’s conservatorship of her estate.

There’s a whole market on Etsy just for objects that read “If Britney made it through 2007, then you can make it through today.” What this trite platitude ignores is that while Britney physically survived after 2007, it’s questionable whether Britney really made it. In 2017, she told Israeli newspaper Yediot Ahronoth that following her breakdown, she didn’t leave her house for two years.

Along with not leaving her house for two years, part of the reason that Britney made her comeback so soon after her public breakdown was because her father was granted a conservatorship of her estate and person. Jamie has complete control over Britney’s assets and medical decisions as well as who she’s allowed to communicate with and where she performs. She has not given an in-person interview since the conservatorship began in 2008. Fans have repeatedly questioned her social media presence and whether she actually has any control of it, with a podcast, Britney’s Gram, dedicated just to analyzing her Instagram. Under the rule of law, it is no longer her prerogative to make her own decisions.

No member of the public actually 14

knows Britney’s exact mental health diagnosis (or even if she has a diagnosis), as Jamie has kept her medical records sealed despite Britney requesting in 2020 to unseal them. Some fans claim that Jamie forces Britney to perform through heavily medicating her, though this specific claim is unsubstantiated.

Britney has said that she will not perform again if Jamie continues to control her career. Vivian Lee Thoreen, Jamie’s attorney, stated in Framing Britney Spears that she has not ever seen a conservatee successfully appeal to end a conservatorship.

Britney, one of the most iconic singers of all time, has no voice of her own right now. She’s resorted to court documents to communicate with the public, expressing that she appreciates the “informed support” of her fans and “doesn’t want this battle hidden away like a family secret.” In taking away the voices of conservatees, conservators effectively incarcerate them in invisible prisons.

Not all conservatorships are abusive, but the power imbalance between conservators and conservatees is inherently conducive to abuse. It is such an effective means of legally stripping rights away from adults and holding them hostage to their careers that after witnessing Britney’s rapid comeback with Blackout in 2007, Michael Lohan considered petitioning to be Lindsay’s conservator.

Based on public record about Lindsay’s relationship with her father and his rocky legal history, it’s abundantly clear that he is unfit to oversee his own estate and person, let alone anyone else’s. He wanted to control Lindsay.

Thoreen has insisted that the end of the conservatorship depends on Britney, and that she’s free to file a petition to end it whenever she sees fit, stating on Good Morning America that “people have it so wrong.” Thoreen’s assessment of Britney’s relationship with her father directly contradicts what Britney’s own lawyer, Samuel D. Ingham III, has said about her fear of her father and the fact that she was “strongly opposed” to having Jamie reinstated as her conservator in 2019 after he briefly stepped down due to health reasons. Following the in-

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ception of the conservatorship, Britney has released a handful of albums, raised two children, and starred in one of the most successful Las Vegas residencies of all time. Why would such a capable woman want her father to restrict her most basic freedoms?

It is easy for Jamie’s team to garner sympathy for their implementation of the carceral system because his team mostly controls the public narrative about the conservatorship. They cast doubt on any statement from Britney’s allies, insisting that the sentiments aren’t true because they didn’t come directly from Britney.

Denying her a voice isn’t just convenient—it’s essential to keep the Britney economy running. Court documents show that the aptly-named Andrew Wallet, a lawyer appointed to help Jamie Spears manage Britney’s massive estate, even referred to the conservatorship as a “hybrid business model.” There is no more hiding that the carceral conservatorship is a tool to make money.

Framing Britney Spears brought Britney’s conservatorship into the spotlight following years of #FreeBritney activists’ demonstrations to free Britney and bring light to conservatorship abuse.

In the 2000s, even at the peak of Britney’s suffering and exploitation, she still seemed incorruptible because the public had no way of knowing her side of the story. Over a decade later, everyone is still talking about Britney, but pop culture and media outlets have shifted from holding her accountable to questioning the machine that called her a monster and then turned her into one. Because of this new angle of focus, she is already the most talked-about pop star of 2021.

Paris Hilton’s 2020 documentary, This Is Paris, also explores the dark underside of stardom that the public has taken for granted for so many years. A common criticism of Paris is that she failed to harness her fame past 2007 because she never managed to understand what made audiences like her—the veneer of authenticity painted onto The Simple Life and the actual authenticity in a massive 2007 leak of Paris’s personal documents, including but not limited to celebrity party photos, various records of Paris being extremely

Image courtesy of Know Your Meme.

racist and antisemitic, and a few pictures of Paris peeing.

Paris’s 2020 tell-all documentary conflicts significantly with her perception of fame and maintaining public attention from 2004, when she wrote (okay, well, when her ghostwriter wrote) in Confessions of an Heiress that the key to maintaining fame is just a dash of mystery.

The book completely misunderstands one of the foundational truths of fame, one that has stayed put since 2004 despite the mammoth shift in how GVCGCs consume media and interact with celebrities—that vulnerability, whether it is forthright or outright forced, will always sell. This Is Paris is Paris’s yearslate attempt to take back control of her narrative through exposing her vulnerable side for the first time and critically assess her personal brand as a coping mechanism for past trauma. Once and for all, she wants to shrug off the “ditzy blonde” character she’s been playing for so long and rebrand herself as “someone who is brilliant.”

While I do believe that the documentary is a stab at regaining relevancy on

Paris’s behalf and cleansing her public image, I also believe that it is mostly authentic. Yet, if indeed the main purpose of the film was to regain relevance by capitalizing on vulnerability, it misunderstands the type of vulnerability that the public is drawn to. In the film, Paris shows us a closet stacked with designer outfits and complains about having to wear a different outfit every couple of hours. She shows the cameras stacks of dozens of laptops, explaining that every time she gets a new boyfriend, she also gets a new laptop because she fears for her privacy. Since its inception in 2002, Paris has been a regular feature on Us Magazine’s “Stars—They’re Just Like Us!” feature. Part of what has endeared the Kardashian clan to GVCGCs is that, even though they’re filthy rich, they still deal with regular problems like cleaning up after their dogs and family drama. In her documentary, Paris further alienates herself from viewers because no regular human could possibly relate to her “problems.” In trying to demonstrate how she’s just like us, she shows that she is nothing like us. She blames media

outlets for their misogyny towards her and her generation of starlets, which is fair. But in the process, she also exonerates herself from profiting off her blonde airhead persona and cleanses her past of immense anti-Black racism, antisemitism, and other atrocious behavior.

Paris’s authentic self is as distant from a regular person’s experience of the world as her early 2000s party girl persona was. Nevertheless, it is clearer now than ever that media scrutiny her for things outside of her control, like the release of her sex tape, took a toll on her self-worth and worldview. She has realized that the way to keep the public interested in her isn’t to maintain a “perfect life” with just a little bit of mystique but to reconcile herself with the fact that she is corruptible.

Declawing the Fame Monster

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strengthening its anti-paparazzi laws in 2014. And, as mentioned before, conversations about mental health, sexism, and racism have increasingly appeared in mainstream media since 2007. In YouTube comments sections of nearly every Britney Spears performance or music video, there are always comments from nostalgic millennials warning the younger generation that they will never know an artist as talked about Britney—and though the manufactured generation wars are largely just a way for older people to complain about younger people, they’re right. Pop culture as the United States knew it in 2007 is long dead, in no small part due to the internet. Though the fame monster itself is still alive, it has lost the razor-sharp claws that made it so dangerous in the early 2000s, both for celebrities themselves and GVCGCs whom tabloids spoon-fed a steady diet of unhealthy celebrity worship.

Whether mainstream media began pushing honest conversations about drug use first or whether celebrities began openly speaking about their struggles with addiction first is a chickenor-egg situation. But in 2021 it’s much more common for celebrities to speak about their struggles without facing public ridicule or embarrassing tabloid headlines in the vein of “Amy on crack.”

When Demi Lovato, a former Disney star like Britney and Lindsay, revealed in Feb. 2021 that a 2018 opioid overdose gave her three strokes and a heart attack, the public responded to her honesty with sympathy. The same was true for comedian John Mulaney, who was met with an outpour of public support and sympathy when he entered a rehab facility for alcohol and cocaine in December 2020.

An article from KQED, an NPR affiliate station based in San Francisco, argues that celebrities who are open tend to receive more support and grace following public breakdowns and struggles. This theory holds true for every celebrity mentioned in this feature. Celebrities who are open and vulnerable about their struggles control the narrative by intentionally destroying any veneer of incorruptibility surrounding 16

Image courtesy of Makati Tondo on Carousell. their fame, rather than letting it shatter without them having any say in the matter. It is too early to tell how this new level of agency will shape future decades of pop culture and media consumption, but I almost fear that this rule is a new incarnation of corporate media demanding pain and vulnerability in exchange for basic respect. All celebrities are incorruptible until they have proven themselves capable of rotting, but they shouldn’t have to metaphorically rot before being allowed public sympathy.

No doubt, attempting to beatify pop culture icons in Hollywood was, and is, a fool’s errand. But like Father Zosima, pop culture as we once knew it is dead and the question that remains is what to make of its once-mighty, now rotting corpse. After Father Zosima’s corpse started immediately rotting, Alyosha Karamazov chose not to give up on his strong religious and altruistic beliefs. In the face of all of the harm that early 2000s pop culture has inflicted, mainstream media and GVCGCs seem to have chosen the same path. Unfortunately, there is no way to completely undo the damage of past pop culture phenomena. There is no way to go back

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in time and make paparazzi stop obsessively stalking Britney, force tabloids to stop making a public spectacle over Amy’s drug use and prevent her death, or force media outlets to reckon with their rampant racism and misogyny in a way that can truly right the wrongs of the past.

Not everyone watches reality TV, keeps up with celebrities through social media, or actively reads tabloid “journalism.” Still, the realm of celebrity culture is inescapable. Celebrity culture is so prominent that, for better or for worse, it affects everyone to some extent. In 2024, fifteen years after pop culture’s purported death, we will be able to more thoroughly examine the results of pushing more humane conversations about fame and rampant discrimination. The questions of where to allocate blame for this mistreatment and how to reckon with ourselves as we reckon with the media lack a definitive answer. Only through asking them, however, can we begin to understand how massive shifts in media consumption since 2000 have altered our perceptions of what we really owe to each other. #FreeBritney. u

Still Life Steven Castro 2020 Graphite “Situated somewhere between the evening sun and a full moon, the warm embrace of the mahogany has never felt so blue.”

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P

e r s o n a l

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ss a y s P er s o n a l E s s ay

9/11, My Birthday, and America’s Evolving National Memory

by Alexander Del Greco

Originally published on Dec. 8, 2020.

P

erhaps no combination of numbers, no date, is more imbued with emotion and meaning in American culture than nine-eleven. To almost every American, that utterance immediately conjures a specific set of words, images, and feelings. Twenty years later, it is still at the forefront of many of our memories.

When I hear “nine-eleven,” however, I often think about being born. I was born the day before the towers came down.

September 10, 2001. To some of my peers, this is a helpful mnemonic device for remembering my birthday, although most of them probably don’t think about it at all. But adults are always intrigued by this. Throughout my life, aunts, uncles, older cousins, parent’s friends, and friend’s parents have remarked and 18

questioned me about it. To this day, I’ve never really known what to say.

Maybe the adults in my life are so intrigued because I am the living representation of the time that has elapsed since 9/11. My birthday is the first reminder of its anniversary. It feels so fresh in their minds, yet suddenly I’m eight. I’m ten years old and I stand five feet tall. I’m a teenager. I remember my freshman year of high school, on September 11th, an administrator I didn’t know made a note of it at an assembly. “Some of our freshmen were born around or after 9/11,” I remember her saying. “Alexander Del Greco the day before. I don’t think you realize how special that is.”

It didn’t feel that special—at least for me. But for her, I was part of that first

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cohort of post-9/11 babies, the first she’d encountered in years of working with high schoolers. And we kept advancing on. We graduated high school. Last year, we became adults (legally speaking, at least). Some of us went off to college.

Practically every American over the age of 25 remembers where they were on that day. Millennials were in school, their routine Tuesday mornings suddenly hijacked by tragedy. Generation X and the Baby Boomers were their teachers and parents. Maybe they heard it on the radio driving to work, or maybe they watched it on TV. I was at the Ronald Reagan Medical Center in Los Angeles, although I certainly don’t remember it.

I think I can say the same for virtually every current Swattie. The last couple graduating classes’ collective memory of

Image courtesy of NY Daily News.

the event must be hazy at best. These are real adults now (to me at least), out in the world. Soon we will be, too.

Part of adults’ reaction to my birthday is discomfort. Discomfort toward their own aging, yes, but an equal discomfort in response to this generation’s creeping march forward, one that signals an increasing detachment from their cultural and political paradigms. 9/11 was formational: it was the single most defining

event of 21st-century American politics. The adult memory of 9/11 is one of sorrow but also of an emerging unity. It was about American flags flying in every yard and storefront. Republicans and Democrats mourning together. George W. Bush throwing a strike in the World Series. A nation that would “Never Forget.”

Of course, that unity was a lie. Middle Eastern and Muslim Americans

didn’t feel it when hate crimes skyrocketed. Still, there was a palpable feeling, a renewal of patriotism and togetherness. The mainstream spats over police were pushed aside as the nation came together to express its gratitude for first responders. Similarly, advocates of restraint in Iraq were brushed off amidst popular and bipartisan support.

Plenty of older Americans now see

Part of adults’ reaction to my birthday is discomfort...in response to this generation’s creeping march forward, one that signals an increasing detachment from their cultural and political paradigms.

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the failure that took place in Iraq (48% compared to 22% in 2003). Many of them may now harbor a greater degree of skepticism toward the police.

However, the cultural paradigms left behind by 9/11 continue to linger. The United States is a sometimes misguided but ultimately benevolent force on the international stage. We hear these comments on MSNBC and Fox News alike.

They’re reinforced in our movies and on TV. The police, however many bad apples they may have, are still a force for good.

The cultural paradigms left behind by 9/11 continue to linger... as younger people, however, our lack of memory surrounding 9/11 helps us break free from these assumptions.

As younger people, however, our lack of memory surrounding 9/11 helps us break free from these assumptions.

Sure, they’re present in the early education we receive, the media we consume. Many of our parents also passed down these beliefs. But to a surprising degree, our generation is largely de-conditioned.

Some of us have been unlucky enough to experience the police brutality or the worst excesses of post-9/11 imperialism firsthand. Police targeting Black Americans (among other communities of color) or American armed forces disregarding human rights abroad are not exactly new phenomena. Plenty of our predecessors have been fighting these fights for decades, even centuries, before we were born. For those individuals affected firsthand by these problems, 20

they have plenty of salient experiences to base a political doctrine around. For those of us lucky enough not to experience those horrors, however, events like 9/11 may come to fill the gaps of our national consciousness.

Some critics have likened contemporary social movements to the swell of domestic civil rights and anti-war protests of the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Others may think it’s our generation’s hubris that deludes us into believing that we, as a generation and a country, are amidst an equally formative moment for American politics. But I’m not sure that it’s a coincidence that those movements came one generation removed from the conclusion of WWII. 9/11 was but one of many of these nation-forming moments—D-Day, the JFK assassination, etc.—whose effects reverberated for decades afterwards in our politics and in our minds. These moments enter the national consciousness rapidly and fade slowly. They are reproduced ad nauseum in media and culture for years, decades, even centuries afterwards. Yet with each passing generation, they fade. The visceral impact of watching the planes hit the towers in real time becomes a memory of learning about 9/11 through books and movies. And suddenly, for anyone under 25, it’s not so visceral.

This mismatch of our generation’s outlook on America and our parents’ is a source of tension, just as I’m sure our parents had with theirs. I think I share the experience with a lot of Swatties when I argue with my liberal parents about these points of inflection in our politics, my views on the police and military among them. The word that best describes their reaction is incredulity.

My dad, whose tirades against Kissinger, Nixon, and the Vietnam War were formative moments in my political childhood, still acts shocked when I say the U.S. is a malevolent force internationally. Sometimes I myself am incredulous when all their experiences and thoughts still, sometimes, add up to what I consider to be reactionary opinions. But when I think about 9/11, it makes an iota more sense.

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I suspect reality lies somewhere in the middle. Whatever it is, the socio-political legacy of 2020 will be something. It will affect our lives and it will affect our kids’ lives.

My parents think I don’t understand them, and they’re right. I can’t really imagine the roller coaster of emotions they must have faced in September 2001, from the joy (I think?) of my birth to the sorrow of the following day. And maybe they struggle to grapple with the fact that no matter how much I grow I will never be them, that I inherited some of their facial features and some of their tastes in food but a generation of experience and memory sets us apart.

If you asked me a year ago what the defining moment of our generation would be, I’m not sure I would have given you the right answer. Almost twenty years after 9/11, the Covid-19 pandemic laid bare the deep inequalities of our society and generated new ones. Between the lockdown in March, the protests of the summer, and whatever is to come following the election, it feels like we are living through history.

I don’t know what the residual effects of this moment will be. Maybe we’ll be wearing masks and sanitizing for years, or maybe the latter half of 2021 will signal a return to normalcy. Maybe the new markets and the new subcultures generated by the pandemic will disappear as quickly as they came, or maybe they will persist. I suspect reality lies somewhere in the middle. Whatever it is, the socio-political legacy of 2020 will be something. It will affect our lives and it will affect our kids’ lives. But just like 9/11, that memory too will fade. u

Gravity Anna Fruman 2020 Oil and cotton thread on canvas

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F

i c t i o n

& P

o e t r y Short Story

The Harpist

by Alex Carpenter

Originally published on Feb. 18, 2021.

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he townspeople speak of Ms. Eliades the way townspeople, once, somewhere, might have spoken about God. As with all gods, the parable of Ms. Eliades is greater than the sum of its facts and fictions. As the legend goes, she began to play the harp when she was two, and before her fifth birthday she was sent to France to learn from the world’s best harpists. She grew famous in Paris; now, she is the choice performer for the international elite, who pay for her hotels, her flights, for her meals at the most expensive restaurants, even for her clothes, in exchange for the privilege of her performances. In hushed voices, the townspeople fog the air with rumor: there has never before been a harpist like her and there never will be again, and she lives in our own town.

Every Sunday morning in the diner where Martha waits tables, Ms. Eliades orders a late breakfast and flips through paperback novels or glossy magazines.

For all of the reverence that the townspeople speak of her with, the harpist is not much different than Martha’s other

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customers. She has a low, polite voice and speaks directly, always knowing what she wants: “A medium coffee with extra milk, and the blueberry pancakes, please.”

Martha’s manager pulls her aside early one Sunday as she ties the white half-apron around her waist. The chef is cleaning the hot griddle with soapy water. Steam collects in the narrow corridor behind the counter and condenses on each cold surface it encounters.

“You know who that woman is, right?

The one you wait on every week?” he asks.

Martha nods.

“Don’t cut any corners with her. Extra syrup, sweep under her table. We don’t want a bad rap, okay?” He squeezes her shoulder. “You know she played a royal wedding last week?”

Martha does as she’s told. She wipes the flecked linoleum tabletop with a damp rag before Ms. Eliades arrives and refills her coffee mug unprompted, for which she is always thanked courteously. Martha is continually surprised at

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how the harpist appears utterly undistracted by the grease-spattered bustle of the diner, seeming almost to hover over the din and sweat and whiny children.

The dresses that she wears, too, are a little bit unusual: they are gauzy, reach her feet, and have swirling patterns and balloon sleeves, the fabric not quite settling according to the normal demands of gravity.

Still, Martha would not think twice about the harpist in the diner, except for the unusual gifts that she begins leaving alongside her receipt each Sunday. They are odd and lovely, and they both startle and touch Martha with their smallness. The first thing was a pressed, parchment-colored daisy, left on the coldest day in January. Martha didn’t know what to do except pocket the flower, feeling its miniscule weight in her apron. Later, she placed it in the windowsill of her bedroom.

As winter wears itself down, more things appear: thimble-sized vials of iridescent glitter, fabric swatches in paisley and damask, pieces of seaglass with

worn edges and radiant, oblong gemstones.

Martha keeps it all in a cardboard box under her bed, all the dust and tchotchke of a minor god. She feels a little odd about holding a shrine for a stranger. But the harpist gives freely and without asking anything in return. Besides, Martha can’t quite bring herself to throw any of it away. ***

[The unusual gifts] are odd and lovely, and they both startle and touch Martha with their smallness.

Sometimes the harpist asks Martha about school. Martha tells her that in history, they are learning about ancient civilizations, and how places like the Roman and Mayan empires, they believed in gods who were loyal to a certain locale. Ms. Eliades nods as if she already knows.

“People rely on myths like that,” she says, and takes a syrupy bite of her pancake. “Our entire worlds are created around our stories.”

“I don’t read very much,” says Martha.

“You don’t have to read. All we ever do is tell stories, really,” she says, and resumes her novel, which is Martha’s cue to descend once more to the bustle of the diner. She moves through her shift while thinking that the stories, too, rely on their readers and believers in order to remain as the living, breathing creations that they are.

That day, Ms. Eliades leaves a page torn from a book in an unfamiliar language. Martha looks up a few of the sentences online after work. It’s in French, a page from an old children’s story. Martha wonders if Ms. Eliades learned it while studying in Paris. Martha wonders if it’s true that she was brought overseas before she entered kindergarten, a prodigy looming in the body of a young

child. She wonders if anybody read stories to her, in French, in English, or maybe in another language altogether.

Or was she like the ubiquitous child of the classic fairytale, shut away in a tower while plucking away at a child-sized harp? Moving at such a young age must have been hard. Martha decides that, someday, when she works up the courage, she’ll ask her. *** One Sunday, when the town’s hydrangeas bear their first green leaves, Martha finds a single ticket left underneath her receipt, printed on heavy paper with gold embossed lettering: Geraldine Eliades performs Debussy’s Preludes for Harp, Tuesday evening. At its bottom is a single line of cursive: Thank you for all the pancakes. I would be honored. G. *** In the glow cast over the sweeping granite staircase, Martha watches the well-dressed concertgoers glide up the steps, easily, as if they’re in their own homes. She tugs at the bottom hem of her dress that now seems like a childish choice and wishes that she’d borrowed her mother’s high heels.

The tuxedoed attendant in the vast entryway takes her ticket and gestures her into the lobby of glittering glass chan-

Coming home is mechanical...She is filled with new worlds of ancient cities, of original gardens, of long-lost rivers upon which the harpist raises golden dawns... deliers and refined chatter. She thanks him. Her seat is in the first row. The program is printed on the same cardstock as her ticket. She skims the brief biography of the harpist. Besides the words is a glossy color portrait, where she is posed on a balcony before an unfamiliar city skyline, her harp poised against her shoulder.

The lights fall. The audience descends to a hush. When they emerge onto the stage, Martha thinks for a moment that Geraldine and her harp look like a pair of royal beings themselves, just like the ones that they must perform for all the time. Then, the harpist begins to play.

Somewhere far inside of herself, passive awe, Martha wonders how a person, a being bound by the ticking laws of the

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Image courtesy of Fine Art America. world, can produce from within herself something that transcends such rules.

The harpist must not be merely a person after all, must not be a person but something closer to lore, dust, and holiness.

Coming home is mechanical; Martha does not care to notice or remember the trip. She is filled with new worlds of ancient cities, of original gardens, of long-lost rivers upon which the harpist raises golden dawns, resurrected easily because time bears no force upon the harpist’s realm. On that night, crossing the threshold from wakefulness into sleep brings with it no difference. Martha is riveted, roaming the places that she herself has come to contain. *** “Your concert was beautiful,” says Martha, keeping her eyes downcast, 24

unable to meet the eyes of the woman, because she has not stopped thinking of the concert for five days, because the ticket with the single line of handwriting has not left her pocket since its happening, because now she is always dreaming of Ms. Eliades’s music.

“You came,” says the harpist.

“I really loved it.”

“I’m glad.”

“How did you—I mean did you always—well—how long have you been playing? You must have worked really hard,” Martha says, the marvel in her voice childish to her own ears, “to get that good.”

“I’ve been playing for as long as I can remember,” says Ms. Eliades. “I would not have a life without music.”

“You just made it look so easy. I couldn’t believe it.”

“It’s both the hardest thing and the

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easiest thing in the world. Martha, do you play an instrument?”

“No. I couldn’t—I’m not like you. I couldn’t be like that.”

Ms. Eliades nods thoughtfully.

“You made it feel like there was no one else in the room. Like we were just talking or something. Like you were telling me a story. Like you were making worlds and putting them into my hands.”

“For someone who isn’t a musician, you understand perfectly.” When Ms. Eliades smiles it is mostly with one side of her mouth. “The pancakes are delicious. Thank you.”

So Martha hurries onto the next table, abashed and stumbling, understanding suddenly her role in the harpist’s world is not like the place that the harpist has come to occupy in her own.

On that day, Ms. Eliades leaves her

an unmarked brass key with a large engraved ring on its end. It is her favorite gift so far, and rests heavy in Martha’s palm, its weight as cool and as lush as a faraway land. *** The townspeople have heard of Ms. Eliades’s performance downtown; she is written about in the arts section of the local newspaper. Martha reads the review while her boss opens the register, a thread of envy hidden in a gush of praise: rumor has it that our town’s best and brightest captured the delighted hall with her fabulous performance—if only she had saved a few seats for all of us!

The cook is heating up the griddle. It is warm out this morning. Outside the windows that face Main Street, hydrangeas placed between concrete squares of sidewalk have simultaneously come forth in uniform, pristine white blooms.

Water vapor condenses on the newspaper. The page falls limp in her hands.

“You’d think she might give a local performance,” her boss says. “It’d be a nice gesture. Giving back to the community and all.” Martha looks down as she ties her white apron neatly around her waist, says nothing about what has been given to her and her alone. The townspeople in the diner say iterations of the same. They’re disappointed in their god.

Martha balances plates and says nothing, rising above the steam and grease. *** Martha buys and listens to Debussy’s Preludes for Harp. She finds more pieces for harp and listens while she reads about the Renaissance for her World History class: rebirth, belief in the human and the secular over the preordained and the

Atlas of Ancient Rome. Image courtesy of Magazine Antiques. divine, newfound artistic and intellectual accomplishment. The melodies that hum from her speaker linger in her bedroom. History has become her favorite subject. In her textbook are abstract, fantastic worlds that Martha can bring to life within herself and adorn with the beautiful objects that she is given.

Her collection of sacred objects outgrows its cardboard box underneath the bed. Each week Martha is left more breathless by the gifts: a flight of white origami sparrows tied together on golden embroidery thread, an iridescent figurine of an angel, two silver spoons with leafy branches engraved in their oval heads. Martha replaces this box with a small, ornate wooden chest she found in the attic. She likes how it feels in her hands, weighty and storied, and she thinks Ms. Eliades would like that it is beautiful. Spring announces its predictable charm over the town, instructing the hydrangeas to set out their modest

pale buds. Martha hardly notices the bland and subtle exchanging of seasons. *** The front page news details the robbery: In the early hours of Thursday morning, the home of Geraldine Eliades, the town’s noted harpist, was broken into.

Several valuables were taken. Ms. Eliades, who will be touring in Europe over the summer...

“It’s a shame,” her boss says, as though commenting on the weather, while counting the cash in the register. The paper warps in Martha’s hands. It’s the first truly hot day of the year. The heat coming through the diner’s front windows is relentless. “I guess people got jealous. Thought she was above us all.”

He slams the register shut. “Those dresses are meant to draw attention. Anyway, I can assign another server to her, if you’re worried about gossip. You know

Spring announces its predictable charm over the town, instructing the hydrangeas to set out their modest pale buds. Martha hardly notices the bland and subtle exchanging of seasons.

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how it can be.”

“It’s alright,” says Martha. She drops the limp paper onto the counter. The front-page image is an ugly, blurry photograph of two shattered windows. “It won’t bother me.”

But the harpist does not come back.

The townspeople in the diner talk about the robbery for a week with garish intensity. As rumor would have it, Ms. Eliades is terrified to leave her home and wants to sell the house as soon as possible. Her role as pedestaled protectorate is wiped from the town’s collective consciousness. Martha knows better than to allow any of this to touch her. Debussy’s Preludes have become the backdrop of her life. She knows how the best of things can’t be stolen. *** One Sunday in June, Martha comes outside for her break to find the harpist gazing intently into the pages of her magazine. An enormous relief comes over her in seeing the familiar dress, the same half smile that graces the harpist’s face as she looks up at Martha.

“I’m sorry that—I’m sorry about what happened,” Martha says, joining her against the faded outer facade of the diner. “I’ve missed you.”

Ms. Eliades waves her hand and the whole affair is forgotten. “Nothing of importance was taken. I just wanted to tell you I’ll be leaving next weekend. I thought a last thank-you was in order.”

“Where are you going?”

“Madrid. Rome. Paris, if I’m in the mood, which I rather feel I will be,” she replies effortlessly. The exhaust fan from the kitchen wheezes old steam out into the eight-car parking lot. Below the fan is a row of hydrangeas. The dull, ugly white bulbs drip with dirty moisture. The scent that’s set into the town is cloying and unavoidable, and will stick through the long summer as Martha waits tables full-time.

“I wish I could come,” Martha says, without thinking. She looks down. Last night there was a summer rainstorm, and the pavement has turned dark and glossy.

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“So come.”

Martha opens her mouth and the sound catches in her throat.

“They’ll pay for your flight and rooms if I ask,” says Ms. Eliades. “Clothes, books, museum tickets. I’d love a companion. Maybe I’ll find something new in all these tired places. Young eyes on old scenes.”

They are the same height; Martha has always thought of Ms. Eliades as much taller. It must have been an optical illusion, conjured by all of those long swirling dresses.

“Can I go to your shows?” asks Martha.

She smiles and shrugs. “If you feel like it. For someone your age, there are much more interesting ways to spend evenings.”

“I can’t imagine anything more interesting than your music,” says Martha.

She leans against the wall, dizzy suddenly in the drenched heat, a fantasia of a summer piecing itself slowly and surreally into being. “Ms. Eliades, I don’t

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know what to say.”

“It makes a nice story, doesn’t it, these last few months?” Ms. Eliades says dreamily. “You couldn’t write a better one, really.”

“Europe will be a better one,” says Martha. “But only if you’ll really have me.”

“I would be honored,” says the harpist, forming her mysterious half-smile. The day has rolled over itself into a new one.

Martha doesn’t remember this kind of heat ever coming to town so early, and is unfamiliar with the kind of faintness that is now possessing her body. She will have to go inside to complete her shift soon. Maybe she won’t. Maybe all of the rules governing the ticking of her tiny life have been suspended in the iridescent mirage that hovers over the pavement, born of heat and the night’s rain, luminous, shimmering, so palpable that Martha wonders if she might, assuming she can emerge from within herself for long enough, reach out and touch. u

Untitled Nara Enkthaivan 2020 Ink and marker

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open letter to the residents of kirkland , wa

by Raya Tuffaha

Originally published on Oct. 29, 2020.

this was your first protest. no mask anymore, excuses dried up in the lake front, no more. here they have built you some kind of temple for your kind of people, kinda people who caught my foot in the door, closed the window and waved kind people of kirkland goodbyes. this was you looking west to the Duwamish name from your tapas and wine. good for you! happy our shouts were audible from your family boats,

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Poetry

kirkland, this was something new. so long living in white names on white shores, how many times did you turn a downward eye to the city? those skyscrapers those firs blocked your view gave you clean air ways to walk for family gelato or music festivals, pretty café pictures on the timeline, nobody’s waiting for you anymore, you’re the rebels, at least you were, so content in your white namesake and lake days, your salt pillar suburb halfway through happy retirement, kirkland. how does it feel to breathe so deep. this was your first protest. how does it feel to know you too walk on dark earth? u

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Thursday Night Zoom Call

by Tiffany Wong-Jones Originally published on Mar. 4, 2021.

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Poetry

The faces of my friends seem to be the only antidote for a loneliness that paints itself in streaks across my room. I watch their eyes & my own firework with laughter.

Afterwards the corners of my mouth ache from stretching across acres of a feeling that eludes despair. Afterwards I watch everyone I love split apart from me slowly.

Something isn’t right. In my heart the afterlife of a vacancy expands to fill my chest.

One day I woke up & I was a shell of a person.

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You might ask me how that works. How, at every stoplight, one loses the will to live. & I will say, Somewhere along the way I lost it.

Any ability to trace the wrinkles around my thumb. Any ability to lace brushstrokes over one another in a pattern that makes sense.

In the pharmacy, I ask for a prescription called How to Be a Person Who Gives & Gives & Gives. I don’t think I can draw a straight line through the thick forest that sits in the space between who we are now & who we were before the long fire.

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Each day I take in less joy than I ever have.

Like a fish suffocating from too much air, like a bird coddled in the hands of a child.

& I promise I once knew how to bear the warmth of the sun, but the rain won’t go away. It is this season forever. & it isn’t so much that everyone I love is elsewhere; it’s that I want to be whole again. u

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B

o o k s Book Review

To the Third The Genderless Body in Anne Garréta’s Sphinx

by Eva Baron

Originally published on April 8, 2021.

B

eneath a night club’s dim haze, the body disintegrates. Limbs slip into the rhythmic pulsing of the beat, suspended by sweat and dance. As bodies collide, flesh increasingly melts together, evolving into a ravenous yet indistinguishable mass that obliterates any semblance of bodily subjectivity.

Within this monstrous vertigo is an “essential melancholy,” one that both anticipates as well as postpones the “death and division of the collective body” that is achieved by a night club’s atmosphere (28). Although unearthing a rather ambiguous if not grim understanding of the body, these layered impressions offer a furtive glimpse into the psychology of the genderless, unnamed narrator at the center of Anne Garréta’s Sphinx (1986; 2015).

Originally written in 1986 when she

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was 24-years-old and a student at the École Normale Supérieure, Garréta’s Sphinx was recently translated from the French by Emma Ramadan and published by Deep Vellum Books in 2015.

While the source material’s immediacy may escape a translated work, Ramadan’s interpretation and subsequent treatment of Sphinx nevertheless retain Garréta’s celebration of bodies that are motivated by constant oscillation. At its core, Sphinx reveals itself as a genderless love story, one that is propelled by a vocabulary purged of linguistic gender.

Unfolding across the nightclubs and cabarets of Paris, Sphinx maps the relationship between the narrator, a jaded theology student and DJ at the popular nightclub Apocryphe, and their love interest A***, a Black cabaret dancer from Harlem. Throughout the entirety of

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Garréta’s novel and Ramadan’s translation, the narrator as well as A*** assume genderless personae, playing with and slipping in between the various shades of sexuality. Despite only becoming a member in 2000, Garréta and her novel encapsulate the restrictive yet experimental impulses of the OuLiPo (ouvroir de littérature potentielle), a collective established in Paris in 1960 with the intention of exploring constraints as a literary device, such as Georges Perec’s novel La Sphinx

by Anne Garréta Editions Grasset & Fasquelle Paris (1986) Tr a n s l a t i o n b y E m m a R a m a d a n ( D e e p Ve l u m B o o k s , 2 0 1 5 ) 120 pages | $14.95 (Paperback)

Disparition that was written without any words containing the letter “E.” It’s clear that Sphinx belongs in and is informed by Oulipian traditions—after all, Garréta’s novel eschews the primacy of gender throughout the French language, effacing rather than cementing abiding expressions of gender. Although the narrator and A*** journey across uncharted landscapes elevated beyond gender, Sphinx’s topography remains grounded by piercing meditations upon corporeality, ephemerality, and love.

Within the first few pages of the novel, the narrator immediately acknowledges their rigorous and somewhat obsessive “contemplation of bodies” (4), one that is discerned through the “faint, colored luminosity” of Parisian clubs and tonally anticipates their eventual fascination with A*** (15). As a DJ at the Apocryphe, the narrator is at once repelled and captivated by the “flesh [they try] to make move every night,” brutally alternating between “excitement and dejection” as individual bodies blur and transform into collective masses (28).

While conveying an underlying sense of repulsion, these observations do not belie the narrator’s eventual preoccupation with the body—and, in particular, A***’s body—as precious or fleeting, two attributes that increasingly characterize the narrator’s ruminations upon corporeality as the novel progresses.

After meeting and eventually igniting a romance with A***, the narrator’s previously detached, fragmented evaluations of the body acquire a simultaneously anxious and mythic quality. While watching A*** dance one morning, the narrator is overwhelmed by “anguish,” a “profound paralysis” that crescendos with the narrator lamenting that A***’s gestures, their flesh, are intrinsically and inevitably “ephemeral” (84). Beyond these anxious connotations, though,

Garréta exercises an agility that prevents the body from adhering to strict platitudes. Within and throughout Sphinx is a corporeality governed by continuous fluctuation, that straddles the boundaries between the tragic and the euphoric through an essential ambiguity. Coupled with its seeming fragility or imper-

manence, the body also locates sites of play in the novel, providing moments that abound with a magnetic attraction and movement that border on the fantastical, “What I was feeling for A*** needed its own embodiment; the pleasure I took in A***’s company demanded its own fulfillment…In a sudden rush

Within and throughout Sphinx is a corporeality governed by continuous fluctuation, that straddles the boundaries between the tragic and the euphoric through an essential ambiguity.

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of vertigo, I was tantalized by the idea of contact with A***’s skin” (39).

The elasticity with which the body navigates these fleeting sensations and lingering impressions throughout the novel, however, often complicates linear or cohesive characterizations of A***.

Steeped in linguistic gender, French and its system of gender agreement necessitates careful dissection, as Ramadan claims in her Translator’s Note, “In French, gender agrees with the object, meaning that the phrase son bras, son is in the masculine because bras is a masculine noun, not because the person the arm belongs to is a man.” To cohere to the novel’s genderless constraint, then, Garréta exploited the continuous tension and ambiguity between an object—in this case, bodies or body parts—and the subject to whom it belongs. In Sphinx, the narrator’s corporeal ruminations filter A*** through synecdoche, distilling spectral images of A***’s supple yet muscular limbs, their “cat-like” movements, their “nonchalant strides,” the sublime rhythm of their choreographed gestures. While Garréta’s corporeal vocabulary remains distinct and, in some moments, incredibly moving, the narra-

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The narrator’s percpetion of and relationship with A*** nevertheless depend upon a projection of bodily fantasies rather than an amalgamation of lived experiences. tor’s perception of and relationship with A*** nevertheless depend upon a projection of bodily fantasies rather than an amalgamation of lived experiences. At one point in the novel, A*** confronts the narrator as they prepare for a cabaret show, asking, “How do you see me, anyway?,” to which the narrator answers, “I see you in a mirror” (73).

Reduced to these splintered metaphors and images, A*** haunts Sphinx as a phantomic reminder of endangered flesh, of an ephemeral body that reflects rather than deconstructs the narrator’s somewhat fetishistic contemplations. At the center of Sphinx is the narrator’s corporeal projection, all of which derive from a troubled history of exploiting Black bodies as literary devices. Throughout the novel, A***’s gestures and physical attributes are often textured with an exotic, animalistic tenor, and the fixation upon A***’s body obliterates any possibilities for nuance in their personality. The simultaneous hypersexualization and annihilation of Black bodies as a vehicle through which to comprehend whiteness betray what Toni Morrison terms as literary surrogacy, “The simple expedient of demonizing and reifying the range of color on a palette…provides a way of contemplating chaos and civilization, desire and fear, and a mechanism for testing the problems and blessings of freedom.” In playing with and destabilizing gender, Sphinx remains sharp and compelling, with Garréta’s proposed intersections between the body, love, and fragility offering intriguing avenues through which to consider queer theory (the fact that I’ve even been referring to the narrator and A*** with gender neutral pronouns conflicts with Garréta’s constraints, as she avoided pronouns throughout the novel entirely). In its treatment of Black-

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ness, however, Sphinx is clumsy at best and, at worst, perpetuates histories of bodily dehumanization.

As a meditation upon fragmentary, genderless bodies, Sphinx astonishes with its agility, with an eloquence that effectively reimagines the varied spaces a body can occupy. Stripped of arbitrary and, as Garréta seems to suggest, largely artificial binaries, language collapses into a tactile drama that beckons us with its immediacy and corporeal surface, producing a uniquely queer landscape of play, of beauty, and of loss.

Written almost five years before Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble, Garréta’s novel clearly provokes the exploration of unmapped bodies, all of which are fragile and at once beautiful in their “irresistible” ephemerality. Perhaps, too, the narrator’s reflexive perception of bodies contributes to the overall impression of gendered or bodily absurdity—the continued superiority of the body in Sphinx, regardless of its lack of gender, proves futile and ultimately detrimental, the ramifications of which echo solemnly throughout the latter half of the novel.

Despite its various slips into tragedy, there remain moments of profound beauty in Sphinx, moments that fundamentally repackage gendered binaries and our relationships to the body. One night at the Apocryphe, the narrator is asked by A*** to dance. “I had the impression that never until this day had I reveled in such a carefree lightness of being,” the narrator marvels as they sway with A***. This “lightness” briefly though stunningly transcends the impermanence that Garréta often assigns to the body in Sphinx, resisting the fatalistic collectivity that seduces as well as repulses. Beneath the pulsating lights, the heavy beat, “There was no longer anybody but us on the dance floor.” u

Book Review

A Manual

Oryx and Crake on

How to End the World and Not Save It

by Angie Kwon

Originally published on April 8, 2021.

A

ccording to Greek mythology, the Oracle of Delphi sat at the center of the world, providing answers through direct communication with the Greek gods. Of course, they disappeared, but we were clearly not left bereft of Apollo’s graces, and Margaret Atwood is the proof of that.

Margaret Atwood is most well known for The Handmaid’s Tale, a dystopian novel published in 1985. Atwood writes the dystopian genre in its most literal definition, which is to critique a current problem in society and envision a future where said problem has gone too far. Oryx and Crake is one of her lesser-known works, but no less foretelling.

Oryx and Crake, written in 2003, opens in a present time post-apocalyptic setting, of which Snowman, the narrator of the story, may be the sole survivor.

The novel fluctuates between the present time and Snowman’s memories from before—when he was known as Jimmy— and after the apocalyptic event. The two

timelines weave together to slowly tell us the story of how Crake, Snowman’s best friend and bioengineering genius, and Oryx, a child sex-trafficking victim and Snowman’s lover, come to become major actors in ending the world.

The novel opens up with Snowman in the world after, a desolate wasteland that is stripped of humanity except for the company of the Children of Crake, genetically engineered people created

by Crake. Oryx and Crake eventually reveals how the end came to be with memories from the time before, a world of no moral ethics interspersed with Compounds, where employees and families of giant corporations live in security, and where Snowman first meets Crake.

To continue with the Oracle of Delphi analogy, while the Oracles gave vague answers (like “If you cross the river, a great empire will be destroyed”), Atwood gives us eerily precise predictions.

She created a world where genetic modification has no ethical boundaries—

and yes, it’s terrifying in that it’s led to a world where chicken nuggets are made from chickens with no heads and 10 breasts, but that’s not the only unsettling thing. The facet of this dystopian world that fascinated me wasn’t just the genetically modified chickens, but the generally desensitized demeanor of the whole society.

When the first silent film was released, people were blown away. When Charlie Chaplin evaded the train narrowly or when sound was added, people marveled at the modern technology. When the Star Wars trilogy was first released, it was a revelation. Never before had any movie been as exciting, as detailed, or as Oryx and Crake

by Marg are t At wo o d Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group (2003) 400 pages | $15.45 (Paperback)

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unique. It was such a brilliant creation that it’s still a classic after decades. But for how many of today’s films can we say the same? I bring this up because this social numbing is precisely what Atwood covers in her book. Unwittingly, every day, our world becomes a little more evolved, a little more complicated, and a little more numb.

In Oryx and Crake, Snowman’s memories from before reveal that he and Crake whittled their time away on the Internet, looking at various porn sites (including a child pornography site where they first see Oryx), snuff films, executions, live streams catering to voyeuristic fantasies, and newsfeeds where the anchors are naked. They flick through these choices without any revulsion, arousal, or shame.

They are completely numb to the unethical, horrific nature of these displays—but the thing is, they’re not isolated cases.

The whole human population has become desensitized to “normal” media that had previously fascinated our predecessors. After the initial breakthroughs, the once-revolutionary films, books, and other media aren’t enough, and people go searching for something that will provide them with a similar experience.

This isn’t something that Atwood con38

cocted on her own. We see this in everyday life, right now. An extreme example are psychopathic serial killers. Famously, Ted Bundy blamed hardcore pornography for his homicidal urges: “...like an addiction, you keep craving something harder, which gives you a greater sense of excitement, until you reach a point where the pornography only goes so far.”

First, the fantasy is enough, but then the killers need more and more stimulation until they need to do it themselves. And even then, after the first time, they feel less and less of the initial high, so they keep chasing it. A more common example of desensitization would be drug abusers or adrenaline junkies. The first drug or adrenaline high is so intense that they repeat the act to achieve the same level of high, but they are never able to achieve the same level of rush ever again, making them seek more and more extreme drugs and activities. We live in a world where nothing is truly revolutionary, horrifying, or strange. It takes more and more to surprise and captivate us.

Oryx and Crake’s allusion to the problem of genetic modification is no less insignificant. In addition to the desensitization to online content, the people living in this world have also become

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numb to ethical and moral outrages. Not only do we see schools catering prostitutes to students or rampant human trafficking, we also see the repeal of all laws restricting genetic modification. Now, anything can be bioengineered, from pigoons, pigs grown with human organs for transplant, to wolvogs, dogs modified to retain their friendly appearances but with vicious wolf characteristics.

When Jimmy first visits Crake at his university, Watson-Crick Institute, one of the first significant genetic splices of a spider and goat (called spoat/gider affectionately by the students there) makes a cameo as the university mascot. This mascot is a real creation of our world, and links our two worlds together. The spoat is considered to be one of the first successful splices and a ‘simple’ creation when compared to the unimaginable bioengineered products that the Watson-Crick students have created, revealing terrifying possibilities. If the spoat, once controversial and bordering on unethical, is now merely a cute mascot, then our world has just started its moral and ethical descent. This link from our world to theirs eliminates the reader’s sense of detachment, and links our world to Jimmy’s. Well, now Snowman’s world.

The Unabomber’s infamous manifesto dictated that “the Industrial Revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race.” Though it is impossible to agree with his methods, his critiques of industrialism aren’t entirely unwarranted. The sudden boom of inventions and the speed at which the world moves has made everything seem trivial and boring. The truly terrifying aspect is that there seems to be no solution to this issue. It doesn’t even seem like a legitimate problem. Does it even make sense that the world is moving too fast and that people aren’t really wowed anymore? Can we even fix that?

Margaret Atwood, our very own Oracle of Delphi, has presented the problem in the clearest and most detailed way possible. She’s even shown us the future, but it seems that even she can’t give us an answer that can save the world. So, with no way to save ourselves, it seems that we are hurtling to the end of all times. u

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Anna Fruman 2020 Oil on canvas

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Carolyn

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M

u s i c Music Review

Symphony of the Night

A Classic Inspired

by the

Classics

by Peter Wu

Originally published on Jan. 21, 2021.

K

onami’s Castlevania—a video game series centered around the everlasting conflict between the Belmont Clan, a family of vampire hunters, and the vampire lord Count Dracula, who is resurrected every century through nefarious means—has established itself as a gaming classic since its inception in the 1980s. Castlevania’s impact on the video game world extends beyond its action-packed gameplay and extensive lore—its music stands out as some of the most exciting and unique video game music of all time. Castlevania’s true claim to fame is perhaps its 1997 installment Symphony of the Night, which adopts a non-linear approach to gameplay and role-playing elements.

Upon playing it for the first time in May, I immediately fell in love with its soundtrack, which features an idiosyncratic blend of musical styles ranging from classical, baroque, and romantic to

jazz, rock, electronic, and metal.

Symphony of the Night takes place in 1796, in which Richter Belmont of the Belmont clan, having defeated Dracula four years earlier, inexplicably disappears while Dracula’s castle reappears.

Meanwhile, Dracula’s half-human/ half-vampire son Adrian, who goes by the moniker Alucard, mysteriously awakens from a self-imposed three-hundred-year slumber and enters the castle to confront the evil that lurks within.

The player assumes the role of Alucard to traverse and fight their way through the castle, discovering new regions and uncovering secrets along the way.

The soundtrack to Symphony of the Night largely features the work of Japanese composer Michiru Yamane, marking her second time composing for the Castlevania series after Bloodlines (1994). Born in Kagawa Prefecture, Japan in 1963, Yamane began learning

music at a young age, starting with the electric organ and eventually the piano. She later matriculated at the Aichi Prefectural University of the Arts, where she studied musical composition and joined the entertainment company Konami shortly before her fourth year at the college. Yamane cited her influences being modern artists such as the Japanese techno-pop group Yellow Magic Orchestra, American progressive-metal band Dream Theater, and film composer Jerry Goldsmith, as well as classical artists like Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, Ravel, Debussy, and Bach.

In discussing her approach to composing music for Symphony of the Night, Yamane felt that there was “some affinity between the image of a vampire-infested world with the traditional classical music” that she grew up learning. She also enjoyed the rock-inspired music of older Castlevania titles, and thus wished SWARTHMORE REVIEW | ISSUE 28

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to combine the classical elements of her musical upbringing with the “dynamic bass lines and groovy rhythms” that she felt were fundamental to the series.

The image that Yamane envisioned was no doubt further realized by the visual art of Ayami Kojima, the character designer for Symphony of the Night. Kojima’s works were elegant, dark, beautiful, and grotesque, creating the gothic visual aesthetic that was ubiquitous with the Castlevania series.

One of the tracks that best captures this aesthetic is “Moonlight Nocturne,” which plays during the prologue of the game. Featuring a synthesized classical orchestra, a somber violin melody supported by blaring brass countermelodies, and tense chromatic movements by the viola, the track is reminiscent of symphonies of the Romantic era and serves as a cinematic introduction to the regal and dark fantasy world of Castlevania. While orchestral arrangements are commonly heard in video game music nowadays, the lush orchestration of “Moonlight Nocturne” is impressive given the technology available for game composers in 1997.

Unlike previous Castlevania games, Symphony of the Night was originally released on the PlayStation and thus took advantage of the console’s CD-ROM technology. Previously, game composers relied on programmable sound generators (PSG) which were built into the circuit boards of arcade cabinets and video game consoles. PSGs were limited in how many sounds could be produced simultaneously, and typically could only generate them through basic waveforms. The CD-ROM, however, allowed all music, sound effects, and dialogue to be pre-recorded and played in-game

Image courtesy of US Gamer. through CD audio while maintaining a pristine audio quality. With this technological frontier to explore, Yamane was afforded more freedom in expressing her musical ideas. Blending classical and popular styles in the soundtrack, Yamane made use of a wide variety of computer-generated instruments, including those from traditional orchestral ensembles as well as those commonly found in rock bands like electric guitars, synthesizers, and drums.

The CD-ROM format, though, was not without its downsides. Because the

While looping music runs the risk of becoming tedious, the music of Symphony of the Night remains engaging and captivating because the compositions themselves are varied.

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music was pre-recorded, there was no way to alter it during gameplay to make it more dynamic and interactive. As such, many composers for PlayStation games relied on musical looping. While looping music runs the risk of becoming tedious, the music of Symphony of the Night remains engaging and captivating because the compositions themselves are varied. Much of the music is tonal, meaning that each piece follows a linear structure where a theme is established and then developed further or contrasted. Because video games have an interactive format, the amount of time a player spends in a certain area of the castle, for example, is indeterminate. In order to account for the player’s movements and technological limitations, music is repeated as many times as necessary throughout given areas.

As with other Castlevania games, much of the music in Symphony of the Night revolves around the structure of the castle in the game itself. The castle

Symphony of the Night serves as a testament to video game music’s intersection between art, technology, and storytelling.

Gameplay from Symphony of the Night. is split into multiple interconnected sections, with each area having its distinct theme that plays and loops when the player enters and cuts out once the player leaves. Although the player is given the freedom to explore the castle at their own pace, certain areas require specific items and abilities to become accessible.

As such, early gameplay involves progressing through preliminary areas such as the Entrance, Alchemy Lab, Marble Gallery, Outer Wall, and the Long Library.

When Alucard, representing the player, dashes past the castle gates and enters the dark hallways of the Entrance, he is accompanied only by the sounds

By blending the flavors of different eras of classical music, the music conjure[s] an immersive, fictional yet believable idea of the past.

of howling winds, crackling thunder, and the shrieks of monsters before the hallways brighten dramatically and the track “Dracula’s Castle” begins. Arguably Alucard’s theme, “Dracula’s Castle” features eerie synth and violin melodies supported by a driving rock accompaniment, giving it an elegant yet dark feeling and a theatrical flair. The next area, the Alchemy Lab, is underscored by “Dance of Gold” which features symphonic orchestration reminiscent of “Moonlight Nocturne” and a recurring descending circle-of-fifths motif to create a grandiose and dignified atmosphere. Juxtaposed with “Dance of Gold” is the more rhythmic referential theme of the next area, the Marble Gallery, which presents a striking blend of groovy synth bass lines with a springy lead melody that is played on a dulcimer. Upon arriving at the Outer Wall, we find ourselves with the track “Tower of Mist,” which borrows the melody of “Marble Gallery” but rearranges it with symphonic orchestration. Unlike the somewhat mischievous “Marble Gallery,” “Tower of Mist” exudes subdued tension through the use of a constant violin ostinato and an increasingly intricate texture, leading to a loud climax before dissipating.

When reaching the Long Library, the

player is greeted with “Wood Carving Partita,” a piece where I believe Bach’s influence on Yamane’s compositional approach is most apparent. The orchestration consists of a harpsichord and a strings section, where they take turns playing the melody and providing accompaniment and counterpoint. Interestingly, the baroque mannerisms that “Wood Carving Partita” evokes is actually somewhat anachronistic, as baroque music was largely superseded by music of the Classical era by the 1750s. By blending the flavors of different eras of classical music, Yamane takes advantage of the cultural associations between classical music and an elite socioeconomic status, allowing the music to conjure an immersive, fictional yet believable idea of the past without the need for specific musical or historical knowledge.

Symphony of the Night serves as a testament to video game music’s intersection between art, technology, and storytelling. Although the game features so many brilliant works of music, they are not as widely accessible as traditional forms of music because they require engagement through gameplay. To this day, the music of Symphony of the Night remains one of Michiru Yamane’s most beloved works, demonstrating the transformative power that music can bring to gameplay and worldbuilding.

Building upon previous innovations in game sound and her own eclectic musical influences, Yamane masterfully crafted the definitive soundtrack to a world of conflict between vampires and humans and the plight of one caught between them. u SWARTHMORE REVIEW | ISSUE 28

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& TV Interview

Gods, Giants, and Automata An Interview with Blood of Zeus Creators Charles and Vlas Parlapanides

by Anoushka Subbaiah

Originally published on Jan. 7, 2021.

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avigating the journey of Heron, a demigod son of Zeus, Netflix’s animated series Blood of Zeus is an electric and richly-illustrated ode to the timeless gods, creatures, and scenery of Greek mythology while representing contemporary dichotomies of sanctity and violence, the godly and the fallible. By rendering the show as a tale “misplaced” and forgotten from the prolific oral tradition of Greek storytelling, creators and brothers Charles and Vlas Parlapanides—the former being a Swarthmore alumnus of ‘99—have carved out the perfect space to understand otherness and archival silence. *** Anoushka Subbaiah: Firstly, I’d like to congratulate both of you on creating this powerful and thoughtful show.

When grappling with something that’s 44

as fabled and learned as Greek mythology, I feel as though it would be quite easy to slip into the comfort of what is tried and true, but I think Blood of Zeus has an almost self-aware gaze to it. I think an example of this is an interview you did with Kate Sànchez, where you pointed out that there are no defined villains in the story. You managed to pay homage to these treasured character tropes, but I feel like they were seamlessly deconstructed at the same time. I was wondering if you could tell me more about that.

Charles Parlapanides: That’s very well said, by the way.

Vlas Parlapanides: That’s a Swarthmore question!

CP: Very astute. Listen, we preface this with a simple statement that we always say: this isn’t our story, this is Greece’s

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story. We’re standing on the shoulders of this incredible body of literature—and though we say “literature,” it was never written down. As we’ve mentioned to other people, there was never an ecumenical council, like in the case of the Bible, where they said this is the one definitive version, but instead there are all these iterations. They’re these amazing stories that have endured for thousands of years. If you look at our pop culture, the fundamental background of, say, Star Wars, and superhero movies is derived from Greek mythology, and it’s these same recurring tropes. Part of it is that these gods were anthropomorphic deities. They were flawed, like us. They weren’t all-knowing and all-powerful and always righteous. That makes them incredibly human. I think that’s why these stories have endured.

Greek myths are ripe for adaptation now more than ever, but when you pitch

Image courtesy of Greek Hollywood Reporter. Left: Vlas Parlapanides. Right: Charles Parlapanides.

it to Hollywood executives and producers, they don’t necessarily feel that way.

They may say they love these stories, but there is this feeling that it’s been adapted again and again. So part of it is finding a fresh way in.

The one thing that we said we wanted to do is to reclaim or at least repurpose the “hero’s journey” because everything in popular culture now is about the antihero. Whenever you deal with an antihero, the villain has to be an even worse version of that antihero. We just miss the hero’s journey, but part of it is that your villain is always a reflection of your hero. So, if we were going to do a traditional hero’s journey, we didn’t want villains—we wanted antagonists. To be honest, when we were first writing the scripts, it was brought up that Seraphim [Heron’s antagonistic half-brother] might be too sympathetic. He still does a lot of terrible things, but aren’t the best

villains the ones you empathize with and understand where they’re coming from?

I think that only helps the material. People think the show is an incredibly rich world with rich characters, but much of that is the source material. We can’t even take credit for that, in our opinion.

VP: We have great respect for that source material and wanted to treat it with a certain amount of respect while also bringing something new to it. The way we were able to bring something new, well, it’s right there in those opening credits. It’s this idea that Greek mythology was an oral tradition and has been passed down from generation to generation. It wasn’t written. Well, what if one of these tales had been lost? And what if we postulate that this is one of those tales? So we were able to maintain a certain level of respect for those tales that we all love while also

telling a story that was original.

CP: It’s very telling and wise that you used the word “deconstruct,” because if you look at the underpinnings of this story, it’s really a deconstruction of the Hercules story—but you can’t pitch Hercules. Again, people are tired—all due respect to Ryan Gosling and the Rock who’ve played different iterations of him—of it.

In the myth, Hercules’ mother was a queen and married to the King, but Zeus disguised himself as the King and impregnated her. She ended up giving birth to twins, but no one ever talks about Hercules’ brother, Iphicles. When we were approaching this story, we said, “Well, in Hercules, the King considers it a great honor and takes Hercules under his wing.” Part of us then asked, “What if the King didn’t feel that way? What if the King hated the fact that his wife, SWARTHMORE REVIEW | ISSUE 28

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you know, ‘cheated’ on him and bore the son of a God?” Iphicles does become a minor hero in Greek mythology and goes on to journey with Jason and the Argonauts. We then thought, “Is there a way Hercules and he could be adversaries?” All we really did was take Hercules, deconstruct it, and rearrange its dramatic components. But you have to give it a new name, because if you said, “We want to pitch a re-imagined version of Hercules,” then forget it. They won’t even take the meeting. What we had to do was deconstruct it and pitch it as something new, but really we’re just using that same sandbox that the Greeks already created.

VP: I agree. You know, Blood of Zeus is the perfect amalgamation of deconstruction while also being respectful to those Greek mythological tales.

AS: In the aforementioned interview, you also established that the show unfolds in a post-mythological era where some characters have fulfilled their canonical arcs. Was this narrative decision a way for you to diverge in some capacity from classic Greek mythology? And for those who may not be as familiar with Greek myths, are there any other elements of the show that wander away from convention?

What we had to do was deconstruct it and pitch it as something new, but really we’re just using that same sandbox that the Greeks already created.

CP: That’s a very wise question, because doing that allowed us to use all of the canon of Greek mythology and have creative license because Greek mytholo46

gy just kind of ends — it isn’t like Norse mythology, where they have a Ragnarök storyline and an eventual end of times.

Basic Christianity overtook Greek mythology and then it just disappeared.

That leaves the door open to say, “Okay, all of these things happened in the canon and now here comes our story. Our story is after everything you know!” And so that’s a way to find creative license.

VP: People who are familiar with Greek mythology are able to watch it and be like, “Oh, that was actually something that was in Greek mythology. Oh, this part of the story over here is something that the guys created.” There’s a certain level of fun when you can identify which is which.

AS: I think placing those little easter eggs is such a great way to have a sense of dialogue with viewers. I want to talk about the visual fabric of the show, which is gorgeous. There are these micro-movements and expressions that stay with you—a favorite of mine was when the soul of Heron’s mother, Electra, sort of molts from her body. How did your team decide upon the level of detail that the animation is going to be narrowed down to? How do you know when to step away?

CP: We have to give credit to our director, Shaunt Nigoghossian. He just did an incredible job. One of the things that we discussed when we first started is, “What is going to be the visual style of the show?” What we talked about was making it as cinematic as possible.

People always say, “This [Blood of Zeus] is an anime.” We don’t disagree because anime, traditionally, is handdrawn, two-dimensional, and from Japan. Ours is hand-drawn, two-dimensional, and from Texas and South Korea.

We understand the purist argument, but one thing that is kind of a tried and true trope of anime is a lot of static shots, where there’s a beautiful drawing and the camera slowly pans over it as whole conversations unfold, then they’ll cut to a static image of something else. But what we told Shaunt is that we wanted it

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And even if you hit pause and each shot might not be a perfect frame, you’ll just be caught up in the emotion of it. to feel as cinematic as possible. For him, that meant seeing those reaction shots.

A lot of the time in animation you have these static shots to save money and labor—but we wanted to sell the moments so that they land emotionally. Those little reaction shots and moments of surprise—that’s the cinematic language we all speak now because we all consume so much TV and movies. It’s slightly different in animation, but Shaunt brought that cinematic approach here and it helps sell moments. When Electra realizes she’s no longer in her body and her soul is being taken away, you should feel that. And you could do it in the more traditional anime sense and maybe have half as many shots. Those individual shots would maybe be kind of “better looking.” They always say in animation to never press pause because you’ll hate the frame you see. In anime, they do fewer shots, but they make it more beautiful. We took the approach of “No, let’s just focus more on the emotion of storytelling.” And even if you hit pause and each shot might not be a perfect frame, hopefully as you watch the show, you’ll just be caught up in the emotion of it, you know?

VP: This is the first project we were involved creatively throughout the entire process from the inception of idea to the completion of the show. Every little moment mattered to us. And as Charlie said, the big emphasis was emotion.

It’s about the characters and what they want, and really understanding what that emotion is and making sure that the audience does, too. We had these great discussions with our director, Shaunt,

book in which after the Persians attacked Greece, the Athenians went to their former allies that provided shelter to Xerxes’ army, and you wouldn’t believe the way they killed them! They stoned the King’s children in front of him, took the King, trapped him within a tree trunk, and covered him with honey so that insects and animals would eat him. I’m like, “These are the Athenians! These are supposed to be like the high intellectuals of the ancient world.” Knowing this was part of that world, we felt that it was okay to be true to that time. We thought it worked. Netflix wanted it to be epic, and to have action and violence. And so that’s why that’s all in there.

Image courtesy of Netflix. Seraphim’s character sheet. who we were very blessed to work with.

The beauty of working with him was he was able to visualize, that he was able to not only make it cinematic, but make it resonate.

We have to give credit to Shaunt and the creative and talented artists at Powerhouse Animation who contributed. We took on what Spielberg once said: best idea wins. With every facet of the show, the best idea won whether it was what this helmet should look like, what the shield should look like, what this moment should be, what the soul should look like. Till the closing credits, there was always an attention to detail and that’s something that is important to Charlie and me, and thank God it was something that was also very important to Shaunt.

AS: I think there’s this delicate interplay between beauty and hyper-violence in the show. There are these scenes that should be painful and grotesque to witness, but they’re so visually-striking, and even elegant. Are there any kinds of anime that you looked to for guidance during this particular stylistic approach?

CP: That approach, interestingly enough, comes from Swarthmore and reading Eliade’s The Sacred and the Profane in a Religion course I took there.

That’s something that we talked about

ad nauseum with Shaunt, about the sacred and the profane and the juxtaposition of the two. Now listen, we love Cowboy Bebop. We love Ninja Scroll.

If you watch anime, it’s pretty violent. I think our show is less violent than some of those shows, but sometimes I feel like, “Oh my God, are we desensitized?” because there are people that have watched it and said, “It’s so gruesome!” I think we’re not as bad as some other shows, but that element is very much in the milieu of anime.

VP: It’s something that we wanted to explore and we think that there’s something fascinating about the sacred and profane. We feel that the show is violent, but it’s not gratuitous. It was a violent world, but there’s also an inspirational component to the show. We feel it’s important to have both.

CP: I was reading an ancient history

VP: I would say we stayed true to the mythological tales and that’s why it worked. In the tales, they showcase extremes: extreme violence, but also extreme sacrifice. There’s great love and exaggerated anger. These things are innate to those tales. I don’t know how and why exactly it works, but it does.

AS: As a member of Generation Z, the body of Greek mythology that I knew and loved was Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson series. I’m very nostalgic about it. I think, as a 13 year-old, I was really charmed by Riordan’s modern and humorous rewriting of legends that could often feel solemn and high-stakes. This is a universe where Ares drives a Harley Davidson, Dionysus wears Hawaiian shirts and drinks Diet Coke, and Mt. Olympus is located on the 600th floor of the Empire State building. Aesthetically, Blood of Zeus could not be more different. I’m curious about what the both of you think of this Americanized, satirical narrative landscape — what qualms do

We feel that the show is violent, but it’s not gratuitous. It was a violent world, but there’s also an inspirational component to the show. We feel it’s important to have both.

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you have with it? What can you appreciate about it?

CP: We have no qualms whatsoever.

My daughter, who is 12, has read all the books and she loves them. Anything that promotes Greek mythology and Greek heritage, we’re all for.

VP: I agree with Charlie. Anything that can get kids to read, either by themselves or with their parents. One of my best friends reads the stories to his boys—how beautiful is that? That’s a memory that they’re all going to have and share. It’s why we do what we do.

CP: To be honest, we’re grateful because I think part of the reason why your generation has an affinity towards Greek mythology is because you loved Percy Jackson and you knew who these characters were. I actually think our show benefited as your generation tuned in because of Percy Jackson.

AS: Interestingly, a similarity between Blood of Zeus and Percy Jackson is the humanizing of larger-than-life deities.

Through starkly contrasting vehicles, I think both of these series challenge power structures, one example being through female characters who have traditionally been misunderstood and deflated into wearisome tropes. My favorite imagery from the show included those stunning, lavender-tinged stills of Hera where her face is contorted into rage and grief — they exude a quiet and piercing feminine power. It reminds

We’re crossing generic Christian and Greek mythological tropes, but that’s something we thought bore importance, to make Electra very strong.

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Image courtesy of Netflix. me so much of Aphrodite’s depiction in Percy Jackson, where her forces of love manage to be tender and debilitating at once, completely overshadowing the more brute, one-dimensional strength of her male counterparts.

CP: That’s a very interesting point.

One thing Shaunt wanted to do was to not only give certain gods and goddesses a color but give sequences of theirs that same color so we understand that this is their moment. We grew up around Greek women, and all the Greek women we’ve ever known were incredibly strong. For us, the Greek woman is a warrior, a mother, and a goddess.

That’s what Alexia, Electra, and Hera

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represent, and we wanted to try and make them as strong as possible. There are different iterations of Greek mythology, but there’s one story where Hera was initially the queen of the heavens.

Part of us felt like, “Oh, wow, if she was queen of the heavens, she must’ve been strong enough that her other siblings listened to her. So what if we could have a situation where Zeus is powerful, but she’s really the puppet master?” We just looked for little clues within mythology to speak to her characterization.

VP: She’s not only strong, though it was very important to us that she was strong, and that she had an iron will— our mom has an iron will, and so that

Image courtesy of Netflix. Still of Electra and her soul.

was imbued in Hera, but she’s also just smarter, to be honest. It’s really fun to see her kind of “play” Zeus, and that’s something critics have responded to. We have a really cool arc for Hera, and without giving anything away, I think people will be very pleasantly surprised with regards to where she ends up.

CP: Another Swarthmore reference: I took two classes with Professor Hungerford, who teaches Art History, and I remember we studied the Pietà, where Mary’s holding Jesus. Looking at the iconography of that, this is the first time motherhood was viewed as something powerful and something worthy. We’re crossing generic Christian and Greek mythological tropes, but that’s some-

thing we thought bore importance, to make Heron’s mom Electra very strong.

When Christianity came to Greece, the reason they embraced it so quickly is that they believed if someone was really spectacular, they were the son of a god.

AS: I wanted to know if you have a favorite contemporary adaptation of Greek myths where creative liberties are taken, and/or if you have plans for something of that nature in the future?

CP: A great book for anyone out there, especially at Swarthmore, is Circe

by Madeline Miller. I was blown away by it. It takes place in the world of Greek mythology, but it’s a reimagining of all the stories she appears in into one nar-

You spend time just thinking about who [your characters] are and what they’ve done up until the point of when the story begins.

rative. HBO’s in the process of adapting it now.

VP: I love that book. I love the way that the author writes. It’s so beautiful and poetic. I’m very curious to see how the show turns out and what choices they made.

CP: Video games have also done justice to Greek mythology. I love God of War. I thought that Hades, the new kind of indie game that’s out there, was a hilarious take on Greek mythology. The act of dying and responding is actually part of the narrative, and I thought that was genius.

AS: Something I’m really interested in is what the devising process looked like in the context of the both of you being brothers. From the interviews I’ve read I get a sense that you’ve continued this oral and familial tradition of storytelling in your own way while writing the show, and I’d like to know more about that.

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Learning to push yourself gave me the toughness to deal with our business, because our business is very precarious. It’s a gig economy...your next job could be your last. again—I’m very blessed that I’m working with Charlie because he has these great big ideas and you’re only as good as the big idea you’re writing about.

Sometimes it’s “Well, what themes do we want to explore?” or “What characters do we want to explore?” Sometimes it’s an amalgamation of both. The beauty of having a writing partner is going back and forth with different ideas. I would say that we believe in research, whether it’s the physical research of reading up on a certain subject or a certain character, or other type of research that Syd Field talks about in Screenplay. That’s the research where you have to really know who your characters are. You spend time just thinking about who they are and what they’ve done up until the point of when the story begins.

CP: It’s in our blood, in a sense. Our last name is Parlapanides. When you see a Greek name with “-ides,” it means they’re from Asia Minor. It’s almost like the Irish.

VP: Yeah, like McDonald means “Son of Donald.”

CP: So Parlapanides means “Son of Parlapan,” and Parlapan means “to speak, or to tell stories.” Essentially we’re the sons of someone who liked to talk a lot. That is intrinsically a big part of our job. Because we’re brothers and from a big Greek immigrant family, we’ve always worked together. Us Greeks, we share our feelings, we wear them on our sleeves. And I do think it helps us. In terms of Blood of Zeus being about two brothers, those familial bonds are something we’ve always felt comfortable working with, and it’s something we understand.

AS: This question is mostly posed to Charley. I understand that your rela50

tionship with Netflix Executive John Derderian, who is also a Swarthmore alum, was central to sealing the show’s fate and realizing this story’s potential.

What was the influence of Swarthmore’s education on your trajectory as a storyteller? What creative seeds were planted here?

CP: I think the answer is twofold. At Swarthmore I learned to work hard, deal with adversity, and to be undaunted, because what I’ve always felt is that people at Swarthmore, they found a way. You didn’t shy away from the work. You just pulled your bootstraps up and found a way. I think that’s been integral to our careers as writers. I know that I wouldn’t have been able to do this job if I didn’t have the experiences that I’ve had at Swarthmore. I felt like when I walked out of there, I had this armor on and I was ready to take the best punches the world could throw at me. I learned to become a voracious reader at Swarthmore.

You’ll do more reading than you ever would there. Learning to push yourself gave me the toughness to deal with our business, because our business is very precarious. It’s a gig economy. You also have to learn how to deal with rejection and failure. You don’t get a paycheck every two weeks. Your next job could be your last. As a writer, you always have to be generating ideas. After being exposed to so many ideas at Swarthmore, I know that I have these places to pull from that I’ve found to be invaluable.

AS: That was a great answer, thank you for that. As a fun last question, do either of you have a favorite figure in Greek mythology and why?

CP: I know in Greek mythologies Zeus was kind of a terrible guy. He would definitely get locked up in the

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modern world. That said, growing up, I always was just kind of enamored with Zeus. Seeing the original Clash of the Titans with Laurence Olivier, there was this grandiose kind of power. As you get older and you read more stories, you realize he’s kind of a bad guy, but because I liked him as a kid, I still have a great affinity for him. There’s a line we have in the next season: “He’s complicated, which is just a nice way of saying ‘flawed’.” He’s deeply flawed, but he’s still my favorite, if you had to put a gun to my head.

VP: It’s difficult to kind of say, “Okay, this is my favorite mythological character.” I would say I have a favorite mythological idea. And that idea is that it’s important for everyone to be true to themselves. The Greeks felt that everyone had a calling, a task of sorts and that some people didn’t pursue that because they were afraid to really be the person that they were meant to be. It’s not easy to be the best version of yourself, but I feel that the Greeks always strive to be the best versions of themselves. I’ve always loved that idea and I think it’s a beautiful, relatable one.

AS: That reminds me of why Greek mythology was such a source of escapism for me, growing up. Just the thought of being a demigod and having your celestial lineage decide your traits and individual aesthetic for you was something I constantly daydreamed about.

CP: Dovetailing into what Vlas said, the ancient Greeks believed in striving for excellence, that there was a special place in Hades’ for people that lived their life in fear, and that we should strive to do something that will be remembered.

That’s a very Swarthmorean ideal. u

Review

Zoey’s Musical Catharsis On Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist

by Mariam Muhammad

Originally published on Nov. 12, 2020.

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oey’s Extraordinary Playlist (ZEP) is an NBC show (2020-present) about a young, ambitious programmer named Zoey (Jane Levy) who develops an interesting superpower—hearing people’s innermost feelings through gigantic musical numbers (later dubbed “heart songs”) that only she can see. The pilot episode deals with Zoey gaining the superpower, navigating through the ensuing confusion, and using what she learns to connect with people more deeply, a more than difficult task given that the people who sing to her have no idea that they’re doing so.

Propping up Zoey is a host of supporting characters who occupy important places in her life: her family (her brother and both her parents), her best friend and coworker Max (Skylar Astin), her electric, non-binary neighbour Mo (Alex Newell), her dynamic boss Joan (Lauren Graham), and her many colleagues at the fictional tech firm SPRQ Point.

As the pilot progresses, however, we see Zoey struggling with a promotion interview, wrestling with romantic feelings for a new colleague named Simon, and coming to terms with her father’s soon-

to-be-fatal illness…all in addition to grappling with the fact that people are spilling out their deepest darkest secrets to her in song!

Zoey isn’t an extroverted person, and it could be argued that this introversion is the result of her innate character in tandem with her insecurities. When her boss Joan asks her about her contribution “percentage” to a team project, Zoey stutters out a feeble “Six…,” and, upon hearing Joan’s scathing response, nervously throws in a “...ty…four?” to compensate. Similarly, when running into Simon, the popular and handsome new guy at work, she blurts out an awkward “howdy!” only to attract a bemused look from Max. These moments littered throughout the episode establish Zoey as a protagonist who’s prone to minimizing herself, her personality, and her

accomplishments, even if she’s arguably too self-critical. This could very well be uncharacteristic, though—perhaps her confidence is only temporarily shaken because of the pain of coming to terms with the deteriorating health of a father she loves deeply. However, I’d say these examples of awkwardness are symptomatic of a broader nervous disposition, one that Zoey herself sums up in her promotion interview when she jokes that she only became a coder because she’s the stereotypically awkward programmer come to life.

In terms of aesthetics, it does feel like the writers took the “awkward nerd” trope too far. Everything from Zoey’s striped cardigan and collared shirt duo to the “Everything is under Ctrl” poster in her room screams “loveable geek.” In some ways, the show has many tropes

To [Zoey], everybody else seems shiny and perfect while she’s bogged down by emotional turmoil and self-doubt.

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beyond Zoey’s characterization: the supportive best-friend (Max) secretly in love with the protagonist and the racially and/or sexually diverse character forced into a supporting role with minimal character development (Mo) being two examples. This lack of depth, however, offers us crucial insight into how Zoey navigates the world. To her, everybody else seems shiny and perfect while she’s bogged down by emotional turmoil and self-doubt. This representation of the world as seen through Zoey’s eyes serves to accentuate the already noticeable cracks in her confidence.

Adding on to Zoey’s aura of insecurity are a series of unfortunate events that seem to take a hit on her sense of self over the course of the episode. There’s the more obvious discomfiture coming from the ludicrous dance numbers and the uncomfortable insights into strangers’ innermost feelings—Zoey discusses these “heart songs” a few times with Mo and once with her father. However, in addition to these vulnerable moments, a number of seemingly less significant incidents also provoked my sympathy.

There is, of course, the awful promotion interview, but there are a couple more scenes that stand out in the episode.

Once, when she suggests to her family that they open the window because her father used to love being outdoors, she’s 52

met with an irritable refusal from both her mother and her brother, coupled with the accusation that she doesn’t care about him catching a cold. When Zoey’s on her way to her interview, her colleague Lief, a suave, seemingly innocuous man also up for a promotion, wishes her good luck and assures her that there’s no toxic competition. Almost right away, he breaks into a vicious rendition of “All I Do Is Win” (another of the episode’s many heart songs), very obviously undercutting his own pretensions at sincerity. Notwithstanding the comedic relief that such jarring irony generates, for someone in Zoey’s position, learning that your most talented colleague is out to get you is not the most pleasant information to receive. She responds to each of these incidents with varying degrees of emotion, and perhaps some of them are mere trifles compared to the heavier side of the show. There is one moment, though, that strikes her straight to her core—and that is when she runs into Simon at the bakery.

Zoey has been bonding with Simon over the course of the episode—early on, he unknowingly sings “Mad World” (a decidedly uncheerful song) to her, and when she asks him what’s wrong, she learns that his father died by suicide almost a year ago. With her own father’s life dwindling away, she’s able

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to support Simon in a way that few other people can and they strike up a good-natured friendship. Except Zoey’s deeply smitten with him, and when she runs into him at the bakery, she lights up...until she hears someone call out “babe” and rush to Simon’s side. This tall, well-dressed, extremely attractive woman, Zoey learns quickly, is Simon’s fiancée, and one can almost pinpoint the exact moment when the happiness runs out of Zoey’s face and is replaced with a superficially concealed wave of sadness. Some people might give Zoey a sympathetic nod, recognising the pain of romantic rejection; but for me, this scene is loaded with emotion beyond the mere ache of rejection because of how Simon has been characterised prior to this scene. From the get-go, he is established as charismatic and desirable, and when Zoey talks to Max about her infatuation we see her swooning over what she sees as his many, many admirable qualities. When she sees Simon on a Tuesday morning energetically playing table tennis, she comments on his “joie de vivre.” Most importantly, after Simon sings “Mad World,” Zoey’s outburst to Mo tells us how she views him: “It just doesn’t make sense! The guy is handsome, and happy, and charming, and very, very sexy… he should only be singing massively upbeat anthems about how totally awesome he is!”

Perhaps this can be viewed as harmless gushing, but to me it seems that Zoey has put Simon on a pedestal—he’s perfect, someone she’s utterly unworthy of. So when she finds out he’s engaged, it’s a moment of tragic confirmation: someone as undeniably flawless as Simon is out of reach for someone as awkward, bumbling, and “sub-par” as Zoey. It’s not the impossibility of her and Simon being together itself that feels painful, but rather the implication arising from it— that Zoey isn’t worthy of love, success, or even happiness. By the time she slumps down on the couch next to her father toward the end of the episode and tearily admits to feeling like “everyone’s against me,” only then do we as viewers feel how

Image courtesy of NBC. true that is, and what follows is a moment of deep emotional release.

Zoey’s father begins singing her a heart song, slowly drawing her into an intimate slow-dance as he does so.

When he holds her hand and twirls her around, when her face flushes with disbelief and her eyes cloud with emotion, I myself am also moved to tears. Of course Zoey’s father isn’t actually singing or dancing, much like everybody else when they’re singing their heart songs—this is all happening in Zoey’s head. But in this case, there is a more heartbreaking reason why this can never be real: he’s not doing either of these things because he’s physically incapable of doing so. Zoey’s father is paralyzed from head to toe due to a rare neurological disease that has both numbered his days and made it impossible for him to move or to speak. But Zoey’s newfound superpower enables the impossible as her father breaks out into “True Colors”

by Cyndi Lauper and gently caresses her while they dance. He validates her feelings—“And the darkness inside you/ Can make you feel so small”—and rec-

ognises her best, most beautiful, and most authentic self—“But I see your true colors/ Shining through.” However, the actual words registered less than the bond itself that came through when he embraced her. It was almost as if his every action was brimming with pure love, was recognising her sorrow with warmth, was singing, “I see your true colors, the most visceral degree of youness, and I don’t love you in spite of it, I love you because of it.” And when I saw the relief on Zoey’s face, after seeing everything she had gone through over the course of the episode, it felt cathartic.

At the same time, my reaction to this episode was accompanied by a little bit of sadness. In my personal experience of dealing with low self-worth, the resolution is unfortunately not as simple as one loving exchange, or (in the case of Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist) one heartfelt musical number; it takes an incredibly arduous journey of introspection and emotional catharsis. In spite of this, I welcomed Zoey’s emotional release. I also recognise that her release was only possible through the willing suspension

of disbelief that this show necessitates, given that her paralyzed father communicates with her through her “superpower.” Although some might view this with skepticism, for me it was what made the show unique and exciting to watch, seeing how this superpower interacts with fundamental concepts of human emotion and human connection.

Even though it could be argued that Zoey’s emotional trajectory was too clean-cut and that the lack of realism undercuts the emotional undertones of the show, I feel that these very reasons constitute its charm. Seeing Zoey’s perception of the world slowly shatter as she discovers people’s unexpected truths enables us to better appreciate that we, perhaps, are simply not the center of the universe…even so, the show tells us that that doesn’t take away from the validity of our own emotional journeys as long as we are open to different ways of looking at the world. Ultimately, I felt engaged as I saw the first episode, and Zoey’s dance with her father was an unforgettable highlight.

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Nara Enkthaivan 2020 Ink and marker

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Nara Enkthaivan 2020 Ink and marker

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The Garden Anna Fruman 2020-21 Oil on canvas

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Editors’ Picks Books

brothers filmed what we / Planted for proof we existed before / Too late…” His poetry provides far more than “proof we existed”: it conjures heartbreaking beauty and reinvents tradition, merging the poetic forms of sonnet, ghazal, and blues in his creation of the “duplex.” “I begin with love, hoping to end there,” starts one duplex, and Brown takes his readers along with him on this journey, writing with love and urgency, “set on something vast.”

— Reuben Gelley Newman Fiction & Poetry Editor

The Tradition by Jericho Brown Copper Canyon Press, 2019 In his Pulitzer Prize-winning poetry collection, Jericho Brown portrays an America wracked by violence against Black people but also filled with Black queer joy, art, love, and desire. These various “traditions” intertwine throughout Brown’s poems, where one speaker’s religion is “his long black hair” and another describes the “bullet points” a cop would shoot into his brain, where one can both observe rabbits—“furry little delights fucking / In my own front yard”—and remember how, working in the garden, “men like me and my 56

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In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado Gray Wolf Press, 2019 In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado was hands down one of the best books I read over winter break.

The memoir, a follow-up to her stunning short story collection Her Body and Other Parties, chronicles Machado’s abusive relationship with a woman in her MFA program. But, unlike other memoirs told in first person, Machado uses the second person, referring to her victimized self and the reader as “you.” This choice forces the reader to identify with a victim of domestic violence, but in a much larger way it also forces the reader to understand that domestic violence is not contained to heterosexual relationships; Machado wants us to know that violence can exist in queer relationships, and victims deserve the space to talk about it.

This book does give space to talk about domestic violence in lesbian relationships, but it is also a testiment to healing from domestic abuse as well as how to cope with trauma without belittling it as “not that bad.” Machado’s abuse was not physical, and so throughout the book she questions the legitimacy of her experience and at times wishes for physical proof of the abuse so that she could stop questioning. She says, “You have this fantasy, this fucked up fantasy, of being able to whip out your phone and pull up some awful photo of yourself, looking glazed and disinterested and half your face is covered in a pulsating star. [...] Clarity is an intoxicating drug,

BEFORE YOU GO! Our picks on movies, television, music, and books for the spring semester, all compiled by the Review’s Editorial Board. and you spent almost two years without it, believing you were losing your mind, believing you were the monster, and you want something black and white more than you’ve ever wanted anything in this world.” Many survivors of violence doubt themselves, and Machado tells her reader that it is okay to do so. It is okay to want proof and explore thoughts you might be ashamed of, because acknowledging that want is part of healing.

Kumarasamy invokes feels close to a collective answer, her depiction of elders, ancestry, and mythology reassuring me that in so many ways, I’ve existed long before I was born.

— Anoushka Subbaiah Movies & TV Editor

— Elisabeth Miller Books Editor

Half Gods by Akil Kumarasamy Harper Collins, 2018 Akil Kumarasamy’s debut collection Half Gods contains ten interconnected short stories that roam across generations, continents, and eras, with an immigrant Sri Lankan family living in America centered at its stony, darkened pit. Both tender and jagged, these stories are a stunning examination of home: what it means to be home, how home can break us, how home can hold us, how home can elude us. Something that stood out to me was Kumarasamy’s bringing of different lands into dialogue with each other: from a terraced tea plantation in Sri Lanka, thick with rain and koel birds, to the muddy tulip bulbs and cigarette smoke of suburban New Jersey, the intersections of our personal, political, and geographical histories felt at once ephemeral and ingrained. What do we do with the wars that have ravaged our bodies and lands? Have they crept their way into our households over the decades? How do we name the cultural disarray and contradiction that lives within us? The unique generational nature of South Asian existence that

was spent introducing us to Sydney, her neighbors, and her neighborhood— mirrored aspects of my own experience growing up on the cusp of a gentrifying Harlem, allowing me to get caught up in the world-building as well as the similarities to my own life. When little things seemed amiss or strange I brushed them off, downplaying their importance.

When tensions started to rise, I felt the paranoia. As Sydney tried to answer the question “where do people go when gentrification pushes them out?” I became just as disoriented and alarmed as her when things took a turn for the sinister. I was unsettled as I watched Sydney’s world veer off course after being tricked into a false sense of security.

A book that deals with loss, community love and support, the haunting effects of gentrification, and more, I would definitely read When No One Is Watching again.

— Hope Darris Personal Essays Editor

When No One is Watching

by Alyssa Cole William Marrow Paperbacks, 2020 In a departure from her typical romance novels, Alyssa Cole had me hooked in her thriller When No One is Watching. As I read about Brooklyn-born and raised Sydney Green’s struggles dealing with grief and a gentrifying neighborhood, I became deeply invested in Sydney’s life. I wanted the best for her, I was annoyed with her, I was fully on board with her journey.

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Movies & TV Nagi-Asu: A Lull in the Sea 2013 In his poem “The Worm-King’s Lullaby,” Richard Siken wrote, “Someone has to leave first. This is a very old story.

There is no other version of this story.”

Nagi-Asu: A Lull in the Sea, a 2013 anime produced by P.A. Works, embodies this quote. The series focuses on four friends living in an underwater civilization who must attend a middle school on the surface after theirs closes due to low enrollment. On the surface, they have no choice but to navigate the manufactured separations between sea people and land people. Along with stunning visuals that convincingly show the shimmer of an underwater civilization, the worldbuilding of Nagi-Asu seamlessly integrates epic folklore with the quotidian. To most, sea gods and underwater cities like Atlantis are old wives’ tales; in Nagi-Asu, they are everyday life, and at times, a nuisance.

Entangled with the difficulties of reconciling sea people and land people are attempts to make sense of adult feelings and the striking fragility of adolescence.

The young protagonists’ generational burden—to overcome the needless separation between land and sea—is the fulcrum that forces them to delicately balance their vulnerability against their tendencies towards restraint. Despite the high-concept premise of an underwater civilization carrying the emotional burden of breathing folklore, this is the story:

that someone has to leave first, and someone will always, always be left behind.

— Anatole Shukla Features Editor

Manhunt: UNABOMBER 2017 “There’s a little bit of the unabomber in most of us. We may not share his approach to airing a grievance, but the grievance itself feels familiar.” – Robert Wright The Unabomber first got his manifesto, which touted the downfall of humanity due to the Industrial Revolution, published when he backed the FBI into a corner, threatening to send more bombs unless the manifesto was published by a major newspaper. When it was finally published, it was a sensation. The bomber, who had warranted one of the biggest 58

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FBI task forces, was given a megaphone to a national audience, and the government looked more ridiculous and powerless than ever with their hands tied.

The manifesto’s publication, however, would ultimately lead to the Unabomer, a.k.a. Ted Kaczynski’s, arrest.

Manhunt: UNABOMBER weaves the lives of the Unabomber (Paul Bettany) and the FBI profiler Jim Fitzgerald (Sam Worthington), who obsesses and ruins his personal life while investigating the Unabomber. This show gives us insight not only into the thrilling breadcrumb trail that leads to the bomber but also into the Unabomber’s psyche. The Wright quote above, though it may raise eyebrows at first, clarifies itself once we, as viewers, are offered a glimpse into the Unabomber’s life and his manifesto’s key points. Of course I couldn’t forgive the Unabomber no matter the sob story, nor do I expect anyone to, but it was exceptionally powerful to see how personally and vividly his story was told through-

out the series. The show isn’t meant to make you suddenly love the Unabomber, although his ideologies of how we have chained ourselves to technology are all thoughts that we’ve had before at some point. Once you hear it, it haunts you. It haunted Fitzgerald and soon you’ll hear the Unabomber too, calling you a blind sheep to society when you stop for a red light at night when there’s no one else there.

— Angie Kwon Asst. Arts Editor

Violet Evergarden 2018 Based on Kana Akatsuki’s light novel series, Violet Evergarden follows the story of an orphaned former child soldier as she settles back into society following an intense war. Previously ex-

ploited as a merciless killing machine, Violet Evergarden struggles to find her place after losing her commanding officer and caretaker Major Gilbert Bougainvillea, whom she desperately tries and fails to save in a final deadly battle. Her arms, which she loses in battle, are replaced with metallic prosthetics.

Traumatized and confused, and struggling to decipher Gilbert’s final words to her, “I love you,” she decides to work at the CH Postal Company as an Auto-Memory Doll, a ghostwriter for people in an age where the majority of people can’t write or need help to convey their emotions in letters. This reveals deficiencies in her own capabilities in identifying and expressing human emotions. But while traveling around the country and assisting others to convey their sentiments, Violet gradually connects with others and more fully understands the scope of human emotions, including that of her own.

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Set in an alternate world akin to that of 20th century Europe, Violet Evergarden nevertheless grounds itself in the painful gravity of war, stunningly animated by Kyoto Animation and aided by a moving orchestral soundtrack.

Violet’s newfound empathy, however, allows her to confront the weight of each life she took throughout the war— each one a letter that won’t reach home, and a person out there left mourning forever. As she parses through her post-traumatic stress and grows into her new life as an Auto Memory Doll, Violet develops meaningful friendships, both with her colleagues and clients at the CH Postal Company, that allow her to process her grief as well as show her what it means to reveal one’s feelings through letter-writing, an intimate and arguably lost form of communication. All in all, Violet Evergarden simultaneously paints a stark and brutal picture of war as well as a poignant, hopeful tale of healing, redemption, and the courage to live freely.

— Atziri Marquez Arts Editor 60

Buffy the Vampire Slayer 2017 While the habit of binge watching one show to the next was worsened by 2020—and didn’t seem to get any better

by December 31st—it seems that, though the options feel limitless, we always find ourselves asking for others’ suggestions.

Currently, I am watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer, recommended by a friend, a show about a 90s Valley Girl turned legendary chosen one. The show’s aesthetics scream early 2000s, with the music, the fashion, and sometimes the jokes. Before watching, I had no idea just how influential this teen drama has been on television and fantasy film since its creation.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer was one of the first serialized television shows which had both an overarching seasonal arc and plotline, along with smaller plots for individual episodes. This style of TV has since turned commonplace. While Buffy fights demons and vampires every episode, many of her villains and triumphs clearly carry metaphors for deeper meanings—abusive relationships, addiction, female friendship—all while her town is

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quite literally on top of the gates of Hell, the opening being in the high school. The show provides light, fun entertainment while simultaneously tackling some pretty heavy subject matters. Buffy continues to have quite the cult following, and not only influences popular culture still to this day, but was successful with various spin off series as well.

When I reached about season 3 of the show, however, recent headlines began to pop up about the show’s creator, Joss Whedon. Within the last couple of months, various actresses who starred on the show came forward with the disappointing news that Whedon perpetrated an unhealthy environment on set and made them uncomfortable.

Other actresses and actors spoke out in support, showing not only the sad truth of the production but the lasting friendships it created as well. This situation also brings to light the age old dilemma of how to appreciate an art without admiring the artist, and if there is such a way to appropriately do so, if at all.

— Annie Wixted Contributing Editor

Music

Will Save Us All!

by Chicks on Speed 2000 “Will Save Us All!” provides a musical education in some of Europe’s sexiest electronic music from the late 70s up until the album’s release date of 2000. The then Munich-based multimedia collective managed to compile eclectic and irreverent covers of some underground classics, such as their phenomenal version of German experimental band Malaria!’s “Kaltes Klares Wasser” and The Normal’s

“Warm Leatherette.”

The fact that Chicks on Speed’s covers are great, however, should not overshadow their own contributions to the electronic music scene. The robotic delivery and super sleazy composition on standout track “Glamour Girl” presents electroclash at its best—almost as if Aqua took a bunch of nitrous oxide and composed “Barbie Girl” specifically for the purpose of a very intoxicated slumber party. If you find the beginning too difficult to bear, feel free to skip to the final track

“Eurotrash Girl,” a cover of Cracker’s (frankly obnoxious) folk song about a trashy backpacker. This is where you can truly see the group’s riot grrrl ethos, as a monotone voice recites the events of said trashy backpacker over a constant drum machine beat. It cannot be overstated how sometimes self-aware scruffy men with acoustic guitars simply cannot do what a few Chicks on Speed can.

— Sage Rhys Music Editor SWARTHMORE REVIEW | ISSUE 28

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The Marías Formed in 2016 Formed in Los Angeles in 2016, The Marías is a psychedelic-soul group that made their presence known in the music industry with their EP’s Superclean Vol. I and Superclean Vol. II released in 2017 and 2018, respectively. After a chance meeting at Laurel Canyon Music Revival series in L.A, María, an Atlanta-raised Puerto Rican, and Josh Conway, an L.A. native, took to melding their diverse backgrounds and influences into The Marías.

Like a forbidden fruit, The Marías entice. They have the ability to create soundscapes that can only be described as dreamy: throughout their discography there are hints of alluring bossa nova, smooth jazz, velvety soul, and bouncy funk, all of which provide a surreal backing for María’s 62

lulling and hypnotic voice. With a new album on the way, CINEMA, The Marías are continuing to sculpt streams of consciousness into something unique, beautiful, and human.

perimental, lo-fi production coupled with Earl’s signature poetics. The deep monotone we’ve come to expect from Earl is there; it’s not quite as hopeless as IDLSIDGO but equally introspective. His steadiness at the mic grounds the tracks, which flow quite freely into one another but produce sharply different soundscapes. The curiously glitchy single “Nowhere2go” is followed by the chilly keys of “December 24,” which itself flows into the jazzy and upbeat “Ontheway!” Earl’s lyrics don’t necessarily reflect the production around him—“Dark face on the news/ Clouds gray on the move/On the way like the truth,” the track’s closing triplet, is made even more ominous when the phrase “on the way” is repeated in the penultimate track, “Peanut.” Earl’s father, an accomplished poet in his own right and a complicated figure across the discography, died when Earl was nearly finished with the album.

His death prompted the recording of the final two tracks, first “Peanut,” a formless, slurred set of bars set over an equally blurry beat, made all the more devastating by the context surrounding it. Then, in the blink of an eye, the album’s triumphant closing, “Riot!,” comes on. It’s a lucid and lush instrumental track, sampling Hugh Masekela, legend of South African jazz, and a friend of Earl’s father. It’s a fitting tribute and end to the album.

— Chase Smith Contributing Editor

— Alexander Del Greco Contributing Editor

Some Rap Songs

by Earl Sweatshirt 2018 Earl Sweatshirt’s evolution from teenage shock-value rap pre-Doris to depressive ennui on I Don’t Like Shit, I Don’t Go Outside reaches another stage with Some Rap Songs. As the title suggests, SRS is a collection of rap ideas—not all of them fully realized— but it nevertheless harnesses an ex-

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Also From This Year...

Arts A Cocoon of Memory: Intersections of Fiction and Reality in Behind These Folded Walls, Utopia

by Eva Baron | Feb. 25, 2021 Creating Hygge

by Atziri Marquez | Mar. 23, 2021

Fiction & Poetry Two Poems

by Tiffany Wong-Jones | Oct. 22, 2020 Two Poems

by Zoe Myers-Bochner | Jan. 28, 2021 March Is March

by Tiffany Wong-Jones | Mar. 23, 2021 Two Poems

by Cat Crochunis-Brown | Apr. 13, 2021 allegory for the year we lost to the moon

by Liya Chang | Apr. 15, 2021

Books Try to be Somebody Upon Whom Nothing is Lost: An Interview with Prof. Greg Frost

by Elisabeth Miller | Apr. 22, 2021

Music The Disease Afflicting the Realm of Classical Music

by Atesh Camurdan | Jan. 28, 2021 Chopin Étude Op. 25 No. 1 & Chopin Waltz Op. 64 No. 2

by Luke Wang | Mar. 18, 2021 & Mar. 30, 2021

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