Issue 16

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Rediscovering Homeland Within

Photo Essay

by Vivian Zhang

AND An experiment for 2017 AND Falling for Grindr, on users and apps

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CONTRIBUTORS Zac Arestad is a senior Anthropology major at Swarthmore. When he’s not sleeping, he enjoys worrying about deadlines he missed while sleeping.

Nora Battelle is a senior English major from New York. Her nose is to the grindstone but her boots are to the thigh ;) Tom Corbani lives to push deadlines to the limit. Tom Corbani lives for those moments of high intensity. He might graduate in three months.

Kat Ham is a junior majoring in Classical Studies. Her primary motivations for pursuing the subject have been an interest in ancient religions and a love for torturing her friend(s) with horrible Roman memes and fun facts that no one asked for.

Jessica Hernandez is a freshman with an avid love for flannels and Five Guys burgers.

Ian Holloway is a senior at Swarthmore from Brooklyn, majoring in Chinese and Linguistics. His literary influences include Gao Xingjian, Qu Yuan, and Jorge Luis Borges.

Rachel Hottle enjoys quiet evenings by the fire and imposing her nihilism on others.

Letter policy Letters are welcome from all readers. We will never publish letters anonymously and we reserve the right to edit all letters for length and clarity without contacting the letter writer.

Letters generally should run no longer than 1,000 words.

They should be sent to nbattel1@swarthmore.edu.

How to contribute We solicit pieces from writers, though we will also accept submissions of long-form reporting, personal, argumentative and photo essays, book and movie reviews, short stories, poems, and anything else that seems suitable. Submissions will be considered from Swarthmore students, alumni, faculty, and staff, and will be considered anonymously, though we will not, except in rare cases, publish anonymously. Submissions should generally not be longer than 10,000 words.

Contact: nbattel1@swarthmore.edu, sherron1@swarthmore.edu

Jonathan Kay is a freshman from Santa Cruz, California studying statistics. He’s in a band.

George Menz is a freshman from Connecticut studying philosophy and computer science.

Eduard Saakashvili has 139 LinkedIn connections and growing.

Leah Schwartz is a sophomore.

Abhinav Tiku is currently a junior studying History and Film & Media Studies. He’s a traveler trying to find where to stop, and in his spare time, he loves eating potatoes of really any kind.

Grant Torre ‘17 is half of the Hrabar/Torre power couple that is now, thankfully, gone from campus—but not forgotten. He is best known for designing a geofilter for his own graduation party and is currently working in sunny Los Angeles.

Lily Tyson is a senior.

Vivian Zhang is from China. Lured by the world. Dream outside the world.

LAYOUT EDITOR TOM CORBANI

MANAGING EDITOR SAMANTHA HERRON BOOKS LEO ELLIOT

CONTRIBUTING EDITORS ISABEL CRISTO IAN HOLLOWAY BRANDON TORRES

FICTION AND POETRY COLETTE GERSTMANN

EDITOR AT LARGE LILIANA FRANKEL

MUSIC SAMANTHA HERRON PHOTO ESSAYS NOAH MORRISON S W A R T H M O R E

Emma Walker is an avid meme lover from Kingston, Jamaica. She spends her free time watching obscure gay indie films and editing her very sophisticated Spotify playlists.

Liz Whipple is a Sagittarius (both star and moon signs) who loves going on whale watches.

EDITOR IN CHIEF NORA BATTELLE

Published by the Swarthmore Phoenix swarthmorephoenix.com Founded 2012 | Issue 16

Design © 2016 the Swarthmore Phoenix. All content © 2016 by its listed author unless otherwise noted. The “R” logo is based on the font Layer Cake by Luzia Prado. The “Review” logo is based on the font Soraya by Pactrice Scott. Printed at Bartash Printing, Philadelphia, PA. Please recycle this magazine.

“You may say a cat uses good grammar. Well, a cat does—” Mark Twain, A Tramp Abroad

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TWO PERSONAL ESSAYS

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Beware the cult of the future Eduard Saakashvili on remembering that life is not a stock

February 2017

Arts

FEATURE

Sick and commercial on a Boeing Abhinav Tiku muses on international flights

ART

‘Freedom Principle’ 21 Reimagining the canon at the ICA

by Liz Whipple

BOOKS

On counterfactuals 27

A review of ‘Life After Life’ and ‘The Man in the High Castle’

by Lily Tyson

TELEVISION & MOVIES

Oscars—not so white? 30 A few truths about the film industry

by Grant Torre

‘Passengers’ and ‘Arrival’ 32

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For 2017 Nora Battelle proposes an experiment in which we try to unknow, and then begin to learn

FICTION AND POETRY

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‘Time Travel’ 28

A factual account of fictions

by Zac Arestad

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ALSO IN FEATURES

9 Falling for Grindr Tom Corbani examines the relationship between the notorious hookup app and its users

Two sci-fi films that never quite arrive

by Jonathan Kay

Peter the lantern’s son

by Kat Ham

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Urban dusk Exchanges

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Cloudburst How to be sick

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Two poems by Ian Holloway

Two poems by Leah Schwartz

LETTERS OF REC

MUSIC

Brief recommendations from our editors on books, music, and more

The Weeknd returns 34 And it’s a pop party

by Emma Walker

Kid Cudi gets personal 35 On ‘Passion, Pain, and Demon Slayin’ ‘

by Jessica Hernandez

PHOTO ESSAY

by Vivian Zhang

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‘Awaken, My Love!’ 37 Childish Gambino can still surprise

by Rachel Hottle

Looking back at shoegaze 38

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FEATURE

For 2017 On the girls who cry while walking their dogs at night

by Nora Battelle

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he’s 17. Her legs are strong, long, protruding like tree limbs from the mesh of a pair of dark sports shorts and, on the opposite end, from black sneakers.

On her ears are a pair of headphones, in her hand, the leash of her nondescript mutt, or her beagle, or her miniature poodle.

She is crying.

Why is she crying?

Well, that is what I want to try and explain to you. I’m looking back, now, on the time when I was one of these girls, on the time when I walked amongst the others like a specter at midnight. We did it in the dark, our crying, with only the gold glimmer of streetlights to show the wet on our faces, and no one to see it.

One of the reasons was this: it was all too much. The lying we did, to our parents and our friends and the boys next to us on the couch. The studying we did, the cups of coffee we swallowed from paper cups in the basement of the school, the vodka we mixed with cranberry juice. The worship we were taught for this or that and him or her or them.

Another of the reasons was this: we couldn’t tell if we were beautiful. We would sometimes eat and sometimes we would stop because we couldn’t tell, when we looked in the mirror, what everyone saw. And we thought that perhaps if things were like so, or like so, or perhaps like so, then we would know, then we would know and the answer would be that yes—we were beautiful.

Another was this: we thought we knew

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all we needed to know, because that’s what they told us when they soothed us or demanded of us, but we didn’t know anything. And we felt it.

Specters at midnight, walking their dogs, crying: there she is! There she walks!

I know her. I love her, still. Because she loved herself, then, too, in an angry confusion based on asymmetrical information and silence; and she also hated herself.

Today, I am astonished by her. Because I see now she is beautiful. She is beautiful because she is angry, because she feels a dissonance between what is in the morning, what she is told is, and what is as she walks alone and unseen. She doesn’t know where to turn or what to trust. She knows only that her friends are in the same confusion, they too are angry and they don’t know why. All they know is that they don’t know when all they are allowed to say is that they know, when all that allows them worth is knowing—knowing and being seen to know.

They talk, sometimes, in the morning, and laugh, their voices shaking a little: “Wait, no, you cried TOO last night while walking your dog?! NO way.”

So when they aren’t seen, when they are subsumed in the darkness with the warm streetlights and the warm presence of a little dog there to allow them to tremble, tremble they do. Music, emotional, repetitive, is blasting in their ears so the absence of solutions is drowned out and so they can murmur nothingness without hearing their own clumsy ineptitude with words.

“Something, something is missing, here.” That specter girl there, she clutches her stomach. Another clutches her heart, and another her head.

These girls are, it is essential to add, white, and liberal, and privileged, getting

the best education money can buy.

But they don’t know anything about that, really.

The year is 2012. Feminism is a historical artifact. Race affects lives, today, only because for historical reasons it often overlaps with poverty—in the liberal northeast, anyway. We are all connected, we are all building bridges every day and all the bridges will hold.

We are limitless! We are happy! We are unified with our friends of color and the fights have been fought. Now, all that’s left is to live, to feel, to be with one another as we are.

So we learned, through our sterling education. There were problems, yes. But nothing too dire. Nothing Obama couldn’t fix, nothing we couldn’t fix, too, with our sterling education, with our brains and our beauty [with this absence, with these tears, with this body of elisions and ellipses that cannot bear to be seen any longer].

Walk, walk, hurry, cold hits her legs in gusts and she gasps in a mouthful of heavy mist.

Where is she going?

To a good college, certainly, where the years will tick onward to 2013 and Trayvon Martin, to 2014 and Eric Garner and Michael Brown, to 2016 and Donald Trump.

She will realize what she didn’t know, somewhat, and she will gasp in a mouthful of shock, hurt, and betrayal by the people she loved for wisdom and by herself, too. Because she will realize that the hurt in her body is a small reverberation from a smash that happens elsewhere. She will realize that the work hasn’t been done, the bridges are made of plywood, and the water is quickly rising.

She will ask, then, how to unlearn all that knowing.

Beginning the unknowing

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s the above an essay? Or a fiction, a memory, a wish? It is all of those, maybe. But it is at least a starting point.

A starting point that ends with a question suggests its own next step. We must address the question: how to unlearn knowing. What does our girl, our dog-walking, crying girl, choose first as her method of unknowing? She watches.

She tries to see what is around her where before she looked at what was shown her—even when it wasn’t, in fact, what was around her. She tries to see what

is in all the ellipses that she felt in the streetlamp light at midnight, those places where she felt something missing, those places where she was wrong.

If we follow her into this searching gaze, will we see this tactic help her unknow? It is an essential step, isn’t it, to change how she looks, before she can change how she knows? Changing what she takes in will allow her to change what she knows—this is the stage of wanting to find something different, and going after it.

But it’s a failure, I’ll tell you that now, and a sad one, perhaps a hideous one.

You’ll see. There is no unknowing that happens in the tale that follows. The two characters in the story, they are both our girl, although one of them is now a boy (because our girl can be, of course, sometimes a boy). And they remain estranged.

They never touch.

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ecause seeing does not equal hearing, or touching, or learning. Most often, however sincere we are, however hard we watch, we find ourselves facing mirrors: you become a reflection of me.

What happens when we watch

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was watching you. Was that wrong?

Just to watch.

You there, sitting on the bench in the rose garden, sobbing.

I knew you, because you were in my seminar, my writing seminar, for the English kids who wanted to write something big, a long paper, a final project—a grand project.

In class, you were a study, quite a study: straight, serious gaze leveled at whomever was speaking, little twitches that prompted the professor to raise his brow at you and to say, “yes, Rose?”

You would respond, sometimes, with those long, detailed answers that seemed to have captured you by the imagination.

Sometimes, you would just shake your head, “Oh! No,” and look down. I didn’t know where you were, really, with either response. The first type I generally couldn’t follow. The second type, surely, shielded someplace you went and didn’t want to—perhaps couldn’t even try to— take us.

I tried to turn to the professor for cues on how to follow you, how to respond to you. He would furrow his brow and interrupt you, he would pull out a little strand of light shining on the path you were describing and weave it into his own theories. He was, I think, ashamed around you, because you cared so much, but not about him, and he didn’t understand exactly what it was you cared about.

I ended the semester unsure if you were, after all, going somewhere in there, in your head, if you knew, after all, something we didn’t, or whether you were lost,

and not sure how to get out, and looking for answers in all the grand projects we were tracing out together at that large oak table. You never succeeded in making us understand anything, so I became suspicious that you never succeeded in understanding anything yourself.

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ur school was very rich, hence the elaborate and lush rose garden tended by its own gardener, Mick. I was casually acquainted with Mick because I worked grounds my first year of school. Mick never worked with the students, incompetent as we mostly were, and stuck to his rose garden, but I made a little headway with him by asking about grafting roses and paying his dog respect when it lay panting outside the garden gate.

Of course, I wanted to be friends with the aloof gardener and his dog. I was very influenced by Thoreau at the time, not so much by his work, which I had skimmed for class in high school, but by the idea of him.

Of course, it was perfect that Rose should frequent the rose garden. I don’t think she talked to Mick, ever. I never saw her speak in the garden at all, actually; she usually read there, alone on one of the benches tucked into the hedge. But I sensed a sort of kinship between them, between her and him and the garden, too, that I wanted to be a part of.

Rose—Rose—sitting there, sobbing.

It was night. I had just walked out of the library and I saw you and I knew it, you were sobbing because you were alone. I

knew, so I thought that gave me the right, somehow, to watch.

But you had to be alone, didn’t you?

Could you have been any other way? With those steady eyes. You were too serious not to be alone!

Someone had just left you. Did you break your garden silence with him? I didn’t know who it was but he had slipped across the lawn and just as I knew you were crying because you were alone, I knew he had failed you, somehow. Damn it.

I remembered something you had written, about a theoretical novel in which the main character always wore wigs, different ones. I don’t remember how it related to your project. You were using it to prove a point. I thought it was funny.

But it seemed so disconnected from you, Rose. There was nothing funny about you.

Not with those steady eyes and those little twitches, of your nose and your mouth and your fingers on the table.

Is this a love letter to you? Maybe. Or practice for my novel, where maybe I’ll get to love you? It’s relevant, perhaps, that I stood there watching you for twenty minutes or so, until your body stopped shaking and stilled in a huddled, broken sort of way, and I wanted to pick up the pieces, and I wanted to kiss you because you looked so pathetic. But I didn’t think I could touch you. Probably, if I tried, my fingers would grasp right through you.

You were insubstantial. You were unstable.

I thought, maybe, you didn’t really exist, you were a figment of my imagination— my suppressed feminine side perhaps, something Freudian, certainly.

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eventually walked around to the other side of the circular garden, where I couldn’t see you anymore, but I was closer to you. I pressed my hand to the shielding hedge. You couldn’t be much more than three feet from me, but I couldn’t hear anything, not breath or movement, or feel anything, the heat of your body or the chill of your sadness. I cursed at myself, in my head, because what if you could see me, feel me. I was real, I was sure, I moved the air and I created little ripples around me. You wouldn’t want me here.

Would you?

After that, I watched you more and more. Sometimes, when in the thick of a crowd, walking down the hill when class-

es were letting out, I would follow you, into the library, down to the dining hall. I would sit at a table near you, I would face myself towards you, I would walk by you again and again and as the months went by, I came to know your habits, what you liked to eat, where you liked to read, other than the rose garden. Because you didn’t go back there.

And I felt like something had broken.

Something? That whole, that unity, that kinship between you and Mick and the garden. You had lost it.

Was I imagining this? Had you really changed? I thought you smiled more, now, when you chatted your words were quicker, more clipped, more charged, but all of it felt—fake. The steadiness of your gaze

quivered.

Our seminar was over. But we were all supposed to be working independently, finishing our projects.

I felt sure you weren’t working on yours, because I never saw you writing.

Did you notice? Me? Around you, watching you, waiting to see if one day, I might touch you, brush my hand against yours, or your sleeve?

Hm. I would murmur, in fear.

It made me feel ashamed. You made me feel ashamed. You, Rose. You. With those eyes that weren’t so steady anymore, that ducked more even as your twitching lips turned into smiling ones; your tapping hands started clutching, instead, clutching into little balled up fists.

Once we’ve watched

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gave you an interpretation of the above story before you even started reading, because I don’t want to obfuscate or avoid my own meanings, or even to leave them up to the risky chances of diverse interpretation: I gave you fiction, but it’s fiction-as-a-tool, fiction-as-utility. I am looking for examples, and sometimes “fake” examples work best of all, fictive ones, because they are allowed to embellish themselves as

close as possible towards reality. Real stories? Well, they’re so often very spare.

The example above speaks, I hope, to the readers of this piece who populate a college campus. You feel those watching gazes, I think—I certainly do. And when we feel the absences in that watching, the unknown, the inaccessible, our hearts ache, and they acknowledge what the girls walking their dogs at night didn’t know how to put into

words. They give form, when they take in information that they are sure is incomplete, to what previously was diffuse and formless: they see unknowing.

But then what? These hearts remain estranged, these minds remain ignorant, these lives fail to touch. To put into words unknowing still fails to give it any redress. That is what we must try next—we must speak into the silence and the empty space we see.

An introduction to something I did

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his time my example is real, because fiction won’t do anymore.

Fiction will still play a role—as before in this essay, it remains a tool, a means through which we can speak to one another. But the speaking has to happen “out there”—because that is, after all, the place we live: the real world. I used fiction to talk to you, here, in this piece of writing, one out-there, but I’ve also used it in other out-theres, and that’s what I want to explain, now.

It was a moment in time, and a space in time, where I felt a gap of understanding, an ellipsis and a distance and an inability to communicate.

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The circumstances: I have two friends here at Swarthmore who run a poetry blog called nouncake, in which submissions listing a series of nouns or noun phrases (which express a mood, a moment, etc.) are reviewed and posted. I was studying abroad and far away from these friends and the group of people who generally posted in the blog. I had also always felt uninterested in submitting a “noun cake” or being a part of this blog, in the past. It didn’t appeal to me as a writer.

What I did: I submitted to the blog, twice. But not under my own name, not under my email address. I will tell you now, the submissions were both rejected.

What follows are transcripts of the emails I sent the poetry blog email address, including the poems I was submitting.

I think they do a fairly good job of explaining why I am submitting these poems, and why under what I will call an alternative rather than false identity, but I have annotated them throughout with bracketed comments for further clarification. I did not include the one response that I received, which goes chronologically between the two emails, but it is an impersonal rejection that cites the formal divergence of my submission from the blog’s typical fare as grounds for the rejection.

Photo courtesy of www.scsi.ie

Email 1: This is a submission for your blog. It is not only nouns but I think it shares the intimate nature of the things you publish. take it or leave it, as you see fit.

Ella Langer is not my real name, and I don’t particularly want this poem to be associated with my real identity [because you may not feel the empty spaces between us when I inhabit that identity, you may think our friendship has illuminated the darkness in between us], but I do feel for some reason [because I wrote it for you, for this, I wrote it to speak to you] it could belong with the other things you have posted. It can be posted, however, if you decide to post it, with this name. Ella exists as an alternative identity that lets me move outside of my “real” self [myself as you know her, as you watch her], and this work can fairly be attributed to her [to the Nora who is Ella, who wants to speak to you anew so that we can insert communication where before there was only knowing].

Somehow, now, I am different Sitting on the train, looking at a boy with a surly face and a coiled body I think of you And I know I wanna get intimate.

It used to be a game, really, a funny thing we can play just to see what happens Young, elastic and invincible, I thought, curious, I was, Struck down by the weight of a thing I didn’t recognize, eventually.

Retreat: retreat: retreat: Now, it’s much more serious.

Consequences: real, I note.

Now, I want to grow.

You—you are a challenge, so far In your bed, I get closer, in your lips on my ear, I get closer, in watching your face when you are talking to yourself, I get closer Because you are almost always talking to yourself. Only, sometimes, to me. And rarely, you are listening. But I watch your face when you look and I think you want to listen.

I don’t wanna get intimate with you, you know.

With you, I would always be tied like a lasso to your whirling arm, slapped by the wind, not moving myself, learning, though, how you move, with each crack I’m so curious You made me curious I think, now, if I got intimate, I would learn.

I could be better If I could learn

Photo courtesy of www.history.com

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Email 2: I have another poem for you. Perhaps you will prefer it. I believe it is more noun centric [I have tried again, I have listened to your criticism—although I have not abandoned what I think is the fiction-truth I want to express in poetry].

I may send you everything I write, now. Would this bother you? I feel very affectionate towards you, for some reason, although your only email to me was, we might say, professional [build this bridge with me! Let us enter the ellipsis! Let us talk! I want to hear you, and I want you to hear me, too].

If this would bother you, tell me and I will abandon this project. I do not wish to infringe on your privacy and your personal virtual space. In trying to put myself in your position, I am not sure what my reaction to Ella would be, and of course I am even farther from understanding your reaction [I acknowledge our distance. So, I ask you to join me, to tell me what lies in that space of unknowing].

In any event, I wish you luck with your project, and thank you for your consideration of my poem. And, perhaps, of my project, of Ella.

Edna at the sterile door, signs pointing every direction, a quiet photo in the corner. Doors, doors, doors. The pavement glittering in summer sun this late afternoon, hair whipping, floating. Edna momentarily stilled from a wheel in the stomach.

A street too far east and a little girl on it listening to stories and imagining. An unknown street. Vaccines? That door over there.

A passage through that door and ever unexpected arrival into a black mind.

Something big and heavy: the body pulling apart one atom at a time, the futile effort to put it all all all back together. That door over there, the one you want. The door over there that will wake you up.

The bars on the crib and grandma stilled behind them. A small form stilled, furled, warm in the sun between those other bodies, two large ones. A small form awake and whole. A small form crumbling into atoms. A small form putting atoms back, one atom for every infinity fallen away.

The door that waits on the other side of the nightmare. The door that is, too, a dream—but there it is, on a street too far east. A green spray of leaves falling through the summer afternoon air.

A rememberance: a medium sized girl in the street. Edna. Inchoate girl.

Reviewing my attempt to talk

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he poems that I submitted and the emails that went along with them were written in an attempt to get closer, to move from watching into interacting and participating, to move from distance and knowing into closeness and discarded walls. I “knew” that the poetry blog wasn’t “for me,” for my writing, wasn’t a language I spoke, so I used fiction, the fiction of an identity as Ella, to move closer, to enter into this world.

A friend asked me if this was such a good solution, if the only way we could move from knowing to unknowing, to communicate across that unknowing, was by being “fake,” by pretending beliefs or identities or thoughts we do not have.

But there was nothing fake about Ella, nothing, I hope, dishonest: she was an open fiction, who I thought could serve as a channel through which new forms of talking could be imagined. Of course, the mistake I made may have been too 8

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much fear of the fake, of the dishonest: in the end the language Ella gave me access to was still deemed too far from the Noun Cake language, and not only were my poems rejected, but my second email went unanswered. But I think she made an honest effort: she tried to create a new space of language that might belong to both nouncake and the girl who sat behind Ella, Nora. She believed that a “fiction” might change everything.

I am far from the first person to propose fiction or fictive space as a tool for reforming reality (see theater practitioner Augusto Boal, see the motivations that propel many writers and artists through years of inglorious, badly paid work). For me, however, this is a timely historical moment to remember it, when we are grasping around us at straws that won’t stick in our hands—when we continue to think we know, when we continue to talk past one another, when we continue to look at blanks in others and fill them with

our own words. The experiment I put forward here is one in which we claim fiction, situational identities, and the reach of imagination as necessary tools that can propel us where the comfortable and strict confines of their habitual identities cannot. I don’t claim that my experiment was a success, or that every use of fiction will yield new understanding and connection; I claim only that we need whatever we can take in our toolbox, and that I think fiction has a fair chance of hammering up some bridges.

So look wherever you can for empty space to fill, make your own effort, craft your own fictional truths: wherever, however we can, the trying mustn’t stop. It’s all an experiment. But the stakes are very high.

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ecause remember what our dog-walking seventeen year old realized? The water is rising quickly. u

FEATURE

Falling for Grindr

Reflections on the relationships we build with hookup apps

Grindr is a app mostly used by men and trans people to hookup. If you spend long enough on it, you’ll come across all types of people and

by Tom Corbani

I

cried when I realized my Grindr account had been deleted. I cried over five years of favorited profiles, an archive of exhausted and unrequited lust, that had been erased from cyberspace by a fudged thumbprint — a scorned ex, a crush from a foreign place, an anonymous hookup from my sexual infancy. Tracking their profiles on the app was a way to preserve a link. Not that I’d ever, ever want to rekindle any of these relationships, but I found comfort in recognizing their faces or torsos every time I fingered through my sexual rolodex. What I’d lost was more than just a list. It was a connection to a history I was terrified to see fade, as I forgot my partners’ traits or initials (you rarely see names on the app, they’re much too genuine). My investment in these virtual tabs frightened me.

I realized that Grindr is much more than just a sex app, downloaded to facilitate no strings attached hookups in queer men’s circles. Users develop a relationship with the interface itself over the years, as partners come and cum and go one after another and the ever-changing grid of pictures is all that remains. “Single” is dead, now that we’re always seeing dozens of people who are down to fuck within a given mile radius. The amount of action we get is determined by our understanding of online social decorum, and whether it be

the tone of our messages or quality of our pictures we’ve developed new flirt tactics contingent on the app’s form. I barely noticed how quickly it changed my little gay world. I needed to sit Grindr down, the way I would a flakey boyfriend, and define the relationship (DTR if you’re in the know). This feature is an attempt at doing this, both through my own experiences and those of various interview subjects you’ll get to meet.

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n a surface level, the app serves a simple purpose: getting men who have sex with men laid. For decades, there’ve been a multitude of ways to go about this, and the app follows the evolutionary lineage of glances at bar counters, personal ads in gay periodicals, and more recently, listings on Craigslist’s M4M (men for men) pages. The latter’s overlap with the Grindr era is most prominent, and many of the app’s current users formerly scrolled through these online listings before making the switch. Alex was one such gay boy who “graduated from the Craigslist camp.” He’s been sexually active since his early teens, finding one night stands any which way he could. Although he discovered Grindr when he was still underage, he only started using it seriously once he got older, since his age was much more of an issue on the app than on the website. In his words, “I was having sex with guys who were 10+

years older than me when I was 14 on Craigslist, versus on Grindr, where I was lucky to find someone attractive, my age, and DTF [down to fuck] with a kid.” This distinction is telling: whereas his experience on Craigslist fits within the common stereotype of the M4M forum as sketchy, on the fringes of the law. Grindr has always been a cleaner platform: less anonymous, more accountable.

I met Alex when we flirted on Grindr Aesthetics, a Facebook group for users of the app to share advice, grievances and screenshots with a receptive community.

His profile pairs a charming face pic featuring a terrier with an open invitation to solicitations. Part of what made our interactions fun was the extent to which his mild self-deprecation and unapologetic libido resonated with me. Our interview hinted at the fact that this might stem from a shared sexual awakening. I grew up in a city, and remember being 15 and cruising the streets in the dead of the night to find men, any men, who’d show me some sexual ropes. Without sex-ed resources or a private internet connection, fucking older was a welcome learning resource. Danger wasn’t of foremost concern: even five years ago, when “gay” wasn’t really okay, walking down a school corridor or a dark alley felt equally risky. Much of this has changed with the increased acceptance of gay lifestyles, and Grindr’s safety-oriented user base is a symptom of these shifts. On SWARTHMORE REVIEW

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Grindr, sex lives feel regimented, normal.

Of course, these experiences aren’t unanimous. Jack, a Swarthmore student I spoke to at length, downloaded Grindr after he got stood up by a boy at an event they’d agreed to meet at.

“I felt weird, I’d never really been to a big bar by myself before — it was a beer garden,” he said. “I got a beer, like a really tall beer, more than a pint — huge — and I just sat there and drank and drank and went outside to smoke and just got on Grindr and messaged everyone, every single person that night, within like a 20 mile radius.”

Eventually he went home, where he agreed to meet up with a boy he found on the app. He described the hookup itself in contradictory terms: “I can’t remember. No, I can remember, it’s very vivid. I’m being modest, I can remember everything. […] You know what?

app. I gleaned that Grindr, as a world of its own to Jack, was a space where he could express and acknowledge desire and lust which, in his day to day life, he was uncomfortable admitting to. His relationship to the app, then, was determined by his relationship to the impulses he gave into whilst using it. Grindr has always been a home to our secret shame; we are always honest with Grindr.

Over time, Jack has grown comfortable using Grindr, getting over his early reticence. Among the factors that triggered this shift was a threesome he had using the app, which showed him its potential to broaden his sexual horizons. The app has also become commonplace in gay male circles, making it less practical to harbor closet shame over its use. Misha, another member of GA who answered some of my questions, considers it to be an integral part of queer life.

I am not alone. Chris is one of the only people who agreed to meet with me when I put out a call for interviews on the app itself. We met in a Center City Starbucks.

I walked over to greet him at the counter, recognizing him from his profile, and was phased by his utter lack of enthusiasm upon seeing me. It set the tone for the rest of the interview.

Chris is on the app daily for hours at a time, as he wakes up, when he takes a break from his 9 to 5 job, as he’s getting ready to sleep. He downloaded it when he broke up with his fiance a few years ago, and can’t really imagine going on without it now. Upon my asking whether he saw it as a net positive in his life, he noted that Grindr is both a source of validation and insecurity.

“It’s so trivial, this obsession with instant gratification,” he said. “If I wake up and have several messages, I feel kinda

I reached out to strangers on the app to find interview subjects. Unfortunately, many of the people I messaged did not care much about my

I didn’t suck his dick. He sucked my dick, I didn’t touch him, it was so weird, it was so weird… Maybe I didn’t finger him? it’s all muddled up. I remember the smell of ass. His ass. So I guess I must have. It was afterwards, whatever we did. I got my dick sucked, I came in his mouth, for sure I came in his mouth, and afterwards we had a conversation.”

Jack shared his vivid mis-recollections at a jagged, halting pace, which along with his repetitive language hinted at some sort of lingering hang-up about this hookup.

He explained to me that his beginnings on the app were characterized by a recurring shame, that would urge him to delete the app after every hookup until he was horny enough to download it again. When I pushed him on the source of this impulse, he recalled that he subsequently avoided this initial hookup when he ran into him on the street, but never blocked him on the 10

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“I probably received more [reactions] when I told my friends that I don’t use Grindr and felt the need to defend myself about that,” he said. “It almost seems as if having Grindr is quintessential to being queer, as [an] oxygen tank is quintessential to being a scuba diver.”

This sentiment was echoed by many of the people I spoke to. Andrew, for instance, sees Grindr as a taken for granted element of gay life.

“I’m surprised when I meet another gay person who doesn’t use it since it’s so iconic,” he said.

What struck me about this statement is less the point being made than the word choice. To call Grindr “iconic” is to elevate its status, and implies that on some level, the app and what it provides should be revered, or at the very least is an aesthetic marker to be celebrated. I personally disagree with this characterization, and

good about myself, like “yas,” really small victories that shouldn’t mean anything.

Or sometimes it’s the opposite, when I’ve already had a rough couple of days and I’m not getting anything on the app, I think I’m not good enough, I’m not x-y-z enough… It can affect your entire day.”

In Chris’s experience, his popularity depends heavily on the kind of profile he’s put out.

“On my profile you can see my face, which i don’t think is God-awful but i’m slightly biased,” he said. “There’s no eye candy for [the other users]. I don’t get shit.

But then I switch photos and I’m on the opposite side of the equation.”

Chris then shows me the alternate picture. It features the headless, chiseled torso of a black man, bearing a loosely draped towel to cover what’s below the waist. The picture’s hot, but we lose the personality and charm of Chris’s original photo, a mir-

ror selfie of him serving face in a trim grey shawl neck sweater.. He’s the first to point out the racism inherent to this contrast, in that he only attracts attention when he presents himself as a sexual object, but accepts that these are the rules he has to play by if he wants attention. Chris doesn’t blame Grindr; he sees the platform as a reflection of values present in the gay community as opposed to the reason they’re appearing.

Chris isn’t alone in calling out the rampant racism on Grindr. Misha also made a point to bring it up.

“It’s sad that for many queer people of color like myself, the messages that we receive on Grindr are polarized – either we get messages that are hostile, or that fetishize our race,” he said. “And maybe on a lucky day, we get to partake in a conversation with a guy who is interested in us; a sort of interest that transcends our race and preference for the canonical white queer men.”

Both Misha’s and Chris’s gripes come from a place of repeated personal injury.

In the end of Misha’s comment, there’s a wistfulness that suggests that Grindr here is representing his queer community at large. In pointing out racism on the app, he’s both calling out gays and their asso-

ciates, and implicitly stating that the app is a representation of the queer world around it. We live on Grindr as we do in the streets, the subway, or parties.

The multiple epithets to Misha’s term of “canonical white queer man” hint at Grindr’s eagerness to categorize its users.

You can input your weight, height, race, “tribe” — gay stereotypes you may identify with —, body type… Providing one’s information gives a profile authenticity, but it also makes it classifiable: a user’s search preferences will omit swathes of the queer population. Is it better to be legitimate but profiled, or rogue and undercover? The information they request is also of note.

I’m most uncomfortable with the “sexual health” categories, which raises hard questions for a community trying to figure out what HIV/AIDS mean in the age of PreP and undetectable positives. One can’t help but feel boxed in, metaphorically and literally, as our being is reduced to a square icon (name, thumbnail, online status) stuck in a grid to be thumbed over repeatedly. What does it mean that we can only make first impressions through a picture, a one-way interaction? None of these queries are answered; instead gays go dick shopping.

“My mindset when I’m on the app is that

I’m in a virtual meat market,” Andrew said.

Jack, on the other hand hand, seems to have gotten over this image of the interface.

“I used to call it a supermarket for sex in my head, with different sections and different produce you can buy,” he said. “In my head though it’s evolved to be more of a social media, and I think I’ve just spent enough time on it at this point that I’ve created my persona in relation it.”

And in a way, Jack’s right. We often use Grindr as we do social media, as a parallel interface to the real life world that we’re constantly navigating; we meet people, interact, and present a curated image.

Despite all of it’s issues, it is undeniably a constitutive element of the queer experience in 2016 for its users, and should be respected as such. That doesn’t mean we should be trapped by the app and its constraints, and my interviewees’ stories each had a silver lining to that effect: Jack gives advice to younger kids, Chris grafted both of his pictures into one image for a more honest profile, and Alex deleted the app to try monogamy with a guy he met IRL. As for me, I’m checking Grindr less than I used to, but just yesterday starred some boy’s profile, cataloguing him for future reference. u

PERSONAL ESSAY

Beware the cult of the future Life is not a stock market

by Eduard Saakashvili

I

spend my days in near-paralysis. An ambitious to-do list, unironically titled “an unambitious list,” commands me to draft cover letters for internships that may not exist. But my first task is to recalculate my GPA, thwarting the registrar’s refusal to quantify my potential.

On LinkedIn, I peruse the profiles of my rivals, anxiously projecting their superior futures. All this labor amounts to almost nothing: little is produced, less is enjoyed.

I am working on my future.

During the annual screening of “The Graduate,” when Benjamin Braddock

mumbles that he’s anxious about the future, the Swarthmore student body erupts in cheers. They sympathize.

With false good humor, Career Services warns us that “winter is coming, but that doesn’t mean your job search needs to go cold.” Their list of instructions arrives in the style of a listicle: “6 Career Moves EVERY College Student Can Make Over Winter Break.”

Even the holidays are no excuse to stop working on your most important product: your future. This is not a product in the conventional sense; you cannot sell or exchange it, you cannot own it. It is a promise, always vigorously remade, but never fulfilled.

Anecdotal evidence suggests that the future was not always so powerful. “The Graduate”’s titular character graduates college without a job, and his careerist parents tolerate it. Professors sometimes reminisce that college used to be a place where people focused on class; then, later, they worried about jobs.

No longer. Today, a formless future brings us to heel and vampirizes our youth. What changed?

Conventional wisdom blames the 2008 financial crisis: the economy is still reeling, the job market is ill, we must work harder now to get ahead. This explanation fails to satisfy, because this new obsession with our futures is far more than a coping SWARTHMORE REVIEW

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mechanism for hard times: a value system has emerged to affirm and support it.

This value system, which predates 2008, shames those who do not participate in the cult of the future (Come graduation, these degenerates will surely move into their parents’ basements.) and creates a new language that evaluates every experience by whether it makes your future self more appealing: “It was a learning experience” or, in the language of the cover letter, “The experience I gain in this program will provide me with a competitive advantage in the job market.”

This value system has a name, and it is neoliberalism. Neoliberalism is real, and it is key to understanding why the future enslaves us.

In “Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s Stealth Revolution,” Wendy Brown diagnoses what she thinks is a momentous transformation in all levels of global society. Neoliberalism is often understood in terms of policy: Reagan and Thatcher freed the market, and the market came for our souls. But Brown says this is an incomplete account. To her, neoliberalism is more than a set of policies; it is a way of reasoning about the world.

At the center of the neoliberal way of thinking is the homo oeconomicus — that’s You, the subject. In the capitalist paradigm of old, You made decisions based on self-interest, pleasure, benefit.

As a rational actor, You maximized Your interest at every turn.

Not anymore, says Brown. Today, self-interest and benefit are quaint anachronisms. Instead, You have come to run yourself like a company: “an earlier rendering of homo oeconomicus as an interest maximizer gives way to a formulation of the subject as both a member of a firm and as itself a firm.”

In this reading of history, You have stopped acting like a human being. Once governed by human impulse (however economical a term, “self-interest” still evokes human subjectivity), You now govern Yourself the way a CEO governs a company. People laughed at Romney when he said corporations are people, but he merely messed up the order: today, people are corporations.

But how does that affect your conduct and way of thinking?

Brown answers directly: neoliberalism tells us to pursue not our human interest, but our human capital.

Say you apply for an unpaid internship with long hours. You will lose money and 12

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sleep and probably have a bad time. But to the neoliberal mind, these sacrifices are a worthy investment, not in yourself (for they may leave you forever scarred), but in your human capital, i.e. your resume, your network, your references.

Per Michel Feher, “An investor in his or her human capital is concerned less with maximizing the returns on his or her investments—whether monetary or psychic— than with appreciating, that is, increasing the stock value of, the capital to which he or she is identified.”

Capital values marketability rather than usefulness, future employability rather than current employment. On the stock market, a company pursues not authentic self-improvement but the perception of success and value. Per Brown, we’ve all started to behave like publicly traded companies: happiness, fulfillment, even monetary success become alibis for endlessly growing human capital.

The caricature of the neoliberal subject, when confronted with a choice, asks not “Is it good for me?” but “Is it marketable?” (and fails to see the distinction).

The tragedy of neoliberalism is that this caricature already lurks inside each of us.

I began this essay with a discussion of the future, because I suspect that your future, as prophesied for you by the highly trained people at Career Services, is merely shorthand for your human capital. Career Services’ stated goal is to help you get you a job. But primarily, it plays doctor to your human capital.

When Career Services tells you about the “moves” you should make over winter break, they are ordering you to increase the value of your capital. They tell you to “make your social media shine” (inflating the perception of your human capital) and “build relationships” (to tie your capital to that of others).

This new obsession with our futures is far more than a coping mechanism for hard times: a value system has emerged to affirm and sup-

I

’m not asking you to live in the moment and ignore the future. There is a real future—tomorrow, a year from now, the moment of your death—which will come to pass. Before there was even a market to be freed, farmers lived in anticipation of future seasons, and their failure to do so could mean starvation and death. There is nothing dishonorable about foresight, planning, and care.

Rather, I am warning you against a fictionalized version of the future. This future—the neoliberal future—is a crude projection of your human capital. It is generated by a secret formula whose ingredients include the number of your LinkedIn connections, your Myers-Briggs personality type (Career Services actually administers this dubious test), and perhaps the quality of your handshake with the most recent visiting recruiter.

This neoliberal future, since it is a projection, exists only in the present. It is revealed to you in your suffocating conversations with career counselors, through bland PowerPoint presentations that map your major to an unappealing list of job titles and companies.

But the real future is contingent, subject to whimsy and chance.

In time, your neoliberal future will fade away. Instead, you will come to deal more directly with your human capital: your mid-year performance review, the number of citations on your most recent journal article.

Your real future, on the other hand, will simply come to pass. It will be a landscape of happiness and suffering, triumph and failure.

We face a choice. We can tend to our neoliberal future with its ideology of endless capital appreciation, and hope that we, as people, turn out okay. Or we can work directly for our actual future, for our actual selves and values.

In Christian theology, we are all born marked by an original sin committed in the distant past, and our task is to redeem ourselves through salvation. But the original sin of the neoliberal homo oeconomicus is in the indefinite future: it is the sin of depreciation, the horror of losing our capital. As neoliberal subjects, our job is to live every moment for the prevention of this sin.

When Adam and Eve committed the first sin, they were expelled from paradise.

But from neoliberal paradise, expulsion is liberation. It’s up to us to find the right sin. u

PERSONAL ESSAY

Sick and commercial on a Boeing A meditation on travel

by Abhinav Tiku

I

step out of the taxi by the curb at Philadelphia International Airport. I am slightly drowsy and stumble onto the asphalt before I pull myself upright and swing my block backpack over my shoulder. It says ODYSSEY in dull white letters on the back. It’s fit to burst and starting to tear at the straps, as if it had been flayed in a previous life for an unthinkable crime.

In fact it is just very old and, like me, a veteran of air travel.

I pay the cabbie a little extra, wish him well, and make for the door, careful not to trip on the jutting sidewalk. My shoulders sag underneath the biting weight of my baggage. It’s 5:36 AM and I am embarking upon an ordeal to cross a continent and a big ocean for the…well, I’ll go with the twentieth time, in the knowledge that the number is probably far greater—and I’m also suffering from sinusitis. Outside a cold breeze blows and I tuck the scarf close to my chest as I slip through the sliding doors.

This is nothing but repetition to me.

I like to joke that I flew before I could stand, let alone walk. I am a nomad of sorts, a traveller, atomized totally, the subject of Brian Evans’ “I’m A Travel-

Security checkpoints are the digestive tracts of any airport and PHL is no exception to this physiology er,” the one who has mastered the art of not drooling on oneself when sleeping on a red-eye; the one who has selectively pre-positioned my headphones in my backpack so as to remove them fast; the one who has inhaled oxygen out of masks, and drunk more ginger ale with ice than

would otherwise be recommended on a flight. This is the life I have thus far lived.

But apparently my check-in baggage is overweight by about three pounds despite my best estimates. The agent at the counter patiently waits while I drop to my knees and rummage through my clothes and miscellanea, swapping heavy for light, bending a particular paperback (Hunter S. Thompson’s “The Rum Diary”) to smush it into the cubic inch of space between my scarf and my shoe. She probably doesn’t want to be here, and who could blame her? PHL is a brutalist structure, composed of concrete, a utilitarian fortress with a tad more sunlight in daytime, and one of the more horrible airports I have traversed. But right now there’s no sun. It’s still dark and only the white lights are shining from the fixtures above, highlighting the pallor of the concrete. By the time I zip up and lock up my luggage, I hope I’ve fixed the problem to spare further embarrassment—and I have. Luckily there’s a semblance of competence currently in me.

“LADIES AND GENTLEMAN. WELCOME TO PHILADELPHIA INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT….”

Oh, right. There’s still security, damnit.

Some nights before I was set to fly, my mother called via FaceTime and suggested, in a familiar tone, that I should shave my stubble before I board the aircraft. She has told me told me to do this multiple times in the past. Now as a rule I like to shave before flights anyway—a little cleansing ritual of sorts before I’m strapped into a pressurized cabin at ten thousand feet without much recourse.

Her fears, however, are rooted in the possible chance I’ll be pulled over for questioning by the Department of Homeland Security because of my light bronze skin and burgeoning beard—the stereotypical bin Laden in a Patagonia poof jacket and Nike sweatpants and Zoff glasses (despite the fact that I am North-North Indian and not even Muslim and only found Zoff recently). As she and I have somewhat come to expect, here the appearance sadly sells more on a passing glance than any deep contemplation does. There’s no

real luxury of thinking in one of the most stressful and serious places to be found on the planet. Rudeness simmers here.

So while rightly detestable for a number of reasons, security checkpoints are nonetheless the digestive tracts of any airport and PHL is no exception to this physiology. Currently the lines aren’t too long, the people generally grumpy but not overly outraged. I have seen corridors clogged with the international. I have engaged in an awkward stand-offish staring contest with a soldier. I have slept for

When stuck in a confined, dusty-ish place for beyond reasonable amounts of time, it makes one aware of one’s real uncleanliness hours on a thin leather seat, covered in the crumbs of a delicious panini. I have seen a family dressed in playground pink struggling to remove all innocuous coins from their persons. In short I have seen and done a lot, and have spent a sizeable portion of life milling through lines at security checkpoints. To my surprise the infamously grueling process, from curb to gate, only took around forty minutes— making it one of the shorter ones.

It wasn’t eventful. Like a motorized machine I perform the standing-still jumping jack, the optimum position to be bombarded with electromagnetic waves in these metal detectors. The guards swab me down with their censors and I’m through with my belongings, which aside from my overstuffed backpack include a Nikon D90 camera and a crumpled packet of Haribo. At the gate I am left to entertain myself by watching the bit-by-bit reddening sky. Past the blinking lights of SWARTHMORE REVIEW

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the runway and the Delta-embossed fin of the plane, I think I see the Schuylkill twinkling in the distance. My skin is very dry and I start to feel the allergens defeating the DoTerra and Allegra tablets in my system. And the Mucinex.

I remember the night before. My friend—whom I wouldn’t see for many months—joked at length on the many absurd hypotheticals in travel, like if I became a drug mule. I shut that down with a pelter of laughter. I’d already been detained once upon landing in Honshu and it wasn’t a relaxing experience. (Worry not: It wasn’t for illicit substances. Still, I wasn’t keen on a repeat.) I was coming back in May of ’15, and trying to use my ID of permanent residency (my ‘Gaijin card’) to pass through immigration, as I’d done in the past. I was instead rebuked and directed to a separate enclosed office where I assumed they only take the criminal and the crazed. There I was, sweltering in stuffy spring heat, and they were trying to explain to me in their sharp Japanese that I wasn’t going to get in… under normal circumstances. Luckily I was an American, and Americans can enter Japan on an invisible automatic visa for a period of ninety days. So I passed through eventually, pissed at the inexplicable sudden revocation of my residency, but glad all the same…mostly I was just crabby and tired and would have killed to get into a bed—“Let me in already!”

I wanted to yell. But all that isn’t going to happen this time because I just avoid the hassle and head straight for the line labeled ‘Foreign Passport Holders’. Now when I go home I am always a foreigner.

It’s official.

J

ust after we take off for Minneapolis I realize I feel like a walking, soonto-be-flying pathogen. My nose is a babbling brook, my mouth is parched, my tongue dry. The flight attendant passes with Dasani but I’m too weak and too damn tired to reach out and ask politely for the bottled water. Saliva is coagulating behind my scalloped teeth and I want to sleep in spite of the roar of the engines.

The guy across the aisle from me is playing Sumoku in a handbook. (I thought Sudoku but upon closer inspection with a zoomed-in iPhone camera I was mistaken.) The woman in the row behind him drinks Starbucks from a red cardboard cup adorned with a white snowflake. I cough frequently, as quietly as I can, and every time I do I smash my larynx with a short gust of air. In an effort at relaxation

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I try to pass the flight mostly dreaming about scenarios bizarre.

Surprisingly I remember quite a bit, and it only accentuates the overall discomfort and strangeness of this particular trip: I dreamt of Mario Kart but with a savage “Mad Max: Fury Road” twist. I dreamt that I partied for a week-long night in a space literally called ‘The Space’ with icecreamy lights shining from a heavenly ceiling. I dreamt of blue milk. I dreamt of a man who claimed to own the only Mercedes-Benz in the entirety of Tajikistan.

I dreamt of a Sufi who could only speak in adverbs and despite this disability he took it upon himself to narrate the Epic of Gilgamesh with the aid of the Muppets, who all the while engaged in a shadow play around us.

Sometimes I speak to myself, at least I try to do it inconspicuously in this cramped compartment, but it sounds too loud When I awake white is streaming beyond the edges of the wings of the plane.

The Midwest is rolling beneath us. It is now that real worry begins to fester in me. Will we land on time? I only have a twenty-maybe-twenty-five minute window to rush from one Boeing to another, and I can’t miss this flight to Tokyo, which would tarnish my immaculate desire to be obsessively punctual. More importantly I am not in the mood to miss anything. Would anything impede my second takeoff? A Canadian blizzard? A mechanical difficulty? It’s difficult to say because the unexpected, no matter how much I’ve planned on Expedia, is lurking any and everywhere. Plus consider the literal physicality involved in this short sprint I must do. Even if my legs can still run after being reduced to fleshy twigs because of hours of un-stimulation in an airplane seat, I have no guarantee of reaching my destination. Sitting isn’t a rigorous sport. It only tightens one’s gluteus maximus on occasion. And when stuck in a confined, dusty-ish place for beyond

reasonable amounts of time, it makes one aware of one’s real uncleanliness as a nifty bonus. Traveling then makes me wholly uncomfortable—it forces me to confront the limitations I must encounter as I bang against the box of my existence. But that might just be my beleaguered mind talking itself into normalcy.

My voice is nasally because I haven’t spoken for most of this travel. Sometimes I speak to myself, at least I try to do it inconspicuously in this cramped compartment, but it sounds too weird and too loud. I try to contain a sneeze but it comes in a sudden eruption that stops as soon as it starts, like a self-conscious anthropomorphic Vesuvius. I release a terse “ETCHU!” before I raise my arm but miss the glob that leaves my nose by less than a second. My snot-stained sleeves start to dry as we descend.

We land swiftly but the deplaning proves to be lengthy and I start to curl and uncurl my toes. It takes almost twenty minutes to step off the plane. I want to shout “Move, ya sonuvabitches!” as I hurtle through the fuselage but I don’t resort to absolute buffoonery. But I run once I squeeze myself out of the aisle and into MSP. I rush, like a madman, with a thudding bag on my back, my center of gravity lopsided, every lazy fibre of my body devoted to simply not tripping and falling on my face. When I arrive at the gate, out of breath, I glimpse the Boeing 777 through the window and, in fleeting bliss, feel my heart settle in the security that I won’t be stuck in a terminal for the beginning of Christmas Break.

I sink into my window seat with an audible slight sigh of relief. My nose is a tiny canonball, my face feels laced with lead, the cavities of my skull are packed with mucus…a flashing concern of bronchitis crosses my mind, but I realize that’s crazy, and chalk my situation up to a temporary case of strenuous dehydration. A coughing fit hits me again, and I wish for deliverance as I try to catch some more sleep before the second take-off. The washy images of my destination begin to color my thoughts—Fuji-san on the horizon with nuclear smokestacks belching steam; Tokyo Bay shimmering like molten pewter; dollops of cumulus clouds blanketing the sky; nigiri and soy sauce in konbini air; me standing by the baggage claim, waiting, all the while wondering about the next time I’ll be in this predicament that’s got a tight and loving hold on me... right, January 8th. Of course. It’s when I fly back over the Pacific. u

Rediscovering Homeland A photo essay by Vivian Zhang

China is my home country— “Smog, god-damned bureaucracy, a cultural desert ever since the 60s… Our country is so trashy. But don’t you…don’t you just love this trashy country?” my friend once asked me hysterically after a few shots of beer down the throat. “…Yes, yes. I can’t think.” Those were the only words that came out of me.

I can’t think. Not because of the effects of the alcohol, but because it was fate that bonded me with this country. Without a conscious choice, I grew up inside of her womb, drew my every breath from her mazy veins of imageries. Before I knew her, she was in my flesh. And like every kid ignorant of its mother, I never really understood her codes in my genes during the past 18 years I spent with her. I only thought of her as an aloof concept hanging above me, chaining my identity with all of her scars and deficiencies passed down from history.

“Why would I want to bear those heavy shackles? I am free.” I once thought so naively.

But when I return to her again, I crawl before her and ask her to enmesh me, for it is from my guts that I feel the calling of her substances. They’re still alive through all the dust from history, distorted and groaning through modernity, yet still wholesome and panting with vitality. I feel her pulse pumping. And every photograph here is my breath on it as I watch its blood flow, intently, with my whole being.

Be it good or be it bad, I want no other choice but to be with her in this.

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ART An alternative to the canon REVIEW

The radical and relevant ‘Freedom Principle’ at the ICA, through March 19

by Liz Whipple

I

n the linear narrative of modern art, in which each decade has a style and each style has a decade, minimalism and pop dominate the 1960s and 70s.

These types of works, almost exclusively painting and sculpture, are those that most frequently evoke responses of, “I could have made that,” “My six year old could have made that,” or, “Why does this cost 44 million dollars?” White men like Andy Warhol and Robert Rauschenberg made bank bringing images of pop culture and current events into the world of fine arts, while other white men like Barnett Newman, Frank Stella and Donald Judd made fortunes painting straight lines on canvases and building sculptures that closely resemble $35 VALJE shelf units from IKEA. In addition to financial success, white male artists like those mentioned above have enjoyed countless solo retrospectives, shows exploring the birth and influences of their artistic movements and styles, and solidified places in the Art Historical Canon (read: the Eurocentric art historical canon that inflates the value of paintings by white people and men). They are the Most Important Artists of the 1960s and 70s, who produced the Most Important Art; according to many, this fact is indisputable.

“The Freedom Principle: Experiments in Art and Music from 1965 to Now” at the Philadelphia ICA presents beautiful evidence against this apparently objective truth, offering a dynamic alternative to the static, mainstream narrative of modern art. The large-scale group exhibition from the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago explores the legacies of avant-garde jazz and other experimental musical movements from the late 1960s, focusing on the African American arts scene on the South Side of Chicago. The show occupies

Photo by Elizabeth Whipple

both floors of the ICA, and is shown with “Endless Shout,” a series of performances by contemporary artists whose work addresses issues of race, gender, and identity.

The art itself is one of the many aspects of the exhibition that make “The Freedom Principle” truly exceptional. The show spans several media, opening with a fifteen minute, two-channel video installation by Stan Douglas of four free jazz musicians performing an interpretation of “Spirits Rejoice.” From there, you are led into rooms of paintings, drawings, collage, prints, tapestries, costumes and other works of visual art, inspired by and important within the black experimental music scenes of Chicago and Harlem. Amongst other things, the show’s curators do an excellent job of tearing down the arbitrarily established hierarchy of material; acrylic and oil paintings hang next to screen prints and newspaper clippings, dresses and coats stand next to photographs of murals. Like many museum shows, it is a collection of primarily visual objects, but these galleries feel like works to be explored and discovered, not consumed in a set, linear way.

Connected to these galleries is a room that holds some of the most unique and

exciting pieces in the show. Aesthetically stunning visual scores by experimental musicians Anthony Braxton and Matana Roberts line the walls, but the majority of the gallery is taken up by “Rio Negro II,” an interactive “robotic-acoustic” sound installation by Douglas R. Ewart, George Lewis, and Douglas Repetto. The installation consists of several separate pieces, which create music through devices that resemble rain sticks, cymbals and other inexplicable mechanisms. Like the galleries, this installation is meant to be explored; it completely surrounds its viewer/listener, continuing to surprise and catch off guard through unexpected banging, intricate stone sculptures, hidden faces and other discoverable details. The pieces in this gallery blur the lines between aesthetic and sonic, showcasing artists whose works bridge the worlds of music and visual art.

As it links audio and visual, “The Freedom Principle” highlights artistic exploration of the connections between the aesthetic and the political. Charles Gaines’ “Manifestos 2,” one of the contemporary pieces in the show, is an installation that includes video recordings and enormous, hand-written scores of music of the art-

The instalation: Douglas R. Ewart, George Lewis & Douglas Repetto Rio Negro II, 2007/2015 SWARTHMORE REVIEW

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ist’s making. To create his compositions, Gaines develops a series of rules that allow him to translate the speeches of Malcolm X, Mohawk scholar and activist Taiaiake Alfred, and other important figures into musical notation.

In addition to its examination of inter-media relationships, “Manifestos 2” is illustrative of the radical politics present throughout the entirety of “The Freedom Principle.” Art museums have a tendency to shy away from the social forces at work behind the pieces on display. Many institutions and curators present art as somehow outside or above politics, except when it is convenient or unavoidable (e.g. Andy Warhol’s political portraits or Kerry James Marshall’s astounding retrospective at the Met Breuer). Minimalism lends itself conveniently to such interpretation, or lack thereof: these artists explore the flatness of a picture plane with a so-called objective approach to artmaking, reacting to trends and criticism within the art world, rather than to the turbulent social and political climate of the 1960s and 70s. Perhaps this is why we see Carl Andre and Frank Stella in the world’s most prestigious art museums and not Muhal Richard Abrams: white artists who can afford to create art that pretends to exist for pure aesthetics are granted more capital, both social and liquid, than those whose work is vocal in

its seeking of social change.

The works of art presented in “The Freedom Principle” are overtly and radically political, telling stories of Black Nationalism and the fight for civil rights. The exploration of art created by groups such as the African Commune of Bad Relevant Artists (AfriCOBRA, formerly OBAC) and the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) presents numerous examples of ways in which black artists used the arts as an instrument of social change, such as OBAC’s “Wall of Respect” in Chicago, a project whose legacy includes influencing Philadelphia’s own Mural Arts Program. Each of these groups emphasized the importance of accessibility in the arts. AfriCOBRA focused heavily on printmaking, which allowed for mass production and circulation of political art, much of which is on display in the galleries; AACM focused largely on education, using their headquarters as a free school to nurture future generations of talented and innovative musicians in all genres.

The exhibition’s curators at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago could not have anticipated, years in advance, the political reality that would emerge during the show’s tenure at the two institutions; the clear parallels between the social and political themes “The Freedom Principle” addresses and those we face today add

another layer of complexity to the show’s historical content. At a time when issues of race have returned to mainstream political discourse (thanks largely to groups like Black Lives Matter) and our recently-inaugurated president and his administration threaten the lives and welfare of millions of Americans, exploring the lives and works of leaders in the Civil Rights Movement can offer guidance and insight.

“The Freedom Principle” is an indisputably important exhibition. It is significant for its fascinating cross-media explorations, for its historic and political content, and for its ability to beautifully and accessibly bridge the two. Perhaps most poignant, though, is its importance in asserting the relevance of the arts, both historically and today, in the fight for social change. Anyone interested in the arts should not only visit the show while it remains in Philadelphia, but should look to the groups and artists it showcases as successful and meaningful examples of ways in which the arts can inspire and catalyze important social and political movements.

“The Freedom Principle: Experiments in Art and Music, 1965 to Now” is open until March 19th. Curated tours are also available at no charge for individuals and groups, the request form for which can be found online. The ICA is free for all, always. u

One of the graphic music scores: Anthony Braxton, Falling River Music (364f), 2004-present. Graphic score. 11 x 17 inches.

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Image courtesy of Anthony Braxton and the Tri-Centric Foundation.

FICTION & POETRY Peter the Lantern’s Son

FICTION

Preface

T

he following work of fiction is styled in the tradition of the great Russian folklorists of the late nineteenth century. Writers such as Sergey Aksakov and Alexander Afanasyev are responsible for compiling and creating the large canon of fairytales and folktales we currently enjoy in the modern day. To western readers, these stories seem noticeably foreign to the Grimm tales they were raised on. Mystical and dreamlike, the conventions of the fairytale narrative seem to fall away instead of creating an immaterial landscape that can freely draw on the symbols and figures of the larger canon. Characters are not contained to their own stories but instead wander freely through multiple narratives, at times in ways that seem as if their inclusion was just impulse on the part of the author. Having icons such as Prince Ivan, the Firebird and Baba Yaga roving on the outskirts of many stories rather than contained within one causes Russian fairytales to be more akin to mythology than the fairytales with which we’ve become accustomed. While a modern reader is conditioned to the chronological uncertainty expressed in “Once upon a time,” the fairytales of Russia further the instability of time throughout the story. The narrative constantly acknowledges its lack of knowledge about the time in which events occur, allowing for a flexible range of times that could be “a year or a day.” In many cases these tales were constructed to be orally presented, so there is no false pretense that the narrator is omniscient. The uncertain interactions between the teller and his story are highlighted rather than subdued and in the process both teller and audience are equally affected by the tale’s lack of temporal and narrative boundaries.

by Kat Ham

I

n a certain realm, in a certain land there lived a peasant and his wife.

The couple had little but their two sons, whom they cherished like princes. The boys were strapping lads, tall as young elms and just as strong, but their hearts were cold with pride. One night the peasant’s wife gave birth. Her husband and sons gathered round and were shocked to see a babe smaller than an aspen leaf cradled in her arms. While their parents wasted themselves to sleep with shuddering cries, the two elder sons silently stole their new brother from his cradle and shut him inside the barn lantern. The babe screamed and cried all the while, but his cries were so soft they were drowned out by the pop and flicker of the flame. That night the elder sons slept well, thinking they would remain the twin kings of their household. But they did not know that the little lantern had taken pity on the fragile babe left to cook inside it.

That night as the lantern’s wick burned down and the child was rocked to sleep in a cradle of ash and melted beeswax the little lantern sang with its rusted voice, “Little one, when you grow up, you will find a bride. Cross glass, and bone, and frost. Your crystal bride hangs from her

tower and her marrow flows from bone to bone.”

The next morning, as a scarlet sun broke across the sky, Peter emerged from the little iron lantern as a man full grown and flushed with the thrumming strength of youth. But as he was born this second time, the peasant’s wife went into the barn and howled in fright at this supposed stranger dressed in clothes of woven beeswax. Her husband and elder sons ran to her aid, but the peasant recognized the marvel.

“Wife of mine, do you not recognize your own son?” he shouted as he went to embrace Peter.

At once the two elder sons recoiled in horror. Their own looks shriveled in the presence of this golden youth with eyes that sparked and danced like the blue hearts of candle flames. As the years went on their anger burned hotter as they watched Peter grow in their parent’s hearts, till one summer day they at last caught fire and turned to bitter ash. But Peter was not content with the fortune he had so far been given. The lantern’s rusted song rattled through his thoughts every hour, and though he traveled through his village and all those neighboring cities, he met no one who had heard of a crystal maiden hanging from a tower whose marrow flowed from bone to bone. One

day as Peter was hunting in the great woods, he came to a stream to drink. And every drop he drank, he replaced with his own tears.

“Why do you salt my waters, young fellow? Tell me what ails you.” The stream bubbled.

Peter in his distress struck the waters and flew to string his bow. “Leave me be.

I am Peter the Lantern’s son and I need no lecture from a wayward brook!”

The stream swelled against him and like its waves the voice grew. “Mind your tongue, young fellow! I do not take kindly to such words.”

As Peter turned to leave he thought to himself: “Why did I offend him? These waters seem so very wise.”

He came back to the banks and sunk to his knees on the mud. “Forgive me, grandfather. I was rash in my grief and offended you. For years, I have traveled the length and breadth of this land but cannot find my destined bride, a maiden cloaked in crystal with marrow that flows from bone to bone.”

The stream ebbed and flowed as if nodding before finally saying, “Give me some vodka and I shall soothe your troubles.”

Ivan dribbled the fiery drink and the stream said, “I cut through many lands, young man. I have seen such a maiden.

Her tower looks down upon my banks.

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Travel across thrice nine lands, through the crystal mountains, the fields of bone, and the ever winter woods, and you shall find in the thrice tenth kingdom the thrice cursed household. It is a terrible place, a black city hanging from a mountain side like icicles from a roof. Be kindly to the kingdom’s lord and remember this charm and you shall have your bride.”

Peter bowed deeply to the stream and went on with his travels. After some time, a long time or a short time, he came to the crystal mountains with cliffs and crags that shimmered like sheets of rain.

No matter where he looked he could not find a pass through to the other side and the face of the mountain could never be climbed as its slopes were slippery as river stone. He crumbled against the glittering stone and grumbled to himself.

“I am Peter the Lantern’s son. I am prince of wax and flame. I should fear no threat from such tattered glass as this.

Why, I can melt by my own hand such a thing.”

And at this Peter placed a hand against the sparkling surface of the mountainside and marveled as it began to curdle and melt at his touch. He walked for such a time, white hot hands held before him and a glistening tunnel of warped and bubbling glass snaking behind him until at last he emerged on the other side. And with the wide stretch of green earth again before him, he went on with his travels.

After some time, he came to the threshold of the bone fields, where the ribs of men long dead ripple like wheat and

their teeth tremble on bone branches like leaves. For a time he forged his way across this field, feeling the snap of arms and legs picked clean by crows underneath his heavy feet, but after so many days and so many nights he began to sink into the brittle pile. By nightfall he had sunk to his chest, but still he grumbled to himself.

“I am Peter the Lantern’s son. I am prince of wax and flame. I fear no threat from such brittle bones as this. Why I could burn by my own hand such a thing.”

And at this Peter placed a hand against the twisted bramble of spines and skulls and marveled as it began to pop and splinter at his touch. He walked for such a time, white hot hands before him and an ashen trail of cindered bones snaking behind him until at last he emerged on the other side. And with the wide stretch of golden earth again before him, he went on with his travels.

A

fter traveling some distance, a field’s width or the breadth of all Russia, I do not know, he at last came to the edge of the ever winter woods. From his place at its border, he could see larks frosted to birch trees and hear the last note of their song which still hung frozen in the air. Though he lacked any thick furs or strong boots, Peter forged ahead and for such a time he bore the brunt of the biting frost, but after so many hours the frost began to creep into his bones. By nightfall, he had been frozen up to his neck, but still he grumbled to himself.

“I am Peter the Lantern’s son. I am prince of wax and flame. I fear no threat from such feeble frost as this. Why I can melt by my own hand such a thing.”

And at this, Peter placed a hand against the wall of ice and snow and marveled as it began to sizzle and steam at his touch.

He walked for such a time, white hot hands before him and a green trail of thawed lilies and sweet grass snaking behind him until at last he emerged on the other side under the shadow of the thrice tenth kingdom. Gazing upward he saw the domed churches and spindly towers of a black city hanging from the underside of a mountain like icicles from a roof.

Peter took a deep breath and recited the stream’s charm: “Spirits of the air, my feet desire to share your space. Lift me high and keep me righted so I may find my crystal bride!”

And as he exhaled he began to rise slowly at first but then faster than a falcon, up and up till at last he touched down on the hard glitter of the kingdom’s marble streets. As his eyes adjusted to seeing the world upside down he was greeted with a glorious sight. Houses of dark oiled wood polished to mirror shine lined the streets each with doors of silver and windows of golden glass. Though a marvel, this upside down city was deathly still.

No matter how many streets he walked he couldn’t spy animal, man or his fated bride. The only noise echoing throughout was the trickling of a fountain with adornments of carved birds and beasts that spilled fragrant oils into its basins.

An image of Vasilisa the beautiful, a Russian fairy tale written by Ivan Bilibin in 1899

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Photo courtesy of http://folklorethursday.com

After snaking through narrow alleys and twisting streets that seemed to only get narrower as he pressed on, Peter came upon a courtyard that spread out like an exhaled breath. At the top of it, stood neither a house, nor mansion, but a black castle sharp and splintered like a great black knife threatening the earth below.

It seemed to glow darkly even in the shadow, and light caught strangely on the facets of its walls studding the blackness with false stars. Most curious were its doors. The great hammered silver doors, each as high and twice as heavy as a village church, were left open beckoning any visitor who dared to venture into the black castle’s maw. And simply put, that is exactly what Peter chose to do. Feeling no fear to speak of, he strode across the threshold only to have the impossibly large doors follow him, slamming shut with such force that Peter was knocked halfway down the great hall. When he had regained his bearings he met only a darkness so thick and heavy that one could feel the weight of it pressing on one’s eyes.

For a time Peter wandered aimlessly, yet never could he find light to lead him or a wall to creep against. Slowly, however, a soft music seeped into his ears. A tiny song. A lullaby carried gently on the still black air. He strained to get closer and followed it further still till the words became clear.

“Lover fair and sweet, here I am in my crystal cage. Though your eyes I will never meet. Don’t look for me fair prince. I will wait for you in these sweet waters.”

And as the song reached its end with a snap, twelve torches lit themselves and in their blaze revealed the magnificent chamber Peter had been standing in all along. A ceiling pock marked with gems and mirrored walls reflected all the light the flames threw out upon a magnificent feast set before him. Sweetmeats and foreign wine were piled high next to truffled stews and suckling pigs which smelled so tempting that Peter could not fathom how his mouth had not been watering all along. But although the table had been set for two, his crystal bride was nowhere to be seen.

Suddenly, Peter heard the sound of footsteps on the chamber’s silver staircase. They were hard and clipped as if stones were hitting the metal steps. Finally, their owner showed himself to Peter the Lantern’s son: a strange and frightful creature with iron horns veined with pulsing red. Feathers seemingly tacked

from the tips of his iron claws to the tops of his iron hooves glinted inky black in the torchlight. The only unfeathered part of his body was his face, which held a pair of pewter eyes and a scimitar shaped mouth—a mouth Peter was quick to notice had double the teeth of a man with twice the sharpness of a beast.

“Partake of anything you see here, young fellow. You are an honored guest in my household,” the beast said as he took his place in the embroidered chair opposite Peter.

Peter the Lantern’s Son’s teeth did not clatter in fright nor did he reach for his sword, but instead he remembered the stream’s warning to treat this cursed master kindly, and he took his place at the banquet and ate his fill.

“Mighty Lord, I have come from far off lands to this magnificent place seeking a fair treasure—a crystal maiden with marrow flowing from bone to bone, my fated bride. I was told she resides in this noble household.”

Through needle teeth the creature said, “I fear your quest is for naught. I have been alone in this kingdom for many years and would have known if a maiden as fair as you speak was in my company.”

But as the creature spoke, Peter heard the maiden’s song again, though softer than before. The sound seemed to stem from the very table at which he sat. And looking closer still, he saw a crystal bottle filled with wine that bubbled with the song. Transfixed, Peter reached for the singing drink only for the beast to slam his iron claws on the table with such fearful might that all but one torch was extinguished.

But the creature once again regained his princely charms and spoke softly.

“Prince, you may have anything you need while you reside here, whether it will be forever or a day but that wine is precious to me. It’s not yet ready for one to savor.”

Peter bowed to his host and followed the creature to a still fairer chamber with a bed prepared for him. But as the creature wished his guest goodnight, he failed to notice the youth’s eyes flickering brightly like candle flames hot and heedless. Waiting till he could feel the foul creature’s snores shake the palace walls, Peter crept his way back through the winding halls and towering chambers till at last he found the banquet hall again.

The bottle still resting on the table was silent, its golden wine still once again.

Raising the bottle in toast Peter said, “To you my bride. May this kiss free you

from this creature’s foul prison.”

As the sweet sip of wine flowed over his tongue, the midnight hour chimed and a vapor began to fall from the bottle’s mouth. But as the shimmering, golden cloud flowed onto the floor the wine in Peter’s stomach boiled into a bitter drink.

His limbs became faint and his eyes fell closed as cold death seized his heart. All the while the cloud grew and grew till it hardened into a maiden’s shape dressed in crystal brocade with a crescent moon in her braid.

“Love, why did you not heed me. Look what your recklessness has done. A minute more to wait and your arms would be around me and your eyes would see your bride.” The princess wept, holding her cold prince in her arms.

But all of a sudden the sounds of footsteps could be heard on the silver staircase,quick and soft this time, till a handsome prince appeared at the maiden’s side with black feathers falling from his cloak and sharpened teeth falling from his lips.

The prince looked down upon the ashen face of the dead Peter with a spark of anger in his eye.

At last he pulled a thickly woven shirt over himself and became a bright feathered falcon. He flew to the farthest corner of the land where the water of life bubbles from the earth in its mossy grotto. Filling a phial with the draught he flew back to his kingdom and pressed the drink to Peter’s cold lips. I know not if Peter the Lantern’s son life returned all at once or slower than the hours, but when at last his heart began to beat again the fair youth stretched his limbs and yawned, “Ohhhh I feel I’ve been asleep for years…”

Prince Ivan was quick to add, “You would have slept forever, you fool, if it weren’t for me. You misjudged me and mine shape and drank what was not yet yours to take, and poisoned yourself in kind. A wicked queen’s jealousy of the beauty of this kingdom and its sibling royals did curse it, placing the threefold enchantments you broke.”

But no love between Peter and the once-cursed prince was lost and in less than a fortnight the courtiers and nobles of this once-lost land returned to marvel at the Wedding of Peter and his Crystal bride.

And the bride and groom lived forever after in great cheer and prosperity.

I too was there, drank mead and yet Ne’er did get my whiskers wet, because I have none to speak of. u SWARTHMORE REVIEW

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Two poems

POETRY

by Ian Holloway

Urban Dusk The blaring blue rectangle haunts me in each building layer.

Night crawled, bright black keys pressed the air with sound.

The blue was behind me, surveillance sensed the new year.

Foamy night, webs of light, filament snags, lined bundles, nichrome wires zigzagging, arpeggios, everything laced with passion, building and swelling like the frothy searise.

Ringing the cavernous tunnel of my ear: the fiber of notes.

Moaning, sighing, sweetly straining, hammers pound into contours, familiar in their return to the spindles, synapses and tunnels, the chords stack in gold cobwebs, days pass knotted in hours, the false flash of orange flickers on seaming screens, and creeping into my night: the blaring blue light.

Exchanges At dusk, she gave me a parcel to brighten the way.

Within it was language, the tree, the tangle, the branches, the gift!

I packed a pearly string of current ruminations, epiphanies, and bent red ribbon around it, bestowing it back to her in the glowing dawn.

Two poems

POETRY

by Leah Schwartz

How to Be Sick

Cloudburst

Take six oblong reddish brown pills every day that you remember to. Never look your doctor in the eye. Avoid those foods that make you sick, or don't. Leave meals halfway through and don't say

Are you able to be un-late, for once in your life?

--he ululates, shunning my ash-strewn cunt--are you dense? Or in some sort of den, for the sundog or for nocturnal things who huddle til cloud break

anything. When you're sick, white lies don't count.

To fit in with others, pretend that the reason you're vomiting in public's that you're hungover. You alone carry your symptoms. Worry about your white blood cell count

when land spouts and thaws? The insults condense into this: I’m a bore. Or worse yet, I’m a bora (a katabatic wind straight from Yugoslavia.)

Well, hand me the gavel. I’ll melt off the graupel.

in private. When asked "are you not feeling well?" say "no" as ambiguously as possible. Or say nothing.

It's very boring to be sick, so make sure it is boring in a secret way that no one else can know.

This should satiate him, I would say. She ate him til he filled up. (He’d rhyme “ice” with “rime ice.”) Turn off the sundial. Turn off the sun. I’ll die from the windchill.

Put on your sweater. Feel at once an upwelling.

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BOOKS The case for counterfactuals REVIEW

A review of ‘Life After Life’ and ‘The Man in the High Castle’

by Lily Tyson

“T

he more you know about the past,” Theodore Roosevelt famously said, “the better prepared you are for the future.” This aphorism has been repeated in countless ways

by Martin Luther King, Cicero, Michelle Obama and others. It is widely acknowledged that history is important for this exact reason: to prevent its recurrence in the future.

The study of counterfactuals can in some ways be just as fruitful for this nebulous future, where past mistakes aren’t repeated, as the study of history. Counterfactuals ask an “if/then” question about a historical moment. They can be especially useful because they allow us to re-live our past with an attentive eye to the way that specific actions or people can have sweeping effects on the outcomes of history. Counterfactuals go so far as providing agency to an individual in history, a move which feels very different than the broad-strokes view of history we are usually exposed to, and a portrayal that can provide comfort to an individual in moments of trepidation about our future.

I find myself revisiting this notion of agency and history in the wake of the

Counterfactuals can provide comfort by allowing us to understand the pliability of our future, and the effect that we as individuals can have over its

election. Many have compared Trump to Hitler, or have warned of a new McCarthyism that could occur in the next four years. Counterfactuals can provide comfort in these moments by allowing us to understand the pliability of our future, and the effect that we as individuals can have over its outcome.

In this instance, history has failed us.

It has failed to teach, it has failed to persuade. Trump has won and our next four years are at the mercy of his whims. But, if historical examples have failed us, what can counterfactuals teach us?

In “Life After Life,” author Kate Atkinson tells the story of Ursula Todd, who repeatedly dies throughout the novel, and after each death, her life re-starts from the junction of a fork where an important decision was made. Born in England in 1910, in her first life she dies at birth. The next birth she survives because the doctor has arrived just in time.

This is how her lives go: in a beautifully rendered account, she dies of influenza, she falls out the window, she dies for countless reasons, but with each death she returns to an important decisions she has made and the second time chooses differently. The countless counterfactuals that Atkinson creates demonstrates the importance of single decisions throughout history. By preventing her nanny from going into London to celebrate the end of World War I, she stops her entire family of dying from illness. From meeting a girl at the train station and walking her home, she prevents the girl’s murder.

Atkinson is hyper-attentive to the impacts of small decisions on the future.

“Life After Life,” in addition to the literary mastery with which Atkinson writes, is beautiful because of its attention to history. Ursula’s life takes place with World War I in the background and, eventually, with World War II in the foreground.

Atkinson is concerned with the average

Life After Life

by Kate Atkinson REGAN ARTHUR BOOKS 529 pages | $27.99

The Man in the High Castle

by Philip K. Dick MARINER BOOKS 288 pages | $14.95

British life during World War I and II, and she carefully sets the scene of an English countryside preoccupied with war.

In many of Ursula’s timelines she dies in the war: once in Germany, holding her daughter to her during an air raid; another time in the basement of her apartment building in England, which doubles as a bomb shelter. The furthest Ursula makes it is 1967, when news of the Six-Day War permeates the BBC. In this timeline she wonders about the counterfactual implications of Hitler’s rule. “But if Hitler had been killed, before he became Chancellor, it would have stopped all this conflict between the Arabs and the Israelis, wouldn’t it?”

Later, she continues, “But think how different things would be. The Iron Curtain would probably not have fallen and Russia wouldn’t have been able to gobble up Eastern Europe. [...] And the Americans might not have recovered from the Depression so quickly without a war economy and consequently not exerted so much influence on the postwar world. [...] And the whole cultural face of Europe would be different because of the Jews. And think of all those displaced people, shuffling from one country to another. And Britain would still have been an empire [...] And no Common Market—Think how strong Europe would be!” Ursula’s nephew, a history teacher, reminds her, “History is all about ‘what SWARTHMORE REVIEW

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ifs.’”

In her next life, this character who has lived and died so many times decides to take these very questions into her own hands: “She was both warrior and shining spear. She was a sword glinting in the depths of night, a lance of light piercing the darkness. There would be no mistakes this time.”

In this timeline Ursula learns German, befriends Hitler’s companion and shortlived wife, Eva. She becomes a regular at Hitler’s table. Then, after eating dessert, she shoots him, and, just as in the end of every other timeline, darkness falls.

Atkinson’s portrayal of Ursula’s life is focused on the minutia of childhood in England during the first half of the twentieth century. There are lengthy descriptions of certain neighbors and of the family’s cook. The plot is not cohesive: each time she dies her life re-starts from a point and goes in a different direction, but, despite this, the plot is not disjointed. The narrative is fluid and her many lives serve as a compelling investigation into the importance of small decisions on the many possibilities for a person’s life.

This counterfactual is played out in reverse in Philip K. Dick’s “The Man in the High Castle.”

“The Man in the High Castle” asks what would have happened if the Allies had lost the war. The novel takes place in 1962, in an alternate situation where

Germany and Japan won World War II and have taken over the United States.

It takes place on the Japanese-ruled West Coast and the plot rotates between Americans and Japanese navigating the post-War economy.

Over the course of the novel, the history of the past few decades is slowly revealed. Franklin Roosevelt was assassinated in 1933, resulting in the Great Depression continuing as World War II began. This leads to U.S. isolationism, which in turn, allows the Nazis and the Japanese to win the war. The act of Roosevelt’s assassination has wide reaching implications, resulting in a world completely foreign to our own. Half of the world has been taken over by Germany, the other half by Japan.

The most thoughtful parts of the novel occur through the discussion of a counterfactual within a counterfactual— through the book-within-a-book “The Grasshopper Lies Heavy.” This novel, banned from the German- ruled sections of the world, is written by an author who imagines the future if the Allies had won the war. One character reads out loud from the book, “The British Empire would control all Europe. All the Mediterranean. No Italy at all. No Germany either.” Describing in detail how the Axis lost the war, this novel-within-a-novel is as unfathomable to the characters within “The Man in the High Castle,” as “The Man in the High Castle” is to us.

Unlike Atkinson’s work, which focuses on one person’s life, Dick’s spans many.

From a high-profile Japanese businessman to two men who start a homemade jewelry business, Dick allows the readers to see the world he has created from many different vantage points.

“The Man in the High Castle” is a novel that is very aware of the intricacies of history, and, as such, one that lends itself best to careful reading. It is a novel that makes up for its failures in literary flourishes and character development by the excellence with which it interrogates the many factors that contributed to the Allies winning World War II. Counterfactuals award power to specific moments in history. Frequently we fall into the belief that history is slowly shaped, but both “Life After Life” and “The Man in the High Castle” disrupt this notion by instead considering the alternate histories that could occur due only to a single action or decision.

Today we can no longer understand what the next four years would have been like if Hillary Clinton was elected, but we certainly can speculate. What we have the power to do now is focus on the future ahead of us and fight for each small decision that may or may not have massive implications for our shared history.

This awareness is the gift that counterfactuals can give us if we allow them to persuade us into believing in the power of even seemingly small decisions. u

‘Time Travel: a History’

REVIEW

A review of James Gleick’s new book

by Zac Arestad

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ver winter break I devoted a great deal of my time to literature on counterfactual history, utopian science fiction, and of course time travel. Given the impending conclusion of my four-year undergraduate experience at Swarthmore and my growing laundry list of personal failures, I was drawn to books about escaping the present. As luck would have it, James Gleick, Royal Society Prize-winning science writer, recently published a new monograph called “Time Travel: a History” through Pan-

theon Books. Throughout the engaging and sometimes disorienting book, Gleick reminds us that while this desire for other times is nothing new, it’s also not historically universal and, in fact, our very understandings of time and space are socially contingent.

Gleick starts the history of time travel [1] with one story—H.G. Wells’ 1895 “The Time Machine.” While he makes sure to address its near antecedents in Edgar Allen Poe and Arthur Schopenhauer, Gleick ultimately sticks with the assertion that time travel as we know it today was more or less the invention of one Mr. Wells. Reviewer Karen Long described

Time Travel: a History

by James Gleick PANTHEON BOOKS 336 pages | $26.95

Gleick’s scope in his 2012 book “The Information” as “intoxicating—thanks to Gleick’s clear mind, magpie-styled research and explanatory verve,” a feature of his writing that has survived and thrived into his most recent work. I was consistently amazed by Gleick’s ability to find precisely the right obscure anecdote

[1] Though the very notion of a meaningful start to anything is increasingly complicated throughout the book

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to fit his argument. The breadth and detail in “Time Travel” reveals not only a careful researcher, but a committed and joyful lifelong reader.

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he structure and density of “Time Travel” make it an occasionally challenging read—with references to earlier [2] chapters or topics sometimes evading the reader. In the chapter “Our Only Boat,” which centers on the development of literary time, Gleick parrots Nabokov: “Ideally a book should be like a painting, which we comprehend… all at once, outside of time.” Though he ultimately disagrees with Nabokov on this point, emphasizing the impossibility of this total vision in the time-based medium of the written word, I was led nevertheless to imagine “Time Travel” as a static visual object, like a diagram of recursive lines and tightly networked, inter-chapter references. The book’s deceptively complex structure equally resembles both Gödel’s looping “closed timelike curves” and the arboreal branching of the “Many-worlds interpretation” of quantum mechanics favored by Erwin Schrödinger, Hugh Everett, andbefore either of those physicistsJorge Luis Borges (in his 1941 story “The Garden of Forking Paths”).

Gleick has the capacity to render complex mathematical or philosophical arguments in prose that’s both intellectually and affectively accessible At its best, “Time Travel” tracks specific problems related to time and time travel through their literary, philosophical, and scientific histories. Gleick has the capacity to render internally complex mathematical or philosophical arguments in prose that’s both intellectually and affectively accessible. Describing in the chapter “By Your Bootstraps,” Gleick starts with the seminal “By His Bootstraps” (Robert Heinlein, 1941) and uses it to discuss the tightly related problems of free will and determinism in physics and philosophy.

In Heinlein’s story, a man (Gleick points out repeatedly that time travelers have, it seems, nearly all been men) working on a dissertation about the mathematics of time travel is confronted by several future versions of himself. Together, they (he?) start to work out some of the paradoxes associated with time traveland Gleick deftly puts them in conversation with a variety of later commentators including logician Charles Taylor and (none other than!) an undergraduate David Foster Wallace, whose senior thesis at Amherst attempted to “defend the common intuition ‘that persons as agents are capable of influencing the course of events in their world.’” Gleick deftly characterizes the ideas that appear in his book as well as the people behind them. Of Charles Taylor, who believes in a rigid, deterministic universe, he writes: I wonder whether Taylor had read much time-travel fiction or even, for the matter, whether he lived in the world I live in, where regret is not unknown and people do sometimes speculate about what might have been.

At its worst, however, the book carries on like a procession of quite interesting but tangentially related anecdotes about time and time travel. For readers as transfixed by the subject of time travel as yours truly, these moments are temporary glitches in an otherwise thrilling ride.

However, for readers invested in clear organization will frequently find themselves disappointed or even bucked by chapters with less focusI found the section on the development of centennial consciousness (“Fin de Siècle”) to be particularly frustrating to work through despite the often fascinating information therein.

Gleick’s use of footnotes serve to both show off a little of his methods, reveal his comic side, and tell stories about the little intimacies that led him to tackle such an ambitious topic. I would direct readers to the bottom of page 248, where Gleick cites his own mother, who responded to his incessant questioning about the nature of time by writing a children’s book: “*Beth Gleick, ‘Time Is When’ (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1960). The present author’s mother.”

On page 250 Gleick slips another comic treat into a footnotethe short tragedy and triumph of one “poor Gordon” who managed to get out of an 1898 moving

This sketch, created by Heinlein to explain the timeline of By His Bootstraps, also evokes the knotty and recursive structure of Gleick’s own “Time Travel”

violation for failing to light a lamp on his bicycle after dark on the grounds that sunset in Bristol and Greenwich is offset by ten minutes.

While these small windows into his writing process are interesting, his skill as a writer comes off just as well in the body text proper. For example, in the chapter about traveling “Backward” in time, he writes, “Some [backward time travelers] just want to relive past loves. Many back travelers are driven by regretmistakes made, opportunities lost.” One wonders if Gleick might be working through his 1997 plane crash, which left him severely injured and killed Harry, his 8-year-old son.

At this particularly trying moment, as institutions we hold dear and norms we cherish seem to tear apart like wet tissue, the time-traveling impulse is as salient as ever. While Gleick is quick to remind us that the time travel of our favorite science fictions “does not exist. It cannot,” “Time Travel: a History” works as its own literary time machine. Science fiction nuts and time travel lovers should absolutely page through this outstanding work of nonfiction. Without an existing appreciation of the topic, however, readers will quickly find their patience tried by his disorganization. u

[2] Another tricky word when discussing time travel

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MOVIES The revolution will not win Best Picture #OscarsSoWhite may have caused a stir, but your dollars in the box office will make the real difference.

ESSAY

The Oscars were targeted last year by the #OscarsSoWhite social media campaign aimed at pressuring the Academy into heralding diversity in the film

by Grant Torre

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t’s the start of a new year and the Golden Globes are behind us, so that means everyone on Facebook and Twitter are suddenly experts on the film industry’s annual awards season. Comprising over eight major ceremonies—only a few of which break through into mainstream consciousness—the two-month rush from Golden Globes to Academy Awards is exhausting, self-indulgent, and (often) incredibly predictable. The larger film industry guilds have their own ceremonies, like the Producers Guild Awards or the Directors Guild Awards, which often signal what to expect at the major end of the awards season stretch and, arguably, the most sought-after prize: The Academy Awards.

Despite the long, contentious slog that awards season inevitably tends to be, most pay attention to the start and end, the glittery awards shows that have Ryan Seacrest 30

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hosting the “E! Live From the Red Carpet” special, one might say. With this tunnel vision, though, comes a sense of expertise that social media fiends often feel, posting status after status complaining about or applauding moves by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (the 90-member body who votes for the Golden Globes) or the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (the over 5,000-member group that votes for the Oscars).

The nominations for these two shows are deemed by casual viewers to be reflective of the state of the film industry as a whole.

Perhaps you’re familiar with posts filled with anger towards #OscarsSoWhite or bitter sadness when one’s favorite movie has been snubbed. Maybe you’ve even recently seen the opposite: posts filled with pride that this year’s Golden Globe and Oscars nominees were diverse, inclusive, and representative of the film industry we want to create. These social media revolutionaries write their posts as if their words are pav-

ing the way for a new industry landscape.

It makes sense, right? An inclusive slate of nominees means the film industry is more inclusive, right?

I hate to break it to you, but your revolution of words will not win an Oscar. It will not win a Golden Globe. And it certainly will not change an industry entrenched in systemic discrimination justified by its economic interests.

The film industry is just that: an industry. Just like the automobile industry or the computer industry, the film industry operates on the premise of making money within America’s (and largely, the world’s) capitalistic society. Its decisions—from what films to produce to what actors to cast—all come down to profit. Studios ask how much a film can gross from an international run or how much it can make from merchandise deals or sequels before they ask what it can do in terms of representation on screen.

Maybe, just maybe, a studio’s premium wing (for example, Fox Searchlight at 20th CenPhoto courtesy of pixel.nymag.com

tury Fox or Sony Pictures Classics for Sony) might take a chance on a film to increase its clout or show that it’s investing in risky and new fare rather than rely on existing franchises, but that’s certainly more unusual as all the major studios are attached to publicly-traded corporations and their stockholders, who are seeking out one thing: money.

One could argue that the #OscarsSoWhite hashtag and controversy that accompanied last year’s incredibly white Oscar nominee list led to a more diverse slate of nominees at film awards this year. In a way, that may be true. For the first time ever, this year’s Oscar nominations feature black nominees in each major acting category, with seven people of color represented in the acting categories overall. We have the first ever black woman, “Moonlight”’s Joi McMillon, nominated for Best Film Editing. We have the first ever black American, “Arrival”’s Bradford Young, nominated for Best Cinematography, following the 1998 nomination of Britain’s Remi Adefarasin.

Despite this, voters for each ceremony may have felt pressured to check a box during the nomination period next to someone they may not have considered in order to keep up appearances and look progressive.

But nominations, contrary to the opinion contained in some of my Facebook friends’ posts, aren’t as significant as one may think.

Nominations are meaningful in some ways; they drive up ticket sales, streaming and VOD statistics, and DVD purchases—but they are not an indicator of the overall state of the film industry.

Notably, each studio’s slate (or list of upcoming releases currently in different stages of production) is often set years in advance, with slight changes, additions, or acquisitions from the indie film festival scene, so we cannot let this year’s historic nominations be indicative of major systemic change. Sure, “Moonlight,” “Hidden Figures” and “Fences” are all nominated for Best Picture, but does that mean there will even be more than a handful of films focused on inclusive narratives next year?

Certainly not.

Each studio and independent distributor produces and markets targeted awards contenders to ensure they’re part of the prestige conversation come each new year, but the vast majority of films that are produced by major studios aren’t even eyeing awards each winter. For every “La La Land” and “Moonlight” there are countless “Fast and the Furious” sequels, low-budget horror flicks (featuring largely white casts and white, male directors), and low-brow comedies (featuring largely white casts and white,

male directors) that could care less about scoring a nomination by the Hollywood Foreign Press but are instead interested in growing a studio’s profit margin so they can take more chances on the risky awards fare.

While there is a lot of justified anger directed towards awards nominations and winners on our social media channels each winter, there are certainly better ways to use our energy all year long to move towards a more inclusive film industry that spans not only highbrow films that premiere after November, but the summer blockbusters and screwball comedies as well.

Rather than use energy to solely complain about or applaud the awards nominations, there are ways we might be able to nudge the film industry into being more representative of the diverse world we encounter and study at Swarthmore. While I

I hate to break it to you, but your revolution of words will not win an Oscar risk sounding like a nagging grandfather, the easiest way to have your voice heard is to actually pay to see movies you enjoy. If you’re in the financial position to pay for a movie ticket or an iTunes rental, show your approval by actually paying for film. Motion pictures are not a right and are rarely created as a public service. Rather, they are an art—albeit often an incredibly commercial art.

The frustration I feel when my peers refuse to go to the movies and support films that depict underrepresented narratives and characters was rarely matched during my time in college, especially when the same individuals criticize the film industry for producing few films that tell these tales.

We cannot, right now, change the fact that films are produced with the aim to make money, but we can give money to the films that “do it right” in our eyes rather than enjoying a free, illegal stream of the hottest movies online.

This is one of the biggest things each and every person can do to have a voice that executives in Los Angeles will actually listen to. They won’t look at your Facebook post but I guarantee you that every Monday morning they are looking at each film’s box office revenue. With enough continued success for films like “Hidden Figures,” which is set to make four times its budget by the end of its run, other inclusive film pitches will begin to get compared to these success-

es. In the film industry, movies are often pitched with “comps”—or previously released films that filmmakers feel are similar commercially to the project they are pitching and, thus, would see similar box office success—and with comps that have high box-office revenue, it may lead to more films with inclusive casts and diverse stories being produced.

The business of making films and the rationale for why there aren’t more films with directors, writers, and actors that aren’t just white is more complicated than just comps or box office gross or anything I can succinctly outline in this piece, and admittedly even more complicated than I can know presently. But it does start with the realization that the business and complexities of making films are more complicated than any Facebook post or tweet can contain. So this awards season, keep your “hot takes” in perspective and understand having diverse Oscar nominees doesn’t mean everything is swell and all the white men in Hollywood have started hiring directors and writers of color to create films for years upon years that employ actors of all races, genders, and ethnicities.

This doesn’t mean stop voicing your complaints, frustrations, and thrills but it does mean speak out and act on more than the small window of awards season. Don’t get me wrong, it really is great if “Moonlight” or Barry Jenkins win Best Picture or Best Director. And if an admittedly great film about white men’s problems (a.k.a “Manchester by the Sea”) beats some incredible films written, directed, and featuring people of color at the Academy Awards—it doesn’t mean all hope is lost.

The end isn’t when the credits roll at the Oscars. The end isn’t when creative minds of color don’t get recognized once again. The end isn’t even when these same individuals finally do get the recognition they deserve.

In fact, the end is not near and may never truly come. Progress is never complete and there is always more work to be done, especially in an industry that is moving slowly but surely. If you’re outraged by the Oscar winners this year or the fact that a white man is championed despite being accused of the same thing a black man is, while the latter is instead chastised and pushed to the fringe, do more than write a solitary status.

Go pay to see or rent films that interest you, speak out and think critically all year long, and educate yourself on the film business (read “The Hollywood Reporter” or “Variety” to start).

And sure, go start a revolution—but don’t make it only about winning Best Picture. u SWARTHMORE REVIEW

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‘Passengers’/’Arrival’

REVIEW

Almost there...

by Jonathan Kay

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he first hour of “Passengers” is a different film from the next: different pacing, different focus, different plot. The tension that results damns what should have been a great film to mediocrity.

Jim Preston (Chris Pratt) has woken from induced hibernation early, one hundred years before he and the five thousand other passengers aboard spaceship Avalon are scheduled to arrive at a new life on planet Homestead II. Alone, facing the horror of dying without ever seeing his intended home, he distracts himself with the ship’s amenities: dance simulations, fancy dinners, spacewalks. Soon, though, he begins to slide into a deep depression.

His beard grows wild; he spurns clothing.

Then, on one of his walks through the hibernation pod room, he catches sight of Aurora Lane, a writer from New York City. He’s instantly infatuated. He obsesses

over her, reading her books, researching her biography, and taking his meals beside her pod. We can read this moment, like many in the film, in two ways: as love at first sight or as the self-delusion of someone so desperate for human company that they would think themselves in love with a stranger.

At some point, he begins to consider waking her up.

At first, he’s disgusted with the idea; as the months wear on, however, his resolve weakens. He causes her pod to malfunction, scrambling away as she opens her eyes in order to stage a meeting later.

When Lane inevitably discovers Preston’s deception, she’s devastated. She refuses to speak or look at him. He’s essentially murdered her, stealing the life she would have led. At one point, she enters Preston’s room as he’s sleeping and kicks the shit out of him with the kind of unadulterated rage and crunching sound effects you’d expect more from a Guy Ritchie movie than a ro-

mance flick.

That’s the first film: loneliness, selfishness, delusion.

The second hour puts these backstories on the backburner, instead focusing on the pair as they attempt to discover the cause of the ship’s malfunctions, running around and checking diagnostics panels, fighting their way through gravity loss and broken elevators, eventually reaching a cookie cutter sci-fi flick climax. Preston offers Lane the chance to return to hibernation, but she chooses to live out the rest of her days with him on the ship.

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t’s important to understand that “Passengers” is not a romance movie, even if its producers billed it as one. The trailer for “Passengers,” which has 21 million views on Youtube, shows earnest and quirky Pratt deliver a note via robot to Lawrence, asking her on a date; they dress up and banter at the bar. It’s a cute scene that, seen in the film, takes on a much

Left, Chris Pratt and Jennifer Lawrence star in “Passengers,” a blockbuster dishonestly marketed as a romance movie. Right, Amy Adams plays the lead in character-driven science feature movie “Arrival.”

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From left to right, photos courtesy of twincities.com and i.ytimg.com

darker tone. The more cliché the romance set piece, the creepier it plays.

This was intentional, but the film shortchanges the entire relationship, which should have been the center of the storyline: Preston’s moral turmoil, Lane’s acceptance of her circumstances, the unique demands of being confined with a stranger. The ship’s cascading malfunctions seemed tacked on by producers worried about appealing to an audience expecting a blockbuster.

What might be needed is a different kind of movie: a science fiction drama that uses new technologies or bizarre settings solely to stimulate human Why does Lane forgive Preston? By the movie’s telling, the desperation of saving the ship and Preston’s near death prompts her to forgive Preston, seeing that the love built on deception was true this whole time. By offering the hibernation pod, Preston wins the audience’s forgiveness; by declining it, Lane offers a feel-good ending. It’s contrived, unsatisfying, and almost criminally negligent in leaving Preston’s actions ultimately unexamined.

Imagine if “Passengers” had dispensed with the option of the hibernation pod entirely and finished out the movie’s most important premise: what people do when they’re trapped alone for the rest of their lives. Preston and Lane would have spent the next fifty to sixty years together— would Lane have shunned Preston until the end, or would she have more likely turned to his dysfunctional company out of desperation? What kind of relationship would have ensued, underpinned by betrayal and loss?

The script for “Passengers,” which had topped Hollywood’s Black List (a yearly compilation of industry bigwigs’ favorite unproduced scripts) for years, was ripe with potential. Instead, the film will be quickly forgotten as another undistinguished blockbuster.

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e don’t see the aliens for half an hour. Instead, we catch glimpses of their vessels, dark oblongs just visible in hazy clouds of smoke, shot

by amateurs with cheap cameras and shaky hands; we see humanity’s panicked reaction, crowds fleeing or gathering beneath the looming shapes while world leaders mobilize battleships and cordon off entire countries; we see Louise Banks (Amy Adams), confused and anxious as she’s swept into the front line of what might be an existential threat to man. “Arrival”’s first thirty minutes aren’t about the aliens—they’re about us. They set the tone for a science fiction movie that dedicates itself to character rather than spectacle.

“Arrival” succeeds in part because of its modest ambitions. That may seem a strange thing to say about a character-driven science fiction piece that features a female protagonist and centers on linguistics. But its most interesting premise—a nonlinear experience of time—is used as a plot device that resolves an impending international crisis and does little else.

Banks, a professor of linguistics, has been contracted by the United States government to attempt to communicate with an alien ship in Montana. She and her team struggle to begin: they show video, reproduce number sequences, and display dead languages to no avail. Eventually, she realizes that their language is fundamentally different than ours: the heptapods (called so for their six legs) write intricate inky symbols in no sequence. “Imagine you wanted to write a sentence using two hands,” Banks says, “starting from either side. You have to know each word you wanted to use as well as how much space they will occupy. [They] can write a complex sentence in two seconds effortlessly.”

“Arrival” succeeds in part because of its modest ambitions This feature of the heptapod’s language becomes the center of the entire movie.

Learning a new language, Banks tells us, rewires our brains. “Arrival” takes this effect to an extreme. As Banks immerses herself in the heptapod language, she begins to experience causality and sequence as the heptapods do, sliding out of an ordered experience of time.

The meditations Arrival offers on time are often without dialogue and deliberately impressionistic—an over saturated shot of Banks’s daughter, a slow zoom onto a childhood illustration, snatches of out-ofcontext dialogue. These scenes, detailing

the death of Banks daughter and her separation from her husband, are elegant and vague, poignant and indirect.

In part, that’s because the movie has its audience assume until almost the end that these are flashbacks; instead, we learn, they’re flash forwards. While the realization, when it comes, is spectacular, the treatment of Banks’ future makes Arrival feel like a story without much meat.

We don’t really get a chance to confront Banks’ decision to have her daughter, to tell her husband—it happens off screen.

This might be because, for all “Arrival”’s focus on humanity, it’s reluctant to entirely dislodge the story of decoding the alien language as the film’s main driver. Banks’s revelation that the images she’d been seeing were of her own future should have been the film’s emotional climax; instead, it felt like a footnote.

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either “Arrival” nor “Passengers” were bad movies. “Arrival” was excellent, although probably overrated; “Passengers” was a decent movie whose premise just didn’t allow it to get away with Hollywood’s usual laziness.

Both of them deserve credit for attempting to broaden the horizons of science fiction in film.

The problem might be an identity crisis. “Passengers,” for example, is unsure if it’s action/adventure, romance, or something else entirely; trying to be all three, it succeeds as none. In only two hours, it’s difficult to both tell an exciting story and deeply explore emotion, relationships, and humanity. Both movies attempted it and neither succeeded completely.

What might be needed is a different kind of movie: a science fiction drama that uses new technologies or bizarre settings solely to stimulate human stories. No explosions.

No looming disasters. Examples exist, like the movie-length episodes of Netflix’s “Black Mirror,” but little mainstream attention has been paid to the importance of purely human stories in science fiction.

Science fiction offers the unique chance to ask otherwise impossible questions. Is it worse to spend the rest of your life alone or to condemn someone to join you? How would you value relationships if you knew exactly how and when they would end?

Although worldbuilding and spectacle are respectable in their own right, to let them become the focus of a movie risks self-indulgence and superficiality. Instead, the more alien the setting, the more attention must be paid to the humanity of the movie. u SWARTHMORE REVIEW

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MUSIC ‘Starboy’ and The Weeknd’s reinvention Abel Tesfaye explores a pop-heavy sound on his new album

REVIEW

by Emma Walker

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fter two albums of slow tempo, noirish music and an album which dipped its toes in the world of pop without fully submerging, The Weeknd (Abel Tesfaye) reinvents himself with this ego-driven, upbeat, party starter of an album. If the bright red background and yellow block letters of the album cover weren’t a sign enough, Tesfaye pushes this pop/R&B fusion over the edge into party pop. This fresh, new sound can be heard right away on the album’s lead track “Starboy” which is as synthy as it is danceable.

In the midst of this new pop-y R&B fusion, however, The Weeknd doesn’t lose the erotic charm that he is known for. The album remains sexy, and fun—which is no surprise considering he cited Prince as one of his main inspirations for “Starboy”.

While Tesfaye carries the same drugand sex-themed lyrics he has used in the past into “Starboy,” he keeps his sound from becoming tired with the incorporation of new beats, sounds, and voices. The main distinction between “Starboy” and The Weekend’s previous work isn’t necessarily the mix of genres; it is a sense of presence. He ditches the hazy and echoey feel of the past for beats which are faster, more pronounced, and quite addictive.

Whether it is the blood-pumping buildup to the screeching chorus of “False Alarm” or the fantastic layering of hip hop beats on “Reminder,” many songs had me wanting to listen again immediately.

Tesfaye’s ability to keep the essence of his iconic moody and dark aesthetic through his musical evolution really stands out in this album. It seeps through via slick avenues such as the sultry voice of Lana Del Rey—which punctuates the album in “Stargirl Interlude” in addition to making an appearance on the outro of “Party Monster.” Overall, Del Rey serves

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The album cover proclaims the upbeat, party-style sound of the album with its primary color

as a return to the ambient and alluring, which helps ground the album in The Weeknd’s notorious aesthetic. Del Rey’s silky interlude is an exemplary transition piece for the album, and Tesfaye’s sumptuous pieces at the end make it cohesive with the rest of the album.

In addition to Prince, The Weeknd cites David Bowie as a source of inspiration for “Starboy,” with the album title alluding to Bowie’s 1972 classic “Starman.” The 80s sound which infiltrates many of the songs is a testament to this. In the track “Rock-

in,’” we see him completely switch up the pace with a style which evokes Prince’s “When Doves Cry.” Tesfaye compares his low register to that of Toni Braxton and attributes the hypnotic 80s beats to the Chicago house music that it so aptly mimics. Regardless of his inspirations, what is undoubtedly clear is that “Rockin’” has the ability to transport the listener to an 80’s club with an LED dancefloor. As culture news outlet Vulture highlights in their review of the album, “Often the difference between Tesfaye and hip-hop artPhoto courtesy of genius.com

ists is one of degree, not kind: His singing voice sounds like the good life, whereas their spoken words only refer to it.”

Similar to “Rockin,’ ” “A Lonely Night” has a slick 80s beat which is a refreshing juxtaposition to its moody, potentially dark lyrics: “There’s nothing between us oh-oh-oh/ Why would you wanna use a life to keep us?/ To keep us together oh.”

“Starboy” seems to have mastered steeping darker lyrics in bass-driven dance tracks. We can also see this in “Six Feet Under” with lyrics like, “Ask around about her/ She don’t get emotional/ Kill off all her feelings/ That’s why she ain’t approachable” coupled with an infectious hip-hop hook.

Another standout feature of “Starboy” is the way Tesfaye combines different sounds and genres to create a lush yet vibrant masterpiece. Whether through the

water drop sound in “True Colors,” or the delightfully surprising acoustic guitar ending on the heavily electronic “Nothing Without You,” Tesfaye is able to keep us on our toes with his melange of sound choices and layering of genres.

As the album goes on, however, I can’t help but feel like it keeps—well, going on. With eighteen tracks, and at total of one hour and eight minutes, the album could do with a bit of tidying up in terms of track selection. Less fillers and more stunners would have made “Starboy” a cohesive and viscerally poignant piece of work, and could have made the difference between the album being full of gems, and being a gem.

Although there is a bit of a lag in the middle, fortunately the album picks back up towards the end, with “Die for You” and “Feel it Coming.” “Die for You” is a

Less fillers and more stunners would have made “Starboy” a cohesive and viscerally return to the artist’s smoke and mirrors roots and could have easily been on his 2012 “Trilogy.” The track features his signature falsettos and a sultry atmosphere, paired with a dark, heavy beat, reminding us why we loved The Weeknd in the first place. As for the album’s closer, I believe Tesfaye describes his work with Daft Punk best: “We want to make sure that at the end, it feels like the sun’s coming up, and maybe there’s a car chase.” u

Moon Man Turned Demon Slayer

REVIEW

A review of Kid Cudi’s ‘Passion, Pain & Demon Slayin’ ‘

by Jessica Hernandez

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id Cudi’s “Passion, Pain & Demon Slayin’ ” was released on December 16th, 2016, almost a year after the release of his last album, “Speedin’ Bullet 2 Heaven.” This most recent project clearly differed from “SB2H” and “KiD CuDi presents SATELLITE FLIGHT: The journey to Mother Moon,” which was released in 2014. Rock ballads from the 80s and 90s constructed the former album, while cosmic sounds and a few classic WZRD guitar riffs heavily influenced “SATELLITE FLIGHT.” While Kid Cudi’s followers awaited “Passion, Pain & Demon Slayin’,” the divided response to “SB2H” was still fresh in their minds. Fans either stood by Cudi and managed to listen contentedly to “Speedin’ Bullet 2 Heaven,” or were caught off guard and regrettably decided that this album was more rock than they anticipated it to be. No matter how listeners coped with the latest musical variation of Cudi’s style, everyone found themselves longing for another project that sounded like the classic lonely stoner. Fortunately, in August of 2016 the artist announced the completion of two albums, both of which Cudi planned to drop before the end of the year. “Passion, Pain & Demon Slayin’,” the first project of the two, was arranged

to drop in September, but its release was delayed until mid-December as Cudi took steps to check into a mental health facility in Fall 2016.

In his most recent project, Kid Cudi discusses personal issues with mental health, which is one of central themes of the album. Despite focusing on his long-term struggles, Cudi paints us a picture of hope and encourages us to “dig deeper” in songs such as “Wounds” and “The Commander.”

Cudi also manages to include a few love songs and arrogant bars to change up the subject matter, keeping listeners interested and the album multifaceted. Kid Cudi produced a handful of the songs on the set himself, such as “Frequency,” “Swim In The Light,” and “The Commander,” among others. However, Cudi also calls on a team of talented producers to create a piquant collection of tracks. The album’s seasoned producers include Dot Da Genius, who created “WZRD” with Cudi back in 2012; Pharrell Williams; and the legendary Mike Dean. Cudi’s lineup for features is equally desirable, with such collaborators as Travis Scott, Willow Smith, and Andre 3000.

“Passion, Pain & Demon Slayin’ “ is divided into four acts: I. Tuned, II. Prophecy, III. Niveaux de l’Amour, and IV. It’s Bright and Heaven is Warm. The first song on the album, “Frequency” has an eerie

feel recognizable in several songs over the course of the album. Over a hypnotic ring that is impossible to ignore, Cudi urges listeners to “widen their views” and tune into the unique set of sounds in the coming songs. He lets fans know that his flow is on its own wavelength and is unlike any other, mandating that listeners be on a certain frequency to take part. Kid Cudi states that love can lead to the frequency

He lets fans know that his flow is on its own wavelength and mandates that listeners be on a certain frequency he’s describing and presses others to “explore” and see what they find in Cudi’s music.

“Swim In The Light” is the first song in which Cudi reveals the struggles he has been enduring mentally, which he describes in slightly more depth later in “ILLusions.” Singing, “you could try and numb the pain but it will never go away,” SWARTHMORE REVIEW

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piece suit and I’m looking so cute” just as the instrumental is cut, which is unquestionably one of the major sound highlights of the song. It’s as if the line captures the exact feeling I imagine a person has when they’re feeling their outfit. It will guarantee that if someone wasn’t nodding their head before, they definitely are now. This track weaves together Cudi’s exposure of fake love from those around him, but still includes the dark themes we’ve seen throughout the album.

“The Commander” is the second to last

Because the album is ultimately a dark one, you’re not likely to hear most of the tracks at your next

Album art for ‘Passion, Pain, and Demon Slayin’ ‘

Kid Cudi alludes to using drugs in order to deal with his depression. The Cleveland rapper mentions this coping mechanism in other projects such as “Red Eye” from “Indicud” and “Mr. Rager” on “Man on the Moon II: The Legend of Mr. Rager.”

Although Cudi raps about the hold his depression has on him, he is determined to “swim in the light” and believes he will “make it through.” Kid Cudi produces this track and includes classic humming, a quick high hat, and a repetition of that sounds that could pass as the intro to a 90s video game.

“Rose Golden” marks the second song of Act II: Prophecy and is one of the strongest tracks on the album. Cudi establishes himself as “The Chosen” and looks back on how his musical artistry has amassed such a following. He raps about becoming more successful, which probably won’t be difficult for the talented Cleveland rapper. “Rose Golden” is sure to be a favorite 36

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among listeners, as it is an archetypal anthem inspiring others to realize their potential and grind harder. Willow Smith’s fluid voice is an exceptional contrast to Cudi’s deep vocals and comes in at pivotal moments of the song. The young singer proves her versatility as her voice feathers “who am I?”, but demonstrates its power as backup vocals during the final hook of the song. It is also worth mentioning that Kid Cudi demonstrates his team’s undoubted production value with Dean and Pat’s combination of various strings and horns that can truly only be described as “Rose Golden.”

One of the tougher songs on the set, and one of my favorites, is “Baptized in Fire.”

It includes a feature with Travis Scott, with whom Cudi collaborated earlier in the year on Scott’s “Birds In The Trap Sing McKnight.” Cudi raps over a hard bass while entrusting the hook to Travis Scott.

In the pre-hook, Kid Cudi raps, “Three-

song of Act IV: It’s Bright and Heaven is Warm. This song represents something of a resolution to Cudi’s battle with depression, as he realizes success over his current issues is part of his destiny. Cudi ends “Passion, Pain & Demon Slayin’ “ with “Surfin,’ ” another model production by Pharrell Williams. It leaves final thoughts of the album consisting of Kid Cudi’s exaltation of his own style and proof that he has the ability to ride his own wave.

Kid Cudi’s new album does not disappoint and will definitely be commended by fans. The rapper is diverse in the way that he beams about his esteemed successes, but is humble enough to give listeners insight into his personal struggles. With five songs in each act except for the last, the album is slightly long and consists of nineteen tracks. Although each act adds depth to “Passion, Pain & Demon Slayin’,” listeners may find themselves getting bored by the end of the third. Because the album is ultimately a dark one, you’re not likely to hear most of the tracks at your next party, but I can picture myself rapping Rose Golden at any kind of function.

This is definitely a compilation of tracks you could listen to when there’s a long drive ahead or when you need to get some work done. No matter the situation, “Passion, Pain & Demon Slayin’ ” is worth a listen.

Top Tracks: Baptized in Fire, By Design, Frequency, ILLusions, Rose Golden, Surfin’ Personal Favorites: Baptized in Fire, Distant Fantasies, Rose Golden u Photo courtesy of amazon.com

‘Awaken, My Love!’

REVIEW

Childish Gambino still knows how to surprise

by Rachel Hottle

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n my first listen-through of Donald Glover’s most recent album as Childish Gambino, I was a bit confused. I went from “Okay, he’s starting out with some funk,” to “Is he singing about zombies?” to “How does his voice sound like that?” to “He’s literally not rapping anywhere on here.” If you come to “Awaken, My Love!” expecting a rap album like “Camp” or “Because the Internet,” you too will be confused, and maybe even disappointed.

“Awaken, My Love!” is not a rap album. It is a funk album. Critics have almost universally likened it to George Clinton’s Parliament-Funkadelic work, and Glover himself has cited such psychedelic soul influences as Clinton and Sly & the Family Stone. Is this album an homage to the music his family played while he was growing up? Is it a nod to the rich history of Black American music? Is it a sharp turn designed to situate him as a funk or soul artist? Or is it a stepping stone on the way to his larger musical goals? How does it fit into his larger oeuvre as a writer, comedian, actor, and musician?

It could be that “Awaken, My Love!” is an homage to psychedelic soul bands such as P-Funk, but Childish claims the sound as his own by retaining the element of surprise. The opening track, “Me and Your Mama,” starts with a shuffling, laid-back section with just background chorus on vocals, and then abruptly switches to a snarling, electric guitar-driven bit with Childish doing some pretty impressive belting.

While this has shaped up to be one of my favorite cuts on the album, this transition was a bit jarring at first. Glover lures you in with his smooth beats and then just rips the sonic rug out from under you on occasion. He comes full circle with this kind of musical joke on the last track of the album, “Stand Tall.” The song opens with Childish singing over some very sparse guitar, eventually adding some background vocals and jazz flute (um, yes please!) to the mix. The whole section has a very minimalist vibe that sounds incredible, but then he goes into a section of background vocals with very heavy synth and then back to the jazz flute counterpoint motif, giving the whole sequence a rather extraterrestrial sound.

The song eventually devolves into sonPhoto courtesy of genius.com

ic chaos and ends with weird laughter as Childish yells.

This is not to say that there aren’t some instantly gratifying moments on the album.

“Redbone” is fantastic. If you haven’t listened to it yet, take a break and go check it out. Right? So synthy, so falsetto. Just let it wash over you. In an interview with Billboard, Childish describes his early impression of P-Funk as being “sexy and scary,” and that’s what this track is. The breakdown on “Baby Boy” is fabulous, and the bass, while not the main attraction, could certainly stand on its own as a solo-worthy line. “Zombies” is funky as hell and has some cool background stuff going on, if you ignore the kind of heavy-handed lyrics about zombies as a metaphor for people who take advantage of you. I like to pretend it’s just about actual zombies, and I suggest you do the same (again, “sexy and scary.”

Am I sensing a theme?).

It took me a few listens to get on the same page as Childish and be able to feel the grooves, but once I did, it was definitely worth the effort (and isn’t that true for

all music? People tend to prefer music that they are more familiar with, so it seems kind of pointless to even be evaluating music at all if our preferences for it are determined by how many times we listen to it.

But I digress). If you don’t have the time or the energy to get used to the weirdness, this is the kind of album that you could have on the background at a small- to medium-sized house party where people are kind of drunk but not too drunk, and just kind of bopping around to the beat. It’s a very groovable album. A lot of the songs feature long instrumental outros which can be frustrating if you’re doing close-listening in a darkened room but perfect if you’re rolling your way through a problem set. And that can certainly be the purpose of some music-listening. But don’t do that.

Listen closely to this album. Let it make you uneasy. Ask yourself why it makes you uneasy. Then put it on in the background at your 70s themed house party and point out the jazz flute on “Stand Tall” and enjoy watching your guests experience it for the first time. u

Childish Gambino stuns with his album’s beautiful cover

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Ozean’s only album is reissued

REVIEW

Looking back on shoegaze, a genre that never quite made it

by George Menz

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ne of the seventy-odd musical subgenres to spring from the British post-punk movement in the late eighties, shoegaze as a genre is defined by absence. Instruments blend together, distorted beyond all recognition, forming not so much a melody as a wave of sound washing over the listener, free from all the rules of what “good music” should sound like. Although lyrics are indispensable— and, often, sung by women with high voices, so that they remain distinguishable over the rest of the cloud of noise— they are generally strings of words linked more by cadence than meaning: just another instrument to be manipulated and distorted into part of the musical scenery.

The sound of shoegaze is the auditory equivalent of watching a Terrence Malick film in the front row of an IMAX theater: overpowering, awe-inspiring, and incom-

I can barely make out more than one word in ten of what’s being said, but it certainly sounds nice. And isn’t that, after all, the whole point? prehensible.

My Bloody Valentine’s “Loveless” remains the unquestioned magnum opus of the shoegaze movement, combining the usual hallmarks of the genre with a healthy dose of British cynicism and genuine artistry that recalls the melancholy dirges of Joy Division’s “Closer,” albeit with near-fatal sardonicism substituting for weltschmerz. In a just world, “Loveless” would be an epoch-defining album on the level of The Clash’s “London Calling” or The Smashing Pumpkins’ “Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness.” As it is, it became the rallying cry of a movement that died in its infancy, and a masterpiece more admired than it is beloved.

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But we’re here to praise shoegaze, not to bury it, and there’s no need to dwell on what might have been—as tempting as it is, given the circumstances: this is, after all, a review of a band that never made it, a band that recorded three songs, took one group photo, and faded into obscurity.

The band is called Ozean, and unless you were in your twenties in the UK in the early nineties and deeply into the shoegaze scene, odds are you’ve never heard of it.

I only stumbled upon it while browsing Bandcamp and, out of sympathy, I forked over the suggested $7 to download MP3s of the band’s three tracks. To say “out of sympathy” seems rather condescending— unjustly, probably, because that $7 was not spent in vain. In the alternate reality where shoegaze didn’t die gasping upon exposure to the air of popular taste, Ozean could have forged a successful career, and this reissue might have been covered in Rolling Stone and Pitchfork as a tribute to a beloved group receiving its due. But that isn’t our world.

The first track, called “Scenic”, begins with a grooving bass line, quickly joined by spacy guitars, eventually giving way entirely to a cloud of sound, over which soar the vocals—ethereal, barely audible, but somehow inextricable from the rest of the sound. If you can tell what this song is supposed to be about, please let me know—I’m willing to admit, of course, that it may not “mean” anything in particular, but it’s always amusing to try and make sense of some moody band’s nonsensical lyrics. (This is one of the reasons for Radiohead’s staying power, regardless of what Thom Yorke tells you.) It might be the last ruminations of a man plummeting to his death from lower Earth orbit; it might be about getting stoned on the beach at three in the morning.

“Fall” opens with a muted drone which soon becomes the backdrop for a curiously mellow bassline. The lyrics here are even less intelligible than they were on “Scenic”; I can barely make out more than one word in ten of what’s being said, but it certainly sounds nice. And isn’t that, after all, the whole point? But this track seems to have a slightly melancholic air, suggested by the title and the long, resigned sighs that serve as a sort of minimalistic cho-

rus. There’s always a sort of gloominess to shoegaze—especially potent in the case of this band, a group of dreamers who never made it, who put away their guitars and went back to their day jobs without changing the world or even putting out a single album.

The final track, “Porcelain,” sounds as fragile as its name suggests. Opening with a spare drum track accompanying a choked synth voice, it breaks into full bloom about a quarter of a minute in—yet throughout it remains distant, as though it’s being heard through water, or from behind a pane of glass: a song you can only hear as an echo, a reduced reverberation.

The synths almost take on the quality of human voices, acting as a sort of backing chorus for the lead singer, whose vocals are once again at odds with the dreamlike quality of the sound. As Ozean’s final testament, it seems entirely adequate.

But “adequate” isn’t enough to justify spending $7 on three short tracks by a band that produced nothing else. Had shoegaze ignited a genuine movement, perhaps it would have been—but as it was, these tracks are simply a glimpse into the landscape of British music in the early 90s: fascinating, yet completely inessential. u

The only image of the band

Photo courtesy of ozean.bandcamp.com

LETTERS OF REC Brief recommendations of books, television, movies, and more from our editors Horoscopes: Madame Clairevoyant Thanks to Sam Herron, who has been sending me my weekly horoscopes by Madame Clairevoyant (from New York Magazine’s “The Cut”), I have been experiencing horoscopes as compassionate check-ins with myself, moments of making sure I am paying attention to my surroundings, my muscles, and my mood.

Madame Clairevoyant phrases and frames horoscopes not as fortune-telling, or even future-thinking, but as a recognition of what’s happening in the present, and a suggestion for how to cope, rejoice, or breathe. If you’d like a weekly opportunity to pause and feel some affirmation from a poetic, intuitive stranger, check up on these horoscopes (or be a kickass BFF like Sam and send your friends theirs!).

power, the game has no set objectives. Instead, the player meanders as they please, earning “bells” to furnish their home and buy new clothes, or beautifying their town with plants and park benches, or filling the town’s museum with bugs, fish, and fossils. In Animal Crossing, there is no nation-state, no death, no poverty, no homelessness, environmental damage, or fascist dictators. Though many of the game’s features rely on the earning of fake money, hard work (if you can even call it that) pays dividends here. In an increasingly unreliable real world, the tiny universe of Animal Crossing offers me an Edenic stability to return to, where virtual bee stings and overgrown weeds are the worst that can happen.

—Colette Gerstmann, Poetry Editor

Book: ‘Ready Player One’ by Ernest Cline Ernest Cline’s debut novel “Ready Player One,” winner of the 2012 science fiction Prometheus Best Novel Award is a must read for both video game fanatics and bookworms alike. Set in a dystopian future where war, famine, and a destructive changing climate make up the state of the world, the novel simultaneously takes us back to the ‘80s with its various pop culture references to Pac-Man, Dun-

Video Game: Animal Crossing Animal Crossing: New Leaf for Nintendo 3DS came out in 2012, but it’s still the most recent iteration in the Animal Crossing video game franchise, and it’s addictiveness has withstood the test of time. The player arrives as the new human mayor of a village inhabited by adorable, clothed, and chatty animal townspeople. Despite this position of

—Samantha Herron, Managing Editor

geons & Dragons, J. R. R. Tolkien, and so much more. In a world where virtual reality is the only escape for many of the world’s inhabitants, teenager Wade Watts must save the online realm of OASIS from the global corporate power already established in the non-virtual world.

—Brandon Torres, Contributing Editor Documentary: ‘Cowspiracy’ I watched this documentary at the recomendation of a friend, and I can’t say that it didn’t have an effect on me: I decided to go vegan (admittedly, ‘Cowspiracy’ was the final piece in a series of factors that led me to this decision, but it was a factor nevertheless). So bear that in mind with this documentary­—it has a message, and it communicates that message clearly and strategically. We also have to give the doc some (limited, but real) fun points for the sweet, handsome co-filmmaker Kip Anderson who guides us through the devastating information presented in the film. Other people involved with the project are filmmaker Keegan Kuhn and producer Leonardo DiCaprio. Find the project available for streaming on Netflix.

—Nora Battelle, Editor in Chief

Animal Crossing: New Leaf subverts objective-based expectations for video games

Photo courtesy of mynintendonews.com

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