THIS ISSUE’S ART TEAM:
Cover Artist Ren O’Hare Featured Artists Lola Fleming, Ren O’Hare, Ciarán Butler & Andrés Murillo
re Ren O’Ha
Featured Photographers Megan O’Rourke & Philly Holmes
Ciarán
Andr és M
urillo
Lola Fleming
Butler
Editor-in-Chief Ursula Dale Deputy Editors Sophia McDonald, Sam Hayes Social Media Manager Ciara Connolly Online Editor Connor Howlett
CONTENTS Letter from the Editor A Fresher’s Guide to Dublin City: Food, Books and More
Art & Design
Art Oona Kauppi Catherine Byrne Fashion Gelsey Beavers-Damron, Ciarán Butler, Millie Brennan Film Connor Howlett, Savvy Byrne, James McCleary Food Dearbháil Kent, Grace Gageby, Kiara Kennedy Games Seán Clerkin Robert Gibbons Literature Shane Murphy Fiachra Kelleher Music Sophia McDonald, Ben Pantrey, Hannah Quearney Sex Alice Payne Chloé Mant Theatre Larissa Brigatti Lucamatteo Rossi Television Ciara Connolly Gillian Doyle ALT. Clare Maunder, Aditi Kapoor, Gráinne Sexton Layout Ursula Dale, Sophia McDonald, Caroline O’Connor, Sam Hayes Head of Illustrations Lola Fleming Head of Photography Andrés Murillo
Trailblazer of Abstract Art: František Kupka A List of Trinity Art Societies For Your Convenience A Comprehensive COVID Guide to Dublin’s Galleries
Fashion Fashion History 101: Irene Gilbert Lady Gaga, An Ethereal Fashion Icon Is There a Case for Knock-Off Fashion?
Film
1 2 3 4 6 8 10
Notes on Lost Boys: Revisiting my Favourite Film A Fresher’s Guide to Dublin’s Cinemas Returning Home The Art of the Trailer
12 13 14 15
A Student Guide to Pairing Food to Wine Three Easy Pasta Dishes Every Fresher Should Learn
16 18
Food
Games
VR is Dead, Long Live VR The Healthier Future of Game Development
Literature
A Man with No Reasons in Ben Lerner’s Leaving the Atocha Station Flash Fiction // ‘Temporary Arrangements’
20 22
24 26
Music
DIY Won’t Die, But Your Hope Will: What can we learn from Burger Records? A Beginner’s Guide to Electronic Music Production
Sex
A Series of Perspectives Clued-Up on Contraception? 2
Theatre
Live Theatre Rebirth (?) How Studying Theatre in Trinity has Prepared Me for the Future Photography by Philly Holmes // ‘Lockdown Campus’
TV
Breaking Bad and Car Crash TV Back to School (On Screen): A College TV Watchlist A Beginner’s Guide to K-Dramas
ALT.
Reality (?) TV Lessons Learned Re-Reading Twilight as a 21-Year-Old Lockdown Routines Boycotting the Fast Fashion Industry
28 30 32 34
36 37 39
40 41 42
44 45 46 47
Featured Photography: Megan O’ Rourke ‘The Sleepy Librarian’
Letter from the Editor: It is going to be difficult to address anything this year without referencing the catastrophic impact of COVID-19 and its devastation of the industry of the arts. This magazine thrives on cultural commentary and, as we adjust to a post-lockdown world, the arts and culture writer is burdened with new limits. It is going to be equally difficult to define the next academic cycle by anything other than the uncertainty of life in the (hopefully) latter stages of a global pandemic. The normal rituals of freshers’ week have been suspended entirely, and as a familiar campus feels distant to those returning, it also stands within a fresh light of odd anticipation for those arriving for the first time. The freshers’ issue is about new beginnings, and brighter prospects than those we left behind at the end of the last academic year. A more optimistic approach is something this issue, and our freshers’ cover, hope to embody. Once again I’d like to thank TN2’s team members for their beautiful work on this issue, be it their writing, photography, art, or help with editing and layout. Some things this issue seeks to address are issues of classism within the fashion industry, how studying theatre can prepare you for life beyond college, a return to activities we loved pre-COVID, as well as a re-evaluation of fiction from our youth. A re-evaluation of old comforts is something we will all have to confront in the upcoming term, as our return to ‘normal’ routines is defined by new distances, new expectations and new regulations. TN2 Magazine has been part of the community of publications in Trinity for more than 20 years and, by initiating the new year with an issue dedicated to incoming students, we hope to provide to some semblance of reassurance for both Trinity’s returning faces, as well as its new ones. Stay safe. Sincerely,
Ursula
www.tn2magazine.ie ART BY LOLA FLEMING
A Fresher’s Guide to Dublin City: Food, Books and More WORDS BY URSULA DALE AND BRIAN LAURITO The Music Cafe - This cosy spot along the quays is a few minutes walk from Trinity’s campus. Rated 37 out of 222 places for tea and coffee in Dublin, it’s warm atmosphere and soothing hot drinks are more than worth the trip. 1 Wellington Quay Grattan House, Templebar, Dublin 2.
The Joy of Cha - This gastro cafe in Temple Bar prides itself on local cuisine, as well as other nutritious bites for whatever the mood. Serving vegetarian, vegan and gluten free options for breakfast, brunch and lunch, there’s something for you and anyone you fancy bringing along! 10 Essex Street East, Temple Bar, Dublin 2.
The Cake Cafe - Literally a hidden gem, patrons walk through The Last Bookshop on Camden Street to get to this independent café. The beautiful courtyard, as well as the quaint interior seating, lend this little restaurant a charming atmosphere—not to mention the delicious food. If you’re looking for a nice, relaxing lunch with friends or a spot for an Instagram-worthy date, the Cake Café is the place to be. 8 Pleasants Place, Saint Kevin's, Dublin 8.
Chapters Bookstore - As a first-year English student, Chapters was a lifesaver. Offering secondhand books at a price that even a university student can afford, it really is a must know for anyone who needs inexpensive, good quality books. If you’re scrambling to find all the books on your reading list at a reasonable price, Chapters on Parnell Street is certainly worth a look. Ivy Exchange, Parnell St, Dublin 1. Oxfam Books - Oxfam Books has great literature and criticism sections, full of potential finds for any budding readers. Wonderfully affordable, and spacious enough for a charity shop, this is another gem for anyone looking to avoid spending a small fortune in Hodges Figgis or Easons. Plus, it’s for charity! 23 Parliament Street, Temple Bar, Dublin 2.
Sprezzatura - This Italian restaurant offers affordable Italian dishes using local ingredients, and is well-known for their mouthwatering pasta. All main courses are under 10 euros, so the prices are completely student-friendly. 5/6 Camden Market Dublin 8.
Sano - This independent pizzeria serves some of the tastiest pizza in Dublin. With prices beginning at 6 euros, it’s a perfect spot for students craving some traditional Italian pizza. Available for dine-in, order or collection, their fresh food and affordable prices won’t disappoint! Their competitive prices make them very popular, so expect a wait. 2 Exchange Street Upper, Temple Bar, Dublin 8. Bobos Burgers - Not to be confused with the American animated comedy, Bobos Burgers make delicious wraps, burgers and sides for relatively affordable prices. As of September 2020, only their Wexford Street restaurant is open for dine-in, but all three are open for deliveries. One of the best student spots in the city, any of the three branches is well worth a potential wait. With burgers starting at 6.95 and chips at 3.50, anything you order is guaranteed to be high-quality and delicious, even if it is slightly pricey for some of the more extravagant dishes. Vegetarian burgers are also available, starting at 8.95. 74 Middle Abbey Street, Dublin 1 / 50-51 Dame Street, Dublin 2 / 22 Wexford Street, Dublin 2.
Books Upstairs - You won’t miss the gorgeous blue storefront of this famous independent bookshop. Tucked away on D’Olier Street, the friendly staff and the elegant upstairs cafe make Books Upstairs the perfect spot for a quick break from campus inbetween lectures, as it’s only a couple minutes away! 17 D’Olier Street Dublin 2.
Gutter Bookshop - Fully re-opened as of June, Gutter Bookshop is the perfect spot for a quiet amble. With its bright, clean atmosphere and white, minimal vibe, this independent bookshop is a great alternative to buying from a chain store. Cow’s Lane, Temple Bar, Dublin 8.
The Pavillion Bar - Where better than to begin your Trinity student experience than at Trinity’s very own ‘The Pav’? If we’re lucky, it should reopen as planned on September 28. This infamous student hub has all you could want from a bar, and its kitchen offers a decent selection of hearty snacks and meals at affordable prices. This is the perfect spot for a pint of liquid Leinster, and its scenic view of the cricket pitch makes it the ideal locale for a post-lecture de-stress. For anyone unsure of where to find it, it’s next to the cricket pitch and the Moyne building.
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Art & Design
Trailblazer of Abstract Art:
František Kupka Czech
artist František Kupka’s (1871 – 1957) works are not, as one might think of Abstract Art, so simple ‘anyone could have made it’ - a red square on a white canvas, à la Kazimir Malevich. Instead, they are monumental in size and content. They are complicated. Music theory and colour theory inspired Kupka, as did nature and the man-made world, and the marks of these influences rendered his works surprisingly substantial. In 2019, I attended a Kupka retrospective in Helsinki’s Ateneum museum. But I attended not once, not twice, but four times, each time more in awe than the last. Kupka was an artist who did not follow the crowd, whose life’s work was so phenomenal that it went unnoticed for decades.
WORDS BY OONA KAUPPI
In the beginning of his career, in the 1900s, Kupka worked as an illustrator for the French satirical journal L’Assiette au Beurre. The main subjects of his rancor were money and religion, personified into two recurring characters. Already then, Kupka had a penchant for social criticism and anarchism. Although Kupka tried to integrate into French society, going so far as to sign his works ‘François’ instead of ‘František’, he was still a foreigner in a patriotic country. He was a minority. Choosing the path of illustration was bold, and this additional radicality separated him from his contemporaries. Graduating later to painting, Kupka first painted gigolos and prostitutes, two other groups of social outcasts. This transitional stage led him into abstraction. Even then, Kupka continued to reflect seriously on the world around him instead of fully joining it, which gave his creations an intellectual edge. He meticulously planned his Abstract art. At the same time, Russian artist Wassily Kandinsky (1866 – 1944) - who is often granted the title of the first Abstract artist - ‘accidentally discovered’ Abstract art by viewing one of his own works upside down. Artists Piet Mondrian (1872 – 1944) and the aforementioned Malevich (1879 – 1935), too, were veering towards abstraction. The Vienna Secession and Cubism were circulating. Some art historians believe that Kupka’s dedication to his new art movement was due to his belief that his works would be accepted by the art world.
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The influences of music theory, colour theory, nature, and even science are clearly distinguishable in Kupka’s art. While figurative art is meant to look like one view of reality, Kupka challenges this with Abstract art that combines different realities: “I believe that it is not necessary to paint and copy trees when people see better ones in reality on their way to the exhibition. I paint only interpretations, or if you wish syntheses, chords and similar things” (Kupka in a letter to Josef Svatopluk Machar, 1905). There is more to every one of Kupka’s works than realism. In the painting ‘The Piano Keys/Lake’ (1905), the shift from music – represented by hands on piano keys – to a rippling lake, produces a clear connection between sound and imagery. Colour theory enters the picture when one looks at the paintings that followed, which transform a ‘fugue’ (a musical ‘chorus’) into a spectrum of complementary colours. By carefully studying art theory, Kupka devised a way of creating dimension with complementary colours: ‘Planes By Colours, Large Nude’ (1909) and ‘Family Portrait’ (1910) inverse shadows and light and, still, are three-dimensional. The colours used in ‘Self-Portrait’s (1905, 1910) make the artist’s skin look impossibly dynamic. Kupka’s ‘vertical’ and organic ‘planes’ were inspired by stained glass windows, crystals, and plants, and again prove the artist’s mastery of colour. Examples include ‘Graduated Red’ (1921) and ‘Study for the Language of Verticals’ (1911). The cosmos was another influence on Kupka, as is visible from ‘Around a Point’ (1920-1930). Kupka hoped to transmit a state of mind to the viewer through his works. He even hinted at telepathy, fantastical as it seemed. The aesthetically pleasing façade of his works simply hid the artist’s ambitious objective, which was to revolutionize the creation and purpose of art. Despite the misfortunes that befell Kupka during his lifetime out of the limelight, success did come for him after World War Two. At the age of 80, Kupka fought for the recognition of ‘Amorpha: Fugue in Two Colours’ (1912) as the first work of abstraction in history. In 1951, the old Czech man signed his first deal with a gallerist. For the first time in his life, he seemed to have found a world where he was not a singularity - in fact, Kupka’s works from the 1930s look like they could have belonged in the 1950s. Blending mazes of colour with fragments of the familiar, Kupka created works that are completely out of this world. Without being figurative, they are expressive. Most of all, their radicality reinstates what is at the heart of abstraction, which is not necessarily simplicity.
A List of trinity Art societies For your convenience Seeing as there’s no Freshers’ Fair this year, TN2’s Art & Design editors have assembled a list of all the relevant art societies on campus. Because where else would you discover that Trinity Arts Workshop holds nude model drawing classes? Nowhere, is the answer. Nowhere. Except here (…aren’t you lucky).
RINITY
ESTIVAL
RTS
Trinity Arts Festival is your wacky uncle Eric, who wears Hawaiian shirts with shoulder pads, and boogies tirelessly at family gatherings. TAF is weirdly cool. But it’s not just cool – it’s also so, so much fun. If there’s a colossal art event on campus, chances are it’s organized by TAF, potentially in cooperation with another society. TAF does everything from glittery t-shirt design workshops to exhibits to GMB takeovers. Keep your eyes peeled for more! Insta: @trinityartsfestival
ISUAL
RTS
OCIETY
The difference between Vis Arts and TAF is that Vis Arts is TAF’s more discrete sibling. Less glitter, but you can say gallery crawl again. While TAF makes art cool, Vis Arts sticks to what matters: promoting arts on campus. With Vis Arts, you can attend talks with artists, take part in student sketchbook exhibitions, and join the legendary ‘Paint n’ Sip’ evenings. Insta: @tcdvisarts
RINITY
RTS
ORKSHOP
Now here’s the real deal, kids. If you’re looking for a club that organizes proper art classes, Trinity Arts Workshop is the place to go. Ever wanted to make some dope ceramics? TAW. What about screen-printing? Check. Don’t know how to use acrylic paint? You know where to go. TAW organizes art classes every week, and their price is so low you’ll wonder why you ever went anywhere else. Oh, and yes, nude drawing. Or nude clay modelling. Take your pick. Insta: @trinityartsworkshop
UBLIN
NIVERSITY
HOTOGRAPHY
SSOCIATION
Like photos? Go here. Instagram: @du_photos
Stay artsy!
WORDS BY COLLAB 3
Art & Design
A Comprehensive Covid guide
To Dublin’s Galleries Following the gradual lifting of lockdown restrictions, many of Dublin’s best-loved galleries have once again opened their
doors to the public. Having gone to great lengths to implement safety measures, most require online pre-booking and are enforcing social distancing, meaning that lovers of art can once again enjoy a trip to the gallery, anxiety-free. Here is a list of the galleries that have opened, and the exhibitions currently displaying that are not to be missed. IMMA is currently open six days a week, and operating on an online ticket booking system. General admission is free, and includes access to the gallery’s Lucian Freud exhibition. This is the fifth exhibition of the gallery’s Freud Project, a collection of works by the prolific realist painter most known for his intensely observed expressionist style. This exhibition focuses on themes the painter turned to time and time again in his work, as well as his relationship with his studio, and the role and function of the artist’s studio more generally in the creation of art. Those hoping to visit the National Gallery of Ireland will be pleased to note that there is no need to book tickets in order to visit. The gallery is currently exhibiting ‘Shaw and the Gallery: A Priceless Education’. It explores George Bernard Shaw’s ties to the National Gallery, a place whose halls he wandered frequently throughout his life, describing it as the “cherished asylum of my boyhood”. This exhibition features a diverse array of items given by Shaw to the gallery, including postcards, letters, photos, sculptures, and more. Also currently on display at the National Gallery is a collection of works by the Spanish Golden Age artist Bartolomé Esteban Murillo portraying the story of the prodigal son. It is available to tour virtually on the gallery’s website. Another notable work on exhibit is Frederic William Burton’s “Hellelil and Hildebrand, the Meeting on the Turret Stairs”, which can be viewed on Thursdays and Sundays only.
WORDS BY KATE BYRNE
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The Gallery of Photography is currently using an online booking system. On display is ‘Love’s Fire Song’ by Enda Bowe, accompanied by a sound installation by Max Cooper. This work by Bowe explores youth culture on both sides of the peace walls in Northern Ireland, and focuses on the customs both factions participate in despite their many differences. Many may recognise the style Bowe’s work from the promotional photos for Normal People, which he worked on with Lenny Abrahamson. Anyone hoping to see what other creatives have been up to during lockdown should plan a visit to the Kerlin Gallery, to see Elizabeth Magil’s ‘Her Nature’. This exhibition of small paintings was conceived during the artist’s lockdown at her farm in rural County Antrim. The artist describes the paintings as “a nod to nature but also a kind of lament to the strange times we were living in”. Also on display at the Kerlin Gallery is a new body of work by Samuel Laurence Cunnane, accompanied by an essay by Brian Dillon titled ‘Ambiguities’. These works negotiate the idea of the outskirt and its many meanings, from the physical to the peripheral, edge-of-consciousness, and were created using analogue photographic techniques. Temple Bar Gallery and Studios is hosting the first exhibition of ‘Swinguerra’ by Bárbara Wagner and Benjamin de Burca. An exploration of social injustice and systematic oppression in Brazil, this exhibition gives positive representations of Black, queer, transgender, and non-binary people, and through collaborative filmmaking illustrates the values of vernacular pop culture and its ability to bring people together, and to create social change. This film was made in conjunction with the Arts Council Ireland and can be visited by booking tickets on the gallery’s website. The Hugh Lane Gallery does not have any visiting exhibitions on display at the moment, but is open to visit without booking online, and all permanent fixtures, including the Francis Bacon studio, are open. The Chester Beatty is currently displaying Siam, a collection of photographs taken by John Thomson in 19th century Siam (modern Thailand). The images include portraits, cityscapes, and scenes of religious and royal ceremonies, as well as the first photographs ever taken of Angkor Wat. It can be toured both virtually and in the gallery, and does not require booking.
5
Fashion
Fashion History 101: Irene Gilbert
The Dublin-based designer who became Ireland’s first couturier
WORDS BY MILLIE BRENNAN
W
ith new Irish designers emerging every year and numerous colleges across the country offering courses in fashion design, it is very easy to forget how far this country has come in terms of making a name for itself in the world of fashion. In the first half of the twentieth century, Ireland was a very different place compared to the Ireland that we know today. Unemployment was high, poverty was rampant and Ireland’s fight for independence plunged the country into a state of turmoil that lasted for years. Needless to say, making a name for ourselves as a fashion capital of the world was not a priority. However, that did not stop Tipperary woman Irene Gilbert from chasing her dream of founding a new culture of high fashion in this country. Born in Thurles in 1908, Gilbert’s career in the fashion industry began when she secured a job running a dress shop on Wicklow Street in Dublin. After working there for some years, Gilbert made the move to England where she trained under a court dressmaker. It was here that Gilbert learned the tricks of the trade while working long hours to create outfits for women of high social rank. Having moved back home in the forties, in 1947 Gilbert went on to open up her own shop. The shop was a roaring success, despite the fact that money at the time was scarce and that very few people had the spare income to spend on clothing. After three years of running her own shop, in 1950 Gilbert’s career in design was kickstarted when she held a fashion show in the Jammet Hotel and Restaurant, a trendy French-themed restaurant located in Dublin at the time. The show was a huge success and from then on Gilbert began selling clothes under her own label. This was a major advancement for the Irish fashion industry, as up until this point, the typical Irish “lady of fashion” had to travel abroad to buy couture and designer pieces. As such, Gilbert subsequently became Ireland’s first ever couturier and the first woman to successfully run a fashion business in Ireland. What set Gilbert aside from other designers was her keen eye and perfectionist nature. She famously spent long hours liaising with her fabric suppliers and poring over her designs before releasing them to the public. It is said that she once went as far as to turn up on the doorstep of Avoca Handweavers in county Wicklow clutching a bunch of dried hydrangeas, begging workers in the mill to help her replicate their colour in her latest tweed creation.
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Undoubtedly, the peak of Gilbert’s career came when she was approached by Princess Grace Kelly of Monaco – possibly the most famous style-icon of the time –and asked to design a piece. The pair subsequently went on to develop a closely-knit friendship and Gilbert went on to design numerous pieces for the glamorous princess. In 2010, a Carrickmacross lace evening dress that Gilbert designed was featured in the Grace Kelly retrospective at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. Aside from Grace Kelly, the majority of Gilbert’s clients were Irish. Featuring among her list of clientele was Mrs Sean T. O’Kelly, the President’s wife, and Anne, Countess of Rosse, from Birr, Co. Offaly. Gilbert also designed one of the variations of the Aer Lingus uniform which is considered to be a major achievement for any Irish designer. Despite the glamour and glitz that one associates with a career in the fashion industry, Gilbert despised the limelight and blended into the background as much as she possibly could. It is likely that this is one of the main reasons as to why she failed to market her designs globally. Designer Pat Crowley, who worked with her for a period during the 1960s, claims that Gilbert was too shy to even meet with some of her most regular clients. This would be a major hindrance in such a social line of work.
...the Thurles woman who paved the way for the future of Irish design...
In 1969, at the ripe old age of 61, Gilbert closed the doors of her business for the final time and said farewell to her sparkling career in design. The nature of the industry was changing too quickly for a homegrown, relatively small-scale designer like Gilbert as most people were now beginning to favour ready-to-wear, prêt-à-porter clothes over garments that were made to measure. After her death in 1985, Gilbert left behind her an amazing legacy as both an excellent businesswoman and an exceptional designer. As the Thurles woman who paved the way for the future of Irish design during an extremely difficult period in Ireland’s history, Irene Gilbert, we salute you.
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Fashion
LADY GAGA, AN ETHEREAL FASHION ICON T
he Cambridge English dictionary defines an icon as “a very famous person or thing considered as representing a set of beliefs or a way of life”. For many in terms of music and fashion, Gaga could be used as a substitute. Fashion at its best takes risks, tells a story and really is walking, wearable art. Lady Gaga, from the start of her career to present day, embodies the idea of fashion and has more than earned her spot as a fashion icon. Her early career saw her do what no one else was doing at the time, especially in terms of what she was wearing. “The Fame'' was her first studio album, and featured “Just Dance”, “Paparazzi” and, of course, “Poker Face”. Gaga, in each of these music videos, wore some LOOKS. Gaga was always mad for a pop culture reference and her David Bowie obsession showed, with the lightning bolt on her face as an homage featuring in both videos. The fashion was —in a lack of better words— , bat-sh*t crazy, but it was why we all gagged over it. The “Paparazzi” music video was a mini movie in itself, but it was the bejewelled neck brace and spiked crutches paired with metallic armour that did it for me. It was an era of risks and shock. Gaga began to do interviews, attend award shows and the looks gave us just as much drama and fashion as she was serving in her music videos. The Kermit the Frog coat was so camp yet elegant and was truly a look that still holds up to this day. I could so see someone selling this on depop or even in a bralette version. Then came the VMAs performance of Paparazzi in the bejewelled white leotard with the huge asymmetrical mutton sleeve. The performance was live art, a commentary of how the media treats those in the spotlight, ending in the death of Gaga, blood bleeding from her abdomen, using special effects, onto her stark white gown. The entire thing was a conglobation of music and fashion to create art. Gaga didn’t stop here, and at the last ever McQueen runway show “Plato’s Atlantis”, Gaga debuted her latest single “Bad Romance” which featured the now iconic armadillo shoes. It was again a combination of fashion and music to create art and launched Gaga into a new era, The Fame Monster. “Telephone” was birthed by Gaga in this era and the monsters were fed with a 9 minute and 33 second music video filled with my favourite Gaga looks ever. “Telephone” is the best collaboration of any two music artists ever (I said what I said and meant it!) The black and white latex dress. The sunglasses with lit cigarettes and huge chain layered over a black dress. The victory rolls held up with coke cans and the studded leather jacket. When I mean every single outfit was literal perfection, I mean it. The entire video is so strange, but it all works and highlights that Gaga can pull off anything. My personal favourite of the mix was the caution tape costume, where it wrapped tight around her and held together by seemingly nothing else. It was so high fashion and glamourous, it was Gaga. Then we have Beyoncé in that yellow latex dress with a matching cowboy hat—are you for REAL. The product placements and odes to Kill Bill in the video, alongside everything else, make it something so special and so fashion that I don’t think it will ever be replicated by anyone else — sorry not sorry.
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It would be a crime if I didn’t mention my favourite Gaga era — Artpop. Artpop holds a place in my heart because it came out in a very weird place in my life and I was obsessed. The album didn’t gain as much traction as it should have, despite it being a masterpiece and giving us such amazing fashion moments, such as the pirouette clown from the album's lead single “Applause”. “GUY” is my all-time favourite Gaga song and video. It is truly stunning; it features the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills and she truly does it for the girls and the gays, that’s it. The long platinum blonde wig combined with a basic swimsuit was such a serve that we didn’t deserve. The platinum blonde is a constant in the video and just gives me LIFE. The look she wears to storm the office alongside Lisa Vanderpump and Kyle Richards (both icons!) is jaw-dropping. The juxtaposition of the black feathered headpiece and white wig, the leather bodysuit and the huge fur coat is stuff of dreams. Artpop was and is so underappreciated cause it was truly ahead of its time. Chromatica—Lady Gaga’s sixth and latest studio album, is supplying us with hits such as “Rain on Me” (when she said “rain on me tsunami”, I felt that) and “Stupid Love”. This new era has ushered in a new vision of Gaga, more edgy and punk, but still with a Gaga twist. Everything so far has been kind of iconic, from the “Rain on Me” purple looks (the white eye liner simply stunning) to the oil spill pink latex moment, both of which just further push the idea that Gaga can simply do no wrong when it comes to fashion. To sum up, fashion is Gaga and Gaga is fashion. I would love to write more but I'm over my word count as is. Long live Gaga!
WORDS AND ART BY CIARÁN BUTLER
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Fashion
Is There A Case For Kn o ck - O f f Fa shi o n ? WORDS BY GELSEY BEAVERS-DAMRON
Iencotered f you’ve ever travelled to any large city, like New York, Paris, or Beijing, you have probably streets lined with stalls selling knock-off luxury goods. From fake Gucci belts to
slightly-off printed Louis Vuitton handbags, knock-off fashion is something that has an international reach. In general, it has always been looked down on as a faux-pas in the fashion industry and definitely not something which you want to be caught engaging with. Especially now, as e-commerce sites like Aliexpress and DHGate are providing online ways to access knock-off fashion, it seems as if the perceived scourge of the fashion industry is not going away any time soon. However, is there a chance that fake luxury goods may be the key to evening out the playing field of fashion's most classist systems? To start, let us look at why knock-off fashion is considered bad. Other than the obvious wanting to avoid being caught with a fake luxury item and be ridiculed for it, there are some ethical concerns. In general, it is important to note that fashion copyright is an extremely complicated legal industry and does not work like most copyright law. Practically no design can be copyrighted to some extent and very rarely does a designer attempt to engage in a legal battle over a design knock-off, especially since it can be very hard to target who exactly is creating the replicas . When it comes to small luxury designers, this gets even more complicated, as most of the time they do not have the resources to prevent knock-offs of their design. The most recent cultural example of this comes from designer Lirika Matoshi and her strawberry dress that became a viral sensation, leading to many knockoffs and cheap reproductions. In this particular case, I am inclined to side against knockoffs, as Matoshi is a small ethical designer and these reproductions are surely being made under less than fair working conditions. However, I do believe that in some cases, the knock-off industry has the potential to redefine fashion's greatest signifier of class divide. Let’s go back in time in fashion history and talk about a designer who revolutionized the way the general public interacted with designer labels: Dapper Dan. Dapper Dan is a designer who began his career in the 1970s but would gain major recognition in the 80s for his designs due to the rise of hip-hop and streetwear. Dan was often kept out of design spaces due to his race, so he used his fashion as a way to reclaim what was being denied to him. He taught himself textile printing and created bootleg fabrics of High Fashion houses, like Gucci, Louis Vuitton, and Fendi to name a few. He reworked these fabrics into garments that were not being made by these labels and reclaimed them for his streetwear lines that mostly serviced Black and queer spaces, unlike other fashion brands at the time. By doing this, he was able to reclaim the names of High Fashion goods for the people who were often denied rights to wear them and ushered in an era of “logomania” that resonates to this day. While he was regularly investigated and sued, Dapper Dan’s designs lived on and fundamentally changed the way people interacted with luxury goods.
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What was so revolutionary about Dan’s work is that he dared to allow people to reclaim luxury labels for themselves. His work resonated with many other designers, personally and for profit, who would start taking logos from large industry labels and crafting their own designs. Because of this, in many ways, I see a lot of positives which can come from the consumption of knock-off luxury goods as they allow people who may never have the funds to buy such high-priced items to engage and dismantle one of the most exclusive worlds in fashion. When it comes to the ethics of this, it is important to remember that most high fashion labels are far from sustainable and often use the same factories as the knock-off labels. Furthermore, most houses have a long history of stealing designs from small designers and I think there is no harm in stealing them back. In fact, I’ll admit that I own a fake Vivienne Westwood necklace. Why? Well, never in my life do I believe I’ll have the funds to drop hundreds on a pearl necklace, but I really like the design and the way they look, so I found a knock-off online and see no real problem wearing it. If you asked me if it was fake, I’d own up to it, but I feel no guilt for wearing fake designs. Fake luxury fashion has the ability to allow people of all classes to redefine symbols and signifiers of wealth, and reclaim their meaning from them. If everyone has a Chanel bag, real or fake, the value of an original dwindles, and so does the symbolism. Further, when people appropriate famous logos or patterns and rework them into their own creations, they continue a legacy of many designers like Dapper Dan. They are taking back a facet of the fashion industry from which they have been excluded. Overall, knock-off fashion will always be a controversial part of the fashion industry. I also find it ironic that those who are so vocally against it are the same people and institutions that have the means to afford and profit off of the continuing of classist values that raise luxury fashion above all else. It is extremely classist of anyone to tell people that they either need to save up to afford an authentic luxury item or don’t otherwise deserve to buy it. Shaming anyone for buying knock-off is ridiculous. The fashion industry is built on the principles of taking and evolving previous trends and designs. Knock-off fashion, in many ways, is a mere continuation of this, by allowing those often excluded from luxury spaces to engage with luxury items. The fact of the matter is that rich people will always buy authentic luxury and are the backbone of the industry, but middle-class and lower-class consumers should be allowed to buy cheaper alternatives. By expanding and engaging in knock-off fashion, we take away the prestige of symbolic fashion items of wealth, and allow everyone to take part in the fun of dressing up and feeling luxurious. Because, ultimately, that is a luxury that cannot be faked.
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Film
Notes on The Lost Boys: Revisiting My Favourite Film WORDS BY SAVVY HANNA ART BY LOLA FLEMING
Peter Pan has always been one of my favourite childhood stories. A fear of becoming a boring adult meant that the idea of a mischievous and carefree boy who can fly and never grows old leading his friends on grand adventures appealed greatly to me. So when I found out that The Lost Boys (Joel Schumacher, 1987) was at its core a retelling of Peter Pan that also involved two of my other interests—vampires and ‘80s teen films—I knew it would be an instant favourite of mine.
The film follows Michael Emerson (Jason Patric) and his younger brother Sam (Corey Haim) as they begrudgingly move with their mother Lucy (Dianne Weist) to a small beach town in California to live with their Grandpa (Barnard Hughes). Michael finds himself caught up with a biker gang who, just like Peter Pan’s lost boys, never grow old. After realising that Michael’s new friends are, in fact, vampires, Sam enlists the help of the Frog brothers, two self-proclaimed vampire hunters, to save his brother. The vampiric biker gang and their leader David (Kiefer Sutherland) is what initially grabbed my attention in this film. While I loved vampires as a child, I became disillusioned with them due to an oversaturation in popular media during my adolescence. I didn’t appreciate the romantic, brooding vampires found in Twilight (Catherine Hardwicke, 2008) or The Vampire Diaries (Kevin Williamson and Julie Plec, 2009-2017). What appealed to me about the vampires in The Lost Boys was the same thing that had appealed to me about Peter Pan: they are reckless and mischievous boys who can fly and never grow old. This, together with a taste for blood and the backdrop of a beachside amusement park, made for some awesome vampires. David and his lost boys also forgo the old-fashioned cloak and high collar that had come to be associated with vampires, their fashion more in line with the alternative post-punk look of the ‘80s. The vampires’ attitude and style is matched perfectly by the film’s soundtrack, which features multiple songs by INXS, a cover of The Doors’ ‘People Are Strange’ by Echo & the Bunnymen, and the film’s iconic theme ‘Cry Little Sister’ by Gerard McMann. While the lost boys stand out as my favourite depiction of vampires on screen, in my eyes it is Corey Haim’s performance as Sam Emerson that steals the show. Sam acts as the comic relief against the more dramatic scenes, his quick-wit providing some of the film’s best comedic lines. But he also provides the film with an emotional depth that puts it a step above any other campy horror flick. Without the genuine adoration and fear we see Sam express for his brother, Michael would have no reason to resist the vampires. Sam and Michael have one of the most authentic sibling relationships I’ve seen in a film, evident from Sam’s response to figuring out that his brother is a vampire—“You wait ‘til mom finds out, buddy!”.
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I could go on and on about how much I adore every aspect of The Lost Boys, from the outrageous death scenes to the Rob Lowe poster on Sam’s closet door. Every scene stands out in my mind as iconic. Every character deserves your attention— even minor characters such as Grandpa and Sam’s dog Nanook provide some of Do you have a favourite film you’d the film’s most memorable moments. But at the centre like to revisit? Send of all of this, the reason The Lost Boys is my favourite your notes to film@tn2magazine.ie film is because it manages to capture so much genuine emotion and heart while never letting that take away from the fun of it all.
A Fresher’s Guide to Dublin’s Cinemas “I’m not hungry. I want to see a film,” Nana (Anna Karina) affirms, rejecting an invitation to dinner, before we see
her in a cinema on Boulevard Saint-Michel, Paris, watching La Passion de Jeanne d’Arc (Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1928). This third scene in Vivre sa vie (Jean-Luc Godard, 1962) encapsulates cinema spectatorship. Nana watches Joan of Arc’s (Maria Falconetti) face in close-up, tears falling to her upper lip. Godard’s film becomes Dreyer’s film, as our point-of-view aligns with Nana’s as she watches Joan. This cuts to Nana crying alone, silently in the darkness. The world of Godard’s film is silenced by the ‘affect’ of the human face on the big screen. Timothée Chalamet crying in the final scene of Call Me by Your Name (Luca Guadagnino, 2017) affected me similarly in the darkness of the Light House Cinema as a Fresher. It’s important to feel familiar with these sites of pure empathy, where you may briefly wander into another character’s world. The return to cinemas is an important emotional step and a welcome privilege as we ease restrictions. Cinema spectatorship simply can’t be replicated at home. You may prefer the escapism or ‘entertainment’ aspect. You may relish the company of friends and their reactions. Some prefer to go solo, which, as you learn very quickly, isn’t as sad as it seems and offers you the luxury of getting to know yourself. If you’re new to Dublin, I present a quick guide to the city’s picture houses and cinematographs. With any cinema, I advise you to book ahead if possible, and to read their guidelines and The Irish Film Institute’s proximity is a gift for Trinity’s cinephiles. Nestled in an old Quaker meeting house on cobbled Eustace Street, Temple Bar, the IFI is my favourite. With important archives, a restaurant, café, bar, and shop offering you a high-quality variety of books and DVDs, it’s a calm refuge between lectures. On Mondays, the IFI offers students a ticket discount (€5.20), as well as membership for €15 instead of €20. The IFI is known for showing art films, holding premières of Irish films, its festivals (like the current IFI Documentary Festival and Horrorthon in October), guest speakers, special screenings like the annual screening of The Dead (John Huston, 1987), and showing particular cuts or formats like Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (Quentin Tarantino, 2019) on 35mm. With only 3 screens, it’s an intimate, pokey place. Retrospectives, like their past Robert Bresson and Alejandro Jodorowsky seasons, are personal highlights. See their website for more information. The Light House Cinema, Smithfield seems vast compared to the IFI. Its shiny surfaces, bright colours, and tiered levels resemble a large subterranean art gallery, inspiring a feeling of celebrity as you make your way gracefully down its steps (or maybe that’s just me). With only 4 screens, a small café, and a bar downstairs, it still feels intimate. It’s an important cinema for screenings and Q&A events during the Dublin International Film Festival. With their midnight movie club (Hollywood Babylon), cult screenings, Cinema Book Club, and a dedication to showcasing domestic gems like Calm With Horses (Nick Rowland, 2020), the Light House is well-worth the Luas or 25-minute walk along the quays from Trinity. Plenty of foodie places in Smithfield and on nearby Capel Street make it ideal for dates. For more information on listings and student discounts, see their website. Cineworld on Parnell Street is, to me at least, the most American of Dublin’s cinemas, embodied by its very own Baskin Robbins. With 17 screens, escalators, shopping mall-like levels, anti-cinema 4DX and IMAX screens, Cineworld is the perfect cinema for that particular ‘entertainment’ aspect of the hotly anticipated sci-fi or Marvel flick. A particular memory of mine is attending the midnight première of Star Wars: The Last Jedi (Rian Johnson, 2017) as a Fresher. Another is being within arm’s length of Paul Schrader at DIFF. This duality, of screening a festival film in one room and a blockbuster in another, is Cineworld’s niche in the city. See their website for more information. Lastly, the nearby Savoy IMC on O’Connell Street is an aesthetic and historic pleasure. With the Volta, Ireland’s first official cinema (1909) spearheaded by James Joyce, no longer standing on Mary Street, the Savoy is a time capsule on Ireland’s main thoroughfare. To me, the Savoy is as close to Nana’s Parisian cinema in Vivre sa vie as I can get to. With its posh-sounding name, art deco feel, red carpets, chandeliers, and high ceilings, it’s a modest opera house. As Dublin’s oldest functioning cinema (1929), the Savoy has changed just as much as the surrounding city, altering its shape and size to accommodate innovations like sound, CinemaScope, and 3D, and its changing Dublin audience. Currently closed, the Savoy’s future is precarious, and has been for a long time. However, with blockbusters, awards season films, and a competitive student discount, the Savoy is worth it, regardless of your friends’ sighs.
WORDS BY CÁIT MURPHY
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Film
Returning Home During what was probably the most collectively stressful period of life in living memory, not having the tonic of
cinema gave me a lot of heartache. Of course, there are significantly worse and more important things taking place in the world during a pandemic, but it is our small rituals of normality that make us feel safe and whole. Whether that be seeing your friends around college, getting a double espresso from your favourite café or heading to the pub for a nice pint of Guinness, our habitual behaviour is a significant part of what shapes us. Going to the cinema is one such example for me. The Spanish filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar once said that: “Cinema can fill in the empty spaces of your life and your loneliness.” Without being able to sit in the dark to watch a movie with a community of people around me experiencing the same horror, wonder and spectacle, I feel restless. I will go to the cinema when I’m sad to lift my spirits. I will go when I’m happy and buy a large salted popcorn and a large mixed Ice Blast. I will go when I’m lost in my thoughts and need answers. I will go alone. I will go with mates. I will go on a date. I will go when I’m heartbroken (probably in that order). I will go when I’m stressed. I will go when I’m bored. I will go when I’m lonely. I couldn’t go during lockdown, when the entire world seemed its loneliest, scariest and most empty. So when it came to almost exactly four months of not going to the cinema, I was both thrilled and nervous to be invited to a press screening. I had many questions: would it be safe? What will it be like watching a movie with steamy eyes (I’m a glasses-wearer, not perpetually horny) and a mask? Will I be allowed to drink/eat? How many people will be there? As soon as the lights dimmed in Screen 1 at the Light House, and the score began to play, I became a blubbering wreck. I wasn’t moved by the film’s opening, or by the film itself—Stage Mother (Thom Fitzgerald, 2020) is pants, for the record—but I was having a physical reaction to being back in the cinema, a place so dear to my heart. It was strange to wear a mask for so long, apply hand sanitiser, walk in one direction, and keep my distance from other people in a building that had been empty for a season and was still not open to the public. But it was also familiar and wonderful and comfortable and exciting. I was returning home.
WORDS BY CONNOR HOWLETT ART BY LOLA FLEMING
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The Art of the Trailer Over the past decade, there has been a surge in cinematic centrepieces which can be more closely recognised as stadium
events than works of art. One of the consequences of this exponential rise in mainstream popularity for headliner films like the Marvel Cinematic Universe or even Tenet (Christopher Nolan, 2020), is a newfound scrutiny for products that fail to meet the polished, pristine standards expected of these momentous blockbusters. First impressions matter now more than ever, as the first publicly accessible glimpse at a film will stick to it for the duration of its marketing campaign and beyond. Sonic the Hedgehog (Jeff Fowler, 2020) was, for example, mocked relentlessly for the hideously designed character model in the film’s first teaser, even when his appearance was reworked in time for the premiere. It is reasonably safe to determine then, that the medium of film trailers has evolved past the point of simple promotion; they are now an essential part of any film’s identity in online circles. There is no question that trailers have become a staple of mainstream cinematic culture over the past several years. Even placing the trailers for The Avengers (Joss Whedon, 2012) and its sequel Avengers: Endgame (Joe and Anthony Russo, 2020) side-by-side yields significant, contrasting results. Setting aside the differences in viewership—33 million for Avengers versus 101 million for Endgame—they are promoting immensely different experiences despite being decidedly similar films. Indeed, the presentation of The Avengers trailer is lathered with clichés that would be considered embarrassing by today’s standards; the SNL-parody triumvirate of sinister narration, sweeping city shots and slow-motion explosions are all packed into the first twenty seconds alone. Even the beat leading into the iconic Marvel Studios title card is lacking in iconography; the trailer is promoting action, not characters. Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr) doesn’t make an appearance until the minute mark, and does so with minimal fanfare. The trailer for Endgame, on the other hand, features exactly zero shots of combat, instead being built around fading shots of each beloved character. Iron Man’s helmet appears in the very first frame, and from that point on the trailer continuously promises us something far more interesting than adrenaline: catharsis. It is essentially a short film, constructing a narrative of intrigue around the question that had riddled the Internet for months: what will happen next? Even the word ‘Endgame’ is withheld from the video’s title, being reserved exclusively for those who have experienced its secrets in real-time. The trailer builds this intrigue, teasing us with cryptic dialogue and emotional outcries, before dropping a double beat in the form of the title and then finally an answer to that aforementioned question in the form of Ant-Man (Paul Rudd). There is a three-act story contained within its two-and-a-half-minute runtime, and the impact this experiment has had on the film’s success speaks for itself. In the past couple of years, this trend of transforming trailers into bite-sized films has taken Hollywood by storm. Knives Out (Rian Johnson, 2019) was promoted using a condensed version of its entire plot, down to the slow build to Benoit Blanc’s (Daniel Craig) now famous line: “I suspect foul play,” followed by an explosive frenzy of deadly blades, hidden passageways and even twist reveals through the character of Ransom (Chris Evans), all packed into the span of a micro-short. The trailer promises a ‘Rian Johnson Whodunnit’, and then readily provides us with a boiled down rendition of the film’s contents, minus the climax, and this approach is no anomaly. Virtually every trailer for a major release nowadays is a genre film in-and-of-itself, whether that be an epically-scaled mystery, an adventurous romp or a traumatic horror film. I would go so far as to argue that the best of them are artistic achievements in and of themselves. In the cases of works like Joker (Todd Phillips, 2019) and The New Mutants (Josh Boone, 2020), they can even impress more than the films themselves. This shift in priorities for trailer houses has been a fascinating one to trace over the past number of years. Suneil Beri, an editor at Create Advertising (the house responsible for Baby Driver (Edgar Wright, 2017) and Black Panther (Ryan Coogler, 2017) among others), said in an interview with Radio Times in 2018 that there were four key demographics targeted by the biggest productions: males and females over and under 25. Today, a mere two years after this information was disclosed, the core strategy employed by the bulk of these houses appears to have turned away almost entirely from targeting gendered and ageist tropes in favour of pandering to fans of specific stories and genres. Mindless action is no longer a point of significant interest, rather it is a film’s ability to offer a unique package amongst heavy competition that can secure its success. For the first time in decades, quality is more easily marketable than quantity, and I for one am immensely curious to see how this attitude will have evolved ten years further down the road.
WORDS BY JAMES MCCLEARY
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Food
A Student Guide to Pairing Food to Wine
To many people, wine can seem intimidating and snooty, especially if you’ve
ever seen someone talk about the “deep chocolate and tinned sardine notes” they get when they smell the rosé you picked up from the off-license. Apparently there is a purpose for the deafening suck of air you hear and the swishing of the drink when someone is offered the taste at “Le Restaurant Français Pompous” – I don’t intend on going into any kind of detail with regard to these practices. Instead, I’ll be delving into the matter of matching food with wine, and show you how this is possible right here in our capital city. This isn’t the “dos and don’ts” of wine, but rather a helpful and simple guide to getting the best out of your experience.
Burgers
There’s no escaping the burger craze around the city. The fully-fledged carnivore and the devout vegan alike can enjoy a satisfying, hearty burger. The standard burger is simply a beef patty, smothered between two buns and maybe some ketchup if that’s your preference. Because the beef plays centre stage, here it would be wise to pair it with a bold and full-bodied red – something like Cabernet Sauvignon or Malbec, both of which are able to stand up to the big flavours of the burger. Cabernet Sauvignon is one of the most widely planted wine grapes in the world. The Cabernet Sauvignon is a reliable and tasty addition to an equally reliable and tasty meal, with simple, fruity flavours laced throughout. The same recommendations work for lamb dishes also. For the veggies and vegans out there, something like Pinot Noir or a full-bodied white, like Chardonnay (though it may be the stereotypical suburban-soccer-mom wine), will work well.
Pizza
Pizza, the culinary pride of Italy, is fast becoming Dublin’s too. Crispy bottom and doughy top, punchy tomato sauce and cheesy goodness – a tried and tested recipe for deliciousness. As is the case with the burger, tomato sauce doesn’t need to be complimented with anything complex, so a wide variety of wines work well. One tip is to try and match the food with wine from the same country or region. As a rule of thumb, “if it grows together, it goes together.” That being said, my choice would be an inexpensive Chianti. A medium to full-bodied red with high tannins (think of the end of a strong cup of tea) and acidity. Acidity helps to cut the fat and grease in the food and they balance each other quite well. For any vegetarians, again, white wine typically works better than red – delicate flavours shouldn’t be overwhelmed by powerful wines. A nice Pinot Grigio is a good safe option. 16
Salad
Salad is unique in that there isn’t really a set rule – it can be warm or cold, meaty or vegetarian, hearty or light. That, however, is not to say that you can’t have a nice glass of vino with your leaves and your veggies. Indeed, there are options aplenty. If you are going for a Mediterranean salad, such as a Caprese or Greek Salad, I recommend an acidic and vibrant white like Sauvignon Blanc or the lesser known Albarino. For something with a bit more oomph and savouriness like Chicken Caesar or Salad Niçoise, go for a dry rosé, which pairs well with its lightness and high acidity which will pleasantly cut the saltiness.
Roast Dinner
Roast dinners are one of the best things in the world, providing time to relax with family or friends and enjoy great food. First, the classic roast chicken: due to its versatility, a number of different wines will work. The optimum choices would be a medium to full-bodied white or a light red. A Pinot Noir is a good option if you prefer a red and for the white, a Chardonnay is light enough to let the chicken shine but still provide some body and depth. For roast beef, I would go for a full-bodied red, similar to the burger pairing: something like a Bordeaux blend or Malbec to stand up to the beef ’s flavours. Finally, when it comes to roast pork, white wine pairs far better than red. The fattiness of the pork welcomes the acidity of some whites, like Chenin Blanc or Sauvignon Blanc. If you do want to go with a red, be sure it’s a light-bodied red like Pinot Noir. As you can see, there’s plenty of experimenting that can be done, and there’s no reason why any student couldn’t have a go at trying to match food with wine. Don’t go breaking the bank for some jarringly expensive wine just for the sake of it. There are plenty of places to get great value wines, such as O’Briens, who have an Italian wine sale and a section with wines for under €10. Of course, if you want to treat yourself and find somewhere in town, there are lots of great options for wine and food pairing. Restaurants such as Monty’s of Kathmandu in Temple Bar, which has one of the biggest wine lists in Ireland, or Olesya’s on Exchequer St, an institution with over 100 wines available by the glass, are great options for students.
WORDS BY PARTH GAUTAM
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Food
Three Pasta Recipes Every Fresher Should Learn WORDS BY BRIAN LAURITO
Who
doesn’t love pasta? It’s quick, it’s easy, and—with just a few ingredients—it tastes great! Below are three of my favourite, easy pasta dishes that I’m sure you’ll love.
Penne with Vodka Sauce Penne vodka is one of my favorite foods, so you can imagine my dismay when I couldn’t find a single restaurant in Dublin that made it. After scouring the internet and watching numerous Youtube tutorials, I ended up with this recipe. It became an instant hit with my friends (who now ask that I bring my “vodka pasta” to every party) and I’m sure it will be with yours too! Servings: 6-8 Ingredients: 1 medium onion 4 cloves of garlic 1 tube tomato purée 2 tbsp olive oil Salt Pepper 60 ml vodka 180 ml cream Parmesan cheese Penne pasta Steps: Start by dicing your onion and the 4 cloves of garlic. Combine in a bowl with salt and pepper. Pour 2 tablespoons of olive oil into a large pot. Over medium heat, add your garlic and onion mixture. Sweat the onions for around 5 to 7 minutes. Empty the tube of tomato purée into the pot and stir to combine. Continue stirring occasionally until the purée turns a darker red, usually after around 7 minutes. Simultaneously, bring a separate pot of salted water to a boil. Slowly add the 60 ml of vodka to the tomato purée. Reduce to medium-low heat and stir regularly. Add your pasta to the boiling water. Cook until al dente while stirring occasionally to ensure that no pasta gets stuck together. Remove from heat, separate out 60 ml of pasta water, and then drain the rest. Slowly add the pasta water you removed in step 6 to your cream. Then, slowly pour your cream/water mixture into the tomato purée and combine. A light orange sauce will begin to form. Add parmesan as you desire to the sauce, stirring to incorporate. Combine your pasta and sauce. 18
Mac and Cheese This dish is probably the perfect comfort food. It’s rich, creamy, cheesy goodness—and, luckily, it’s not too complicated either. Plus, you can always spice it up by adding whatever leftover veg you have sitting in the fridge. Servings 6-8 Ingredients: Conchiglie pasta 2 tbsp flour 2 tbsp butter Salt Pepper 355 ml milk 200-250 g cheddar cheese Steps: Bring a pot of salted water to a boil over high heat. While the water is heating up, add 2 tablespoons of butter to a separate pot over medium heat and allow the butter to melt. Into the melted butter, add 2 tablespoons of flour, as well as salt and pepper to taste. Stir to combine. Reduce to low heat. Slowly pour 355 ml of milk into your pot and stir. Keep stirring to ensure that the milk doesn’t burn. The mixture should begin to thicken, creating a roux; this will serve as the base of your cheese sauce. At this point, your salted water should be beginning to boil. Add your pasta and stir occasionally, cooking until al dente. While the pasta cooks, return to your base. Add the cheese one handful at a time and stir. The cheese will melt, turning your sauce yellow. Drain your pasta and return it to the original pot. Combine your pasta and the cheese sauce.
Spaghetti Carbonara Carbonara is way more delicious than it has any right to be. Incredibly simple, this delectable dish can be made with ingredients that most university students will already have in their kitchen. Traditionally made with guanciale, I ’ve substituted pancetta here as it’s much easier to come by, and the final product tastes just as good! Servings: 6-8 Ingredients: Spaghetti 3 large eggs 1 large egg yolk Black pepper 110 g Pecorino Romano 130 g diced pancetta Steps: Begin by beating 3 large eggs and 1 large egg yolk in a mixing bowl. Add cheese—either a full 110 grams of Pecorino Romano, or a combination of Pecorino and Parmesan—and as much black pepper as you desire. Beat the mixture until smooth. Bring a pot of salted water to a boil. Add spaghetti. Stir occasionally. While your pasta cooks, add 130 g of diced pancetta to a cold pan. Bring the pan up to medium heat and cook the pancetta until it turns golden brown. Remove from the heat but leave the pancetta and the rendered oil in the pan. After the pasta has cooked, drain it. Then, return to the original pot. Pour the contents of the pan—both pancetta and oil—into the pasta pot. Coat the spaghetti. Add your egg and cheese mixture to the pot. Stir vigorously. The goal is to use the residual heat of the pasta to emulsify the eggs into a creamy sauce. Serve and enjoy! 19
Games
VR is Dead, Long Live VR The digital gaming industry is inseparably tied to consumer electronics. Progress in one field is often driven by
demand in the other, leading to impressive new inventions on both sides. Yet at every turning point, there are those who take after the luddites of the 18th century, declaring the old ways “better” and resisting the current of change. They find reason upon reason to discredit a new invention or paradigm. This has happened most recently with the advent of Virtual Reality for the consumer market. It seems like every other year, VR is enthusiastically declared dead by the mainstream, only for another “must-play” VR title to release shortly thereafter. So why is there a persistent aversion to VR in the gaming community, and why has the tech stuck around this long in spite of it? Well, VR’s first serious introduction to the gaming space came in 2012 with the launch of a Kickstarter project for a product called the Oculus Rift. The Rift was ambitious, aiming to transport you to another world with the power of your gaming PC. The project was successful and the company began shipping development kits in the following years. After an acquisition by Facebook in 2014, Oculus shipped a consumer version of the headset in 2016. The new tech was not without its problems. The original Rift was plagued by issues which, for many gamers, were dealbreakers. Aside from the high cost (totalling nearly $1,000USD for the full setup) and requirement for a large physical playspace, most early consumer VR games themselves were… not very good. When you think of a “cool” idea for VR, you probably imagine running around inside a first person shooter, gun in hand, blasting bad guys like they’re going out of style. Or maybe you think of a sprawling open-world RPG or a driving simulator. Many early VR developers thought of the exact same concepts. These ideas would have been great if it weren’t discovered that frame rates lower than 90 frames per second and the mere act of moving forward in VR space would give horrific motion sickness to all but the most lead-bellied players. Perhaps this is what led VR to be viewed as an expensive novelty, with little potential beyond brief amusement. VR tech seemed destined to share the Wii remote’s fate, where evening after evening of motion-controlled bowling with friends gradually yielded to more traditional gaming, while the motion controllers gathered dust on the shelf.
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But dark as those early days were, VR persisted through the last few years of the decade as developers learned the ropes. Creators in the games industry were starting at square one in completely unfamiliar territory, much like cinema during the advent of sound or colour in film. It has taken a few years for developers to even scratch the surface of what works in VR and what doesn’t. The technology has not only proven it can be interesting, but that it will be absolutely paradigm-shifting. In the four short years since the launch of mainstream consumer headsets, games have been released that simply cannot be played conventionally. Valve finally released a new installment in the Half Life series with VR-only Half Life: Alyx in 2020. Astrobot Rescue Mission in 2018 showed how VR doesn’t have to mean first-person, presenting an astoundingly fun 3D platformer. Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes showed how VR can be applied to the party game genre. One player dons the headset and attempts to disarm a bomb based on written instructions which are invisible to them, but visible to everyone else in the room via the TV screen. However, my personal favourite showcases for VR have been in the rhythm genre. Games like 2018’s Beat Saber, 2019’s Pistol Whip and 2016’s Thumper showed how rhythm games can be elevated to a new level in VR. Rhythm games have always been about chasing that “zen” state that comes with hitting every note in a song, but the application of VR dials this satisfaction up to 11. In Beat Saber, you slash blocks with light sabers to the beat of the music, driving a light show in the background with every swing. From the moment the song starts, there’s nothing from the real world to distract you. It’s just you, the music and the score counter. Similarly, Pistol Whip has you firing guns at faceless cyber goons to a banging electronic soundtrack. For me, VR rhythm games represent the ultimate form of escapism. For the VR enthusiasts out there, the future looks bright as the technology advances at a breakneck pace. A mere five years ago, the notion of a fully wireless headset was a pipedream. In 2019, Oculus released the Quest headset, a fully wireless, standalone headset which was sold for a budget price at $399. Further, Sony has confirmed that PlayStation VR will be compatible with the upcoming PlayStation 5. So we can safely say that VR has proven its right to stick around, and some major players in the games industry have recognised that. Video games themselves were once a niche platform, but slowly inched their way into the mainstream. We are seeing the same thing happen with VR. Over the next few years, you can expect to see VR headsets become more and more prevalent in the living room, much like games consoles have.
WORDS BY SEÁN CLERKIN ART BY ANDRÉS MURILLO
21
Games
The Healthier Future of Game Development The last six months have brought many changes to the world of entertainment, with creative fields
almost grinding to a complete halt. However, while the theatres, film sets and music venues all went dark, game developers’ computer screens continued to shine. This is not to say that COVID-19 and the move to remote working has not affected the industry, the delay of The Last of Us: Part Two, and Cyberpunk 2077 has shown us this. But this moment of pause affords us the opportunity to examine how games are made and wonder if things should change. Like most of us, many studios have struggled to transition to remote working. Supergiant Games has spoken at length with NoClip about the difficulties of working far apart from their team while releasing version 1.0 of their game Hades. Creative director Greg Kasavin specifically mentions the lack of spontaneous conversations between the team and the difficulties of maintaining a healthy work/life balance as part of this rough transition. This is echoed by one team member who showed the four inches of space between his work filing cabinet and bed in the credits footage of the video. Most upsettingly, while studio director Amir Rao hopes everyone in his team is doing well, he cannot say for certain that they are. Although Supergiant Games and Hades are in no way at the scale of an AAA developing team or game, their struggles with continuing to work remotely can only be scaled up when looking at bigger teams and projects. Unfortunately, even in The Before Times, work/life balance was not a new issue within the games industry. Toxic workplace environments along with mismanagement more often than not culminate in unforgiving periods of crunch before release. Some notable examples being Red Dead Redemption 2’s 100-hour work weeks prior to release (as revealed by The New York Magazine). CD Projekt Red also admitted to investors in January that even despite their (then) 5 month delay until September, crunch time would still be necessary to release Cyberpunk 2077 on time (as reported by Polygon). The game has since been delayed until November 2020 and it is almost certain that the people working on it are facing another few grueling months of crunch. The adage goes, If you love what you do, you never truly work a day in your life, but I would argue that the romanticisation of late hours at the computer and ignoring sleep, your health, and your family, to release a game on time benefits no one except the investors that finance these projects. Most worryingly, however, between remote working, the lack of clear delineation between work and rest, and the loss of the camaraderie of the team in the office, there is a significant risk that development crunch could be more damaging than ever before. 22
So if working from home is not the way towards a better working environment in game design, what is our route forward? I would suggest we cast our eyes to the indie sphere, where small development teams work on creating tailored game experiences rather than unsustainable one-size-fits-all games. Two games that spring to mind for this are the indie darlings Undertale and Stardew Valley. Both games were created primarily by one person, with Eric Barone (Concerned Ape) for Stardew Valley and Toby Fox for Undertale, and both games had similarly long production times. Out of good, quick, and cheap, the accepted logic is that you can only pick two, and for these developers, they picked good and cheap. By working on the games by themselves, they could maintain strong creative control over the projects, and by choosing a pixel art style they could avoid the time and cost of rendering in 3D, however because of this both projects had long development times. Undertale being in development for 32 months and Stardew Valley is still being updated today despite Barone beginning work on the project in 2012.
All in all, I love games, but it has reached a point where the majority of them are made through unsustainable and damaging systems. As much as I was excited for the release of Cyberpunk 2077, I don’t know if I can in good conscience support a company that has forced its workers into so many months of unnecessary crunch. If smaller dev teams, with less focus on graphical fidelity and a shift in attitude to “it’s ready when it’s ready” is what it takes to help remedy these unhealthy attitudes around work, I am absolutely ready for this change. And if it means we see more inventive, stylistic, short form games like The Haunted Island, A Frog Detective Game that’s just the icing on the cake.
WORDS BY NIAMH MULDOWNEY
Considering how long those development cycles were, I propose that an even more sustainable approach to game design could be found in the tiny game, for example Grace Bruxner’s Frog Detective games. Bruxner has been designing games for over 4 years now, all of them short comedic games that rely on clever writing and inventive design to entertain their audience through their short run times. Her two Frog Detective games, The Haunted Island, and The Case of the Invisible Wizard only take an hour each to play, but each line will bring a smile to your face, along with the visual comedy of the games’ worlds and the magnifying glass in which you examine it. Bruxner and her team spent 5 months on the first game, and divided the writing, programming and composition of the music amongst herself and her two team members. Bruxner also has an attitude towards games that they should be fun to make and that will be ready for release in their own time, with the time between the gameplay trailer of The Invisible Wizard and it’s release being only 5 days. This promotional strategy fundamentally rejects the typical hype driven video game advertising, and certainly lessens the stress on the small development team.
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Literature
A Man with No Reasons in Ben Lerner’s Leaving the Atocha Station A
dam Gordon, the protagonist and narrator of Ben Lerner’s largely autobiographical novel Leaving the Atocha Station, rarely responds to emails. He pretends, even to his best friend, Cyrus, that he has no internet connection in his cheap Madrid apartment, “as I thought this would create the impression I was offline, busy accumulating experience.” Adam begins his account of his year-long fellowship in Madrid with the assertion that he, despite being an up-and-coming American poet, has “never had a profound experience of art.” The story that follows is a somewhat reluctant Künstlerroman, in which Adam struggles with Spanish, with art, with two simultaneous love affairs, and most importantly with his own anxiety and loneliness. This is a writerly book that wears its intertextuality lightly. The title itself is taken from a poem by John Ashbery, a terrifically challenging poet with whom Gordon is enamoured. To my mind, however, the figure of the Anglophone in Spain conjures Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia and the raft of Spanish writings by Ernest Hemingway. Adam’s lassitude and anxiety are striking when considered next to the apparent self-assurance found in Orwell and Hemingway. Adam is the very antithesis of the steadfast Hemingway hero – at least as he exists in the popular imagination, à la Midnight in Paris – and has none of the indefatigable idealism with which Orwell beguiles us in his frank account of the Spanish civil war. When, early in the novel, another man punches Adam, he pretends to be laid out flat: “I could taste the blood from my mildly cut lip and I bit hard to deepen the cut so that I would appear more injured and therefore solicit sufficient sympathy”. Adam, in 2004, inhabits a world in which a blueprint for manhood that held so much sway in the twentieth century has, for good reason, been eroded. This blueprint was laid out in no small part in Orwell and Hemingway’s writings: broadly, their male heroes are enamoured of a cause despite its concurrent violence in the case of Homage to Catalonia, and they are at one with nature, opposed to the decadence western society, and often chauvinistic in the case of Hemingway. Discussing his latest book, The Topeka School, in which Adam is also the protagonist, Lerner notes that “the triumphalist ‘end of history’ discourse of the ’90s masked an accelerating identity crisis among certain white men of which Trumpism is one manifestation”. Pop-socioeconomic commentators from across the spectrum, from Jordan Peterson to Natalie Wynn of Contrapoints, note that today’s public discourse has been slow to adapt to shifting gender roles, and that men like Adam receive little guidance in conducting themselves, as men, to their own and to society’s advantage. Lerner himself has described Adam as having a “fear of the actual”, and, indeed, his many lies range from the inane to the inexcusable. As a young adult in a foreign city, Adam wants desperately to feel at home and simultaneously to reinvent himself. He is trying to self-actualise, but how does one self-actualise while eschewing the actual? Frustrated, if excited, by the progress of his relationship with the suave Teresa, Adam attempts to mollify his own anxieties by considering the pleasures of speculation: “maybe I liked protecting the idea of our making love from clumsy attempts at its actualisation.” Adam recognises that his role as the young male artist is supposed to consist of “accumulating experience”, but he is terrified of doing so.
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Suffering from an unspecified mood disorder, Adam self-medicates and, in so doing, revels in “absolving myself of some portion of my agency”. Whatever his officially diagnosed disorder is, Adam clearly suffers from imposter syndrome. He needs the “mechanism” of smoking to facilitate his moving through social situations and to convince himself of his unobtrusiveness, a sort of Prufrockian mask; he craves affection from Teresa and Isabel but keeps them at arm’s length, and believes their affection for him will last only as long as they don’t know him well; finally, brought to an anti-terrorism rally by his Spanish friends, he feels his voice sounds “off ” in a crowd of thousands: he stops chanting and, worried he looks conspicuous, mouths the chants silently. This is a far cry from the fulfilling, masculinised camaraderie found in Hemingway and in Homage to Catalonia. Given his paralysing self-awareness and his imposter status, how is Adam to subscribe to a cause or to a social set? If we transpose the conditions of the novel onto 2020’s political climate, how, as a white, straight, wealthy, college-educated American, is Gordon to protest, given that he represents exactly that which almost all protest today is organised: the patriarchal order (an order that excludes him in practical terms, but to which his identity group has almost exclusive theoretical access). In a discussion with fellow artists, Adam gives the pithy assertion that “[t]he proper names of leaders are distractions from concrete economic modes”, a useful aphorism the next time you forget the name of a politician. Not only is his wilful ignorance of political realities a mark of immaturity – Adam lampoons his sexual rival, Carlos, a Marxist who votes for the conservative party in order to “exacerbate the system’s contradictions”– the abnegation of personal responsibility contravenes one of “traditional” masculinity’s core tenets. When bastardised, this principle of personal responsibility yields neoliberalism, but without it little can be achieved by men or by women. Adam’s desire to elide his identity stems from embarrassment. He eschews the imagined community of his nation but experiences only its lack. The spectre of Bush’s war in the Middle East, of Al-Qaeda and Basque separatist terrorist bombings, and of Franco’s highly masculinised doctrine of fascism cloud the book. Disillusioned young men are a society’s most destructive demographic: the agents of white nationalism, Islamist terrorism, gangland crime, incel culture, and the many other ways in which young male frustration manifests. There is no demographic for which disillusionment translates so directly to damage to society. Lerner is not afraid to portray the pathetic, which is more difficult than it sounds. We often encounter pathetic characters in art, but rarely are these pathetic characters our heroes. Being pathetic, or indeed vulnerable, is shown by Lerner to be a transitory state, not a character trait. We are all frequently pathetic in our own lives, often within minutes of being enviable, smart, funny, or strong. Lerner's writing is so powerful because it routinely shows a character who does stupid things, shoddily justified. Adam is insecure and cruel, and at his most cruel when he is at his most insecure. Yet where many artists have given irrational behaviour the character of hysteria (and often coded it as female), Lerner's protagonist navigates the world according to the logic of irrationality. Just as Cyrus’ girlfriend Jane and the unimpeachably cool Teresa reflect “traditionally” masculine characteristics, Adam is permitted vulnerability, and must construct his sense of manhood and of personal responsibility not in opposition to vulnerability but alongside it. As Freshers’ Week 2020 approaches, we, like Lerner’s Adam Gordon, will be attempting to self-actualise and self-author. Ravaged by the unforeseen, Dublin will be a foreign city, perhaps strangest to those of us who used to be familiar with it. Whatever our hopes are for Freshers’ Week, this week remains a flashpoint in Ireland’s campus rape epidemic and more broadly for the destructive effects of male insecurity and received fantasy, which often triumph over the actual, over our sense of personal responsibility and humankind’s inherent, if forgettable, decency. No man is vulnerable all the time or unfailingly triumphant; accommodating the braided reality of the human experience into our lives is what makes heroes of us. There are many reasons to read Leaving the Atocha Station. It is technically innovative, funny, and moving, and Lerner’s portrayal of conversation in a foreign language is novel and engaging: “[t]hen she might have described swimming in the lake as a child, or said that lakes reminded her of being a child, or asked me if I’d enjoyed swimming as a child, or said that what she’d said about the moon was childish.” If for no other reason, however, it is worth reading for its prescient exploration of the ways in which a frank regard for our own vulnerability is the only path to heroism.
You can't spell “pathos” without “pathetic”, or something like that.
WORDS BY FIACHRA KELLEHER ART BY REN O’HARE
25
Literature
Flash Fiction: ‘Temporary Arrangements’ Ger didn’t actually want to come with me to get stuff in IKEA. She cared more about being
seen as helpful than actually helping, which I felt was petty. The plan was for me to go alone to buy things for our grandparents’s new house, but the day before I was supposed to go I got a message from Ger. She said Mam told her over the phone how good I was to be driving all the way from Sandyford to IKEA and then suggested she join me and we go in her car, so she could give me a hand. Ger saw Mam’s praising me as another example of me being her favourite child, a suggestion which fundamentally upset Ger. “It’s only because you're the youngest,” she would say. I knew Ger took the time to come to IKEA as an oblique way to limit the positive side-effects I could earn from going, but she also wanted to use the car journey to complain to me about Mam. Even though Ger was driving, it still felt like I was the one in charge, since again, she wasn’t interested in what we actually had to get. When we were approaching the top of the queue Ger said, “Right so, you know what we’re getting? I don't want to be here long.” Our grandparents were downsizing from their three-storey home in Wicklow to a two-bed bungalow in Malahide, down the road from Mam. The contents were being sold with the house so they needed things like bedding and rugs. Mam had ordered wardrobes and a suite of furniture for them somewhere online but she left the smaller things for me to get. While Nana often phoned me about the “stress of it all”, I found it hard to take her worry seriously. While Mam was definitely making a fuss over the move, I believed Nana secretly enjoyed the attention it gave her. The more people involved in the move, the more people to whom Nana could act overwhelmed by it, which meant the more we would assure her that they were only happy to do things for her. I was better at doing this than Ger was. As much as Nana would have liked to pick new home decorations out herself, she would never leave the house without Grandad and he refused to go shopping because he hates wearing the mask. Mam said they would eventually buy things more to their taste when everything had calmed down again. This took a weight from my shoulders. Until then I arranged to take a few hours away from working at home to walk around IKEA. “Do you think they sell double-adapters here for plugs?” said Ger as we moved through the showrooms. “I may pick things up for myself while we’re here.” “I haven't seen any yet. Maybe they’re further on.” Before each room was a yellow sign asking customers to enter one party at a time. There were markings on the floor that had dulled and begun to peel at the edges. We walked into an interpretation of a child's bedroom. There was a pink single bed with a large painted crown over the headboard. Ger dropped onto the duvet and turned to face the fake window glued to the wall. It showed the room’s view from the second storey onto a back garden with children playing on a swing set. The view was sweet, but I thought its sincerity was undermined by the photographs of different children framed on the wall. “God, it's so hot in here,” Ger said. She pinched the nose of her surgical mask, pulled it from her face and took in a big breath of air and slowly placed it back over her nose. She then blew against the mask, which made it look full and curved like a parachute until it deflated and wrinkled again. “Right, let's keep moving so.”
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We passed through the showrooms, pulling out display cabinet drawers and feeling the veneer of kitchen countertops. By the living room furniture, I pointed out a coffee table I liked and asked Ger if she thought it would suit my sitting room. I couldn’t figure out the full face that she made but her eyes squeezed together and she shook her head. “A rattan coffee table. You’re twenty-three,” she said, “not sixty. No, get something more timeless,” I agreed and we went on. Eventually, we walked down the staircase from the showrooms to where we could collect the smaller things like lamps and artificial plants. The walkways were packed with clustered shelves and heavy, stacked pallets, most of them half-filled with products already opened. At the foot of the stairs was a bank of shopping trolleys, baskets of yellow tarpaulin bags and a sanitizing station. I placed my hand under the automated dispenser and clear, watery fluid dropped into my hand. It smelled repulsive and antiseptic like gin. “We’d better get one of those,” I said. I picked a waxy bag from the basket and pulled it over my shoulder. “How do they clean these?” I said to Ger, who stood with a shallow frying pan in her hands, not listening. “These are actually good for three euro,” she said. “If we don’t tell Nana that they’re from IKEA she may keep them for longer. And we should get a few soap dispensers for the house too. Do they sell the actual soap?” She decided to ask someone. They didn’t, he said, “unfortunately”. I told her to put the pans back. We continued along the stream of customers that moved in a procession. I stopped occasionally to pick out vacuum-sealed pillows and look at lampshades. About halfway through the markethall I dumped our full shopping bag into a trolley because I could only hold it for so long and Ger said that she wanted to get new towels and picture frames. I was so tired that I said nothing; I just rested on the handlebar of the cart and pushed it along lazily. Any illusion of control I had over the situation was ridiculed with every addition to the cart. We reached the checkouts with a trolley brimmed with mostly things nobody actually needed. “We actually don’t need to get half of this,” Ger said, as we loaded the conveyor belt at the till. “Nana will bin most of it anyway, and I don’t even know if I have enough on me to get all of this.” Both Ger’s sudden awareness of what I had put into the trolley, and the assumption that I was interested in negotiating what Nana and Grandad needed right before we were about to pay for it all, annoyed me, and so I ignored her solicitation. “Well, they’re only taking card now anyway,” I said. “And Mam gave me Nana’s to pay for this, so it is taken care of.” “Thank god.” The contents of the trolley amounted to over eighty euro. While Ger packed everything at the end of the till I plugged the card into the machine and input Nana’s pin. I took a copy of the receipt from the cashier. Ger drove the trolley out through the glass sliding doors and I doused my hands with sanitiser, rubbing it between my fingers until it completely soaked into my skin. This is the first entry in a new flash fiction series by TN2, which aims to give a platform to exciting new writers from Trinity. If you would like your fiction to be considered for publication, simply submit it to literature@tn2magazine.ie along with your name and a one sentence bio.
WORDS BY SHANE MURPHY
27
Music
DIY Won’t Die, But Your Hope Will: What can we learn from Burger Records? The garage label’s sexist scandal is part of a greater problem. Here’s how indie can recover. Content Warning: Sexual Assault
The recent conversation surrounding California-based label Burger Records and the scandal that resulted in their liquidation has subsequently died down, unsurprisingly following the formula of how cases of sexual misconduct in indie have been treated.
The Lured By Burger Records Instagram page was launched on 18 July in the hope of “amplifying voices and supporting those who were victims of sexual predation by predators involved with Burger Records.” The garage label was founded in 2007 and is famed for their all-ages shows and loyalty to reinforcing the DIY credo, with a roster showcasing the absolute best of the indie and garage scene. The label was accused by long-time fans and supporters of harbouring a culture of sexual assault at shows, their affiliated record store, and within its catalogue of artists. Posterboys of this Cali scene were accused of sexual predation and grooming, namely The Growlers, The Frights, and The Buttertones. By creating a space where vulnerable teenagers were invited to be a part of something they were ‘honoured’ to be accepted into – allowing them to drink with the band and giving them access to tour buses – Burger Records placed known predators onto pedestals and gave them access to potential victims. The label were the architects of their own culture of complicity. Becoming aware of this, they rebranded as ‘BRGR RECS.’ In response to the allegations about the sexist culture at their label, Burger Records issued a statement outlining their plans to stamp out misogyny within their label. With the initiative to start an all-female imprint called BRGRRRL and counselling fund for those “who suffered such trauma while engaging in the Burger scene”, they also pledged work with women to recognise abusive and coercive behavior but these promises never came to fruition. The label ended up folding entirely as musicians including Nobunny, Part Time’s David Loca, and the breakthrough case of SWMRS’ Joey Armstrong came forward and acknowledged their predatory behaviour. It kills me to immediately turn to the “where do we go from here?” mantra because it seems like we haven’t learned at all. What happened in Orange County is merely part of a greater and more insidious problem — it’s a stark reminder of how subtle misogyny is endemic in indie rock. This genre’s culture makes deities out of losers. From feigning superiority over others as a result of your ‘refined’ taste to the romanticisation of toxicity and hedonism, there is a pyramidal structure of covert and overt examples of shitty behavior that have been humoured for decades. The narrative of the boy rebel’s broken heart is well-worn as illustrated by the last fifty years of popular music, with rock music itself being mostly defined by men writing songs about women, songs about the women he has loved and lost before and how these women have betrayed and failed him. 28
With the self-aware risk of embodying the Radical Feminist Killjoy Caricature that wants to destroy your video games and rock n’ roll music, I acknowledge that if I have a problem with the conventions of indie I must have a problem with the annals of rock history. The women of pop-punk and emo are nameless, our sole source of power rooted in the impact we’ve had on the frontman’s romantic life. The where’s-my-hug entitlement of The Descendents’ early catalog, to the internalised misogyny of Miz Biz-era Paramore. The race fetishisation in Weezer’s Pinkerton, to Nick Cave’s murder ballads. The piles of brutalised women in Big Black’s discography, to the groupie-laden bravado of Led Zeppelin. I feel like subjectivity or Death of The Author doesn’t apply when these women are non-autonomous vessels (and often actually dead.) Can I forgo this judgement in light of the fact that these bands’ talent? Do we need to accept the sexism in punk and DIY scenes because “it’s just how it is”? It feels disingenuous to not mention that the bulk of these artists mentioned have acknowledged the fact that their subtle sexism hasn’t aged well. However — especially in the case of what happened in California — events of this severity should not have an expiration date. The common retaliation used to be that you can’t be punk if you abuse. Yet nothing is more insidious than a predator exhibiting their virtuous plumage to distract from the underdeveloped bird beneath. A prime example of this existed in the form of Destroy Boys. Signed by Burger, they are a ravenous riot grrrl outfit who prided themselves on reviving the credo that was once spearheaded by the likes of Courtney Love and Kathleen Hanna. Once it emerged that the band was complicit in rape apologeticism and victim blaming, naturally their ethics were thrown into question. Anybody can feign progressive beliefs to fit better into a scene or to make possible victims feel more comfortable, but actions will forever speak louder than words. The nature of DIY music culture calls for self-regulation and often results in a lack of accountability when people speak out. It boils down to virtue signalling and scenes not practising what they preach, actively ignoring allegations that circle for years and only acting on it when survivors go public. The question of optics takes precedence over accountability, so when a band or a label finally take action, it feels like a PR exercise in damage control. The methods taken by the label after the allegations came to light were a sophisticated form of victim blaming; placing the onus of fixing a broken system onto the women that it failed. It won’t be long before someone claims that demand for these reforms is cancel culture’s doing - the pernicious, seemingly faceless force of our generation’s bloodlust for ending wrongdoing in all its forms. If true cancel culture existed, I wouldn’t have to engage with an influencers’ third notes app racism apology of the week or read alleged abusers’ painful redemption stories in mainstream publications. If independent music is going to reckon with this problem, they need to provide support to victims the minute the concern is raised — not when allegations reach social media, not when the abusers themselves admit to their actions. This is mere harm reduction and it shouldn’t take losing consumers and fans to take your duty as an authority seriously. Musicians, regardless of gender, should be calling out sexism whenever they see it. Bravado shouldn’t be rewarded and girls should be brought to the front.
WORDS BY HANNAH QUEARNEY
29
Music
A Beginner’s Guide to Electronic Music Production Over
the Summer, I got around to doing something I’ve been putting off for years - producing electronic music. From the outside, this hobby can appear intimidatingly difficult, with its own jargon, software and online subcultures. Once I started digging into it, however, I was surprised to find there are a plethora of free, beginner-friendly resources available. The most difficult part was learning where to start. For help, I reached out to Irish electronic musician Herb Magee (AKA Arvo Party), for advice on getting into electronic music as a beginner. To produce electronic music, you need a Digital Audio Workstation (commonly referred to as a DAW). This software allows you to create, record and manipulate audio. There are many reputable free options, such as Garageband (which comes pre-installed on Macs), Reaper (recommended in a Q&A with Autechre) and Cakewalk. Arvo Party “started out with Logic and still uses it for writing and recording. I use Ableton for live stuff...” These DAWs are expensive, and are more common among professionals, but both offer free trials. In the early stages of learning production, it doesn’t matter too much which one you pick. The most important thing is to make a choice and stick with it until you become familiar with the interface. This is the biggest initial obstacle, and if you switch around a lot at the beginning, you’ll waste a lot of time adjusting to each new program. What you’ll see when you open your DAW will depend on which one you’ve chosen, and it is at this point that online video tutorials become helpful. Generally, a DAW will include a library of audio clips and MIDI instruments, as well as a time grid with seperate tracks (like a multi-track recorder). In Ableton, tracks are divided into either MIDI or audio. Audio tracks can hold any number of audio clips, as long as they don’t overlap (to overlap audio clips, you would have to place them on different channels). MIDI is like a piece of sheet music, an instruction of what notes should be played, at what volume and for how long. To play MIDI clips, you will need to load a MIDI instrument onto the track. The interface of DAWs tends to be pretty intuitive. You place audio or MIDI clips on different tracks, you press play, and the program begins to play what is on the tracks, moving from left to right. The best way to become comfortable is by simply playing around with the tools at your disposal. Don’t worry about sounding good or doing it “right”. Just experiment and have fun. You’ll gradually become more familiar with splicing and editing audio clips, creating MIDI melodies, and finding your way around the DAW’s library of sounds. After you’ve been experimenting for a while with a DAW, you might hit a roadblock. Either you’re still baffled by the interface, or you don’t know what to do next after you’ve put down a drum pattern and one or two instruments. Thankfully, again, the internet is full of tutorials. Still, I would like to recommend one particular YouTube channel: Collective Intelligence. The host uses Ableton, but the tutorials he has on mixing, arrange and workflow are broadly applicable to many DAWs. He gets straight to the point, he’s a natural teacher, and he never assumes his audience knows anything about what he’s explaining, a problem I’ve found with many tutorials.
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Of course, you won’t become a musician by watching hundreds of online videos. Arvo Party himself said “I don’t really use Youtube as a means of learning music production. I might use it if I come across a real problem (I remember being confused by Logic’s buffering system early on) but for the most part my learning comes from trial, error and experimentation.” Tutorials can help you with a particular obstacle, but at the end of the day, you’ll learn the most from doing it first hand. In some ways, electronic music can be easier to make than traditional music. If I want to record a song I wrote on guitar, I need to be able to perform it perfectly (notwithstanding the ability to do multiple takes or “comp” sections from different takes together). When producing music digitally, I have total control over details that I would be hard pushed to reproduce on a real instrument. However, there can be significant challenges to becoming a skilled electronic musician. You need to be able to design sounds, structure tracks, create beats, chord progressions and lead melodies, mix the different elements and master the track. In a typical band, each one of these roles is handled by a separate person. In electronic music, it is often one person fulfilling most of these tasks. The learning curve is high, and you shouldn’t let yourself get discouraged. These things take time. When I asked Herb what he would have liked to say to himself when he was first starting out, he responded “If I could go back and advise myself when I started making electronic music, I would spend a lot longer teaching myself how to mix and EQ stuff. I would also not let myself near any compressors or limiters! Everyone has to start somewhere and I’m glad I’ve been able to teach myself many things about production but I am still learning something every day.” Luckily for us hobbyists, the pressure’s off. There is no rush to become the next Aphex Twin, or squeeze out track after track when you’re not having fun anymore. When you get fatigued delving into one area, you can always change tack and focus on something new. “The beauty of the modern home studio,” according to Herb, “[is] that if you do find yourself stuck, you can simply move on to another idea and come back to whatever is trapped at a later point”. When you’re considering engaging seriously in any new hobby, it’s important to be realistic about how much time and energy you have to spare. There’s nothing worse than having a hobby become another chore. Setting out an allotted time for music production can help ensure you don’t just dabble at it once or twice before abandoning it. In an interview with Perfect Sound Forever, Aphex Twin mentioned that he made his best music when he waited until “you’re really bored and you’ve got nothing to do”. As for Arvo Party, he said “I don’t really have a ritual for making music although I suppose in the last 5 months, it has always been in the same environment with mostly the same equipment.” Everyone has to find what works for them, but producing music digitally allows for a great deal of flexibility. Whether you’re a fan of vaporwave looking to slow down forgotten seventies hits, an aspiring composer, or a vocalist who wants to make their own backing tracks, I hope this article has made the prospect of dabbling in electronic music production a little less daunting.
WORDS BY BEN PANTREY 31
PERSPECTIVES - PERSPECTIVES - PERSPECTIVES - PERSPECTIVES Sex
The articles in this series provide thought-provoking, entertaining, and relatable snapshots into students’ experiences
navigating relationships, self-discovery, and other affairs of the heart. Here, you can find introductory snippets from each article, using the QR code below to read the full pieces. 1. Falling For The Straight Girl
WORDS BY ANONYMOUS They say that when you know, you know. When you have a crush on someone, there are a million different signs: your heart races, your palms sweat, you’re desperate to impress them. I spent my early teen years very into romance, reading fan-fiction and reblogging gif-sets of my favourite couples on tumblr. I dreamt of meet-cutes in kitschy coffee-shops with indie music playing in the background. I’d sip a frothy drink as I read my book and then, across the room, lock eyes with the guy who’d change my life. His features were always vague. I didn’t really have a specific ‘type’, or have any idea what traits I wanted in a boyfriend, but thought that I’d figure that out eventually. I’d meet him, and I’d just know. I didn’t know a thing when it came to you… 2. What I Learned from Travelling with Friends
WORDS BY JULIA BOCHENEK
At the end of my time in high school, my senior class took our annual messy trip to Disney World. We stayed in a questionable music-themed motel, spent most of our days in the parks, and ended up spending too much money on overpriced (but tasty) food. Overall though, it was an amazing trip and such a good experience to add to our core highschool memories. But there was one major issue that many people thought about months before the trip: who were they going to spend all of their time with in Disney World? Who were the best people to make these memories with? 3. Solo Dance
WORDS BY EMILY STEVENSON When I arrived home from my first Freshers’ Week, my sister asked whether I had a boyfriend yet. When I said no, she jokingly told me that she was disappointed in me. Any time I would mention a guy I had met it was followed by a chorus of “Oooohhhh!” from whichever family members were present. This was something which I had experienced for as long as I could remember – the assumption that I must have a crush on any male I would mention, regardless of our relationship. The more I denied it, the more convinced family would become. The idea that heterosexual men and women cannot be friends, without one crushing on the other, is a trope which has been used repeatedly in the media. It has been spilling over into the modern mindset for some time, and it’s beginning to wear on me… 4. Holidaying with my Partner’s Family
WORDS BY ANONYMOUS
No, I am not crazy. Well maybe only a little, but after not seeing my boyfriend for months because of the dreaded C***d, a month of being next to each other sounded like bliss at that moment. I packed my bags as fast as I could and off I went. We’ve been on holidays together before, however it was just the two of us and not my partner’s entire family! In my naïve mind, I thought that it would be similar. As you might expect, I got a rude awakening. There are some trivial things you need to know when holidaying with your partner’s family. For example, You probably shouldn’t show an uncomfortable amount of affection when you have drunk one glass too many... 5. From Long Distance to Living Together, and Back Again
WORDS BY JACKSON LITTLEWOOD
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A lot of people seem to have a very dismissive attitude towards long-distance relationships. As somebody in one, I’ve gotten questions and comments such as: “How do you deal with it?”, “You have more patience than I do”, and “You must really love her to go through that.” While I don’t mind these comments at all, and I know that they come from a place of genuine curiosity, I think that they do reveal that there is a decent amount of stigma surrounding long-distance relationships. Oftentimes, couples break up before they have to go through a period of distance because they know that they can’t bear the challenges that come with it. I sympathize with people who feel this way, which is why it may be helpful to tell my story about my long-distance relationship…
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6. Single and Not Ready to Mingle
WORDS BY ANONYMOUS
‘People take different roads seeking fulfilment and happiness. Just because they’re not on your road doesn’t mean they’ve gotten lost.’ H. Jackson Brown Jr Perhaps at the age of 21 I should be worried about the complete non-existence of my love life. I’ve never dated anyone, I’ve never even kissed anyone. While this may seem weird to many people, to me it feels perfectly normal. At this point in my life I don’t really want a romantic relationship, and honestly wouldn’t know what to do with a boyfriend if I had one. Feed it and take it for walks?.. 7. A Healthy, Unhappy Relationship, or, Not Knowing If You Should Break Up
WORDS BY ANONYMOUS
Whether we like it or not, most of what we learn about love comes to us through TV shows and movies, where drama is the name of the game. In movies, the love plot is almost always, in some way or another, about the repulsively titled “chase”: a tumultuous journey that ends in either a first date, marriage, or children. In TV shows, we get to see relationships play out over a longer period of time and they typically fall into one of two categories: perfect, happy couples who have their squabbles, but ultimately love each other... or, dreadfully unhealthy relationships as a result of which both parties are made unfathomably worse as people... I would posit though, that sticking to these two formats ignores a third, important type of couple: the healthy but unhappy couple - two people who care about each other, who were in love with each other once, but aren’t in love anymore... 8. Invalidating My Own Sexuality
WORDS BY ANONYMOUS
The first time I struggled with my sexuality was when I was sixteen. I was in a relationship at the time, and I remember feeling terrified of telling my boyfriend that I was bisexual. His reaction was non-judgemental and accepting, and it reassured me that my bisexuality was not something that I would ever have to worry about. For a few years, I coexisted with this fact, as dating a person of the same sex hadn’t presented itself as a real situation to me; while I was in a relationship, it wasn’t something that concerned me. As I have gotten older, my sexuality has become something which I’ve thought about more… 9. My Life Isn’t a Movie
WORDS BY JANE LOUGHMAN ...So, I’d wander into different friendship circles, identify a potential love interest, but, then, brush it to the side. Until, as astonishing as the concept was to me, someone I liked made moves on me. I don’t mean your traditional shenanigans of night-out culture - I mean someone, over time, whether days, weeks, or months, talking to me, making an effort to get to know me. This method predominantly took place over social media, but it would always be so subtle and in between banter and ‘flanter,’ that I would never be one-hundred-percent certain that there was interest there. This famous ‘talking stage’ takes the crown for being the most common stage I’d find myself in other than single...
10. It’s Not You, It’s Me: Dating While Disabled
WORDS BY GELSEY BEAVERS-DAMRON … In general, I don’t really bring the topic of my disability up to others because I don’t like dealing with the questions that normally follow, or the note of pity in their voices that they can’t help but have… Since I can barely get up the courage to talk to my friends about my disabilities, it also greatly impacts and limits my dating and romantic life a lot. While a lot of my fears are in my head and I recognize that, I am really scared of going out with someone and then having to explain to them that there’s “something wrong” with me. How do I begin that conversation? What will this someone say? Most relationships I’ve seen presented are between able- bodied and neurotypical people, and there isn’t a Cosmopolitan for disabled people that will provide you with “10 Tips On How to Meet Your Soulmate When You Physically Can’t Leave Your Bed…” 33
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Sex
CLUED-UP ABOUT CONTRACEPTION?
As
we return to college for another year (albeit a year unlike any other…) perhaps now is the ideal time to evaluate, or re-evaluate, the contraceptive form which is right for you. We’ve analysed all of the major forms of hormonal contraception available to you on this emerald isle, to provide you with a good starting point for finding your perfect contraceptive partner. For more information about the contraceptives discussed, please contact either: Your GP , The College Health Service (who host nurse-run contraceptive advice clinics), The Irish Family Planning Association or visit www.sexualwellbeing.ie/sexual-health/contraception THE CONTRACEPTIVE CONTENDERS VYING FOR YOUR ATTENTION ARE:
The Combined Pill - a tablet, taken orally, which contains artificial versions of the female hormones oestrogen and progesterone. It is effective whilst taken as directed. Typically, this pill is taken once a day for 21 days, followed by a 7 day break during which you would experience a period-like bleed. The Progestogen-Only Pill (Sometimes known as the mini-pill) - a tablet, taken orally, which contains the hormone progestogen*, but NOT oestrogen. This pill must be taken daily (either within a 3-hour or 12-hour window - depending on the pill type) in order to be effective. You should not take breaks between pill packets.*an artificial version of progesterone The Injection - an injection containing an artificial version of the female hormone progesterone, which must be given by a healthcare professional every 12 weeks. The Implant - a small, flexible rod containing artificial progesterone which is placed just under the skin on the inside of your upper arm. It must be inserted by a healthcare professional, and it lasts for 3 years. The I(ntra)U(terine)D(evice) (copper and plastic, a.k.a the copper coil) - a small, t-shaped device made from copper and plastic. Once inserted into your womb by a healthcare professional , the copper IUD can last for either 5 or 10 years depending on the type. The I(ntra)U(terine)S(ystem) (hormonal)(Sometimes known known as the hormonal coil) - a small, t-shaped device made from plastic which releases the hormone progestogen. Once inserted by a healthcare professional, the hormonal IUS can last for 3-5 years - brand dependent. The Patch - a plaster-type device which releases oestrogen and progestogen into the bloodstream through the skin. Each patch lasts for 1 week, and patches should be used in 4 week cycles (3 weeks on, 1 week off). The Vaginal Ring - a small, soft plastic ring which should be placed inside the vagina. The ring releases a continuous dose of the hormones oestrogen and progestogen into the bloodstream. Once you insert your ring, it remains effective for 1 month.
ROUND ONE: REAL-WORLD EFFECTIVENESS
How effective is each contraceptive form when we factor in human error? Our competing forms of hormonal contraception are all considered to be more than 99% effective when used perfectly. In other words, when these contraceptives are used perfectly by 100 women, we would expect no more than one of them to become pregnant each year - if even that. In the real-world, however, contraception is not always used perfectly… The data below is taken from the NHS and Planned Parenthood websites, and lists the real-world effectiveness of our competitors: Contraceptive Form
C. Pill
Real-world Effectiveness (%) Expected yearly pregnancies per 100
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Our WINNERS of round one are: The Implant The IUD (copper)
P-O. Pill
Injection
91
92
94
9
8
6
The IUS (hormonal)
Implant
IUD
IUS
Patch V. Ring
>99
>99
>99
91
91
>1
>1
>1
9
9
ROUND TWO: UPFRONT COST VS COST PER YEAR
It is common for people to be discouraged from using long-lasting forms of contraception, as they can carry higher upfront costs than forms which are taken or applied more frequently. However, it is worth comparing the average yearly cost of all of our contraceptive contenders. Over time, the relative value of the long-lasting, higher-upfront-cost contraceptive methods may come to surprise you. We have taken our data from the Irish Family Planning Association and HSE, and have calculated the cost per year if the contraceptive is used for five years, for example, by factoring in the first year’s initial consultation/insertion fee, follow-up consultations, and/or device removal if required. All are eligible for repeat prescription discounts and Medical Card discounts. Contraceptive Form
C. Pill P-O. Pill Injection
Upfront cost €
65-74.5 65-85
Cost per year €
164.5- 164.5283.25 203
Implant
60 (student rate) Up to 314
IUD
IUS
Patch
V. Ring
280
Upfront 399
85
Approx.80
258 Max. 141.60 34-68 91.80393 (1 every (3 years) (5 or 145.50 12 weeks) 10 years) (3 or 5 years)
Approx. 345
The top three contenders for value over time: 1st Place: The IUD (copper) Runners Up: The Implant, The IUS
ROUND THREE: HORMONAL CONTENT AND SIDE EFFECTS
Side effects are almost inevitable whenver you introduce a substance into your body. For many, the introduction of artificial oestrogen into the body has no major ill effects. For some, however, it can produce a significant number of side effects. For example, you are advised to avoid contraceptives containing oestrogen if you have circulatory issues. The introduction of progesterone and progestogen can, similarly, affect some, whilst not affecting others. The table below categorises our contenders by hormonal content:
Progestogen
the Progestogen-Only Pill, the Implant, the IUS
Progesterone
the Injection
Oestrogen and Progesterone
the Combined Pill, the Patch, the Vaginal Ring
The Overall Winner: Unfortunately, this subheading is deceptive… We cannot tell you which contraceptive method is the best; we can only tell you that the best contraceptive method for you is the one which you feel happiest and safest using. Please make informed choices when it comes to contraception. For more information about the contraceptives disccuses, please visit your GP, the College Health Service, the Irish Family Planning Assocation or visit www.sexualwellbeing.ie/sexual-health/contraception
A QUICK P.S:
Just thought we should mention how our hormonal contraceptive friends compare to the good ol’ penis condom… - Barrier methods of contraception (such as the penis condom) are the only methods of contraception which protect against STIs as well as pregnancy. According to Planned Parenthood, the effectiveness of penis condoms decreases to 85% when we factor in human error. Penis condoms are available for free from the College Health Service and the Students’ Union. In shops, the price of penis condoms can vary wildly - from less than €1 to more than €3 per name-brand condom. Penis condoms and other barrier method forms of contraception; they do not release hormones into your body.
WORDS BY ALICE PAYNE
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Theatre
LIVE THEATRE REBIRTH (?) August 2020. Live
performances. Enclosed (or open) spaces. Following government restrictions, the theatre groups planning to perform live again had to be cancelled or postponed once more. In the midst of all things happening now, theatre is embracing virtual realms, as I pointed out in a previous article about ‘Theatre. Online’. But the question is, when will live events in communal physical spaces happen again, in safe conditions, in accordance with government guidelines? Some theatres, such as The Gate, announced that the theatre house will not be able to reopen until 2021; there has been no news on The Gaiety Theatre since July and, for the moment, all theatre performances have been either cancelled or postponed, except for Panto which also might not happen according to Covid predictions for the near future. Bord Gáis Theatre gave its last update in April; The Smock Alley will be back with some limited capacity live performances on Sept. 3; The Abbey Theatre has been immersed with virtual audiences since Dear Ireland and will host live performances with limited audience members—there’s even Theatre for One which is literally “a mobile state-of-the-art performance space for one actor and one audience member at a time.” Now, that is a performer-audience relationship right there. Project Arts Centre published a very detailed guideline on opening spaces and hours, hygiene, and really clarified the conditions to attend the space. There will aslo also be some live events from Sept. 6. Aside from this news, live theatre performances will also be back in pubs, Glass Mask Theatre will open in the premises of the Bestseller and the International Bar will also host live theatre performances, amongst others. Hopefully the guidelines will remain somewhat stable. P.S. don’t forget your mask.
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WORDS BY LARISSA BRIGATTI
How Studying Theatre in Trinity has Prepared Me for the Future
When I was eighteen years old, the thought of going to
college seemed like the biggest undertaking of my life. I had applied to do a TSM in Drama and Classical Civilisations, and I was reluctantly optimistic as to what the four years awaiting me would bring. Everyone I knew from secondary school seemed to have a definitive job that they would graduate into; becoming a doctor, dentist, accountant — and this worried me. Would my Arts degree manage to carry me to a purpose in life, or would I end up regretting choosing such a broad path? Fortunately I had way less to worry about than I thought. My four years in Trinity College did a lot more for me than merely my getting a degree —under the guidance of the fantastic staff in the Classics and Drama departments I found myself discovering new opportunities daily that I had never even thought of as options to pursue. Although I loved Classics, my heart was with Drama, and I tried to get as involved as I possibly could.
I continued to foster my interest in reading and studying plays and soon found myself becoming creatively involved in them. Writing scripts became a constant, especially in my final two years. I also became involved in stage and production management, and managed to successfully stage and production manage numerous debut shows in the Samuel Beckett theatre. Being a part of something that meant so much for so many people, that would be broadcast to audiences for three special nights, gave me so much enjoyment that even to this day I frequently remember almost shaking with excitement and pride as I saw a play that everyone in the crew and cast had worked so hard on. I encourage anyone who gets the chance to to participate in shows as much as possible, whether its within the boundaries of the department or the DU Players society (the latter also played an important role in my getting hands-on experience, in a welcoming and friendly environment, and I would encourage anyone to participate as much as possible in the society). 37
Theatre Of course, it would be hard to forget the friends I made along the way — each person I met both within and outside of the course made my college experience what it was. I was able to learn so much from every person I met and they all helped to foster the love that I had for Drama. Whether it was meeting someone in the corridor outside a classroom and having a quick chat, or simply nodding at someone as I passed them in Front Square, everybody I encountered was lovely, and I wish every single one of them the best of luck going forward. I truly believe that by having such a wonderful environment in college it helped me to fully reach my potential in my academic work.
It’s impossible to summarise how I feel about college now. The four years of my life passed me by before I could stop and fully take everything in — every time I had finished a show or a project I would get swept off my feet again, totally caught up in student life and the opportunities it provided. Yes, I may be graduating into another recession, but I fully believe that doing an Arts course taught me more about life than any other path I could have taken. I loved every single moment of it, and if you decide to follow the same path, you will as well.
WORDS BY AKSANA FRAYNE PHOTOGRAPHY BY PHILLY HOLMES 38
PHOTOGRAPHY BY PHILLY HOLMES ‘LOCKDOWN CAMPUS’
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TV
Breaking Bad and Car Crash TV Spoilers ahead for Breaking Bad Season 2
A car crash is a great cliff-hanger for your season finale. Castle, Grey’s Anatomy, The Vampire Diaries, and a million
other shows have used this trope in the past. It allows showrunners to shock viewers without having to come up with something new, getting them invested in watching the next season to see who survives. It also gives the writers easy story hooks for the next season: maybe somebody gets addicted to the pain medication they’ve been taking after the crash, maybe a couple gets together after they realise just how suddenly everything can change, or maybe a character who feels responsible for the crash goes off the rails. A car accident can happen at any time, so no matter what your characters have got up to in the rest of the season, you can throw one in. Season two of Breaking Bad took the crash trope to a new level, and I don’t just mean thousands of feet in the air. The plane crash had been foreshadowed since the beginning of the season, where due to the black and white filter our eyes were drawn to the pink teddy bear floating in Walt’s (Bryan Cranston) pool while a number of police sirens sounded in the distance. Specifically, the first thing we see floating in the pool is an eye. That could have been the end of the stinger, screaming at us “well, whose is it?!”, but instead the camera pans down to underneath the water, where the bear, missing an eye, is revealed. I’ve never been a fan of this specific kind of in medias res opening, where you start in the middle of the action and then flash back to where it all began, knowing what’s going to happen but not how. I’m not saying that they can’t be well utilised, I just think they are often a symbol of lazy writers who can’t keep you engaged in a series without constantly reminding you that you don’t need to worry, something really interesting will happen eventually.
That’s not what we saw in season two of Breaking Bad. In this season Jesse (Aaron Paul) and Walt begin to grow their meth business with the help of amoral lawyer Saul (Bob Odenkirk), while Hank (Dean Norris) becomes traumatised through his dangerous work with the DEA and Skyler (Anna Gunn) gets involved in a money laundering operation. Conflicts that play out over the course of an episode, such as when Walt and Jesse get stranded in the desert, never feel like filler, which would otherwise make the season a joy to watch, without the constant reminders of what’s to come. At the beginning of multiple season two episodes we see this opening scene expanded upon, with people in hazmat suits bagging and tagging what seem to be random objects floating in the pool, photographing Walt’s shattered windshield, and removing two body bags from the driveway. The opening of the finale reveals that Walt’s home isn’t the only one being searched for evidence – there are people in hazmats all over the neighbourhood, and two pillars of black smoke are drifting up from nearby houses. They could have shown this dramatic scene from the beginning, but instead they build up to it. This build up is why I think these hints at what’s coming work so well. This crash is not an accident, a fluke or even the result of one bad decision.The writers want to remind us that throughout the season Walt is always moving towards this outcome. Again and again Walt makes decisions that hurt others in service of himself, and the writers want to make it clear that every time he did this he became closer to the man who would eventually let his partner’s girlfriend die, resulting in her grief-stricken air traffic controller father letting two planes crash. It all happens right after Skyler discovers that Walt has been cooking meth, further emphasising his connection to the crash. Breaking Bad is not a show averse to blood or gore, which is why the finale’s sedate explosion, especially when compared to the car crash trope, is so effective. After all that build up, Walt looks up to see a far off explosion, and watches puzzled as the bear from the first episode falls into his pool. The episode then ends before anything else hits the ground. Usually, we delight in the carnage of a scene like this: the mangled vehicle, survivors calling out for their loved ones, sparks flying from a machine being used to cut someone out of the wreckage. But here, we don’t need to see anything else. We don’t need a spectacle to marvel at; we have great writing. Breaking Bad’s season two finale took a popular, if slightly stale, trope and breathed new life into it, the writers adapting it to fit the story they were telling. The story of Walter White will live on, and it’s not just because of masterful season finales like this one, but because of the show’s consistently high quality. WORDS BY GILLIAN DOYLE
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Back to School (on Screen): A College TV Watch list WORDS BY CIARA CONNOLLY
As we enter the dawn of a new era of Zoom lectures and remote learning, I can’t help but feel sorry for the scores of students, like myself, who will miss out on many of the traditional formative experiences of college life. So, whether you are a wide-eyed fresher or a seasoned third-level student, I have assembled a list of college-centred series you can live vicariously through in these strange times.
Community Revolving around a dysfunctional and eccentric study group at a community college, led reluctantly by suspended lawyer Jeff Winger (Joel McHale), Community showcases a diverse group of characters from all walks of life, from mature students to disgruntled faculty members. The gang’s bizarre adventures in improving both themselves and their failing college will have you longing for the days of mass gatherings and group hugs. This series is one of my favourites because it perfectly illustrates the way in which people with very different personalities and backgrounds can come together in college and end up as unlikely friends. It also has an array of unique themed episodes, including annual paintball fight showdowns and a historical pillow fort war documentary, making you wish you could have put Greendale down on your CAO application. Available on Netflix.
Dear White People Following the lives of a group of Black students at a fictitious Ivy League college, Dear White People captures the petty politics and scandals that often go hand in hand with attending a prestigious institution. Getting its namesake from the controversial campus radio show hosted by film student Samantha White (Logan Browning), the series delves into issues surrounding racism and discrimination, and the many forms of activism students can get involved in to combat them. Despite being an American show, these issues are universal and still relevant on Irish campuses, even without the lenient gun laws and high police brutality rates of the US. Available on Netflix.
Fresh Meat For a viewing experience a little closer to home, Fresh Meat focuses more on the social aspect of college than the academic side, which is ideal as that’s the side we will be missing out on for the foreseeable. The show marks the beginning of comedian Jack Whitehall’s rise to fame as he plays the pretentious JP, who joins five other freshers in moving into off-campus housing in Manchester. Tackling the complexities of living in student accommodation with all the doubts and mistakes that come with starting a new chapter, the series definitely serves as a cautionary tale against getting sexually involved with your new housemates. Available on Netflix.
Normal People This list would not be complete without mentioning the reason you may have applied to Trinity in the first place; Normal People. Despite its glamorous portrayal of Trinity as a place where your childhood soulmate is only one house party away, I regret to inform you that you may spend the entire four years looking for the Marianne to your Connell, with little success. In addition, the show’s depiction of the overactive sex lives of students in their first year of college will also prove to be a let-down for the vast majority. However, this series is the most accurate crash course college experience you will find on screen, even if it’s due to purely geographical reasons. It covers a lot of iconic Trinity locations, serving as a virtual campus tour for new students and making returning students feel almost nostalgic for doing actual college work in the library. With the additional inclusion of buzzwords like ‘Schols’ and ‘Erasmus’, all that’s missing is a few cans of Prazsky at the Pav. 41
TV
A BEGINNER’S GUIDE TO K-DRAMAS WORDS BY SRISHMA CHATTERJEE
With the ‘Korean Wave’ or Hallyu taking over the world right now, it is no surprise that South Korean soap operas,
better known as K-dramas, are also becoming increasingly popular. Indeed, Netflix has not only gotten the rights to stream several K-dramas that were very popular in the past, but is also producing their own. K-dramas do a great job of introducing viewers to the small nuances of Korean culture, such as drinking beer with fried chicken, which is called chi-maek, the practise of acting cute to get what you want, known as aegyo, and eating black bean noodles or jjajangmyeon on moving day. Through these dramas we are often introduced to romanticised and stylised versions of what the life of a typical South Korean looks like; their fashion choices, their music tastes and their pop-culture references, along with learning how important a sense of community, social structure and following norms is to the Korean people. K-dramas are abundant with tropes that become all too apparent when you’re an avid watcher like myself. A classic would of course be the rags-to-riches storyline that makes us want to root for the underdog character through their struggles. There is also the constantly-looming ‘love story’ element in dramas across all genres. Even in a horror drama, you will always find at least two people falling in love. Having trouble knowing where to start in the world of K-dramas? Not to worry, I’ve rounded up a selection of the best starter dramas covering a range of tropes and genres.
For the Hopeless Romantics
If romcoms are your go-to comfort place, then Weightlifting Fairy Kim Bok Joo would be a great place to start. This drama tells the heart-warming young adult story of a 20 year old female weightlifter falling in love for the first time with a handsome collegiate swimmer, experiencing a whole different world outside of lifting barbells. It features a strong female lead, a concept being explored only recently in South Korean dramas. Although the feminism isn’t overt, the struggles facing women can be seen in protagonist Bok-Joo doubting her chosen path and wanting to be a ‘normal girl’, even going as far as resorting to lying about what she really does at college from her crush. Coffee Prince is another classic old-time favourite starring arguably the most popular South Korean actor, Gong Yoo (he is my absolute favourite, but I will try to not be biased). The story revolves around the dreams and lives of four people who meet and work together at a café. The lead protagonist, Han-Gyul, who does not want to be tied down and join the family business, reluctantly takes over running the family owned café and meets Eun-chan, a girl with an unpredictable personality who he hires, mistakenly thinking her to be a boy.
For the Thriller Addicts
If nail-biting, sofa-gripping, adrenaline-rushing suspense is more up your alley then not to worry, South Korean dramas have you covered. A personal favourite, Psychopath Diary, would be a great place to start. It tells the story of Dong-Sik, a timid office worker who witnesses a murder and accidentally picks up the diary belonging to the serial killer. Due to a drastic turn of events, Dong-Sik gets into an accident, losing his memory, which causes him to believe that he himself is the serial killer. As a masterpiece produced by Netflix, historical zombie thriller Kingdom should be on the top of your watchlist too. Set during the reign of the Joseon dynasty, it follows crown prince Lee Chang’s journey to discover the truth behind the plague of the undead that is ravaging his kingdom. This drama manages to combine action and suspense with a historical setting, even adding in court politics, to make an entirely entertaining, binge-worthy mix. This is also the only K-drama I have watched, and I have watched way too many K-dramas, that does not have a love story even two seasons in, which is a fresh and rare thing in this world. 42
For T ho s e L o oking for a G o o d Cr y Another genre that is so well done by South Korea is pure, melodramatic romance. Possibly the most widely watched K-drama of all time; Goblin, fits perfectly into this category. Also known as Guardian: The Lonely and Great God, we follow the story of Kim Shin, portrayed by the ever amazing Gong Yoo, a great general of the past who was cursed with immortal life, becoming Dokkaebi (Goblin) after he was murdered by the king out of jealousy. Tragically, his suffering can only end when he meets his ‘bride’, who will be destined to kill him with a mystical sword. This story of star-crossed lovers, along with an even more heart-breaking story of the second pair, the resurrected King and the Queen (Kim Shin’s sister), has brought most viewers to tears, me included. As such, prepare for it with copious amounts of tissues.You have been forewarned. Chicago Typewriter is another romance, taking place in two drastically different time periods of Korea - the present day and in 1930s Korea under Japanese occupation, a period of extreme political turmoil. It covers the story of three Korean freedom fighters who are resurrected 80 years later. The lead protagonists are Han Se-Ju, a celebrated author in present-day Seoul who has fallen into a slump, Jeon Seol, an ‘anti-fan’ of Se-Ju, and Yoo Jin-Oh, an extremely talented mysterious ghost-writer who offers to help Se-Ju for a certain price. The series beautifully depicts friendship, love and betrayal that spans almost a century and how different the values of these things are in different times. Be prepared to hate the mysterious typewriter, who seems to be the cause of all the misfortune that befalls the protagonists.
Advanced Viewing The aforementioned dramas should help a complete newbie to get started, but for those who are feeling more confident in exploring beyond, I would recommend looking into the Reply series. A series of three unrelated dramas set in 1988, 1994 and 1997 in South Korea, Reply follows the lives of a group of teenage friends and how they grew up in these respective time periods, showcasing what life was like for a Korean during those times. The protagonist of each of the three instalments is always a young teenage girl who is shown to mature through various life experiences, and through a love triangle. All three instalments keep us guessing who the husband/father is until the last episode using various tricks, leaving you either ecstatic that the male character you were rooting for all along ended up with the girl, or devastated and wronged that he did not. The Playbook series, also called the Wise-Life series, is another great slice-of-life series that is worth a watch. The first instalment, Prison Playbook, is a drama that depicts the story of prisoners and staff at a small prison. An unlikely drama in the slice-of-life category, it shows the good in people and humanizes prisoners. The second instalment in this series is Hospital Playlist, which details the story of five doctors who met in medical school and have been very close since,and how they ended up working together in the same hospital. This is not like Grey’s Anatomy or House where you have threats of plagues and rare unheard-of diseases, instead it shows a more realistic portrayal of the life of a doctor, the sacrifices they need to make for their job and the reality of having to deal with constant grief.
Where to Watch
Netflix is the easiest place to find K-dramas nowadays, with all the previously-named dramas (except for Psychopath Diary) available to stream right now. However, for those who do not have a Netflix subscription, I myself have watched all the above-mentioned dramas on other free streaming platforms such as Viki. If you are willing to watch 15 minutes of ads for every 20 minutes of an episode, then Viki is your one-stop shop for all Asian dramas. On the other hand, if you really do not want to waste your time watching ads, and are willing to withstand various pop-ups and questionable software that causes your antivirus to shudder, there are plenty of hidden corners of the internet where K-dramas can be found. I’ll say no more. There is such a wide variety of K-dramas out there that cover almost all genres, meaning it can get understandably overwhelming. As Oscar-winning director Bong Joon-ho famously said, “once you overcome the one-inch tall barrier of subtitles, you will be introduced to so many more amazing films”. This can be perfectly translated into the experience of watching Korean dramas. At first, it might feel like a world completely unfamiliar to what you are used to seeing in Western media, but by watching the dramas carefully you can gain a deeper understanding into Korean society. So, don’t be afraid to go out of your comfort zone and go beyond this list to explore all that South Korea has to offer through the magical world of K-dramas. Hwaiting! (Best of Luck!) 43
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Reality (?) TV WORDS BY CIARA CONNOLLY ART BY ANDRÉS MURILLO
If an unhealthy amount of daytime television during lockdown
has taught me anything, it’s that all reality TV shows mainly centre around two things: love, and career success. These qualities are exactly what makes them so inspirational, and often so fantastical, to viewers everywhere watching as people’s lives play out in ways that we could never imagine for ourselves. Unfortunately for everyone involved, this is exactly the point. Reality shows, despite what their name would suggest, thrive on manufactured drama where ratings trump real life consequences, repeatedly resulting in dire effects on both sides of the screen. Prime examples of such shows include the British summer ‘bang-fest’, Love Island, and the long-running competition series America’s Next Top Model. Both shows are guilty of perpetuating narrow-minded stereotypes and beauty standards to viewers, particularly aimed at women. In 2019, after much backlash for their lack of body diversity, Love Island contestant Anna Vakili was hyped up by producers as the first ever ‘plus-size’ contestant, despite having an hourglass figure and flat stomach. She was undoubtedly a far cry from what many would consider plus-size, leading to countless social media posts from viewers now needlessly questioning their own weight. This portrayal also certainly had an impact on young girls tuning in every night who might be more vulnerable to issues with self-esteem and self-worth. These stereotypes and standards aren't just pushed upon the viewers. The majority of America’s Next Top Model’s (ANTM) contestants have been subjected to mandatory makeovers over the course of the show, after being told that their natural beauty is ‘not marketable’. In addition, models who objected to these drastic changes, notably women of colour, were lambasted by the judges, labelled as ‘angry’ and ‘difficult’. In one instance in 2004, contestant Yaya DaCosta (now an accomplished actress appearing on Chicago Med) was berated for embracing her natural beauty, and told that her “intensity to prove her ‘African-ness’” was “too overbearing”. After her eloquent and polite rebuttal she was simply dismissed as “defensive” and “condescending'' by head judge Tyra Banks, the host of a show that supposedly stood for empowerment. Although these harmful depictions can subconsciously distort our expectations of society, there’s yet a darker side to reality TV. Former Love Island contestants Sophie Gradon and Mike Thalassitis both took their own lives a few years after appearing on the series. While it’s undeniable that there were many contributing factors in these circumstances, both Gradon and Thalassitis, like many islanders, faced online bullying and harassment in response to their TV appearances. In one of her final interviews, Gradon said, “there would be so many negative comments. They are commenting on the way you look, the way you talk. They would come up with an opinion of you on a TV show where they’ve watched you for 45 minutes”. These tragedies led many to criticise Love Island’s lack of support services for these young people suddenly thrust into the spotlight, prompting them to update their guidelines to include therapy sessions and prolonged contact with contestants upon their return home. While many of the negative aspects of reality TV are rooted in society itself, programmes like Love Island and ANTM do little to distance themselves from them and promote positive change. Instead, they embrace them - stoking trials by fire on social media and promoting unrealistic ideals with little oversight. With tighter regulations and warnings for younger, more impressionable viewers placed on these programmes, we may be able to stop the blurring of the line between reality TV and real life.
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‘What if I’m not a superhero? What if I’m the bad guy?’: Lessons Learned Re-reading Twilight as a 21-Year-Old For me, like most people, lockdown has been a scary and uncertain time. In times of worry and uncertainty, I always find myself seeking out the familiar and the known as a kind of safety-blanket to cloak myself against waves of anxiety, with my go-to comforters often being movies that I’ve seen about a million times or well-loved books with yellowed pages. I’d been planning on re-reading Twilight for a while, and Stephenie Meyer recently releasing Midnight Sun was the final push I needed to commit to falling back into that world that I hadn't visited in a long time. This time around, my 21-year-old self found it harder to ignore some details of Bella and Edward's relationship that were either romanticized or went unnoticed by my 12-year-old self.
I was always firm in my place as a member of ‘Team Edward’, but I was surprised by some of his behaviour that I had evidently glossed over before. I remember being thrilled by Edward following Bella and her friends on a trip to Port Angeles andenvious when he was sneaking into her bedroom night after night to watch her sleep. Reading Twilight as a young teenager, I had no experience with romantic relationships and so I had no frame of reference to be able to separate a healthy relationship from an unhealthy one. What my younger self saw from Edward as a desire to protect Bella, I now recognise for what it really was: Edward didn’t simply ‘follow’ Bella to Port Angeles, he was stalking her. He wasn’t cheekily ‘sneaking’ into her bedroom every night either, but rather breaking into her bedroom and breaking every boundary of privacy while he was at it too. Edward’s behaviour in Twilight reminded me more of the stalker character Joe from the Netflix series You than the perfect vampire/god-like boyfriend that I remembered him to be. The popularity of modern tv series like You, which is based on a book, prove that Twilight isn’t an outlier in its portrayal of an obsessive boyfriend, and that it’s a common trope still used in fiction today. Friends also comes to mind, as a show from the 90’s that maintains a substantial level of popularity today, despite having a multitude of problematic aspects and its own portrayal of a controlling and possessive boyfriend in the form of Ross Geller. Edward excuses his overbearing behaviour much in the same way that my younger self used to, by believing that Bella is so hopelessly clumsy that she simply cannot take care of herself and so she is actually lucky to have someone like Edward to watch over her, as who knows what might happen to her otherwise. This excuse both exposes a lack of respect for Bella and loses accuracy when you consider that Bella is a largely sensible person and that Edward himself acknowledges that she has acted as the responsible caretaker for her mother her entire life and has now taken on that same role while living with her father, Charlie. I think that this tendency to excuse behaviour like Edward’s is instilled in girls from a very young age. I remember being pushed by a boy on the school playground and being told that ‘he only did that because he likes you’. This mode of thinking is dangerous because it encourages little girls to confuse meanness with love and this harmful thought process followed me into my secondary school years. Twilight got a lot of hardship because it’s ‘cool’ to hate popular things and all too common for the validity of things that have a predominantly female fanbase to be dismissed and ridiculed unjustly. Having first been published fifteen years ago, the series is also a product of its time in a way and there is a heightened awareness today of the signs of toxic relationships that there wasn’t when I was a teenager. Despite my hit of nostalgia being semi-replaced with a dose of reality, I still adore the nostalgia of Twilight and the feeling of comfort it gives me that eases the homesickness I sometimes feel for a time in my life that’s attached to such a palpable sense of safety that I can’t ever really return to. Reading Twilight makes that return possible for me, if only for a few sentimental hours.
WORDS BY RÓISÍN CAREY ART BY CIARÁN BUTLER
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Lockdown Routines
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M
y mum woke me up before 9 am every single weekday morning during lockdown.
It was beyond frustrating. Since I’m the literal opposite of a morning person, it did not suit me at all. The worst part of it all was that it seemed pretty unnecessary. It’s not like I had anywhere to BE. Or much to do. Online classes started late and any social interaction with friends usually happened in the evening. Nobody seemed to be ready for a call or FaceTime before the late afternoon. Everyone was sleeping in. So why all the hassle? Aside from the fact that my whole house was buzzing with activity from 7am onwards due to work or school concerns, the reason my mum always seemed to come up with was the fact that “we need a routine if we are to get through lockdown unscathed”. I complained and unwillingly complied, but the more I thought about it, the more I realised that maybe she was right… After a while, getting up earlier got easier. There was a certain comfort to this rhythm we were getting into that helped me get over the strangeness of these “unprecedented times”. It allowed me to adapt to online learning faster, since it did not feel like I was on holidays, and pushed me to actually complete my essays on time. Allowing lockdown to overpower everything, from my social life to my daily routine, would have probably put the biggest strain on my mental health and would have taken ages to recover from. I’m not saying it was perfect, but this small aspect of strict routine allowed me to feel like I was keeping a minimum of control over my life. I couldn’t change much about the events that had gotten me into this situation, but I could have an influence on that specific aspect. That’s not to say I wasn’t glad when holidays arrived and I was once again sleeping in, but at least something positive emerged out of this experience I really was not a fan of in the beginning: a sense of normalcy.
WORDS BY ALIX PHILOUZE ART BY REN O’HARE
Boycotting the Fast Fashion Industry WORDS BY ZOE TIMMONS
We
have been given yet another reason to abandon fast fashion in the name of more sustainable alternatives. For all their promises of trendiness, it would seem as though some of the biggest names in the fast fashion industry are yet to cotton on to the worst fashion faux pas of all – ripping off smaller brands. Not to worry though. The fashion news Instagram account DietPrada, which has posted countless exposés on big-name brands, will gladly clue them, and you, in. In their most recent round of naming-and-shaming, DietPrada called out Victoria’s Secret for plagiarising designs. The brand came under fire (yet again) for selling a range of lingerie which bears resemblance to the work of a black-owned lingerie brand, Edge o’Beyond. The Victoria’s Secret lingerie features “distinct signature elements” from the ‘Daisy’ set created by London-based designer Naomi De Haan. Responding to the controversy, De Haan described precisely just how insidious the fast fashion industry is, commenting that a brand “preying on independent Black businesses and then using brown and black prison labor to copy our products was a huge slap in the face.” Victoria’s Secret are not alone in their unethical practices. The entire business of fast fashion is built upon unsustainable practices. It is not concerned with artistic integrity because all that matters is the bottom line. So, rather than hiring a team to come up with original pieces, these multi-million-dollar brands have no shame in stealing and profiting from the designs of independent creatives. They ruthlessly prey upon small, often minority-owned brands who simply cannot compete with a company who cut costs at every corner to produce ‘trendy’ scraps for the masses. The recent scandal underlines both the appeal and drawback of fast fashion: it’s cheap. One of the main reasons fast fashion has survived thus far is the fact that consumers are reluctant to turn down a bargain - Victoria’s Secret retail their version for roughly half the price of Edge O’Beyond. You have to wonder though, what are the hidden costs of the apparent ‘bargains’ fast fashion offers us? For a business to profit from the production and selling of under-priced garments, somewhere along the line, they are exploiting their workers. Maintaining a fast fashion price point generally means that providing a living wage is off the table. Underneath the piles of €2 tops for sale, the shameful truth is laid bare - a factory worker might be lucky to see 2c of that, struggling to make ends meet while fast fashion giants such as H&M, Zara and PrettyLittleThing reap the benefits of their work. While it may seem more economical to buy the cheap version, the ethical cost involved is pretty hefty. Knowing that your fast-fashion purchases indirectly contribute to modern slave labour, treacherous working conditions and irreversible environmental harm makes the sweet success of bagging a bargain a tad sickening. It’s time to think twice before opening our wallets. We all know that money talks, and in supporting fast fashion retailers we are inherently supporting their unethical and downright slimy practices. Given that exploitation and fast fashion go hand-in-hand, the only ‘trend’ we should be supporting is sustainability. Sustainability is about more than having a tote bag or a KeepCup - (I’ll ashamedly admit that I still don’t own a KeepCup). There is no ‘one size fits all’ approach to shopping sustainably, and no one expects you to get it right all the time. Granted, practicing sustainability on a budget might seem daunting, but simply being aware of your spending habits and making small tweaks is a great start. Be mindful when making purchases think quality over quantity. Invest in pieces that suit your individual style rather than the graphic tee from Bershka you’ll soon see on every second person. In doing so, you can support smaller, sustainable brands while ensuring long-lasting and high-quality clothes. Does that mean you need to trash those countless bodycon dresses you hoarded from the days of underage discos? Definitely not. You can pop into your local charity shop and see whether they are looking for donations, or swap clothes with friends. If you’re looking for a side hustle now that Miss Rona has wiped out minimum-wage summer jobs, selling clothes on sites like Depop is an easy and ethical way to make money and practice sustainable consumer habits. Happy (sustainable) shopping! 47
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