TN2 Issue 4, 21/22

2021-22 TN2 ISSUE 4 SPRING TN2MAGAZINE.IE

ART/FASHION/FILM/FOOD/GAMES/LITERATURE/MUSIC/SEX/THEATRE/TV/PLACES/ALT.

TN2 ISSUE 4 ART TEAM

Cover Artist Emily Stevenson Featured Illustrators Linde Vergeylen, Ellecia Vaughan, Emily Stevenson & Jessie Huang Featured Photographers Megan O’ Rourke, O.T., Peggy Machale, Satwick Chandra, Jack Mitchell, Eadaoin Fagan & Hilary Mullen

Megan O’ Rourke

Editor-in-Chief Ciara Connolly Deputy Editors Robert Gibbons, Alice Payne Social Media Manager Kate Byrne Art Kate Byrne Ella Sloane Fashion Gelsey Beavers-Damron Millie Brennan Film Savvy Hanna Cathal Eustace Food Molly Guy Lambton Lauren McKenna Games Robert Gibbons Ryan O’ Connor, Gelsey Beavers-Damron Literature Róisín Ní Riain, Brídín Ní Fhearraigh-Joyce Meg Melvin Music Hannah Quearney Gale Aitken Sex Alice Payne Shannon Connolly, Karla Higgins Theatre Gráinne Mahon Leah Downey TV Gillian Doyle Adam Balchin Places Hilary Mullen Gabriela Grzywacz Gaeilge Yu Hua Chaomhánach Nina Nic Mhánais ALT. Sophie Furlong Tighe, David Wolfe Head of Illustrations Emily Stevenson Head of Photography Megan O’ Rourke Layout Ciara Connolly, Meghan Flood, Hilary Mullen

CONTENTS Letter From The Editor

Art & Design

Dublin’s Art Scene: What’s Happening In Spring 2022 It is Time for a Conceptual Art Renaissance

1 2 4

Fashion

6 Costume in Marie Antoinette The Lisbon Girls: ‘Pretty Politics’ of The Virgin Suicides 8

Film

Blush: Understanding the Chromatic Language of A Single Man Ten Years on From The Hunger Games

11 13

Food

Hx46 // Review

Games

Forever Games

Literature

Seeking Books, Finding Signs Line Break // Say Nuttin’ (Pears) Modernist Masterworks, 100 Years On

Music

The Academic // Live Review Can Eminem be Cancelled?

Sex

Sex on Screen What TikTok Has To Say About Dating

15 16

18 20 22 23 24

26 28

Theatre

What Does Your Favourite Musical Theatre Protagonist 30 Say About You? A Review of Endgame at The Gate 32

TV

Animation: The Next Generation The Case Against Continuity

34 36

Places The Pandemonium of Nights Out Planning The Perfect Summer Party The Most Instagrammable Places Around Dublin

ALT.

Can We Really BeReal.?

The Truth About Having Seven Flatmates Notes on Spending Time Alone and Relishing Life

38 40 42

44 45 46

PASSAGEWAYS TO SOMEWHERE

PHOTOS BY O.T. & PEGGY MACHALE

INTO THE WOODS

PHOTOS BY MEGAN O’ ROURKE

CANDLES IN STORM

A

PHOTOS BY SATWICK CHANDRA & MEGAN O’ROURKE

Letter From The Editor I’ve never liked goodbyes. At this time of year there is always a sense of finality in the campus air – from the sweet smell of the cherry blossoms as they rapidly lose their flowers, to the empty lecture halls and subsequently packed libraries. However, much like Mother Nature and exam season, goodbyes are inevitable, and so it is time for me to bid farewell to TN2 by presenting our final issue of the year.

In this issue, we appropriately celebrate nostalgia, including great literary works of the past, beloved long-running TV shows, and the infamous Hunger Games phenomenon of 2012. We have also highlighted the latest happenings in the city we call home, from a guide to the most photogenic spots in Dublin, to reviews of the latest local art exhibitions, live music and theatre performances. This issue also sees an extended showcase of photography submissions, which have always adorned the opening and closing pages of our print editions so beautifully.

On a personal note, being a part of TN2 has been one of the most rewarding experiences of my time at Trinity, and being at its helm this past year one of my greatest privileges. TN2 has given me so much, from confidence in my writing and leadership skills, to new friendships I will surely cherish for a long time to come. I am immensely proud of all of our staff who have worked diligently throughout the year to elevate students’ opinions and experiences on our humble pages. I am also immensely grateful to all our contributing writers, photographers and illustrators who have submitted their work to us during the year – without you, there is no TN2.

To quote my favourite movie franchise of all time, “part of the journey is the end”, and what a wonderful journey it has been. I hope our final cover of the year is a reminder that although the sun must set for a goodbye, it will rise once again for a new beginning.

Best Wishes and Warmest Regards,

ART BY LINDE VERGEYLEN

Ciara x

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ART AND DESIGN

Dublin’s Art Scene: What’s Happening In Spring 2022 Spring has sprung, and with it has too a myriad of Dublin art exhibitions, installations and events. Here is TN2’s list of those we consider truly unmissable this Spring!

National Gallery of Ireland Giacometti: From Life (Exhibition) Alberto Giacometti (1901–1966) was one of the most important sculptors of the 20th century. Hailing from Switzerland and settling in Paris, he was influenced hugely by the Cubist and Surrealist styles, but his art was also informed by his close relationships with family and friends. These influences are evident in the bronze and plaster sculptures, paintings, drawings, and prints featured in this extensive exhibition featuring the first of any of his works showcased in the National Gallery. This significant exhibition opens on the 9th of April.

IMMA The Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA) are currently celebrating their 30th birthday, and so it is no surprise that they currently are hosting an extensive range of activities, events and exhibitions. Here are our top picks of what they currently have on offer:

The Narrow Gate of the Here And Now (Art Exhibition) Presented in 4 chapters, this extended exhibition explores specific themes within IMMA’s 30 year history. The first chapter of the exhibition, ‘Queer Embodiment’, is currently running and will close on the 15 May. It establishes the context for the rest of the project, showcasing works that describe recent events and changes in Irish society, and is split into three sections categorised by theme: mourning, navigating and expressing identity while facing adversity, and home.

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What Does He Need? (Art Installation) This project is by the artist, writer and educator Fiona Whelan in collaboration with the theatre company Brokentalkers and the Rialto Youth Project. It is described as a “critical inquiry into the formation of masculinity, exploring how men and boys are shaped by and influence the world.” It is running until the 2nd of May.

Gallery of Photography PROTEST! Photography, Activism and Social Change in Ireland (Exhibition) Beginning on the 14th of April, this exhibition looks at how photography has been fundamental in documenting and thus encouraging social change in Ireland throughout the years. It features photos depicting conflict in Ireland since 1960, as well as describing the methods, specific to photojournalism, by which these images are captured.

Kerlin Gallery Jan Pleitner: temperatures of time This exhibition of abstract paintings by the German artist Jan Pleitner aims to “visualise the universe and the forces at play within it”. The paintings are deeply influenced by the rural landscape in which they were conceived, and are described as having been created through a highly physical, meditative process that involved Pleitner scraping back layers of paint that he builds up on the canvas in an attempt to “develop and redevelop his own distinct language within the tradition of abstract painting”. This exhibition runs from the 2nd of April until the 7th of May.

Olivier Cornet Gallery Vicky Smith: The Cold Bark Against My Back This series of paintings, sketches, writings and other works by Vicky Smith is centred around her interest in the way in which women’s stories are told by the news media. Her first exhibition with the Olivier Cornet gallery is informed by her experience of being a mother while also working as an artist, and of yearning to adventure beyond the home while in lockdown.

WORDS BY KATE BYRNE 3

It is Time for a Conceptual Art Renaissance Each time I see an Abstract Expressionist painting sell at auction for millions, sometimes hundreds of millions, my heart sinks. Not solely because we live in a world where the ultra-wealthy can barter works by dead artists, which often sold for measly sums during their lifetime, in money-laundering, profit-making schemes, but because it is likely nobody will see those paintings, in-person, again.

Poor Abstract Expressionism; it has been weathered down by the age of Instagram. Seeing a painting, or worse, a sculpture, on your dim, pixelated phone screen can’t compare to seeing it in person. The work of artists such as Lee Krasner, Helen Frankenthaler and Joan Mitchell in particular fall victim to photo reproductions which create flattening, shrinking, warping effects, and remove the art from spatial context. (Of course, this isn’t helped by auction sales. Surely nothing short of a school can be worth the $30 million price tag of Willem de Kooning’s Untitled XXII sold for at Sotheby’s.) The emotional impact and, to an extent, the intellectual and aesthetic impact of Abstract Expressionist paintings is dependent on space.

Those open to Abstract Expressionist pieces are often overcome with emotion before them. According to the art critic Philip Hook, Mark Rothko is “the most wept-over” artist in galleries. How one navigates and positions their body around the piece and the environment is what allows us to, as Agnes Martin would put it, “accept pure emotion” without “demand[ing] explanation” from Abstract Expressionism. It is no wonder then that the reproductions of these works in digital and print form can leave many who are not already invested in the work conspiring that Abstract Expressionism was one big gimmick on the part of a few shrew con-people.

Conceptual art, while indebted to the work of artists such as Marcel Duchamp and Man Ray, had its genesis during the decline of Abstract Expressionism in the early 1960s. The rise of conceptual art was a reactionary one as many conceptual artists opposed the inward-looking, small, and sometimes dogmatic art world of the 1950s. As such there was no Conceptualist movement with a capital ‘c’ but a worldwide aesthetic and cultural shift which encompassed a diverse range of artistic communities and practices which individual artists would drift in and out of. Fluxus was possibly the most influential and long-lasting movement in conceptual art. Centralised in New York (the former capital of Abstract Expressionism), Fluxus began as a form of institutional critique. As its founder George Maciunas put it in a 1963 manifesto, Fluxus would “promote a revolutionary flood and tide in art, promote living art, anti-art”.

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In terms of its artistically revolutionary nature, Fluxus was opposed to the creation of new objects for the rich to hoard, choosing instead to create interdisciplinary, ephemeral “Happenings” which were then recorded. One of the most famous (notorious?) members of Fluxus was Yoko Ono. Ono’s work in the 1960s was never about creating an object; she invited participation, physically or in the imagination, to step on a painting, cut clothes from her body, look to the sky. In her work the process was the concept, and the concept was the art. Ono’s work is concerned with the space, environment, and the body as much as (if not more than) most Abstract Expressionist work, but it is actually able to transcend the space and time in which it ‘happened’ or is being exhibited. Conceptual art of the 1960s and 70s flows between the active or material and the conceptual or contemplative.

An artist who perfectly exemplifies this is Ana Mendieta about whom Olivia Laing writes, “She knew that the body was many things at once, that it is always in flux.” Though she evades categorisation Mendieta’s work showcases much of what defines conceptual art, she worked across disciplines, her works were fleeting then captured, her ‘processes’ (synonymous with what others would call ‘concepts’) were the focus of her art, not a final piece. Her magus opus, the ‘Silueta’ series she created through the 1970s, was made in this vein. Shocking and visceral, they perform in an almost transcendental way. Part of what makes Mendieta’s work so powerful is that while the work speaks of the earth and body, you do not have to witness the, to use the Fluxian word, Happening, nor do you have to travel to a gallery or museum to be touched by the material. Even if someone buys Mendieta’s original photographs or they become blurrier every time they are screenshotted and reshared it doesn’t really matter because once we encounter her work, we carry the concept and process, and therefore the emotions or thoughts her work may ignite, forever.

This is not Abstract Expressionism, in which the bodily experience is robbed along with the artwork as it was intended to be shown. Instead, the conceptual art by Mendieta, Ono, Maciunas, and the many other conceptual artists of these decades, Vito Acconci, Jenny Holzer, Alison Knowles, and so on, is untethered from the object. The ideas, the activities; they are the art. The recordings can exist online, in books, in conversation, outside of institutions because what they really serve to do is keep the ideas and expressions of the artists alive. Conceptual art has become rarer and shallower, making headlines again in 2019 with Maurizio Cattelan’s work ‘Comedian’. ‘Comedian’, or the infamous banana-ducted-tapedto-the-wall, is a reminder that conceptual art is only as interesting as its concept, however, ‘Comedian’ did not manage to dull conceptual art’s challenging notions of ownership. Only those who paid the six-figure price for the certified artwork can display ‘Comedian’ under Cattelan’s name but anyone who ‘Comedian’ outraged or inspired, in a sense, owns their own version of ‘Comedian’.

The drama and presence of Abstract Expressionism will have its time yet. But it seems to me that in this world of priceless paintings being kept indefinitely in temperature-controlled warehouses, the dominance of algorithms in determining what art is seen, sold, and made, corporate theft of art, and those nauseating celebrity NFTs, now is the time to usher in a new era of conceptual art. One which unabashedly circumnavigates and takes advantage of institutions like the art market or social media. One which allows people to flow in and out of creation, participation, and recollection. One which pushes for a diverse range of ideas, ways of doing, ways of seeing, to be spread, inviting artists and ‘non-artists’ of all backgrounds and perspectives. The many ways a conceptual art renaissance would manifest is a mystery but perhaps a good (if not, at least whimsical) start might be doing as Yoko Ono instructed in 1960 and, “Carry a bag of peas. / Leave a pea wherever you go.”

WORDS BY BRUNA CIULLI

ART BY ELLECIA VAUGHAN

5

FASHION

Costume in Marie Antoinette

Sofia Coppola’s 2006 biopic, Marie Antoinette, offers a visual feast from start to finish as we follow the evolution of the titular monarch’s saccharine style. Milena Canonero’s Academy Award winning costume design is central to the construction of Marie Antoinette’s identity throughout the film; the costumes themselves are symbolic of the young Dauphine’s metamorphosis from an innocent Austrian princess into the infamous queen we all know today for her love of the sweeter things in life.

This transition is deftly captured in one of the early scenes of the film, where we see the princess’s forceful disrobing, followed by a swift change into her new unfamiliar attire upon setting foot on French soil. This scene symbolises the stripping of Marie Antoinette’s identity and her emergence into the role as the queen of France, which quickly becomes overshadowed by her duty to conceive an heir to the throne.

Whilst Canonero certainly took some artistic liberties with the costume design, producing a creative reinterpretation of the character, the outfits worn by the Dauphine, played by Kirsten Dunst, were never far from factual. Speaking to The London Times Magazine, Canonero said: “I simplified the very heavy look of the 18th century. I wanted it to be believable, but more stylized.” Here, costume is employed as a powerful storytelling tool and acts as an important device used to support the narrative.

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As Marie begins to find her place in the royal court at Versailles, her clothes gain a life of their own as we bear witness to a striking evolution of colour and shape in tandem with her rapidly changing circumstances. At the onset of the film, Dunst dons an array of sugary pastel dresses that look good enough to eat. Speaking of her inspiration for this candied aesthetic colour palette, Canoero recalls Coppolla handing her a box of pastel-coloured macaroons from the Laduree pastry house at the start of pre-production: “She told me, ‘These are the colours I love’. I used them as a palette. Sofia was clear about the colouration, but left the rest to me”. Mouth-watering sherbet pinks, pastel yellows and tiffany blues dominate the colour scheme for much of the movie, creating a wardrobe which bears a striking resemblance to the decadent cakes and pastries that Marie is often pictured indulging in. This motif is drawn early on in the film, when the young Marie Antoinette is described as “looking like a little piece of cake” by some gossip mongers at a court dinner.

As her time in Versailles progresses, so too does the queen’s style; her increasingly amplified silhouette has connotations of power, whilst the growing precarity of Marie’s wigs can be interpreted as symbolic of the monarch’s own instability as the revolution gains traction and danger looms ever-closer. The colours of her dresses gradually become brighter as she finds her footing and gains confidence amongst the once unsettling opulence of Versailles.

The costume design aptly conveys the relief that finally comes with motherhood for Marie, the prospect of which has long burdened her. In their countryside retreat to Le Petit Trianon, we witness the queen at one with nature - she is no longer confined to the tight, excessive dresses worn at the palace, but appears draped in airy, angelic white garments. Similarly, her hairstyles become much more loose and natural, delicately framing the Dauphine’s face.

On returning to Versailles, the carefree fashion from Le Petit Trianon is quickly traded for more rigid, formal gowns in muted sombre colours made from heavy materials as the queen mourns the death of her mother and the revolution grows in intensity. The emotive colours chosen by Canonero for Marie Antoinette’s costumes help the story unfold and offer the audience a unique insight into the young queen’s private life, shedding light on some common misconceptions of her character. Coppola portrays the queen as a kind of tragic feminist heroine with whom it is impossible not to sympathise with in some way. We become privy to her vulnerability, worries, and naivety throughout the film, as she is not merely presented as a shallow, frivolous character.

WORDS BY ELLA SLOANE ART BY EMILY STEVENSON

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The Lisbon Girls: ‘Pretty Politics’ of The Virgin Suicides “We felt the imprisonment of being a girl, the way it made your mind active and dreamy. And how you ended up knowing which colours went together.”

Sofia Coppola’s The Virgin Suicides is many things. It is an elegy to girlhood, a tragedy dressed as a dream, a claustrophobic suburban nightmare. But within the folds of these morbid romantic idealisations, it is most importantly a study of images. In 1970s Michigan, four boys tell the story of the Lisbon girls, beginning with the youngest sister’s suicide. Already complicated by the voyeuristic perspective of the narrative, the film employs a delicate network of images. The most feminine and poignantly powerful aspect of these images is costume. Coppola and designer Nancy Steiner designed a strikingly metaphorical and literary wardrobe for the Lisbon girls. The epicentre of this film (and Coppola’s vision as a filmmaker) is girlhood.

Contextualised in this girlhood, which is a simultaneous product of the Self (Lisbon girls) and the Other (the boys who are the narrators), costume is subverted to conceptualise and challenge society.

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The film opens with a shot of a messy dressing table.

Perfumes, an eyelash curler, bottles of nail polish and make-up brushes establish the theme of beauty, and with it, artifice. The camera regularly hovers over such arrangements; shelves and tabletops with an array of creams and lipsticks. Casually littered among these cosmetics is religious memorabilia - crucifixes hanging from necklaces, rosary beads and souvenirs of the Virgin Mary. These are the things that define the Lisbon girls and the things that the Lisbon girls in turn use to define themselves. The girls exist in between the social impositions of (gendered) beauty and religious conservatism. They are Ophelias, Lolitas and Marys, all collapsed into one. These materials of aesthetics and theology are the only meaning they have and they find their personal subjectifications through objectifications.

The Lisbon girls barely talk in the film. The power of words and eyes is exclusive to their admirers, the boynarrators. The girls’ expression is tactile, it is all to do with their bodies. The iconic red lipstick they all share and the costumes they wear, are symbolic of the girls themselves.

It is for their bodies that they are punished and locked up by their parents. It is for their bodies that the boys across the street set-up telescopes and obsess over them.

It is for their bodies that they themselves oscillate between entrapment and rebellion. Authentic to the 70s, they wear flared denims and delicate lace dresses, chevron middies and hippie-esque tops in pastel colours and dusky florals.

Their surroundings are perpetually lathered in fabrics and there are several shots of the girls in their ennui, lying in a cornucopia of clothes. They seem to be inseparable as much from the clothes as they are from each other. Culturally, clothes are charged with the paradoxical combination of the modest and the erotic. They conceal and reveal.

The Lisbon girls struggle to make sense of this porous duality. On one side they have a mother who makes them high necked “identical sacks,” otherwise known as prom dresses, and on the other, there are the boys who are only interested in what lies beneath the so-called sacks. The girls must submit, as they have no autonomy to define girlhood on their own terms.

Images of beauty are closely tied to sexualisation. And this is where the Lisbon girls find their loophole, albeit momentary. They build a belief system around these aesthetics that becomes their safe space - a space where they can be whatever they want to be, subverting this regime of images that is thrust upon them. Exclusive to the girls, their rooms are overwhelmed with clothes and beauty products.

Away from the gaze and castigation of others, they play a game of experimental identity with their bodies - how they pose, how they paint them and what they wear. There are three significant examples of this in the film. First, Cecelia, the youngest, spends most of her time in a multi-tiered wedding dress. A 13 year old girl in a wedding dress is a clear polemic on the double standards society sets for girls and women. This dress is like the Victorian nighties that the Lisbon girls restrict themselves to in the latter half of the film. Nighties are garments that children and adult women both wear. Similarly, Cecelia’s wedding dress is a deliberate yoking together of the modest and the erotic.

Second, the bandages covering Cecelia’s slit wrists, after her first suicide attempt, are wrapped in multicoloured bracelets and bangles by her sisters. The girls try to hide the harsh truth of their lives with artificial definitions of prettiness; their girlish innocence clashes with womanly sexulisation. The third and final example is Lux labelling her undergarments with names of her male admirers. The ubiquity of the Virgin Mary in the film is testament to how severely these young girls are sexualised. There are two names that Lux writes on her underwear and bra - Kevin the garbage man and Trip the highschool gigolo. Despite coming from different backgrounds and age groups, Kevin and Trip both see Lux with the same predatory eyes. In writing their names on her most intimate items of clothing, Lux subverts this fetishization. Her underwear and bras become charged with her own agency. Until of course, her mother washes them and bleaches away the names.

The film constantly objectifies the Lisbon girls. For the Kevins and Trips, they are Lolitas; for the boy-narrators, the girls are only an extension of their things - a stolen diary, old photographs, etc. - Ophelias. And for their mother, they are Marys - pristine, ideal and virgin. The girls are only understood as objects and they fight this reduction by turning these very objects into means of personal expression and agency. They twist and turn these images, put red lipstick on them, dress them up in a wedding gown and label them, compelling the viewer to rethink the cultural meanings they represent. Locked up in their gilded cage, they gorge on catalogues of high fashion to quench their thirst for freedom. But their subversion is partial, it is not strong enough to destabilise the entire network of images that surrounds them. In the end, when the sisters have killed themselves, we only see fragments of them - shoes, a frock, stockings, sandals, pants and a cigarette. They are once again condensed to what they wear, elements of their costumes. The very form in which the film (and its source material, Jeffrey Eugenides’ book) exists is also evidence of how the Lisbon girls are nothing but tantalising stories for the boy-narrators.

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The liminality essential to costume in The Virgin Suicides is habitually misunderstoood - or rather not understood at all. Much like Coppola’s other films, here too, her auteurial feminine aesthetic is reduced to superficial cinematic pastry, signifying nothing more than the ‘pretty.’ But if one is willing to look beyond the sexist frameworks underlying these criticisms, there is a wealth of meaning lurking behind the beauty of The Virgin Suicides, and its costumes are indispensable players in Coppola’s ‘pretty politics.’ The Lisbon girls are burdened with ‘pretty’ misogynist ideals of beauty, sex and virginity. But they are transgressive and rebellious, and annihilate their objectification into subjectification through those very materials - costume.

Afterall, clothes are such an essential part of female moral policing. The Lisbon girls expose the ugly underside of ‘pretty.’ Unfortunately, their sabotage is too intimate to disfigure the overwhelming system. And they end up losing themselves in these images, gradually decaying into oblivion. In the film and the book, for the boy-narrators, viewers and readers, they remain inscrutable artefacts.

What sticks with me well after the film is over is the image of a pink bra hanging from a crucifix. .

“Obviously, doctor, you’ve never been a 13-year-old girl.”

WORDS BY KHUSHI JAIN 10

Blush: Understanding the Chromatic Language of Tom Ford’s A Single Man

FILM

Tom Ford’s 2009 directorial debut, A Single Man, shares a fascinating relationship with René Magritte’s 1929 The Treachery of Images. Just like Magritte’s pipe is not a pipe, Ford’s adaptation of Isherwood’s modernist novel is also not an adaptation. It is much more and demands an unbiased analysis. Rather than understanding it as derivative or secondary to the 1964 novel, it must be seen as a product with its own creative potential and cinematic language.

Furthermore, it overlaps with Magritte in its exposure of the constructedness of art. Just as the pipe is only an image of the pipe, Ford’s characters are also self-conscious about the construction of their ‘selves’. Ford’s genius lies in extending this thematic concern to the aesthetics of A Single Man. A globally known fashion designer, Ford’s sartorial magic takes new forms of details and textures in the art design of this film. He pays a fetishist attention to colour and through it explores cinema’s capacity to isolate, focalise and reframe. He breathes life into Isherwood’s words through visual playfulness that has rightly been compared to the experience of falling in love.

At the level of plot, A Single Man is a love story. George Falconer is a closeted homosexual who has recently lost his partner Jim in a car accident. Like the novel, the film spans a single day in George’s life as he finishes his lecture on Huxley, dines with his friend Charley and goes skinny dipping late at night, all the while dealing with the grief of his loss. Making a drastic departure from the novel, Ford’s George is contemplating suicide. This adds a sense of finality, a conclusion that looms all throughout the film, heightening its sentimentality. Where Isherwood’s novel flaunted its fluency in the stream-of-consciousness narrative, Ford’s film makes style his narrative strategy.

Ford’s investment in aesthetics has led critics to call his film a 100-minute long commercial for men’s cologne. What may have escaped them is the thematic and contextual significance of Ford’s beautifications. “Virgos are precise, almost uptight,” Ford believes, himself being a Virgo. He not only shares this sign with Isherwood but also Colin Firth, who plays George. It is to this that Ford attributes the acute attention to detail in his “Virgo Virgo Virgo film.” Not a speck of dust is out of place in A Single Man, nothing is random or left to chance. From George’s crisp white shirts to Charley’s orange trees, everything has meaning; an intention of investigating the ideas of beauty.

Central to the film’s politics is George’s grief and consequential reluctance to live. Ford resolves this suicidal desire through the conflict of the trappings of aestheticism and the merits of real beauty. His character subjectivity, as Kyle Stevens puts it, is based not just on desire but also care. The material world with its superficial beauty is what gives George a sense of order, an order that he has to realise is false. He tries to maintain and keep his outer world together with an obsessive neatness, shown in his kempt and mechanical domestic arrangements, so as to not collapse on the inside. This is his final desperate attempt at finding meaning. Colour becomes an important tool for Ford to explore George’s psyche. He visualises Isherwood’s verbality.

The film opens with a beautiful shot of George waking up from a dream, a combination of flesh and cotton sheets. A voiceover crystallises the presence of two Georges, the one we see and the one we hear. The careful composition of the frame; the flesh, the texture of the carpet and the ink soaking into the white cotton sheets are all tactile signifiers of the utterances of “cold,” “still,” and “hurt”. The ink on George’s lips suggests oral sex as well as the kiss of death. The black of the ink, the white of the sheets and the browns of the room form a solidarity that will feature throughout the film.

This chromatic tripartite is in direct opposition to a fourth colour, blue. The prologue of A Single Man is literally immersed in this colour, as the camera slowly gazes on parts of George floating underwater. George’s oldest association with blue comes from his first meeting with Jim. We see it next in Kenny’s stark blue eyes, the ‘spiritual’ blue sharpener and Jennifer’s outrageously blue frock. Lastly, blue appears in the mammoth size poster of Hitchcock’s Psycho standing in the background of George’s meeting with Carlos. An especially interesting insertion, Stevens postulates that Ford uses intertextual sexual tension present in the combination of fear and desire (the foundation of Bates and Marion’s relationship) to historicise the taboos of sex and homosexuality prevalent during the early 1960s. Blue, thus can be hypothesised to represent George’s ephemeral moments of desire, not physical but “spiritual.”

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This desire is intrinsically associated with beauty which in turn leads to a heightened sense of emotion in George. And this is where Ford really experiments with colour. He expresses smouldering sentimentality by literally igniting the screen. This technique, which has been called flushing or blooming by film scholars, is a chromatic warming of scenes through subtle shifts in saturation, luminosity and contrast. It is as though the scenes are being viewed with a red filter. I like to think of it as the screen literally blushing, George’s inner experiences manipulating the mise en scene. Whenever George witnesses something exquisite, be it the toned torsos of the boys playing tennis, his assistant’s green eyes and perfume, the dog smelling of buttered toast or sharing a cigarette with Carlos, the frames turn warm and take on an unnatural red quality. Music is also heightened and there is a deceleration of time.

Ford’s film has been attacked for its superficial ideas of beauty and the anti-realism of using blushes. But beauty, as Ford conveys through blushes is not in the objects but in George’s response to them. Ford is not standardising beauty; the viewer responds to the beauty on screen only after and because of George’s own response, i.e. the blush. George’s response also becomes the basis of his own subjectivity. It is in acknowledging others that he acknowledges himself.

Beauty compels him to care and the blushes become, in Stevens’ words, his “moments of undying.” And by virtue of being George’s personal and subjective responses, the blushes are unreal. “It’s smog that makes it that colour,” Carlos says.

In them, nature and reality are reincarnated through George’s perception. Instead of being a flaw, this unreality of the blushes has to be understood as a strength. Thematically, the surreal blushes accentuate Ford’s idea of constructedness (like Magritte’s The Treachery of Images). Charley, who is also heavily associated with colour, is shown “putting her face on.” A grotesque shot of her half-painted face in the mirror is the most overt visual reference to this theme. Verbally, it is present in George’s opening voiceover, as he prepares to “become” George. The performance of identity and with it, gender, is underlined by Ford.

Other than the blushes, red, as a solid colour, appears only thrice in the film. First, in the car-wreck leading to Jim’s death. Second, in the end, when George has his moment of clarity under a red moon. And third, in the middle, when Kenny and George go to shop for sharpeners. Kenny picks a red sharpener which George believes symbolises “rage and lust.”

Thus, colour is not only used as a visual aesthetic. The semantic signification of consuming colour is equally important.

For example, Kenny is explicitly associated with white clothing, stressing on his youth, and flashback scenes are shot in monochrome to represent the nostalgia of black and white photographs. Stevens says that Ford embraces colour in all its “potential boundlessness, effeminacy and emotionality that the history of western aesthetics sought to contain through masculine values.” Colour represents the human, sexual and embodied, while dullness stands for the dematerialised and socially conservative. In Ford’s hands, colour carries the potential of becoming “memory colour,” as Thompson writes. To Kenny’s, “we’re born alone, we die alone. And while we’re here we’re absolutely, completely sealed in our own bodies,” Ford responds with colour that is transformative, eruptive and destabilising.

Colour reigns supreme in the final tragic scenes of the film. George is richest in colour as life bleeds out of him, he is most alive when he dies. From constant shots of clocks to time becoming irrelevant to George, the ending is poignant in its acceptance of the realities of life. Red blushes contain within themselves the capacity to fade, the restorative ‘undying’ gestures come with the potential to vanish. They are symbolic of the uroboros, reminders of the cyclical nature of things - there are beginnings in ends as there are ends in beginnings.

In A Single Man, colour becomes life. Or rather, Ford makes life colour. He asks us, almost compels us, to see beauty, intelligence, friendship and the memory of love, and cherish them all. He urges us to find our very own blushes. Because in the end it is all transient, “like everything, they fade.”

“For me the film isn’t at all about death … The end of that film is the end of all our films. It’s the end of your film. It’s the end of my film. That’s what happens. That’s what comes to us.” - Ford 12

WORDS BY KHUSHI JAIN

Ten Years on From

This past March was the ten year anniversary of the release of The Hunger Games. Directed by Gary Ross, the film was an adaptation of the first book from Suzanne Collins’ Hunger Games trilogy. While the books were popular, the film’s release pushed it to the forefront of pop culture, particularly for pre-teen and teenage girls. After becoming invested in the story while watching the first film at my friend’s birthday party in 2012, I quickly read through the trilogy of books, and saw the first sequel, Catching Fire, in the cinema with my friends during its opening week. I’ve watched the entire film series multiple times over the years, and every time it has felt more relevant to the world we currently live in.

However, on the first film’s ten year anniversary, articles and social media posts popped up around the web talking about how, a decade later, The Hunger Games seems to have been forgotten. The most notable was a Forbes article entitled ‘Why The Hunger Games Vanished From The Pop Culture Conversation’. As someone known to get into deep discussions about The Hunger Games at two in the morning, it certainly hasn’t vanished from my pop culture conversations, however it seems unfair to suggest that it has vanished from the minds of others outside of my late night lectures. First, the fact that multiple articles were published for the tenth anniversary proves that the film isn’t forgotten—I didn’t see any articles about ten years of Rampart. Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence), the series’ protagonist, has been mentioned in recent episodes of popular tv shows like Hawkeye and The Boys, as a clear pop culture reference. And, as much as he has apologised for his character’s actions, Jack Quaid still gets angry tweets from people upset at him for killing fan-favourite character Rue (Amandla Stenberg). Unfortunately for Jack, plenty of people continue to talk about The Hunger Games ten years on.

The Hunger Games clearly hasn’t been completely forgotten, so those saying that it has ‘vanished’ from pop culture seem to actually be suggesting that any franchise without multiple television spin-offs or a theme park is a failure. While, out of all of the franchises, The Hunger Games world is the one I would be most excited to explore further—looking at the other hunger games which Katniss wasn’t a part of, other districts, tributes, victors—I definitely don’t need an Expanded Hunger Games Multiverse. Films should be allowed to just exist—tell their story and then get out of there. They don’t have to be part of the pop culture conversation years after their release. Nobody needs a two-part stage play about Katniss’ and Peeta’s son time-travelling with some kid from District 1 to save Finnick Odair. Having said that, a film adaptation of the prequel book, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, is planned for release within the next few years. But the breathing room between the release of the last film and the prequel make it feel less like a money grab and, hopefully, more like a genuine continuation of the story. The Hunger Games franchise isn’t dead, it just took a well-deserved break.

The original Hunger Games trilogy did have a bit of a struggle; It was dismissed as YA Fiction for girls, (because anything for teenage girls is automatically subpar) and criticised for being a copy of Battle Royale by people intentionally disregarding everything but the superficial plot elements of both films. However, The Hunger Games franchise was by no means a failure. It should be considered successful for, if nothing else, actually adapting all of the books, which is more than can be said for a lot of similar (attempted) franchises. Films like The Golden Compass, based on the His Dark Materials trilogy, and I Am Number Four, based on the Lorien Legacies series, never made it past the first book. Perhaps even worse is the Divergent trilogy; The decision was made to split the third book into two films—a choice also made for the final Hunger Games and Harry Potter adaptations—but the fourth film was then cancelled, adapting only two and a half of the novels and leaving the series on a cliffhanger.

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As well as achieving the bare minimum of managing to adapt the whole trilogy, the film adaptations of The Hunger Games are actually good. It has the common problem, found in almost every film adaptation, of details being left out, but overall the films complement the books—the films bringing the books’ words to life, and the books providing more in-depth information. The first film in particular is elevated by the addition of scenes with President Snow (Donald Sutherland).

The books are all from Katniss’ perspective, and so we learn everything from her, but the short scenes of President Snow offer a break from the chaos of the games and widen the world in a way not found in the books until the sequels.

Something else that made The Hunger Games stand out for me was that it always felt the most real—like The X Factor but with more murder. There aren’t any magic or dragons, just corrupt politicians, celebrity worship, and a lot of trauma. The hunger games event gets bigger every year to keep viewers interested, just like the crazy reality competition shows we have nowadays. There’s a love-triangle for fans to fawn and fight over, but it does the exact same thing in the world of The Hunger Games—Katniss kisses Peeta because she knows the people watching the hunger games in The Capitol will like it, and if they like her she has a better chance at winning.

I can see it in the world’s response to current events, like the Twitter fandom that has formed around Ukraine’s president Zelensky—there’s a difference between supporting Ukraine and stanning their president like he’s your new favourite fictional character. Or when that had to pause for bigger news: Will Smith slapping Chris Rock at the Oscars. Waterford Whispers News said it perfectly in their article, ‘Sorry Ukraine But Will Smith Slapped Chris Rock So We’re A Little Distracted Today’. It’s a reminder that we could always be easily distracted by ‘bread and circuses’. On the other side of this, the three-finger salute used by Katniss in the films has become a symbol of pro-democracy for protesters in Thailand, Myanmar, and Hong Kong, going beyond pop culture to become part of real rebellions.

Whether or not The Hunger Games franchise does expand beyond the upcoming prequel adaptation, I believe it has firmly cemented its place in pop culture, at least for my generation. It might not be at the forefront of every conversation, but it doesn’t have to be.

WORDS BY SAVVY HANNA

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Hx46 // Review

FOOD

Sitting in Hx46, I always feel welcomed by the energy. There’s really good music, friendly staff, and an assorted range of customers – from friends going for brunch, to sweet families with toddlers, to lone diners, brought back by the delicious food. There is also a steady stream of takeaway customers coming through. The phone rings often, and as we come into the evening, people are constantly coming in to pick up their takeaway orders – a promising sign for the food.

Hx46 feels like a respite from Harold’s Cross Road outside. Though the cars zooming by are still visible through the wide glass windows, and lightly audible, there is a distinct energy created within the cafe. The sounds of the kitchen staff and baristas are discernable but not bothersome, and add to the feel of the place. The interior decoration is minimal but well-thought out. There are several well-chosen paintings hanging on the white walls, and plants scattered around. There are fluorescent lights, and also hanging lights. The tables and chairs outside catch the afternoon sun. Depending on the time of day and the clientele, there is a different atmosphere – when it’s quiet, people’s conversations are maybe a bit hushed, but not in a way that makes you feel like they’re stopping themselves, more as though they are naturally catering to continuing this environment. When it is busy they are lively and lovely, not hushed at all, a pleasant cacophony.

The tables are just close enough to each other, adding to the convivial nature of the place.

Hx46 is both a café and restaurant, marketing itself as pan-Asian cuisine. During the day they serve a brunch menu, which has items like pancakes and eggs benedict, which contrast with Asian-style wraps and noodles, all falling around the 10 euro mark. The French toast, which I have sampled, is underwhelming in its presentation – four little pieces of yellow bread, lightly sprinkled with blueberries and honey – but the taste of it is so delicious, the balance of flavours being just right. The noodle dishes are similarly underwhelming in their presentation, appearing just as a massive mound of noodles. While the focus is not on presentation, the noodles soon reveal themselves as an insane explosion of flavours, perfectly blended. The sweet treats on offer at the counter have a good range, from chocolate biscuit cake, lemon drizzle, and mixed berry crumble, to a range of gluten-free and/or vegan options such as Toblerone and almond gluten-free cake. The coffee is very affordable, ranging from one euro eighty for a tea, and three euro for the higher-end flat white. They have a range of alternative milks. The dinner menu is solely Asian-influenced and has a slightly higher price bracket. They are happy to make any dish possible vegetarian or vegan-friendly, or to accommodate other requirements.

Hx46 is a really good all-rounder – it has good food, is affordable, and is a good spot to check out, whether you are looking for a quick coffee, a place to settle for the afternoon, or a sit-down meal. It has a variety of foods to choose from, is conveniently located, and is very affordable, in particular for tea and coffee, and the brunch menu.

WORDS BY MOLLY GUY LAMBTON

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GAMES

Forever Games I am a big fan of comfort media. The playlists you constantly return to when you’re alone on the train. The movies you watch when you’re sick or it’s a rainy day. The books you reread again and again until the pages are practically falling out. The paintings you go to in the National Gallery when you’re having a rough day and need to be reminded of a moment of beauty in the world. Returning to works of art like these is an act of nostalgia and an act of reflection.

You’re reminded of who you were when you first fell in love with the works, and you’re pushed to think about who you are now. For me, that’s never more true than when you replay old video games: branching paths, improving skills, changing builds all are concrete examples of how different the You is now from the You you were. And so, for my final article with TN2, I hope you’ll allow me this self-indulgence to reflect on some of my favourite comfort games and give you the excuse to return to some classics from your past.

get the 8th highest score on the machine. But suddenly, this thing that had been solitary and self-driven, became somewhat competitive, but more importantly cooperative.

We stood there cheering each other on, encouraging each other. Afterwards I realised that she too had had a Tetris phase in her past. It was a penny drop moment for me where I suddenly realised that this thing that had been a comfort and escape for me, had also been the same for so many people. Now, when I play, I’m reminded that, despite enjoying it as a solitary experience, I am not alone.

Tetris is the perfect game. There are literally no ways to improve Tetris. Avid readers of TN2 will have noted that in every article I have written over the course of the year, there has been at least one reference to Tetris. Tetris is the most recent comfort game for me, despite it being the oldest comfort game on my list. I got into Tetris in the year of our lord, 2020. I was stuck at home for months without the funds to purchase a console and so, one day, I just typed “Tetris online” into my browser and away I went. The first time you play Tetris, you will likely get mildly overwhelmed.

It’s intense. It’s a lot. It goes at a steady, unrelenting pace that makes it feel like the walls are closing in on you and no amount of pushing and shoving will slow them down.

That first Game Over screen is demoralising, but also encouraging. You know you can do better. So you try again and that score is a little bit higher, and again, and again and again. That initial feeling - the inescapable pressure of the falling blocks - stops being a cause of stress and becomes the defining pull factor to playing again. When you play Tetris, you Play Tetris. The world around you dissolves into colours and shapes and you are cut off from reality in a way that I have never felt before in a game. It took the solitary, loneliness of lockdown and turned that into a positive.

Tetris stayed on the backburner for me for quite some time, with the purchase of my Switch Tetris Effect became a mainstay. But it sort of held the same space in my life: a solitary escape for me alone. This changed on March 19th, when I played Tetris on the arcade machine in Token against my friend. She absolutely destroyed me and managed to 16

The most excited I’ve ever felt driving home after buying a game was in 2008 with the purchase of Mario Kart Wii. It was the kind of can’t-sit-still excitement that you only really have when you’re eight years old. I took out the plastic steering wheel, I read the manual under the passing street lights. From the second it entered my Wii, until I

eventually moved consoles, it became a fixture. It was the game to play. Still when I’m asked my favourite tracks of all-time, I think of Maple Treeway, Coconut Mall, and Moo Moo Meadows. It was my first ever online gaming experience, spending late nights attempting to connect to Nintendo’s servers in rural Meath only to come dead last. In fact, I’m the youngest in my house; I always came dead last, often not even being given the chance to finish the race and getting last minute Bullet Bills to propel me to slightly-less-behind-but-crucially-still-last-place. Yet, despite my lack of prowess, it was always fun. I never felt demoralised in loss, I just loved the excitement of the race.

I would drive around tracks backwards, look for the secret shortcuts, pick a CPU to be my enemy and target them with all my items. I spent hours with my brothers trying to unlock every character and every kart. It is such a simple game that provides such simple pleasures.

I still play Mario Kart 8, and I presumed it was basically the same but with a bit more polish. Recently, however, I returned to Mario Kart Wii and it just felt right. The races felt claustrophobic and chaotic without the modern iteration’s underwater and sky driving which opens up many more paths. The characters looked chunky; the sounds felt robotic. Your kart felt like it was fighting against you. Mario Kart Wii is not a perfect game, in fact objectively it’s not even the best Mario Kart. But all of those imperfections, those little quirks, the inclusion of Funky Kong, are all the things that make me love it. It’s your favourite jumper that has a hole in it. It’s the oven pizza that tastes a little bit like cardboard. It’s the movie where you can see the strings controlling the puppet. It’s all the comfort and the magic of your first childhood experiences.

As I said above, I’m the youngest in my household and so, I got used to watching games and not playing them. I would take the controller for a level or two, but most of my experience with older games is as a passive observer, rather than Player 1. The first game I wanted to play - and I mean really wanted to play - was Kingdom Hearts. For those who don’t know, Kingdom Hearts is a crossover series between Final Fantasy and Disney. It began on the Playstation 2, our first household console. The story is an absolute mess with lore that grows and builds upon itself with the coherency of your least favourite amatuer improv group. It is a ludicrous melodrama that seven year old me thought was the highest form of art. I’ve watched the opening cinematic more times than I can count. I would start new games just to watch that intro (a HD - by 2002’s standards - surrealist cutscene set to Hikari Otaku’s ‘Simple and Clean’) and play through the tutorial (a dream sequence with a choral score and stained glass floors which disappear underneath you while a narrator says things like “Take your time. Don’t be afraid. The door is still shut.”) The mystery, the intrigue, the drama, the romance of that first instalment, when paired with the silliness and familiarity of all my Disney favourites, was a game that felt like it had been designed for me. Even watching playthroughs of the tutorial for the sake of this article still gives me butterflies.

As the series went on and became more and more convoluted, I lost track. I missed out on Kingdom Hearts Birth By Sleep (yes, dear reader, all of the spin-offs have ridiculous names) because I didn’t own a PSP, I never finished Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days, and I played Kingdom Hearts Re:coded out of a sense of duty rather than any love of the game itself. Kingdom Hearts 3 is out now and is supposedly the conclusion to the series (though since writing this they have announced Kingdom Hearts 4), yet I have not even attempted to buy it. I adore the first game with all my heart, but every entry since has been diminishing returns. I don’t think that Kingdom Hearts is necessarily better than any of the subsequent instalments, but it is mine. It was the first game that I truly loved, it’s the game I could replay over and over and over again, it’s the game whose soundtrack still plays on repeat in my head as I’m walking around. It’s a messy, silly, ridiculous game, but it’s the game that showed me what games could do, how they could make you feel. I think if someone came to it now, they would find a strange, clunky, cringey, awkward game that takes itself way too seriously. But when I play it, I see that game that was once the highest form of art. To me, it still is.

Comfort gaming puts you back in the shoes of your younger self. It reawakens muscle memory that you thought was long gone. It asks you to recall the secret paths in Coconut Mall. It lures you into a 15 minute Tetris break in the middle of studying. It reminds you of everything you loved when you were seven years old and your entire world was inside your PS2. It’s a way of reacquainting yourself with the versions of you from the past and a way of reminding yourself that they are not very far out of reach at all.

WORDS BY ROBERT GIBBONS

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LITERATURE

Seeking Books, Finding Signs To my mother’s disappointment, I am not a religious person. But I’m not a full-blown committed atheist either.

Maybe I’m just superstitious and I try to notice signs and patterns, but there are moments that suggest to me some sort of higher power or universal order. Not necessarily a god with a capital G, but something. Whatever is out there, I think it has a sense of humour or a proclivity for the poetic.

One such moment happened in Oxfam Books on Parliament Street last May. My granda had passed away the month before and I was still fresh in mourning. It was the first day of shops opening up after the third lockdown. My housemate and I were gleeful on our pilgrimage around the charity shops, excited for the much-missed browsing of bookshelves. We were engaged in this mission when Claire exclaimed: “Look! Songs of a Sourdough!”. She found the title amusing. She was confused when I shouted out in excitement. The title felt so familiar to me, but I couldn’t immediately remember why. The poet was Robert W. Service. This poet, a British-Canadian, was not a name I saw regularly on my charity shop browses, nor was he featured on my Literature course. Quickly flicking to the contents, I saw the titles “The Cremation of Sam McGee” and “The Shooting of Dan McGrew”. I knew these poems because my granda recited them at family gatherings.

Considering Service was not particularly famous, it seemed uncanny that here his poetry was, while I was grieving my granda’s death. Out of all the books, out of all the shops we could have gone to, Claire had happened on noticing this particular book. Claire said I had to buy the book and I did. €5 was a reasonable enough price for a sign of something sacred.

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At my granda’s wake, I’d felt overwhelmed and dishevelled.

It was the first wake I’d been to. My cousin suggested that the reason it was so upsetting for me was that I hadn’t grown up going to wakes and seeing dead bodies. I kept thinking that perhaps it was the other way round, that I was the normal one for having not seen a dead body before.

And that I was upset simply because my granda was dead.

I bit my tongue.

I felt irrationally irritable about the visitors coming by to pay their respects, catching up with my uncles and aunts, sharing memories that I was not privy to. Various uncles solemnly repeated that wakes were a dying tradition that we young people didn’t understand or appreciate. (I felt I understood perfectly.) They explained that the idea was that family members would keep watch over the departed to make sure that no nefarious spirits attempted to steal their soul as it travelled. Despite my waning faith, I think this idea is beautiful. But it did not lessen the distress.

Uncle Padraic reassured me that this wouldn’t be the way I remembered my granda; he was right. We are all grateful to him now for organising a birthday dinner in 2019 which gave us an excuse to gather together. I wonder now if Granda had decided he would perform the poem beforehand. It felt impromptu at the time – the right hour had struck and the right amount of uisce beatha consumed.

After an extravagant dinner in the softly lit dining room, surrounded by his children and grandchildren, Granda started his reciting: “There are strange things done in the midnight sun, by the men who moil for gold…”

His children and grandchildren listened reverently as Granda recited these long poems. My uncle silently went and found his friends to bear witness to the scene. Reading the text now, I can only hear the lines in my granda’s voice, and I can envision him demonstrating Dan McGrew’s talon hands – “my God, but that man could play!” – and warning us about ladies “known as Lou”. On a quiet summer evening at Killiney Beach, admiring the Dublin Mountains, I hear Granda asking: “Were you ever out in the Great Alone, when the moon was awful clear, / And the icy mountains hemmed you in with a silence you most could hear?”

previous owner also sketched two faces on the back page – perhaps they did not enjoy their learning assignments as much as Granda enjoyed his. Has this book been passed around families, then discarded once the poems were committed to memory? I have to disagree with the bored artistic pupil who discarded this book – it has become a treasured possession of mine.

The charity shop text has revealed that Granda would actually skip lines from the original text, but we never noticed because he improvised to match the rhyme scheme and metre. I would never have known if I hadn’t found this physical copy. In lectures, professors have theorized about the tradition of oral storytelling and how it is a dying form of entertainment. Here it was in action.

My relatives are not quite sure when Granda learnt these poems, but we assume it was in his schooldays. At the sprightly age of ninety-five, he had been carrying these poems around in his mind for eighty-odd years. I like to imagine that there is a league of grandfathers dotted around Ulster, ready to tell their grandchildren about Sam McGee, Dangerous Dan McGrew, or Flynn who came from Cullentra.

Half the poems in my Oxfam copy have been marked with small dashes, suggesting someone was assigned those ones to learn. My granda’s two poems have been left out. The

WORDS BY ANNA RICE

19

Line Break // Say Nuttin’ (Pears) Pears Part I: Pears.

Not what you’d expect from Tinder.

You piggybacked me to them, so that my feet wouldn’t get wet only to shower my hair with pear drops when my head hit foliage.

“Say nuttin’”, you said: entreating to impress, as you, with the weight of two crunched, squashed, squelched pears underfoot; I played my part, gave girly squeals of delight.

“Pear jam, pear tart, poached pear; there’s so many things you can do with pears…”

Bingo.

The pears watched on, impervious to me willing the impossible survival of something digitally sourced in their organic world.

But, not to worry; you gave me a tour of how your Nana changed the hierarchy of photo frames based on who was this month’s favourite.

(I felt compelled to iconoclasm as you prepared to slot me in amongst them), on an unchanging threshold of lace net curtains

Who taught you to flirt like a 70’s cookbook?

and a familiar, familial odour we forged an unspoken understanding;

All the while, flesh decayed around us.

trauma starts at home, when matriarchs play chess

I wasn’t listening–

with a two-dimensional collective of smiles.

(it felt good to be enmeshed in the spine of masculinity) you didn’t notice.

And by the fireplace, freckled hands, they found their prize: you, not fully formed– Hurler of the Year 2006–

“…Nature’s bounty; my Nana used to make a great pear enshrined: tart.” with gappy teeth, tie and stick.

‘Say nuttin’’ had very clearly been lost on you.

It struck me that you were still not fully formed; “…Do you know how to tell if a pear is perfectly ripe?” are men ever fully formed?

Who knew you could mansplain fucking pears. “…You remind me of her a bit, my Nana. She’d have loved all this.”

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Pears Part II: Pears.

There’s something addictive about bruised fruit. I am at the doorstep to your interior ulterior, fumbling with my laces; you handed me a “safe home”, for the journey, and a pear, for formalities.

As bruised skin grazed pocket my cheeks recalled their last meeting point with yours: under the immersion heater, it had rumbled an accompaniment– a concerto of Creaking G-Plan House– to our rumbling laughter about aliens and your “Michelangelo bum” in bed, while my red wine-steeped shirt was still stewing in the sink. Like pears, and I would not remind you (a piece of mine remained there) that just for a while, amongst those pears –they knew that something in me was too wild, too fragile, to tie you down– I had entertained an idea of us when you talked healing: the garden you plan to grow, outside of Co. Wicklow, or Westmeath, was it?

WORDS BY REBECCA GUTTERIDGE. ART BY LINDE VERGEYLEN

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Modernist Master works, 100 Years On 1922 marked a critical year for modernism. Literary powerhouses produced some of their best works and provided new insight into the human condition. In 2022, the centenaries of these great texts are being celebrated.

While these texts are still revered, are they still relevant?

To answer this, I look at three landmark texts of 1922, and analyse how they relate to the contemporary condition.

long that I think we have a greater appreciation for every excuse for celebration (and hey, if we want to emulate the ragers of the 1920s, I’d be the first RSVP).

Ulysses Though I can’t say I have read Ulysses in its entirety, I have made multiple attempts, and that’s something I think Joyce would revel in. Ulysses is a mentally-taxing look into the mundanity of daily life, transformed into a behemoth, mythic journey. It is clear that Joyce is writing about human experience as authentically as he can. Sure, it’s a difficult read, but who ever said life was easy?

Constant and sudden lockdowns over the past two years have ruthlessly exposed the mundanity and monotony of life; I even started to miss repetitive school days and strained small talk (both of which Stephen Dedalus endures in the novel). From these experiences, I have learned the value of each day, and the small moments within them.

Ulysses is beautiful but brutally tricky. And if you (like me) can’t face its wrath, you can still live its hundred-year-old legacy by roaming around Dublin, just as its characters did for LITERALLY THE ENTIRE BOOK. The Beautiful and Damned While The Beautiful and Damned is one of a couple of books that Fitzgerald published in 1922, I think it speaks to 2022 the most. While I can’t relate to Anthony Patch’s wealth and privilege, I can certainly understand his lifestyle. Waiting on his inheritance, Patch happily squanders his life.

Deciding that life is meaningless, he decides that the only valid way to spend it is by being idle, a thought I resort to any time I have an assignment due. There have been many moments in recent times where it seemed as though there was no rationale to life; but, like in Ulysses, I think we can find meaning in the small things, like family, friends, and getting to go more than 5km from your house.

Patch loves a good party, and has no shortage of them.

Today, however, we have been deprived of parties for so

22

The Waste Land T. S. Eliot’s angsty epic turns 100 this December and its bleak narrative of the post-war condition can act as a cathartic comfort in the face of 2022’s frustrations. As is a running theme, Eliot searches for meaning in the fragmented, post-WWI landscape, framing his search with literary and ancient allusions. Allegorising the past helps Eliot express his despondency with the present, a familiar emotion in 2022. In both The Waste Land and the literature of 2022, there seems to be an enduring interest in ancient myth and lore. While Eliot employs the Fisher King and Holy Grail stories, today novels like The Song of Achilles are still topping the charts. In 2022 it seems there is the same yearning to escape from reality and the frustrating present into stories of the past; who doesn’t love a bit of cathartic escapism?

Each of these texts provide a representation of the world 100 years ago, and all seem to be connected by a common thread: the search for meaning within a mundane, inconsequential, or cruel world. Unfortunately, it seems as though we are still searching 100 years on. However, the fact that we can use these texts to help us gain some understanding points to the consistency of the human condition, as well as the enduring quality of these modernist works.

WORDS BY LARA MELLETT

The Academic // Live Review

MUSIC

On Friday the 3rd of December 2021, The Academic played the 3Olympia* after a solid year and a half of limited live performances.

While ‘indie-rock band from Westmeath’ might ring like an oxymoron in the ears of many, The Academic have come to be affectionately tolerated, almost endeared members of the Irish music scene. Though I’ve yet to meet anyone who declares them, unequivocally, their favourite band, I’ve also never met anyone who fails to sing along to their very catchy songs. No good playlist is complete without at least one or two of their hits.

What set the tone of this concert however, was its strange in media res timing. Yes, that’s right, We Felt it Too. This gig, as was repeated by frontman Craig Fitzgerald on the night, was the first proper performance they’d been able to put on since the beginning of the pandemic. However, In a cruel twist of fate, it seemed at that moment it would also be the last for the foreseeable future. Only the evening before, new Covid guidelines had been announced by the government. Everything was tightening up again in an effort to ‘save Christmas’. Craig and the rest of the band, Dean Gavin, Matthew Murtagh and Stephen Murtagh, had a mantra that night and it was, ‘There is only tonight!’.

True performers, the band was only more committed to give their long-suffering fans a good show despite this bittersweet timing. With their boundless energy and new album ‘Acting My Age’ in tow, they had no trouble with that. The band played brilliantly, and when they weren’t jumping around like lunatics, their genuine delight at being back on stage was evident in their own smiles and laughter. There’s something special about seeing performers delight in performing that only ever adds to the enjoyment of an audience. The Academic are crowdpleasers, in the best sense of the word.

Though the novelty of being maskless in a singing, dancing crowd was exhilarating, the obvious highlight of the night was the talented Mr. Fitzgerald surprising us all by taking off his jumper and throwing it out in the sea of waving arms. You can only imagine the frenzy as tens of frantic hands rushed to grab that damp garment. It was, indeed, a stunt that complemented their album title beautifully. And yet, I think my abiding memory of this night will be the image of that same shirtless young man in front of his microphone, blowing kisses to a middle-aged blonde woman (presumed mother) sitting in the upper circle of the theatre, bottle of beer in hand. Now that’s what I call showmanship.

They capped off the night with some sort of Christmas rock jingle and told us they loved us. Then The Academic left the stage, uncertain when they would play again. The audience filed out slowly, quietly queuing for their coats and the exit, all more than a little reluctant to leave, but each of us with a song that’d be stuck in our heads for days to come.

WORDS BY BONNIE MACCANN

*To clarify, 3 has been added as a prefix to the venue name due to much confusion with the ancient Greek site, Olympia. Many a concert/play/musical-goer has found themselves in the Greek wilderness rather than the Dame Street theatre. Thank goodness for the distinguishing power of branding!

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Can Eminem be Cancelled?

Cancellation is a tricky beast to wrestle with. The rules are generally known - a single sentiment, word or action could be the final nail in the coffin of a celebrity’s career, public pressure is applied to sponsors to withdraw support and the celebrity is generally boycotted. Cancellation has in recent years swept through societies all around the world like a tidal wave of righteous anger and for the purposes of this discussion, this is our seemingly irresistible force.

Seemingly irresistible.

In the other corner, Marshall Mathers - our immovable object. Eminem has been a conduit of criticism for years stretching back to the Clinton era. His career has been made by thriving off of the controversy of dealing with his critics, who disavow his lyrics which flippantly discuss drug use, domestic abuse, and threats of murder, often directed towards former President George W. Bush or Eminem’s ex-girlfriend, Kim. His songs are frequently packed with homophobic and sexist lyrics, particularly in his diss tracks, and of course, there is always the rare, but not non-zero, chance of the n-word appearing in one of his songs. Specific instances of Eminem’s problematic side include The Source magazine’s claim that he called all black girls “dumb” back in the early 2000s and reports of an unreleased track in which Eminem states that he “sided with Chris Brown” referring to the Chris Brown-Rihanna domestic abuse case. He is seemingly the perfect target at which to receive the treatment of cancel culture.

Seemingly the perfect target.

And yet, repeated attempts to cancel Eminem have failed to cause a permanent or financial dent in the image of the rapper.

The most recent attempt was a campaign, predominantly on TikTok, based around his feature with Rihanna, “Love the Way You Lie”. Those on the pro-cancel side of this debate claim the song’s lyrics condone domestic abuse, particularly the line “If she ever tries to f**king leave again / I’mma tie her to the bed and set this house on fire.” Fans of Eminem have come to the rapper’s defence in a number of ways including claiming the song actually condemns the situation of domestic abuse depicted in the song as well as the common “defence” that Eminem has much more problematic songs so to leave this particular track alone. The schism devolved into a debate between the generalised groups of pro-cancel Gen Z and anti-cancel millennials. The campaign has since fizzled and Eminem emerged generally unscathed.

This is an intriguing case study in understanding cancel culture as a phenomenon in general. Has Eminem proven a method by which to defeat cancel culture? How has he managed to slip through the cracks? These events beg a curious question; can Eminem be cancelled?

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Immediately after bursting onto the scene with his major record label debut album (if we ignore Infinite which failed to make a mark with fans), The Slim Shady LP, Eminem established a combative relationship with the FCC, news and music channel executives, rap magazines, other rappers and celebrities, and was immediately thrust into villainy in the eyes of Middle America’s “decent” citizenry. This antagonistic relationship continued for nearly a decade but has certainly been diminishing since circa 2010,when Eminem embarked on creating his “Recovery” image and ditched the bleached-hair, oversized white t-shirt Slim Shady persona of his younger era. His modern persona has moved away from fighting “the establishment” (with the exception of his anti-Trump rhetoric) and has begun a more niche feud with the modern rap and mumble rap industry. This means that to cancel Eminem, one must look back at his older materials. The sheer volume of backlash dating from the 90s onwards dilutes the impact of any new attempt at cancellation. Any problematic aspects of Eminem can be written off as “no longer him” or even the idea that “that was Slim Shady not Eminem”.

Eminem is benefiting from the provision of double jeopardy – he can’t be prosecuted for the same crime twice. It seems Eminem outlasted the attempts at cancelling him while his career was on the rise and now that he has unarguably made it and began the second half of his career, it appears too late to be able to touch him. Any attempt to curb the spread of his music is of no use now since his music is too well ingrained in modern day culture, with Eminem being a prolific writer and frequent collaborator in the industry. As well as this, there is the fact that his highest selling days are behind him anyway. The Eminem Show and The Marshall Mathers LP, both of which sold over ten million copies, are over twenty years old and recent releases have been met with far more moderate numbers and acclaim. Due to this, many may ask why the need to expend effort to derail a career that is slowly fading away anyway.

Similarly, the Eminem argument reminds me of the moment in the 2020 U.S presidential election when pro-Trump supporters yelled both “stop the count” and “count the votes”; in Eminem’s case it is that he plays both sides of the political spectrum. Eminem purposefully exudes the attitude of an anti-wokeness proponent who would label his wouldbe cancellers “weak” and “snowflakes”, and would defend his “right” to homophobic, sexist, or transphobic locker room talk. At the same time, he has also released songs with anti-Trump, anti-Bush and neo-conservatism, and pro-gun control themes. The same “establishment” culture that Gen-Z wishes to cancel is the same environment Eminem has been fighting throughout his career and a mutual “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” mentality seemed to have formed between the two groups before the recent TikTok campaign. Eminem has, in an attempt to move away from his Shady side, even apologised for his sexist or homophobic lyrics in certain instances, but has never apologised for his general approach to discriminatory lyrics. Specific instances of liberal views do not a liberal make but it is fair to say that Eminem has muddied the waters enough to save himself from having either his conservative or liberal fans from coming after him.

Lastly, taking the matter with a much wider perspective, is the argument that “that’s just how rap is” and the question “can rap be cancelled”? Many of the problematic features of Eminem’s lyrics or his various personas apply to the greater industry of rap as a whole and attempting to go after rap as a form of expression could be seen as opening a cultural can of worms. The medium of rap often takes all the hits of homophobia and sexism and it works to shield any individual rapper from these problematic themes. This is not to say that the cancellation of a rapper is impossible (rap isn’t the invincibility star from Mario) but while misogyny or homophobia may get individual tracks removed they are unlikely to permanently tarnish a rapper’s career. Rapper’s chances of cancellation stand outside of their work, like Lil Wayne and Ice Cube’s endorsements of Trump or B Simone’s comments about the Black Lives Matter movement, and in this area, Eminem has largely done quite well to avoid major controversy.

Any attack on Eminem can be deflected with a bit of whataboutism, shifting the spotlight onto a myriad of other rappers, provided that the group cancelling him can nail down the exact political reason to do so. Even then you run the risk of Eminem using the opportunity to twist the narrative to a proclamation of his defiance as the establishment comes after him, which his fans will eat up and will strengthen his base. All in all, I think it’s pretty clear that while cancel culture is a tour de force, so is the so-called rap god.

WORDS BY LOUIE LYONS

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SEX

Sex on Screen Sex on screen - it can be funny, controversial, romantic and so much more. These days sex scenes are a pretty common feature of television and film. There’s nothing I love more than curling up and watching a good movie, and when I have the room to myself, there’s nothing I like more than watching a really good sex scene. A great scex scene enhances a story. It can create drama and surprise. It can show the release of tension between two (or more) characters. Not to mention, they’re an opportunity to show what healthy sex and consent look like on screen. Lastly, it’s in the name! These scenes are sexy!

Now that we’ve established what great sex scenes can do, let’s dive into the not so great. Sometimes a sex scene is ruined because it hapens unexpectedly when you’re just trying to watch something nice with your Nana (an equally traumatising experience for you both). Other times, these would-be love scenes are ruined by shameful timing, disturbing premises and not enough pillow talk. The top three offenders in my opinion are; After and After We Fell, 365 Days, and Twilight Breaking Dawn Part 1.

After It’s hard to know what to expect when the logo ‘Wattpad Studios’ appears on your screen as you settle in to watch a film you later find out is based on One Direction fanfiction. Credit where credit is due, we do see informed consent during one of the encounters, but the first sex scene is a big old mess. Our principal characters, Tessa and bad boy Hardin share a lukewarm kiss which leads onto Hardin dipping out of frame for about ten seconds. I assume this was meant to allude to oral sex, but with no verbal or visual confirmation that he did anything other than twiddle his thumbs, this sex scene doesn’t quite land. In the third instalment (don’t ask me why I keep watching these movies) things get even worse when we are presented with a phone sex scene … with no dialougue? If I wanted to use my imagination, I wouldn’t be watching a movie. In all seriousness, an opportunity was missed here. We could have had passionate, erotic dialogue, instead we got awkward facial expressions and background music.

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365 Days What brought these two characters, Laura and Massimo, together you might ask? Well to make a long story short, boy sees girl, boy likes girl, five years later boy kidnaps girl and keeps her hostage for a year. A classic rom-com if you will. In all seriousness, the entire set up for the following sex scene is extremely dodgy and dare I say … unsexy. Despite being abducted, Laura falls in love with Massimo and has sex with him because *checks notes* he saves her from drowning after he pushes her off a boat.

The post near death experience sex is pretty graphic and, as is the case in After, the audience is nearly deafened by the background music. Despite the actors trying their best and the sexy music, this scene just can’t be enjoyed against such a weird backstory.

Twilight Breaking Dawn Part 1 Twilight took the world by storm both in their novel and film forms. Audiences waited for years to see Balla and Edward get their happily ever after. It’s also fair to say that they waited years to see our girl Bella finally get some action. The big night however simply wasn’t all that amazing. Perhaps a movie that needs to stick to PG-13 guidelines shouldn’t be judged too harshly, then again, can this scene even be counted as a sex if we don’t see any sex? What we do see, is arguably far more inappropriate than any actual nudity or sex act. The morning after sees poor Bella covered in bruises and the poor bed broken in half. Destroyed furniture and unwanted injuries does not a sex scene make.

And there you have it, my take on some of the biggest blunders in sex on screen. No hate if you enjoyed any of these scenes, they are fiction after all and as the saying goes, different strokes for different folks.

WORDS BY AOIBHÍN CARR

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What TikTok Has To Say About Dating: Nobody’s Having Fun

TikTok is certainly in its heyday right now, and it doesn’t require much introspection to understand the appeal. It is an extremely entertaining and addictive app that is so multifaceted in terms of content creation that it caters towards the interests of so many different people. Its marketability undoubtedly lies in its FYP (For You Page) feature, which functions to ensure that the videos you see are tailored towards you, and are relevant based on the types of content you most often interact and engage with, meaning that for the most part, everything you see is of personal interest and significance.

Content that is based around topics of dating and relationships has always been a common feature of my FYP, especially videos in which people share their experiences of bad first dates with people they match with on dating apps like Tinder and Hinge. These videos are funny, and are usually intended to be so, as they highlight the insane struggles of, from at least what I have seen, dating heterosexual men – a reality that is so universally painful that it begs for humour when being discussed, because otherwise it’s just sad.

I have always enjoyed this sort of content, and so I have never had an issue with seeing so much of it on a daily basis.

Recently, however, the gears have shifted slightly, and it is not as enjoyable.

The content that I am consuming maintains this kind of subject matter, but it has abandoned much of its humour. I see countless videos of planned-in-advanced dates never getting confirmed or cancelled the day of, women getting stood up, and just getting treated horribly. And even though these videos aren’t nice to watch, especially in such large quantities, and do little to encourage one to date and actively pursue men, they’re not the ones that annoy me.

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It’s the ones that give advice – the dos and don’ts of dating/talking to men – that irk me. Of course, they’re not all like this. Some do actually provide well-generated, meaningful advice. But there is a certain style of this category of video that I always find something . . . off about.

For one, it’s the tone these videos take, which is extremely autocratic. These creators leave no room for arguing: what they say is law. This is of course problematic because the things they are talking about can more often than not be classified as generalisations, to which there are always exceptions. For example, I’ve seen women warn off men that might make a move on the first date, regardless of how innocent it may be, as not *really* being all that interested in you. Basically, they say it’s a red flag. And I get where they’re coming from. They believe that if a guy is genuinely interested, he’ll be too nervous or conscious of making you uncomfortable. This is a fair claim. It’s also probably something they’ve learned from their own experience. But it’s not a universal truth, and not something you can justifiably judge every single person you meet by. There are also plenty of longstanding loved up relationships in existence where things have actually happened quickly, where moves have been made in the early stages. And seriously, how ridiculous does it sound that if a guy kisses you on a first date, it translates as him not genuinely liking you?

Another idea that gets thrown around a lot on there is the whole “if he wanted to he would” thing.

Again, I get the sentiment behind it. And it’s a great tactic to employ if you’re unsure about someone, and want to talk yourself out of continuing to pursue them. But it also doesn’t really take into account important factors such as, maybe he’s shy, or scared of rejection, etc. It’s also something that I always consider from my own perspective, in that there are always things that I want to do, for instance when dating/talking to someone, but that doesn’t mean that I always do them. So how can I not allow the same inconsistency in a potential partner? Regardless of how annoying it may be.

These are just two examples of the types of ideas that are being propagated right now. I’m not saying that there’s no substance to them, but to present them as if there is no alternative is problematic. Because these creators are not simply saying this may be a reason for someone’s behaviour, they’re saying it is the only reason, and that if it happens you should walk away no questions asked. They come across as holier than thou, and often do not allow conflicting opinions to be substantiated. It views dating and more importantly, people, in black and white terms – a perspective that simply cannot accommodate the many complexities of human reasoning and interactions. What’s more, it encourages so called gameplaying, in which women tell other women to constantly play hard-to-get, to imitate toxic behaviours, and do whatever you can to mess with his head. While in practice this can all be productive and fruitful, dating really doesn’t have to be so complicated and full of theorising and ulterior motives. Sometimes you can just go with the flow.

WORDS BY KARLA HIGGINS

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THEATRE

What Does Your Favourite Musical Theatre Protagonist Say About You? The musical theatre scene has absolutely exploded with colourful characters in recent years.

From Hamilton to Heathers, everyone has a particular protagonist that has a special place in their heart and that they feel they particularly connect to. So, without further ado, what does your favourite musical character say about you?

Alexander Hamilton: If your favourite character is the young, scrappy and hungry Hamilton, I have to be brutally honest with you: this is a basic choice. You probably thrive off of academic approval, are irritatingly smart without trying, and are the centre of attention at parties. You are also fiercely loyal to your friends and absolutely unshakeable in your beliefs, never shrinking away from standing up for what you believe is right, which can sometimes be to your detriment as you don’t always know when to let bygones be bygones. Maybe take a break every now and then, though - you probably have a tendency to take on a bit more than you can manage, and you don’t always have to be so non-stop!

Jenna Hunterson: If your favourite protagonist is the warbling waitress from Joe’s Diner, you are an incredibly wholesome person and you deserve the world. You definitely have an affinity for baking and coming up with new, unique recipes, and spend a lot of time in your kitchen surrounded by sugar, butter, flour and various other baking ingredients. You’re an incredibly hard worker and put 100% into everything, and try your best to be kind to everyone you meet. You tend to foster very close relationships and have a deep affection for your close friends and you’re always there for each other when one of you needs a little extra support. However, try not to be so hard on yourself all the time! Even when you’re giving 100% your heart isn’t always in it and you can find it difficult to take a step back for fear of disappointing others. You can feel a bit lost from time to time, and it can get you down if you let it, but trust me - you’re doing great!

Evan Hansen: If your favourite character is Evan Hansen, I’m sorry to break it to you, but that is a massive red flag. You may have good intentions, but your awkward nature and inability to speak up at crucial moments tends to land you in hot water, and you find it difficult to rectify the situation at the best of times - maybe you should take a leaf out of Hamilton’s book. You also tend to be a little self-centred, and find it hard to see others’ points of view - when there’s a conflict, you immediately shut off and assume you’re the victim. Not cool, dude.

Elle Woods: This is an excellent choice, and if Woods, comma, Elle is your favourite character, then I am absolutely positive we would be friends! You are a joy to be around, larger than life and have a totally killer fashion sense - in a metaphorical way of course, because happy people just don’t shoot their husbands. Similar to Jenna, your friends are deeply important to you and you cultivate closely knit relationships with them. Once you set your mind to something, it’s made up - you’re going to work hard until you reach your goal, come hell or high water. Your eternal optimism stands to you in every aspect of your life and you never back down from a challenge, because dreams really do come true and you never have to compromise!

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Veronica Sawyer: If your musical fave is Veronica from Heathers, you are the absolute antithesis of the ‘peaked in highschool’ trope. You definitely had a teenage experience that ranged from mediocre to downright bad, and were itching to get to college and settle properly there. It took some time for you to figure out the things you wanted and it definitely took a lot of trial and error along the way - you made some mistakes and maybe ended up with some people you didn’t vibe with, but trust your intuition enough to know that the social hierarchy of secondary school is just teenage angst bullshit! Also, I know the edgy ones seem intriguing, but STAY AWAY - if they’re an active Reddit user that’s a red flag and you should run the other way.

Anastasia: If your favourite character is Anastasia, then you must be protected at all costs. You value family and friendship more than anything, and your heart’s desire is as simple as having a home, love and a family and being content with them. You make good first impressions on most people and often come across very sweet, demure and kind, but that doesn’t mean anyone should cross you - you have a feisty, spirited streak and a bad temper and you won’t let anyone push you around for long before you give them a piece of your mind. This is a trait that works very much in your favour as it means those around you quickly learn to respect you and stay on your good side, which means you can have meaningful relationships without the fear of being taken advantage of or manipulated. You’re also incredibly headstrong and determined, and if you put your mind to something there’s no stopping you until you’ve learned to do it!

Elder Kevin Price: If you most relate to Elder Kevin Price, then you were definitely the kid in your class that reminded the teacher to give out homework, were probably a “gifted kid” and have never done anything wrong in your life - according to your parents, anyway. You work extremely hard at what you’re passionate about, but sometimes that passion can get lost along the way and replaced with a desire to be praised or just be considered better than everyone else, which isn’t necessarily good for you or those around you. Try relaxing once in a while and doing something for fun rather than to add to your CV or make you more favourable in the eyes of God (whatever floats your boat). You don’t always have to be the next All American Prophet! Sometimes you can just enjoy the things you love, and when you allow yourself to do that without the perfectionism or need to impress, you’re actually a very fun, passionate and caring person to be around.

Elphaba: If your favourite is Elphaba - wicked witch extraordinaire - then you are definitely both extremely capable and way too hard on yourself, simultaneously. You’re exceptionally clever and talented, and things like academic studies or extracurricular activities come very easily to you. At times, you fall short on self confidence and making friends - unreasonably so!. You have a bit of a chip on your shoulder and feel the need to prove yourself to everyone, finding it difficult to let your guard down and be vulnerable with others. You find it hard to make connections with people, but when you do manage to let someone in, they are the most personal and rewarding relationships - whether romantic or platonic - and change you for the better. You also understand the importance of not shrinking yourself or trying to fit into other people’s expectations of you. You know you’re capable of defying gravity and no one is ever going to bring you down!

WORDS BY GRÁINNE MAHON

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“What Dreams! [...]

Enough, it’s Time it Ended”: A Review of Endgame at The Gate I had a dream about Endgame. When the poster for the production was released last October, I dreamt of a tiny black-box theatre where I was dragged onstage halfway through. I had turned up late. There were no seats left. The cast was made up of people I knew, frantically running back and forth under bright lights in garish costumes. I sat in the centre of the stage, as if this were Beckett’s Absurdist take on a pantomime.

I wasn’t planning on seeing the show originally - when it comes to Modernist literature, I’m more Team Joyce than Team Beckett (for my sins). But my friend offered me a spare ticket, and I remembered my dream. I knew I had to go. My unconscious mind had foreseen this, had bestowed upon me a prophecy. Unfortunately, the show itself did not quite live up to my REM-induced vision.

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After 10 minutes of bobbing up and down to let people reach their seats, the lights dim and the curtains open to reveal the stage. In the centre, barely lit by two “windows’’ on either side, is a large armchair. In this armchair sits something? Or someone? The shape upon the chair is draped in a stained sheet, with only two red, leg-like things sticking out from underneath. No matter how hard I stare, I can’t work out whether it is man, mannequin or corpse seated there. Once the sheet is pulled off, it is more clear what the chair contains. His face is still shrouded by a teatowel, this rag marked with what appears to be blood in the places where eyes and mouth should be. The figure is reminiscent of Bacon’s Pope Innocent X portrait, silent screaming from a distorted face. However, once this final covering is removed, the spell is broken.

The cast consists of Frankie Boyle as Hamm and Robert Sheehan as Clov, the strange father-and-son/master-andservant duo that propels the play, although the true nature of this dynamic eludes us. Gina Moxly and Seán McGinley play Nell and Nagg, Hamm’s bin-dwelling, possibly deceased parents. Sabine Dargent’s set design is bleak, with a curved, dome-like stage that makes movement Sisyphean for the limping Clov and chair-bound Hamm.

Sheehan is captivating with his shuffling gait, dark humour and rodent-like physicality. Although a grown man, there is something of the petulant child in Sheehan’s portrayal, emphasised by his mustard dungarees and erratic climbing of ladders.

However, Boyle’s portrayal of Hamm is uncertain to the point of being non-committal. Caught between comedian and aggressor, father-figure and tyrant, this rendition of the character is frustratingly muddled. While the text makes clear that Hamm is paralysed, Boyle is full of potential energy, seeming as though he may stand up and walk at any moment. This directorial choice could have served to introduce another dimension of violence and deception to the play, the idea that Hamm is less helpless than he appears to be, more sly and manipulative. However, whether due to Boyle’s acting or Taymor’s direction, it comes across as more of an oversight, a lack of clarity as opposed to a deliberate ambiguity.

Overall, the pessimism and dystopian setting of Beckett’s text was portrayed underwhelmingly. If we’re trapped with these characters in a room at the end of the world, only two small, high windows through which to gaze upon the “corpsed” landscape outside, where is the claustrophobia?

Where is the sense of dread, the impending-slash-already present doom? Hamm and Clov are constantly circling back to the idea of some “end”, yet when it finally comes, there is no emotional pay-off. The more of a wreck a work leaves me, the higher regard I hold it in. If something makes me cry, leaves me numb, or has my heart burning upon leaving the theatre, closing the page, watching the credits, then in my view, it has succeeded. Unfortunately, Endgame did not get close to achieving this.

Back in October, I’d woken from my Beckettian dream dazed and distressed. Despite the beautiful set and witty script, the only thing I felt upon leaving the Gate that evening was dehydrated and in need of a cigarette. As I discussed the lighting choices with my friend (slightly directionless and muddled, in her opinion), an exchange between Hamm and Clov lingered in my mind: HAMM: Have you not had enough?

CLOV: Yes! (Pause.) Of what?

HAMM: Of this... this... thing.

When it comes to movement, Hamm and Clov have a codependent, symbiotic relationship due to their mirrored disabilities. Hamm is blind and paralysed, anchored to his chair, unable to move. In contrast, Clov has his full range of vision, but cannot sit down. In this way, Beckett sets up their desperate dynamic: Clov and Hamm despise each other yet neither one can live without the other. Beckett’s scripts, due to their limited casts and lack of traditional plot or action, demand that the central relationship (here, between Hamm and Clov) be intense, intimate, and most of all, believable. Yet Sheehan and Boyle’s dynamic did not evoke such a sense of antagonism. The relationship between these two was one of mild inconvenience, rather than that inescapable transaction through which Hamm and Clov are forced to mutually construct the world of the play.

Although they have significantly less stage-time, the relationship between Nagg and Nell was more impactful than that of Hamm and Clov. In a play of such bitter humour, Nagg and Nell present a small oasis of love and care, albeit a doomed one. Both are trapped in dustbins throughout and are dead long before the play is over, yet I was more invested in their short scenes than the much more lengthy interactions between Hamm and Clov. Through their few lines of dialogue, they conveyed Beckett’s characteristic combination of metatheatrical wit, tragicomedy and nihilism in a way that Sheehan and Boyle did not manage.

WORDS BY GALE AITKEN

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TV

Animation: The Next Generation Like most kids of my generation, if my waking hours weren’t consumed by the likes of Scooby Doo, reruns of the 90s X-Men series or Tom & Jerry, then they were spent in school, waiting to escape back into those animated realities. Since those days I have seldom returned to the world of animation, even then favouring film, with my never-ending love of Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse (2018) present to this day on my desktop wallpaper. I always chalked this reluctance to dip back into animated TV series up as a sign of my maturing taste in telly. My black and white mindset sorted animation into something relegated to those younger years, with notable exceptions that still proved to be for ‘the family’ as opposed to incorporating more mature themes.

2016 me would drool at the overflowing cornucopia of different animated TV we have today.

In the past 2 years alone my eyes have been gifted with a range of series perfectly capturing the reason why I wanted to write this article. The growing and often celebrated willingness of more mainstream audiences to dip back into animation, with the promise of adult themes suited to a growing audience. The Legend of Vox Machina, a recent original animated series funded through Kickstarter, follows a fantastical, whimsical and hilariously sweet Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) adventuring party. Following in the footsteps of its online source material, the animated show deals with many of the mature themes that riddle the hundreds of hours of Critical Role’s first campaign, all with a carefully crafted gloss of graphic violence and profanities. As David Tennant, a guest voice actor on the show commented, “It’s animation, but with swear words. What could be better?”

In this sense I believe animation as a medium on TV has shifted to accommodate the growing underlying culture that my generation so desperately craves week in, week out. A harkening back to the past in form, but in substance, hitting all the right notes of the present. While developing Invincible (2021), Robert Kirkman stuck to the maturely rated comic series roots and provided a beautiful blend of animation, the coveted superhero genre and the moving character dynamics of an oscar-nominated drama. What Kirkman did shattered tropes of the contemporary superhero and teen drama subgenres, and obliterated the idea that animation is a genre unto itself. The title card even gets bloodier as the series goes on, drawing in more of an audience each week as we breathe in the dark days facing Steven Yeun’s protagonist Mark Grayson.

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Certain shows still struggle to dive headfirst into a more adult side, perhaps for the better however.

Marvel Studios’ What If? proved to be a hit, not only for diehard fans of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but also younger audiences who wanted to see a different take on the superheroes they’d grown up with. Indeed this is more widespread with Marvel as a studio, taking baby steps into more mature and darker themes rather than plunging in headfirst, despite the lauded praise of the more grittier Marvel Netflix series.

What I find fascinating is that, despite the rise in popularity of these darker, adult shows being transposed and developed in animation, the shows of my youth, in particular, haven’t lost one bit of their shine. Sure, the recent Scoob!(2020) movie didn’t exactly hit home with hardcore fans of the original Scooby-Doo shows, but that doesn’t detract from the success of recent animated ScoobyDoo shows. Scooby-Doo and Guess Who?(2019-), a show still going strong with new, intriguing mysteries, excellent guest stars and reimagined animation, simply adding to the foundations of this show, 50 years after the classic Scooby-Doo Where Are You?(1969).

All this is to say that animation as a medium might generally shift to suit audiences or break new ground, like Arcane (2021) jumpstarting the oft-thought dead videogame subgenre of TV and film, but it never forgets its roots, both in respect of the source material and the medium.

With another classic, the X-Men: The Animated Series being revitalised as X-Men ‘97, I will await with eager anticipation as to how this beloved franchise will adapt to modern audiences while remaining committed to its largely PG ‘90s roots.

WORDS BY ADAM BALCHIN

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The Case Against Continuity Like any good scholar, I try to familiarise myself with the titans of my genre, to understand popular stylistic developments and truly appreciate innovations in the medium. As a student of the small screen, I’ve been watching a lot of Seinfeld lately.

I’ve taken to annoying my friends with my observations about the gang’s cultural literacy and daydreaming of pitches for episodes that could be made if the show aired today. It was only a matter of time before something stuck in my head enough for a TN2 piece. That moment came towards the end of the season seven two-parter “The Bottle Deposit”. George finds himself in a mental institution, committed by his boss on the basis of a report he falsely takes credit for. The episode continues, but we never cut back to George: as far as we know he is not released. Considering how seriously Seinfeld usually takes its continuity, especially in a time before streaming services, I expected George’s predicament to roll over to the next episode. It didn’t. And I was glad, because they’d really done all they could with the scenario. It made me think about the freedom writers have when they’re able to push characters into situations with no regard for how they’ll get out of them, when they can prioritise humour over established canon.

Not every show should eschew continuity, of course, even ones that revolve around humour. The stakes on Gilmore Girls were notoriously low. Season one plots are often as relaxed as Rory (Alexis Bledel) getting her first bad grade on a test. But whatever was happening, it mattered to the characters, and the show remains surprisingly compelling to this day. Continuity not only works for this show, it’s essential. If everything resets at the end of the hour, how could we ever consider Emily (Kelly Bishop) gifting Rory a suite of furniture for her room? It’s only because we see this event as marking a shift in the granddaughter/grandmother relationship that it isn’t interminable.

Not every show, however, is Gilmore Girls, and some are much less down to earth. In the Community episode ‘Advanced Gay’, Pierce’s (Chevy Chase) dad appears, even though his mother referenced seeing his ghost in a season one episode.

They joke about this inconsistency with a flimsy excuse for why she said this, and the episode continues on. As a show known for breaking the fourth wall, this was the perfect way to deal with inaccuracy, but I don’t think I would have found the episode any less funny if there had been no mention of the blip. The first season of a show, especially a sitcom airing weekly as Community did, is about discovery, for the writers at least. The most coherent experience isn’t always the most fun.

A middling pilot doesn’t have to mean a middling show, things can be worked around and adjusted.

Parks and Rec is a perfect example. People talk about the transformation of Andy Dwyer (Chris Pratt) from inconsiderate oaf to lovable goof, but Leslie herself is rewritten from an annoying incompetent employee to eager packmule. It was obvious season one wasn’t working, and rather than try to move around in something they found constricting, the writers made changes to the fiction they had established which, judging by the show’s subsequent success, was the right call.

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An attention to continuity can hamper shows in other ways. Once it is established, it’s expected, and you can get caught up in inconsistencies at surprising times. Over its seven season run, New Girl spends one episode looking at the relationship between Jess (Zooey Deschanel) and her sister. Not seeing her again really isn’t a problem – except at Jess’ wedding. It ends up being a rushed affair, but with her and her parents neglecting to even mention that it’s a shame she can’t be there, especially after the difficulties we saw in the first episode, what’s supposed to be light and fun is somewhat spoiled. This was a moment that would have been better had the authors been clear they were changing canon. Sitcoms also often have less direction than dramas – we don’t watch to find out what happens next week, we watch to have a laugh and to forget about reality for a while.

The writers for Arrested Development understood this very well. Each episode ended with narrator Ron Howard describing a humorous situation that was to happen “on the next episode”. Buster’s hand being bitten off by a seal in such a section is kept (and is a wonderful culmination of jokes from that episode), but often the events of these epilogues are never referenced again. Although the show didn’t trunk every advancement at the end of each episode, with characters coming in and out of prison like a revolving door, it’s clear that humour outweighs consistency every time.

I do not long for the days when sitcoms needed to reset because watching every episode was near impossible. I do however think it’s important that writers consider whether continuity should even be a priority on a given show, and under what circumstances it should be ignored.

WORDS BY GILLIAN DOYLE 37

PLACES

The Pandemonium of Nights Out

The last few months we have seen the return of Irish nightlife after two years of lockdowns.

Finally, it was time to dust off those dancing shoes and party dresses, and rummage for that fake tan well past its expiry date for a night out on the town.

Returning to nights out after Covid was a surreal experience. I did not know how I would react to being back in a nightclub, dancing right next to people after being told for two years to stay away from people. I was excited however, and I had even written up a song predictions playlist on my phone cataloguing the bops I wanted to hear after so long locked away (devastated to not hear a bit of Olivia Rodrigo that night). I was anxious at first, but once I heard the sound of Shakira’s ‘Hips don’t Lie’, I was running onto the dance floor and my worries, for the moment, were forgotten.

One thing I am glad to see has not changed in these last two years is the absolute chaotic vibes of the girls’ bathrooms. I know what you’re thinking, what on earth could possibly be so significant about the girls’ bathrooms on a night out? Girlies, I’m sorry I am about to reveal all our secrets to the world.

There is an immense amount of chaos to be found in the girls’ bathroom. First off, the nightclub can get pretty packed at times, and if your friend does something as simple as making flirtatious eye contact with a guy she thinks is cute and loses you gals in the crowd, or goes to the bar for a drink, that may be the last time you ever see them. The girls’ bathroom is a space of retreat to text your besties until you’re reunited so you can all get back on the dancefloor once more.

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The complete strangers you bump into in the girls’ bathroom on a night out can end up being some of the coolest people you’ll ever meet. If politicians behaved the way girls did in the Copper’s bathrooms, climate change would be solved, there would be world peace and Covid would be a distant memory by now. The power, co-operation and determination these women have is astounding. It’s not just your friends you came out with that will be looking after you, complete strangers who you’ve just met will make sure you’re ok as if you’ve known each other for years. The five minute friendships you make in the girls bathroom cannot compare to anything else. You find women hyping each other up when others feel down, complementing each other’s outfits and offering things like lip balm or chewing gum for anyone in need.

Sometimes you’ll occasionally see a lollipop lady in the corner playing a role just as vital as the one you had in school. She’s there selling lollipops, sprays of perfume, whatever you need to refresh yourself for a continuous night of dancing. You’ll find other girls by the sinks fixing their lipstick, complaining that the DJ won’t play ‘22’ (Taylor’s Version) and is instead insisting on playing the so-called ‘stolen version’ and most of all, making sure nobody commits the ultimate sin on a night out: texting their ex. As Taylor says in the song , “it feels like a perfect night to make fun of [your] exes”, just don’t text them.

This may sound a bit mad, but in my opinion, the way women behave in the girls’ bathrooms on a night out is what female empowerment is all about. What you find in the girls’ bathrooms is women having each other’s backs, which is so important. No matter who we are, what problems we have, or how many tequila shots we’ve taken at the bar, it’s important to be there for someone to brighten up their Saturday night if they need it.

It’s great to see nights out back to normal hours after they were placed to be closed by midnight as a result of the so-called Cinderella Variant, because we all know Covid doesn’t come out until after twelve. It did have its pros however. It was handy to know that by the time your Penneys glass slippers were beginning to hurt your feet you could be on your way home once the clock struck midnight.

Nightlife has been through a whirlwind these last few years, more than any other industry. It’s about time it reopened. It’s mad to think that a few months ago we weren’t allowed through the door and now there is talk of nightlife opening hours being changed through legislation and staying open until 6am. Through it all, the girls’ bathrooms have stayed the same. And if you ask me, we all deserve the chance to dance until dawn.

WORDS BY HILARY MULLEN

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Planning The Perfect Summer Party As we have learned over the past three years, outdoor social events are the new nightclub when it comes to social gatherings. There is no better way to enjoy the summer than a garden BBQ with all of your friends, some good food and music and a healthy amount of rosé.

When it comes to organising a summer get-together, there are two routes you can go down - the inexpensive route, and the more boujee, expensive route. However, I think that there are many ways to save costs and still create a perfect setting for your party.

A Perfect Garden Space First of all, you do need some sort of an outside garden space. I personally think that this space doesn’t need to be too big and it can also be a shared garden space that many people have access to. In order for your neighbours not to hate you for the rest of your time living there, I recommend that you make sure your neighbours are aware of the gathering. There is nothing worse than your neighbours hating you (trust me , I’m speaking from experience). Once you know that your neighbours won’t be calling the Gardaí on you, we can get started with all the prep.

Bring the Goodies!

As you will be hosting the gathering, it is best to make it a BYOB. You can always provide the mixers and non-alcoholic beverages, but considering that you are spending money on food, I think it’s fair for your friends to bring their own drink.

When it comes to food, we all know that there are plenty of dietary restrictions, allergies, vegans, etc. Make sure you know beforehand the dietary needs for all of your guests. In other words, do not have an ice-cream themed party when you know that one or two of your friends are lactoseintolerant. Believe me, your friends will be grateful that you accommodated their needs, even if it means slightly more effort on your part.

Personally, I think guac and tortilla chips always satisfy everyone. Another great option is your generic snacks of pretzels, crisps etc. but also making it slightly more elevated with little mozzarella morsels and olives. Some other great options include: hummus, breadsticks and pesto.

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Unleash Your Inner Designer To create the perfect atmosphere, you will need some form of a table. In my budget friendly ways, last summer, I just used the dining table that I had and brought it outside with the chairs. It gives it that indoor/outdoor living vibe which I hear is quite popular after having binge-watched all three seasons of Selling Sunset. You really do not need any fancy outdoor furniture but if you have them, then obviously use them. Another way to add a vibe to your space is to put plants around. This is especially useful if your outdoor space is mostly concrete or gravel. I loved having some of my larger houseplants outside as it just created a great vibe for the party. Also, this is your time to boast about your ability to keep plants alive.

If you have any fairy lights, neon lights, etc. You can always place them on any walls and bannisters.

Thankfully, the sun is setting later these days, so you don’t need a full flood light situation. However, if you feel that you need something in the later hours of the evening so all of you are not looking at each other in the dark, the best thing to do is ask if people have any outdoor lamps. You can also buy a set of solar powered garden lights for relatively cheap or go onto a zero waste Facebook page and see if people are giving any away. It’s great to make your garden party sustainable if possible.

With all of these steps put together, you have the perfect plan for an amazing outdoor gathering.

Now that you have the whole party planned and ready to go, you can relax and enjoy your evening with friends and family, on a warm summer evening, until it rains.

OR W DS BY GABRIELA GRZYA W CZ ART BY SJE SIE HUANG

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The

Most

Instagrammable Instagrammable places around Dublin

places

around dublin.

“Latte foam art, tiny pumpkins, fuzzy comfy socks”. This is the iconic line in Grammy award winning, internet comedian Bo Burnham’s famously witty song ‘White Woman’s Instagram’, which details the content that social media pros enjoy posting sharing to the world. This song made me feel really called out and really basic, but is a bop nonetheless. However, one thing he never mentions in the song that anyone who loves social media can identify with, is posting aesthetically pleasing photos of the city they live in.

Dublin has always been an artistic wonderland full of arts and culture, and there are plenty of places that sell avocado toast that are worth putting on your story. I am here to break down the best places in Dublin to post those aesthetically pleasing shots of this class city.

Anne’s Lane

This technicolour dream coat of a street would give Rihanna a field day. You have probably seen St. Anne’s Lane on your Instagram before. This is Dublin’s umbrella street. The street is covered on top with multicoloured umbrellas to create a rainbow no matter the weather. A photograph on this street will brighten up your Instagram and show your followers there is more colour to Ireland than just emerald green if you look hard enough.

River Liffey

The River Liffey has more bridges on offer than Taylor Swift has in her discography, each a unique photo opportunity. From the Ha’penny Bridge to O’Connell across the way, there are multiple choices out there for you to get a snap of the river the famously divides the north and southside of the city. There is something so gorgeous about a photo of the Liffey where the river reflects the sky. The clouds and their reflections below come across symmetrical to create this blended work of art that can remarkably be captured with just the camera app on a smartphone.

Temple Bar

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Yes, it’s a bit stereotypical. Yes, any American ever to land on our shores has this locationon their Instagram. However, I wouldn’t recommend it if it wasn’t worth it. This quarter of Dublin’s fair city exasperates Dublin’s artistic culture. The famous pubs with overpriced Guinness, the vintage clothes shops and the beloved Merchant’s Arch create the perfect indie-esque vibe that are worth a few snaps within your camera roll. I was walking around the Temple Bar area on Paddy’s Day and there was something about the place that made me feel so at home when getting a few pictures with my friends,covered in green clothing and embracing our Irish pride after being locked down on the day for the last two years.

Powerscourt Townhouse Centre

Home to a Pygmalion more famous to students than Brendan Shaw’s play of the same name. You have small bars and cafés inside to show off any sort of food or fancy cocktails your heart may desire to post on your story. The inside of the building is made of old brick and covered in artificial plants and lighting to give this place a cosmopolitan jungle effect. You’ll definitely find something to snap up inside here.

Trinity College (obviously)

How could I write an article on Instagrammable places in Dublin and not mention the place many of us find ourselves in everyday. There are plenty of spots to get a cute picture posted on Instagram. There’s the old library for all you book lovers out there that want to get a few dark academia style pictures of some lovely books and the famous staircase. The front of Trinity is probably one of the most famous shots of a university ever, and it is worth getting a picture of it at night when it is lit up in different colours. The Museum Building looks like a work of fantasy, akin to Hogwarts or the Sanctum Santorum that Doctor Strange resides in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The front square is the perfect place for a classic graduation picture. You have plenty of options, the steps of the Dining Hall, the Campanile, the Exam Hall, and the Chapel are all lovely Instagram worthy shots. I love a good photo next to old style buildings and Trinity offers so many potential picture opportunities to choose from. Show off the university you enjoy studying at to all your followers with a caption quoting Normal People, because what else would a stereotypical Trinner post after all?

There are more places I could mention that are Instagram worthy and the best places for taking a selfie. I’ll leave it to you guys to find the rest that town has to offer. Dublin is famous for holding magic within its cobblestone roads and I am sure you have your favourite spots across our fair city to take beautiful photographic shots in.

WORDS AND PHOTOS BY HILARY MULLEN ART BY JESSIE HUANG 43

Can We Really ?

Late one Tuesday night my flatmate comes running into the kitchen, barely holding in her excitement. “It’s BeReal time!” Before I can give her the very embarrassing news that I do not actually know what “BeReal” is, her phone is out and she’s taking a picture of me sitting on the sofa.

Over the past few weeks, BeReal has made a name for itself on Trinity Campus. The app was originally uploaded to the App store in 2020, created by entrepreneur Alex Barreyat.

Barreyat decided to create the app as an alternative to the inauthentic posting behaviour that he noticed was plaguing social media. While the app has been around for a few years now, it only recently gained popularity among university students, currently ranking #10 in social networking on the App store.

BeReal is a social media app that claims to be unlike any other; it demands for you to be your most authentic self.

This is done by creating a time constraint on when users are allowed to post. Throughout the day, users will receive a single notification. From the time of receiving notification, users have 2 minutes to take a picture (from the front and back camera). This then gets uploaded to your profile, followed only by your close friends. BeReal attempts to eliminate the falsity that other social media apps, such as Instagram, have come to harbour. In allowing users a select amount of time to post, authenticity is more or less guaranteed. BeReal must then definitely “be real”. It would seem as though, for the most part, users are respecting the philosophy upon which the app was founded. My flatmate posts herself just waking up from naps, we posted a selfie during a lecture today (shh). But how are we to be sure that BeReal is truly real?

There is a sort of epidemic that has contaminated all forms of social media: posting is no longer about sharing your day-to-day, or about likes and dislikes. Sites such as Snapchat and Instagram specifically have been transformed into marketplaces; marketplaces for goods, but also (and more importantly) for a specific lifestyle. In the past, your Instagram page would be a casual collection of things you enjoy, things you were doing with your friends. Today it seems as though the Instagram page has become the individual user’s carefully curated brand; we don’t have to be subject to ads and promotions, we make them ourselves.

This doesn’t mean that we are all becoming influencers, but to a certain extent we all unconsciously try to show

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certain more ‘posed’ parts of our lives. The nature of social media requires that we portray ourselves — this can also be seen in the recent rise in “casual” photo dumps. Without realising it, we all tend to adhere to this unspoken social media rule: we all try to perform or display a lifestyle that is usually only a small fraction of who we are.

Being part of a generation that grew up with the internet, there would be a constant reminder that not everything seen online is real. Despite the warning, it is still quite easy to buy into the fantasy world that social media sites like Instagram produce. So with its rise in popularity, why should BeReal be the exception?

WORDS BY ELISA ECKSTEIN ART BY EMILY STEVENSON

ALT.

The app claims to be the outlier from the rest, an oasis of guaranteed authenticity. How can we know this to be true?

For the time being, BeReal has maintained the status of a pseudo private Snapchat story; you choose who sees your posts, and you generally post things you wouldn’t want to share outside of your close group of friends. However, as the app grows in popularity can you really promise that you won’t be tempted to be a bit more performative?

Further, how can we be so sure that companies won’t come into the app, as they did with Instagram and Snapchat, and start capitalising off of users and their adherence to social media norms.

While the time limit on posts offers a form of constraint on what and when users can post, posts can still be made when the time limit expires. In the week that I have had BeReal, it seems as though every time someone posted late, they were either with friends, or doing something interesting. This isn’t to shame those people, but it goes to show how much this idea of curating our social media has wormed its way into our everyday lives. This doesn’t apply to everyone, there are still some people out there keeping it real. However when it comes to social media we must ask ourselves whether we ever really portray ourselves honestly — because the whole point of social media is to portray yourself, not to actually be yourself.

The

Truth

About Having Flatmates

Seven

The sun peeks through your blinds early in the morning. Peace and serenity creep into your body as birds chirp outside your window; the world is beginning to wake. The smell of your coffee brewing from the kitchen wafts through your house as you prepare yourself for the day. Maybe a cheeky morning meditation or some journaling when you get up is on your to-do list. Life is quiet. It is you, and only you, in your space.

Let me now paint you another picture: you wake up, unintentionally, to your neighbours doing construction work in the back garden at 8:30am. Stomping feet upstairs ensure that you do not fall asleep again. You hear various voices, some familiar, and others confirming that yes, your friend’s sneaky link stayed over the night before. Showers are turned on as your STEM housemates rush frantically out to class.In contrast, the arts and humanities students make themselves a relaxing breakfast as they don’t have their singular class of the day until 3pm (writing as a history student, yes it’s true).

The group-chat with your house members is sending your phone into a state of frenzy as somebody asks who’s mouldy bread and hummus in the kitchen has not been thrown out yet. Ah yes, good old student living.

As a second year student who lived in Trinity Halls last year the hunt for a house started in April. We sifted through Daft on the daily, looking at house after house and where we thought our second year would be spent. A particularly memorable one was an apartment just off O’Connell St. It had “walls” that were made up of what seemed like poster board and only stretched five feet off the ground, leaving ample space for your flatmates to peer in the top and see you in all your glory. There was also what seemed like a make-shift mezzanine floor, which we convinced ourselves would be the so-called “shag pad”, insinuating that whoever had a special friend staying over would get the bed and the person living up there would move for the evening. This also, may I add, was open plan so had no doors for that matter. In the end, we decided that maybe living in some nineteenth century, fake-wall and missing-door nightmare was not the one.

The search was stressful; one house after another resulted in failed attempt after failed attempt. That was until, one day, a seven person house popped up on Daft. Yes, seven. It was ideal, there were roughly seven people in our friendship group that were willing to all move in together for the upcoming year. We viewed the house, put security deposits down and were ready to move in by July 1.

Settling into a new environment is hard for most, but coming from the luxury of student accommodation, with heating and hot water on demand and all your friends at your doorstep, was a big jump. Through the last eight months of living here our heating has been broken for half. Most of December was spent shivering in our rooms, wearing three sweatshirts, socks, tights and joggers to bed, and still being cold. We were truly living the reality of every Victorian child and were two steps away from developing consumption.

Living with so many has its moments, but truly and honestly it is so much fun. These are the memories that stay with you long after your four years in college, longer than the memories of dirty pots and pans. If I were to give any advice to people either questioning whether to move out of home next year or looking for somewhere new to stay, do it! Nothing is ever as stressful as it seems in the moment.

I’ll now leave you with a story that happened in my house only this week. An eighth member made an appearance.

He was a housemate that did not pay any rent and ate half of our food: a little mouse. On three separate occasions the mouse was spotted and various methods were put into practice trying to get rid of him. Surprisingly the YouTube clip of a high pitched frequency to “get rid of mice” did not work. The creature was chased with brushes and oven trays in an attempt to get rid of him, until eventually he was left to roam our kitchen freely for two days, banishing the rest of us to live off food that did not require refrigeration, heating or cooking. Thankfully, the mouse was gotten rid of all of his own accord. He wasn’t concerned about the traps – he knew the gas bill was going to be too high next month. These memories, though sometimes terrifying, are what last forever.

WORDS BY ELLA MCCORMACK ART BY ELLECIA VAUGHAN

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Notes on Spending Time Alone and Relishing Life My friends and I are terrible people, the best kind of people, in my opinion. When we are at a bar with a pool table or a club with awful dancing, we like to play this game. It began with a “study session” that predictably, very quickly descended into a real session. We got to talking about how our teachers tried to describe our mental illness in a compassionate way to our parents. So now, we psycho-analyse strangers through the lens of a primary school teacher’s catchphrases. There are the “pleasures to have in class”-anxiety, or the “very accommodating to other students” - low self-esteem. And then there is my description; “vivacious”. I suppose this means that I am intense, that the colour grey doesn’t really exist for me. It’s all or nothing, it’s live or die, it’s bi-polar and it’s not necessarily a bad thing.

I’m convinced that ice-cream tastes better to me, that I enjoy music more, that I can hug tighter, love longer. It certainly helps when I need to pull an all-nighter to finish a college assignment! I don’t want to write an essay about how I am the victim of my own brain, I kind of love my crazy. This is radical, I know, to argue that my illness is actually a good thing and maybe it is just Stockholm syndrome. But apathy is the greatest sin of all and I fight the good fight every day by caring about everything. I care that my best friend tries a Shamrock shake from McDonalds because he’s never had one and so I’m not entirely sure what gets him up in the morning, if not the promise of the minty goodness. I care about kindness and it makes me really sad when I’m sitting on a train and some Dad is being a dick to their kid and I have to go to the bathroom to cry because I really, really want to help that little girl. And I can’t stop thinking about her, wondering if she’s okay. I cannot remember the last time I was neutral about anything, even meditation isn’t simply relaxing, it’s a spiritual experience. Sometimes it’s a little bit lonely, sometimes I feel like I’m the last person left alive that remembers a time when students got shot at protests because they were so passionate and they had that much power. And now, they’re just medicated and told it’s not their job to fix the world. But I am white, western and university educated, if it’s not my job to at least have the decency to care and try to make it better than who’s is it? Maybe I am vivacious.

Kids these days (the nineteen year old laments) are forever trying to rationalize everything, which we’ve been doing since the dawn of time, but the problem lies within the way language has been prioritized and policed. We don’t express that we would like to try to rationalize our own bizarre, absurd and privileged lives in order to create art or simply to cope.

We talk about “normalizing” everything. We’re so silly. Don’t we realise that our beauty lies in our strangeness? By placing emphasis on “normalizing” we are saying that there’s something inherently wrong with “not normal”. We want the world to be clean and normal and easily defined. I am none of those things and I think I’m all the better for it.

When did we become so scared of intensity? Why not just embrace all of the good stuff, whole heartedly? Why not just dive right in and get our hands dirty instead of trying to pretend that we’re indifferent to it all? Many people who have recovered from depression have said that the worst moments were not when they felt sad but when they felt numb.

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There has recently been a “maximalist” movement. A counter revolution to the post-recession obsession with minimalism.

This is great news to me. Why not coat everything in glitter or cushions or salt or sriracha? Why not purple pens instead of black or blue ones? Why not finish every email with a joke, with a compliment, why not five exclamation marks!!!

Who the hell came up with the idea that we should have one colour palette or a “taste” in music, books, art? I don’t have a “taste” in these things, I have a hunger for them. I want everything overstated, in every colour, every texture. Surely we have grown out of our 90’s culture of being surly and ironic. I swear there’s a bang of classism and some fucked up manifestation of the consequences of capitalism off of it- as with most depressing and gloomy things that I disagree with on a fundamental level.

I add a ridiculous amount of honey to whatever I can get away with. I buy the squeezy bottle in Aldi and watch my tea turn golden in the afternoon light. I buy socks that are two sizes too big for me and slip and slide around my flat. I order hot chocolates with lots of marshmallows at cafes when I am hungover. I try to give people a proper chance before I dismiss them, a gift that has been given to me many times over. All of these things make my life feel exponentially more beautiful. I promised myself that I would only smoke cigarettes in beautiful places so now I walk to the canal every morning. I am awake before everybody else and listen to music that makes me want to write poetry.

Since going mad I have learned that it is infuriatingly necessary for me to spend time by myself. And not just time where I write essays for college or re-watch Rick and Morty for the millionth time, although I do try to make time to do both of those things. More importantly though, it is imperative that I spend time by myself simply doing nothing. It is in this interest in boredom that creativity springs. I put on music that I’ve never listened to before, right now it’s Elliot Smith. I read articles from the free magazines that they give out in the IFI. I cut out my favourite pictures and phrases, and I make a collage. I surround myself with triangles of soft paper, cheap candles and art, any art that I can get my grubby little hands on. I fall in love with myself a little bit, I feel connected to myself, in my silence. I’m trying to see this time I spend chewing and spitting and stretching words and ideas out onto a page and then straight back into my mouth as valuable and important.

When you are a highly resilient person and when you were forced to hide your pain for the sake of others for so long, it can be extremely difficult to admit that things can be better. It feels like a betrayal to yourself to admit that you could be fundamentally happier. Still, this happens to me. I catch myself forcing myself to drink double espressos or reading books that I don’t have any particular interest in. I do this, I think, because I’m scared that if I kept drinking oat flat whites or reading Sally Rooney books I would cease to be interesting. It’s hard to let go of pain because it seems to be the glue that holds you together, it seems to be written into your very DNA so you don’t know who you would be if you stopped struggling against the inevitable tides, you don’t know where you’d end up if you just let yourself drift. Someplace better, I promise.

WORDS BY LIBBY MARCHANT

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SOFT ENDINGS

PHOTOS BY JACK MITCHELL , EADAOIN FAGAN & PEGGY MACHALE

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