TN2 Issue 3 20/21

2020-21 TN2 ISSUE 3 WINTER TN2MAGAZINE.IE

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

THIS ISSUE’S ART TEAM:

Cover Artist & Photographer Chloé Mant and Éadaoin Fagan Featured Artists and Photographers Lola Fleming, Chloé Mant, Nanami Ando Nic Suibhne, Catherine O’Brien, Megan O’Rourke Featured Photographer Catherine O’Brien

e ’Rourk

Lola F

nO Mega lemi

a Éad

o

n aga F in

ng

Editor-in-Chief Ursula Dale Deputy Editors Sophia McDonald, Sam Hayes Social Media Manager Ciara Connolly Online Editor Connor Howlett Art Oona Kauppi Catherine Byrne Fashion Gelsey Beavers-Damron, Ciarán Butler, Millie Brennan Film Connor Howlett, Savvy Hanna, James McCleary Food Dearbháil Kent, Grace Gageby, Kiara Kennedy Games Seán Clerkin Robert Gibbons Literature Shane Murphy Fiachra Kelleher Music Sophia McDonald, Ben Pantrey, Rory Codd Sex Alice Payne Chloé Mant, Karla Higgins Theatre Lucamatteo Rossi Television Ciara Connolly Gillian Doyle ALT. Clare Maunder Aditi Kapoor, Gráinne Sexton Layout Ursula Dale, Sophia McDonald, Fiachra Kelleher, Sam Hayes, Ciara Connolly Head of Illustrations Lola Fleming Head of Photography Andrés Murillo

CONTENTS Letter from the Editor Art & Design

Piet Mondrian, Neoplasticism, and the Artist's Most Iconic Compositions

A Beginner's Guide to Knitting The Haunting and Fantastical World of Harry Clarke

Fashion 2020 Fashion Trends // A Review Bridgerton and the Rise of Regency Fashion The Art of Minimalism

Film

Making a Festival Film on a Student (Lack Of) Budget “It’s a 22-Hour Movie!” - Cinematic Television in the Streaming Wars Food From Branch to Bottle: A Beginner's Guide to Homebrewing TN2's Declassified Guide to Eating in Isolation Games

Blurred Lines: Why the PS4 and Xbox One Should be Retired Social Constructs: What Do Towns and Cities in Games Represent?

Literature Flash Fiction // ‘In Untended’ Bryan Washington’s Memorial // A Review

Music Dream Festival: We Will Return to the Muddy Fields and Sweaty Tents Once Again Was Mark Fisher Right About Pop Music?

Sex Living With My Significant Other ‘drivers license’ and the Drama that’s Dominated the Internet What’s Your Love Language?

Theatre

1 2 3 4 6 8 10 12 14

16 18 20 22 24 26

28 30 32 33 34

The Promises of Embodiment

36

TV The Best and Worst TV Boyfriends The Real Housewives of The Other Side

40 42

ALT. Ode to a City: Dublin Nurturing Friendships from Afar Big Tech’s Political Peformativity The Billionaire Debate: Are ethical billionaires a myth?

Gaeilge Scannáin le Feachaint Orthu agus Tú ag Cniotáil Oscar Wilde: Mairtíreach de Chearta Daonna

44 44 45 46 48 49

Featured Photographer: Catherine O’Brien

Letter from the Editor: The exact history of Saint Valentine, a Roman priest who supposedly performed secret ceremonies for Christians, has a tricky legacy of origin. Identifying his story's relevance in the celebration of the namesake day, however, is a much simpler task.

Among some conflicting stories of his varying services of good will, one theme is perennial: the importance of celebrating love. This year’s Valentine’s day, as with all our beloved rituals pre-COVID, will be marked by its unique approach to this centuries-old holiday.

People globally (except, perhaps, in New Zealand) will be encouraged to distance from each other, rather than embrace and touch, in strange dissonance to the lineage of a day where physical and emotional intimacy are (usually) a priority. This issue therefore seeks to encourage a celebration of love beyond traditional romantic or physical boundaries, as moments of affection feel increasingly rare to us all.

February 14th will represent the passing of just another day in lockdown for many; some might even welcome a break from the increasingly commercialised nature of modern celebrations of Valentine's Day. Here at TN2, however, we hope to offer you a Valentine’s issue that eschews the expectations of this day's traditions, and instead simply embraces the idea that at the moment, in whatever form it may take, we could all do with a little bit more love in our lives. In light of threats of loss or separation, we begin to truly appreciate how precious the people we have to love really are.

Our Valentine's cover is a special homage to the concept of celebrating love, created as a collaboration between a couple: the art is produced by Chloé Mant, and the photography by Éadaoin Fagan.

Some written spotlights of this issue are: a guide to identifying your love language, a list of the best and worst boyfriends in TV history, and tips on nurturing friendships from a distance. I’d once again like to thank the TN2 staff who have dedicated themselves to this issue, and have worked diligently in spite of the ever-looming dark cloud that is this pandemic. Lá Fhéile Vailintín Faoi Mhaise Duit!

Stay safe.

Yours sincerely, Ursula

www.tn2magazine.ie ART BY LOLA FLEMING 1

Art & Design

Piet Mondrian, Neoplasticism, and the Artist’s Most Iconic Compositions Geographical planes and primary colours are elements of neoplasticism that transform fragmentation into form, and chaos into simplicity. These stylistic choices were advanced by Dutch artist Piet Mondrian (1872-1944) in a new era of expressionism known as ‘De Stijl’ (1917-1931). The National Gallery of Ireland’s limited exhibition on Mondrian showcases the chronological evolution of the artist’s work, from beginnings in naturalism, to pointillism and cubism, to the Neoplasticism Mondrian is renowned for today.

I visited the exhibit back in December 2020 during Ireland’s quick stint at Level 3; while the exhibit is no longer open for in-person viewing, the National Gallery has released a fantastically comprehensive online exhibit on Vimeo, led by the Gallery’s Janet McClean. On loan from the Kunstmuseum Den Haag, the works span over a 40-year period, first detailing Mondrian’s humble beginnings as a young Calvinist in the Netherlands at the turn of the 19th century. The artist’s time in the farming communities of North Brabant induced his fascination with texture and shape. While the subject of Mondrian’s paintings is largely agricultural, the artist does not focus on the details of the landscapes. Rather, as demonstrated in ‘Barn at Nistelrode’ (1904), Mondrian concentrates on the form of his subjects, squaring out blocks to bring attention to the natural angles of the composition.

With a burgeoning artist’s community specialising in light, colour, and pointillism, the Dutch province of Zeeland became a place of great inspiration for Mondrian. Intrigued by the intersection of spirituality and thought, Mondrian frequented the theosophical communities of Doesburg, Zeeland. These communities advocated for the maintenance of balance, harmony, and a spiritual connection with nature. As demonstrated in ‘Lighthouse at Westkapelle’ (1906), ‘Dune III’, and ‘Arum Lily, Blue Flower’ (1909), Mondrian painted through the lens of theosophy, bringing attention to the horizontal and the vertical. A dotted pointillist style with blue and green contrasts against hues of pink and orange, further emphasizing Mondrian’s prescription to the linear forces of nature. This period for the artist is verging on abstract; even so, it is grounded in the naturalist elements that are a central theme in all of Mondrian’s art.

After viewing an exhibit on Picasso, Sézanne, and Braque, Mondrian became enthralled with cubism. With a piqued interest in abstract art, Mondrian moved to Paris in 1911 and worked closely with artists including Rivera and Delaunay.

Mondrian captured trees and buildings, reducing the forms of the subjects into their basic shapes. The artist’s time in Paris marked a key transition in his work. Cubist compositions, including ‘Composition in Oval, Color Planes’ (1914), became the basis of Mondrian’s most iconic paintings.

In 1914, at the onset of World War I, Mondrian fled his Paris apartment for the Netherlands. The artist remained confined in Holland for the duration of the war, although it was during this period that Mondrian came together with Theo van Doesburg (1883-1931) to begin an internationalised art movement known as ‘De Stijl’, dutch for ‘The Style’. The two artists began this small community to establish a new artistic language that focused on elements of Mondrian’s past: the horizontal, the vertical, and primary colours. Although the group soon split over an artistic disagreement, Mondrian continued to utilize the techniques of Neoplasticism.

Mondrian returned to Paris after the war to continue advancing his art. Of all works produced, ‘Composition with Red, Blue, Black, Yellow, and Gray’ (1921) is the most striking; Mondrian eliminated details to produce a painting that reverberates tranquility. Stylized internet reproductions don’t do the composition’s texture justice; in person, Mondrian’s brush strokes are imperfect, and purposely rough. Whilst precision is not an obstacle for the artist, colour accuracy carves the way for resplendent visuals. Shades of white vary from egg white to a soft gray. Mondrian layers the paintings with consistent red, yellow and blue, using orange as an accent colour. Thick black lines differentiate the colour blocks, ensuring the simplistic appearance of a two-dimensional figure. Mondrian advanced further ‘De Stijl’ through repetition and variation until his death in early February 1944.

The artist’s contemporaries have employed impressions of Mondrian’s Compositions in art, architecture, fashion, and film. In the 21st century, Mondrian’s name is closely associated with modernism, naturalism, and internationalism; modern creatives will continue to appreciate and draw inspiration from Mondrian’s work for generations to come.

While the National Gallery is closed due to Level 5 Covid-19 restrictions, the Piet Mondrian Exhibit is available online 2 until February 14th.

WORDS BY CAROLINE BOYLE

A Beginner’s Guide to Knitting If

baking bread wasn’t your thing during quarantine, chances are you considered taking up another unexpected trend of 2020: knitting. In recent years, Nordic countries have established a new visual direction for knitting, which contains, at its core, the interaction of simplicity and good design. But knitting isn’t an immediate skill - it requires careful planning and time for improvement. Here’s the quickstart guide for someone just getting into knitting.

1. Stitches. Knitting is the sum of two stitches, the knit and the purl. Stockinette stitch is the most common alternation of these stitches, and resembles a flat series of braids on one side (knit) and horizontal waves on the other (purl). Both sides are knitted in garter stitch. In ribbing, stitches are knitted to create perpendicular ridges and purled to form indents. The effect is a stretchy fabric. The easiest way to understand these stitches is to look at them in ordinary pieces of clothing.

2. Notation. Notation depends on the language in which the pattern is written, but in English, k means knit and p means purl. Co is cast on, which is how you create the stitches at the beginning of a project. Kt2g means knit two stitches together in a right slant. Decreases that are left-slanting are ssk, or slip slip knit. Kt2g and ssk decrease stitches in a garment, for example at the crown of a hat. Fortunately, the knitwear designer will typically include a key with the abbreviations used.

3. Patterns. Now that you’ve understood stitches and notation, it’s time to find a pattern. Knit a scarf as your first project.

The Spruce Crafts and Purl Soho have easy, free patterns. Once you’ve got your foot in the door, sites like Ravelry, which is a resource for knitters and crocheters, can be useful for finding patterns. Designers will post their patterns there, likely at a price (5 euro is standard), but there are also free nuggets to be found. PetiteKnit is one of the more popular pattern designers online.

4. Yarn and Needles. There are many different types of yarn, and they come in many different colours. Go to a yarn store if you can: show the sales assistant your pattern and they’ll point you towards suitable yarn and needles. I’ve found that using good quality, natural yarns increases the likelihood of wear. Remember to keep the yarn labels for washing instructions. If you’re choosing yarn and needles on your own, pay close attention. The yarn you use will require a corresponding needle size. Check the recommended needle size on the yarn label. Check the size and type of needle (straight, double-pointed, or circular) in your pattern. Make a ‘swatch’ or a sample with your yarn and needles to match the pattern’s gauge. On Ravelry, you can look up projects that used the yarn you’re interested in. Later, you might use multiple strands of yarn at once. Until then, be patient.

5. Getting started. On the topic of patience, you’ll need it for this part. First, watch a tutorial on casting on. Then, watch a tutorial on the knit stitch. Cast on 20 stitches and knit on straight needles. Once you’ve got that down, learn to purl. When you try ribbing, use a smaller needle size and do a 2x2 rib. Now you can start your pattern. If your knitting looks like nothing the first few rows, continue. It will take shape. Continental style knitting is faster than English style knitting, but learn the latter first. Don’t be afraid to ‘frog’ (unravel) if your work looks wonky or you made mistakes – I do this all the time. Before you know it, you’ll be casting off your scarf. And look up blocking!

Congratulations, you’ve learned to knit! In the 2010s and 20s, knitting has experienced a resurgence. Now more than ever, patterns are stylish. Resources are at your fingertips. Yarns are diverse. Ultimately, there’s freedom in knitting. If you worry about sustainability, choose an eco-friendly yarn, and if you like hats that are just the right amount of oversized, adjust yours to your liking. It’s all in your hands.

WORDS BY OONA KAUPPI

3

Art & Design

The Haunting and Fantastical World of Harry Clarke If

you have ever visited the National Gallery of Ireland, you may already be familiar with some of the eerie and whimsical works of the twentieth century Irish artist Harry Clarke. It is in a small, dimly lit chamber at the back of the gallery that they reside - beyond the bright, high-ceilinged rooms of Irish paintings, the airy portrait gallery, the sweeping staircases. And there is truly no more suitable place in the gallery for Clarke’s pieces; for it is neither his paintings, nor his sketches, nor sculptures that inhabit this room, but his much-celebrated works of stained glass art. As highly stylised as his illustrative work, the figures depicted are solemn, wide-eyed, tall and spindly, distinctively androgynous in appearance and with delicate, exaggerated features.

It is interesting that these ethereal and provocative figures should be depicted in this way, as it is sacred art that they are featured in: take, for example, the 'Mother of Sorrows' piece, a Pietà in which a heavy-lidded Virgin cradles a gaunt and emaciated Christ. This style distinct to Clarke sees the convergence of the divine and the worldly, of innocence and near eroticism.

'The Travelling Companion', Photo © National Gallery of Ireland

4

A major influence upon Clarke’s illustrative and eerie style was the Art Nouveau movement, to which he was introduced at a young age by his craftsman father Joshua Clarke. Harry Clarke’s family believed that he was also very moved by the fact he attended the same school that James Joyce had, and that this was a factoring influence in his eventual “fascination with the terrors of damnation”. It was these very terrors that created such intriguing contrasts in his sacred work in particular.

By the time he reached his late teens, Clarke was studying stained glass art at the Dublin Art School; it was during his time there that his portrayal of The Consecration of St. Mel, Bishop of Longford, by St. Patrick was awarded a gold medal for stained glass art in the 1910 Board of Education National Competition. His talents recognised, he then went on to train in London, and after attempting a few sets of illustrations that were never completed, he finally published his first work in 1916: six colour plates and twenty four monotone illustrations for a gift book edition of Hans Christian Anderson’s Fairy Tales. His timing could not have been better: the Golden Age of Illustration of the 20th century was just beginning to gain momentum, and soon Clarke was in high demand. It was during this period of time that he produced a series of illustrations for a gift book that made definite his reputation as an accomplished illustrator - a gift edition of Edgar Allen Poe’s Tales of Mystery and Imagination. With both Poe’s and Clarke’s styles being similarly eerie, peculiar, and bizarrely romantic, they complimented each other quite beautifully.

'Mother of Sorrow', Photo © National Gallery of Ireland

Harry Clarke’s strange and wonderful style led him to become leader of the Irish Arts and Crafts movement, a prolific illustrator, and an internationally renowned stained glass artist. The contradictions in Clarke’s work that define his style reflect a broader contrast between Clarke’s work and those that much of it was made for: the Catholic church. Within this repressive and stringent culture Clarke’s work emerged strange and incandescent, just as his stained glass pieces do from the dark walls in the back room of the National Gallery.

WORDS BY CATHERINE BYRNE

5

Fashion

2020 Fashion Trends //A Review WORDS BY CIARÁN BUTLER

2020 was a year like no other. Society was engulfed in a pandemic that changed everyday life as we all knew it. The fashion industry changed alongside the pandemic, with social media becoming a primary marketing source. Tik Tok became a virtual world stage for fashion and gave birth to a variety of trends. With the new year, I thought it was the perfect time to review what clothes dominated the market last year and give you all a slice of my thoughts.

1.

Tie-dye anything.

There are certain things I believe all of us associate with the first initial lockdown. That is whipped coffee, Animal Crossing and, of course, tie dying absolutely anything and everything in sight. I believe the accessibility of being able to tie dye was the reason it went viral, and having tik tok as a tutorial centre made it even better. Spray bottle of bleach and an old jumper? That’s now a trendy garment babes.

2.

Those nylon Prada bags As seen on every influencer, the 2000s nylon Prada shoulder bag was a must have for the fashion forward around the world. Coming in eleven colours, this shoulder bag was it. I honestly love the aesthetic, very y2k vibes - 10/10 for this trend.

6

3.

Everything beige?

Beige seemed to be the IT colour for clothes this year. I feel like my entire Instagram feed was just filled with different shades of beige everything, from bags to jumpers. While it was not my cup of tea, I still feel obliged to say it was very aesthetically pleasing, mainly because I love a bit of colour blocking.

4.

Flares, flares and more flares Bringing disco back, flared trousers truly were a staple this year. I would back this trend 100% as I adore a flared trouser.

However, flares are not the same as a boot cut (aka the devils incarnate in denim). No, flares give you that Mamma Mia ‘sleeps with three gorgeous but random men and buys a hotel in Greece’ energy that I personally feel akin to. Flares will never die and I will fight anyone with a different opinion at the back of The Buttery.

5.

Layers. Lots of layers.

Honestly layering is not a new concept, but it is one that took over, thanks again to the virality of tik tok. Turtle neck, a t-shirt, and a cardigan? At least you won’t catch a cold. I feel this trend was very popular with the e-boy/girl aesthetic/alt fashion scene. The vibes were very tik tok couture anyways, so I loved it! It was a great way to reuse old pieces and bring them to life again.

6.

Anything Harry Styles wore in 2020 Man is a fashion icon. Need I say more?

While there are many more fashion trends to note, I feel like 2020 is a year to be left behind, buried, locked away and never been heard from again. On that note, stay safe 7

Fashion

Bridgerton

WORDS BY GABRIELA GRZYWACZ

and the Rise of Regency Fashion Like

everyone else for the past month, I have also been obsessed with Bridgerton, not only for the steamy scenes and the extravagant balls but also for the amazing costumes. Bridgerton-Esque corsets have also been flying off the shelves in Victoria’s Secret and Amazon as TikTokers have gotten onto the trend. I cannot count how many TikToks I have seen where a person buys a corset specifically because they like the Bridgerton aesthetic. Numerous websites, such as Cosmopolitan, have written about this phenomenon. The costumes in Bridgerton are truly amazing as they were handmade specifically for the show, it taking about four months to create the whole wardrobe. Due to the popularity of Bridgerton and the fashion trend that it has inspired, Lyst this month called the trend “regency-core” while New York Post has called it “royalty-core”. As a fan of period tv shows and movies (Pride and Prejudice is still one of my favourite movies and I watch it at least once a month), I found it interesting that it was Bridgerton in particular that started this viral trend.

8

This is possibly due to the fact that we are all eager to binge on some new tv shows and, let’s be honest, we have certainly run out of those over the past year. This results in everyone just consuming the same shows at the same time, which generates a buzz. Bridgerton at least feels this way, but, upon further digging, I saw that fashion designers have been on this regency revival for over two years now, with the likes of Loewe and Marc Jacobs being inspired by such designs.

However, it is curious to see how one show can inspire such a response especially with regards to corsets. Corsets have been used historically to make the waist smaller but some people swear that they are great for back support as well. I would also say that corsets never went out of fashion. The trend of waist trainers that was prominent a couple of years back (aided by the Kardashians all promoting them on their Instagrams) were basically corsets that were supposed to change the shape of your body. This Bridgerton trend feels very different, though. Refreshingly, it seems like the people that have gotten into this “regency-core” trend have done so simply because they like the look of corsets rather than having the need to change their bodies. Apart from corsets, other regency-core aspects have been seen through the past couple of years, including puffed sleeves and one of my favourites: pearls.

All of these aspects of period fashion that have become quite popular over the past couple of years are still much more subtle than the combinations and very authentic portrayals of regency period fashion that have rocked TikTok. Bridgerton has started to let people explore and allow them to wear whatever they like. I came across countless TikToks where people just bought corsets and wore them out because they liked how they looked in them. As someone who has also dressed older than I was and not cared, it’s great to see people choosing to wear what they like rather than being confined to the clothing uniform of a certain age, gender, and time. I doubt that we’ll be wearing regency period dresses to pop to the shops anytime soon, but the corsets are here to stay.

9

9

Fashion

The Art of Minimalism How a more minimalistic approach to fashion can reduce your overall carbon footprint.

“Training yourself to become more selective is the single most effective thing you can do to upgrade your wardrobe. Try to think of your closet as an exclusive, members-only club.

Only pieces that you love and are truly excited to wear get an invite” - Anuschka Reese

As another season of blustery spells and dark evenings draws to a close, it is time to drag

the summer clothes down from the top of the wardrobe and hang up your winter woollies.

But, before you take one look at your old summer dresses and nonchalantly deem them so last year, take a minute to think about the implications of buying a whole new wardrobe each season, and how, by adopting a more minimalistic style, you could see your clothes staying in fashion for longer.

It is no secret that the fashion industry is one of the biggest contributors to greenhouse gas emissions in the world. Each year, around 225,000 tonnes of clothing are dumped by Irish consumers (Source: Oxfam Ireland). Unfortunately, the majority of this ends up in landfills which in turn has a hugely negative impact on the environment. Twenty years ago, people were disposing of only half the amount of textiles that they are now. Why the excess? Why do we buy so much more clothing than what we need?

The answer is simple. With the unbelievably low prices offered by fast fashion companies and the newfound accessibility of trend following as a result of the rise of social media, the attraction of succumbing to every single fad is all too real. Of course, the problem with following trends is obvious: things don’t stay in style forever, leaving you with a black bin bag at the end of each season that has only been worn a handful of times.

10

This is where the capsule wardrobe comes to the rescue. The concept behind it is simple: instead of having a wardrobe overflowing with trend-pieces that won’t last from one season to the next, a capsule wardrobe is a more minimalistic collection of timeless, curated, good-quality pieces that will hopefully last for years. When building your own capsule wardrobe, it is important to think of every item that you buy as an investment.

These are garments that will be in your wardrobe for (hopefully) a very long time, so it is really important to make sure that you are buying things that are of good quality. First, consider the colour: is this a colour that you like and will not get tired of? Can you think of other items already in your wardrobe that you could potentially pair it with? Next, take a look at the style: is this something that is likely to fall out of fashion quickly? Does it suit your own personal style? Will you wear the item enough? A good idea is to use the five ways of styling rules – if you can’t think of at least five different ways that you would style the garment before you purchase it, then realistically you are not going to wear it enough to justify buying it.

As a general rule of thumb, more plain or basic pieces will stay in fashion for longer and are much easier to style. Bold prints and patterns might seem great in theory, but they can quickly become tired and outdated. Generally, sticking to neutral colours like cream, beige and black is a good idea as they make up the basis of the vast majority of wardrobes because of their versatile and enduring nature. Think of Audrey Hepburn’s iconic black dresses, or Marilyn Monroe’s signature white halter neck number. These are simple, timeless pieces that have stayed in style for decades and are unlikely to fall out of fashion anytime soon.

The benefits of adopting a more minimalistic approach to fashion are obvious.

Imagine the amount of space in your house that could be freed up if you eliminated your least-worn items from your wardrobe. Picture the money that you could potentially save by cutting back on the amount of clothing that you buy and think about what you could alternatively use this money for. Most importantly, consider the effect that changing your shopping habits would have on the environment as a whole. Consuming less clothing is one of the easiest ways to reduce your carbon footprint and to play your part in preserving the world’s natural resources for future generations. What’s not to love right?

So, next time your finger hovers over that all-to-attractive ‘add to basket’ button and you anticipate the thrill of making yet another online purchase, take a minute to think about what exactly you are doing. Consider the degree of necessity of making such a purchase, picture the landfills of the world rapidly filling up with discarded clothing and repeat in your head the age-old mantra: sometimes, less is more.

WORDS BY MILLIE BRENNAN

11

Film

Making a Festival Film on a Student (Lack of) Budget WORDS BY CONNOR HOWLETT

Sdaunting hooting a festival-quality film may seem like a rather unrealistic creative endeavour for a student. It can be particularly when you read of “low budget” independent films that cost roughly €1,000,000. Unfortunately for us, most

students don’t have a spare million within reach after having to pay preposterous Dublin rent and university fees that already felt like a bit of a rip off before our in-person classes were cancelled. Movie money always appears a little fantastical from a distance, but the costs do add up. A lecturer in one of our film classes last year broke down how much a film that we had been scheduled to shoot at the end of that semester would have cost in the “real world” if we were paying cast and crew industry minimum for their contribution. The total sum for shooting a three-page script that only consisted of four scenes, with five days of prep, three days of shooting and one day of post-production, would have been €23,140.75. This doesn’t even include equipment rental, which can be very pricey. We had to plan our shorts with a budget of €0. Money plants may exist, and they may be beautiful, but they won’t finance your low budget film. This lack of budget can place a huge burden on a young filmmaker who is bursting with ideas and vision, but it can also be a special kind of pressure that forces innovation and creativity. Sometimes, this budget-less creativity can be rewarded by a film festival.

Cáit Murphy, a Senior Sophister student in Film and English Studies, is one such Trinity creative whose cinematic ingenuity caught the attention of festival programmers. She Talks in the Afternoon (Cáit Ní Mhurchú, 2020) is an experimental documentary short that was selected for two film festivals last year, first as a finalist at the Lift-Off First-Time Filmmakers 2020, before going on to be nominated for Best Student Film at HER International Film Festival.

The film is a collage of voices, images and reflections, sitting with three friends who meet up and talk in an afternoon in August 2019.

With the high-concept desire to record a conversation in a restaurant or café, inspired by the cinéma vérité films of which she is a fan, Murphy approached several different locations to ask for permission to film, and was grateful to the very accommodating Beanhive on Dawson Street. Murphy made the film with her friends Ren O’Hare and Tilly Driscoll Smith, and didn’t give them a script. Instead, they were prompted to discuss issues important to them: namely, gender, place, identity.

Ren

12

hy p r u M t i á C O’Hare &

Mugged O ff The film was shot on a Sony camcorder, as Murphy prefers the aesthetic quality that it captured over that of a smartphone. She shot lots of footage (about an hour or so of conversation) which gave her plenty of content to edit from and allowed her to be selective of both dialogue and image in post-production. Sound quality can be one of the major challenges on student films, as specialist equipment can be pricey, but bad quality sound can at its worst make a film truly unwatchable (like a certain palindromic blockbuster that did not save cinema). To avoid this, Murphy used a setting on the camcorder to better pick up speech and further optimised the dialogue in post. Ultimately, she did not look for perfection and wanted the street sounds to be an integral part of the finished product. The result is a poetic blend of conversation and diegetic street rhythm, and you truly feel as if you are sat with these friends listening to the fascinating things they have to say whilst surrounded by the hustle and bustle of the world. Those were the days.

In terms of post-production, Murphy relied on the free resources available to her, such as Trinity’s Mac Labs, which all have Final Cut Pro editing software installed. She suggests that “it’s worth making films (especially experimental films or documentaries that are cinéma vérité in style) which don’t require a crew (shooting by yourself, shooting on-the-go, making your own music, editing) and learning those skills.” When finally submitting to film festivals: “be patient. It took a year between shooting and festivals where the film was screened.” Unfortunately, this does usually cost a bit of money, but you can narrow down which festivals to submit to on FilmFreeway by focusing on student film categories, free categories and experimental film categories (if appropriate). If you find the right festival, you won’t need to pay much more than a cinema ticket. Keep an eye out for Dublin University Film Festival (DUFF) from DU Film, which is open for film students in Ireland, and free to submit to this year.

Whilst Murphy’s creative process is significantly more sophisticated, it is not the only way to shoot a student short to gain industry attention. Mugged Off (Lola Fleming, Peter Horan, Connor Howlett and Grace Kenny, 2020) is a film I co-directed and starred in about a man having an affair with a sexy mug after his first mug lover goes missing in the vast wilderness of St. Stephen’s Green. Seriously. We had a budget of approximately four bus tickets up O’Connell Street during production and four coffees for pre-production while we came up with the idea, shot it on an iPhone using the in-built lens, made it a silent film to avoid having to worry about sound quality, used a royalty free soundtrack, and edited it on a laptop’s free editing software. Last year it was selected for the Dublin International Film Festival’s (DIFF) First Frame student showcase, and it was screened at the Light House cinema in Smithfield. If a film that features me half-naked in bed with a mug can make it to the big screen, who knows where your filmmaking could take you?

She Talks in the Afternoon and Mugged Off are available to watch on YouTube.

Follow @caitmxrphy on Instagram; @caitmurphy10 on Twitter.

13

Film

“It’s a 22-Hour Movie!”

Cinematic Television in the Streaming Wars WORDS BY JAMES MCCLEARY

The worlds of film and television haven’t always gotten along too well.

For the longest time, it was a sign of decline for a bigshot Hollywood actor to take up work on the small screen, whereas nowadays any show without a star in the credits is likely to be dead on arrival. The rapidly increasing favour afforded to television in the twenty-first century can of course be traced back to certain tentpole, critical darlings like The Sopranos (David Chase, 1999-2007) and The Wire (David Simon, 2002-2008), but the most recent factor in this development is indisputably Netflix (the founders of which disappointingly are not also named David).

Famously, Netflix introduced the ‘binge format’, dropping every episode of each show on a single launch date as if it were a movie premiere, and giving the audience total control over their rate of consumption.

Inevitably, this approach has started to seep into the creative process behind these shows, as more and more television writers are being expected to consistently achieve the standards of singular narrative film while still producing multiple episodes or even seasons of content.

Shawn Levy, one of the executive producers of Stranger Things (The Duffer Brothers, 2016present) has gone so far as to say that: “with every key decision, we really tried to think of it like a very long movie that would be parceled into eight sections. That was our guiding mandate.” Stranger Things has since been promoted by Netflix as an “eight-hour movie”, and each subsequent season has been subtitled as if it were a sequel: Stranger Things 2, Stranger Things 3, etc. This trend has since taken the industry by storm, as every streaming service has sought its own flagship “x-hours movie,” with Disney Plus’ WandaVision (Jac Schaeffer, 2021) being the latest.

Whereas film and television were once at odds, now the industry-wide goal appears to be to force them together.

14

There are a number of likely reasons for this. The first is budgetary; Stranger Things 1 had a reported budget of approximately $6 million per episode, to a total of $48 million for eight hours of content. The similarly themed feature films It: Chapter One (Andy Muschietti, 2017) & Chapter Two (Muschietti, 2019) on the other hand, had a combined budget of approximately $114 million for an overall runtime of just over five hours. As viewers in the comfort of our own homes, we accept a slower, more financially conscious pace from television; characters can talk in recycled hallway sets for minutes at a time, while VFX monsters can lurk invisibly in the shadows until episode six of eight without complaint. Film does not have this luxury, burdened instead with the expectation of cathartic entertainment compressed into a single cinema viewing. When one considers that the Netflix business model depends on a show’s ability to keep audiences watching in order to remain profitable, the opportunity to create cheaper equivalents to the biggest blockbusters on the market, while also maintaining engagement for a considerably longer stretch of time, must seem like a modern-day miracle.

But while this development is evidently beneficial from a business standpoint, it is starting to look like the “eight hour movie” approach is taking a toll on the writing teams behind your favourite shows.

Whereas a film tends to be developed creatively by a single director and one or two writers (unless you’re part of the small army who wrote for Spider-Man: Homecoming (Jon Watts, 2017), in which case, why are you reading a student publication), television tends to be more of an impulsive process between a room full of writers, evolving storylines naturally over time with only a loose end goal in sight. To refer back to the Stranger Things example, there appears to be something of a disconnect between the show’s television-formatted pre-production and film-scaled production procedures, as was hinted at by Levy when he said that the COVID-19 pandemic “impacted very positively by allowing the Duffer brothers, for the first time ever, to write the entire season before we shoot it.” In television, making the story up as you go along is perfectly natural: it’s part of the process. But if Stranger Things is being treated like a franchise of “eight hour movies” serialised as a single arc rather than an episode-to-episode journey, then the improvisational nature of television simply isn’t sustainable. So if you’re wondering why Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown) joined that goth gang at the tail-end of Stranger Things 2 out of absolutely nowhere, this is probably the reason why.

I do not believe this trend is going to become the new normal; already shows like Succession (Jesse Armstrong, 2018-present) and Schitt’s Creek (Dan & Eugene Levy, 2015-2020) are wrestling their way into critical and public favour with distinctly episodic storylines unadaptable to film. The issue is prevalent predominantly in the streaming wars between Netflix, Amazon Prime, Disney Plus and the hundreds of doomed copycats, and it is the opinion of this author that it will ultimately result in a sense of fatigue that will hurt their biggest brands irrevocably. Remember when Netflix had six Marvel shows? Me neither.

15

Food

From Branch to Bottle:

A beginner's guide to homebrewing WORDS BY SONNY DALY

Even

though humanity is suffering through a plague, the traditional order of nature is still working as it should, bringing the bountiful array of foragable and harvestable fruit of the seasons with it. In a primal sense, the best examples of human civilization and a flourishing environment mean the production of alcohol from excess agricultural output and the produce from wild plants. In such tedious times as those in which we live, where most of us are cooped up at home with little to work towards and too much time on our hands, we should really be preparing for the rejoicing that will happen at the end of all this. We should be amassing an arsenal of completely free homebrew wines and beers which can be shared with our friends and family; not just at the lifting of restrictions but all future times which merit celebration.

16

In principle, alcohol is just the result of yeast eating sugar, yet people will still pay extortionate prices for it.

It can be made at home with minimal equipment in the space of a month or two, or however long you’re willing to age it for after the initial fermentation. A certain degree of sanitation is required when it comes to your fermentation vessel, which can be whatever sealable receptacle you have available. Keep in mind however, that carbon dioxide is a by-product of fermentation so you will need an airlock on your vessel, or else endure the daily ritual of burping your brew (just twist the lid and let it fizz). Besides that, all that is required is some form of yeast and sugar; both of which can be bought from any supermarket. Bread yeast works okay, but the end result might be a bit…bready. If you’re feeling adventurous there are many sources in nature that harbour wild yeasts; everything from young pine cones to the air that you breathe, which can be cultivated in a starter. If you want to make life easier, wine yeasts can be bought online for next to nothing.

The next step is to find flavour. The possibilities are endless, but a few popular homebrew wines which can be made from fruits sourced in parks and hedges in your locality, such as elderberry, blackberry, crab apple, dandelion and plum. Another option can simply be to collect all your uneaten fruit at home that might be going bad and freezing it until you have collected enough to brew. The freezing process also makes hard fruit like crab apples softer, and therefore easier to press. If you want to have an easy life, there’s always the shop, where many fruits are available (as well as honey if you’d like to make mead). If you do choose to wait for autumn to pick hedgerow fruit, or the produce from that old apple tree in the garden that everyone thinks is a burden, your patience will be rewarded. Grab a bucket and fill ‘er up. 2-3 kilos of fruit should make a flavoursome gallon (4.5L) of wine. If you get any strange stares while out picking, let them look. You’re the one winning in life.

Wash your fruit and then crush it in a pot to release the juices, but don’t make it into jam as bursting pips in fruit can make your wine bitter. Boil the fruit along with a gallon of water to kill off any evil yeast and to bring out flavour. Add 1.5kg of granulated sugar in the boiled gallon of wine and stir. More can be added for sweeter results, and most likely a slightly higher alcohol content. Then add your wine to your fermentor, preferably with the fruit pulp in a straining bag to infuse more flavour throughout fermentation. Allow it to cool to lukewarm and then add your yeast. Put your fledgling booze in a dark, warm place and it should start bubbling within a day. In around 2 weeks the bubbling should have slowed considerably. You then remove the straining bag and transfer the wine into a second fermenter. The trick here is to remove the liquid on the top from the sediment on the bottom. This can be done using a rubber tube or the intestines of your dead enemies. Be careful not to shake up your concoction while it is fermenting and ageing as the sediment will make your wine bitter and resentful.

When the bubbling has ceased completely and you’ve aged it some amount past a month, transfer the finished wine into flip top bottles or whatever airtight container you have to hand. I just re-use my mother’s wine bottles. Stocks are in constant supply. A process called cold-crashing comes in handy at this point; you place your wine in a fridge until it has a finer clarity. Remember to avoid being a medieval serf and label your bottles. It looks a lot more professional (not to mention safer) to those who you’re serving it to. The practice of homebrewing not only increases your appreciation of your own self worth, but it also gives you a better understanding of where your booze comes from and what it contains in comparison to the likes of the ambiguous Tesco rosé. All homebrewers have varied methods of their craft but here above lies a relatively solid set of guidelines that has worked for me countless times. This article may be a mere cork in the stream of our relentless alcohol consumption, but I hope it becomes an inspiring start to someone’s future endeavor of making something out of nothing. Happy brewing and happier boozing.

17

Food

TN2’s Declassified Guide to Eating in Isolation We share our tips to prepare your own isolation bunker

You’ve gotten news that you’re a close contact of a confirmed Covid case, or you’re feeling under the weather you’re waiting for a Covid test. You’ve been told to restrict your movements and isolate yourself. What now?

You’re trapped in your room twiddling your thumbs, bored out of your mind and with nothing to eat. But what if you were prepared for this? We’re here to help you through the next period of isolation.

Takeaways We all love a takeaway now and again. Having to rely on Deliveroo, Just Eat or other takeaway services to bring you food? Nightmare. At the best of times on a student budget they’re expensive too. You can always cut corners with discount codes but it’s easy to get fed up with takeaways pretty quickly. While ordering takeout more than once a day every day during your period of isolation seems convenient, it is probably not the best thing for your health.

18

WORDS BY DEARBHÁIL KENT

Learn What Foods Are On Your Side Foods that are tinned or have a long shelf life are your new bffs. Foods like baked beans, tinned tuna and instant noodles all belong in your isolation shelf. Gathering things like a spare plate, glass, cup, set of cutlery and some kitchen roll isn’t a bad idea either. A valuable purchase in this time of isolation? A travel kettle. Not only will it heat up your instant noodles and other foods, but you can always make yourself a cup of tea or coffee and fill your hot water bottle.

Hairdryer Could be a good way to reheat up leftover takeaway/pizza!

Ordering Groceries to Your House While you may not be able to avail of the use of an oven, you can look into ordering groceries online to your door. Supermarkets usually do their own delivery service but you can also obtain groceries through the mobile app Buymie and even Deliveroo. This can be particularly good for ordering lunches and getting your fix of your five a day.

19

Games

Xbox One

Blurred Lines: Why the PS4 and Xbox One Should Be Retired

WORDS BY SEÁN CLERKIN

2020 brought us a new generation of console hardware, finally replacing the aging jet-engines in our living rooms with sleek, shiny, quiet gaming machines. The line between generations has never been more blurred, with just one major launch game (Demon’s Souls on PS5) being truly exclusive to next-generation consoles. The rest of the software lineup across both major platforms is a jumbled mess of cross-generational games. I’m here on my soapbox to tell you that’s a bad thing. Here’s why.

Let’s begin by stating the obvious: this argument against blurred, fuzzy boundaries between console generations is not a new one. Indeed, it has been championed by some of the more outspoken members of the PC gaming community for as long as console gaming has existed. The most well-trodden argument is that old hardware holds back the “progress” of the industry. Perhaps no generational transition was more exemplary of this than the 7th-8th generation transition in 2013. When Grand Theft Auto V was initially released on PS3 and Xbox 360 in September that year, PC gamers recoiled at the thought of playing the game at 25 frames per second. Watch_Dogs was one of the most hotly anticipated launch games of the 8th generation, but was ridiculed into memehood by its unimpressive graphics, which many gamers blamed on the requirement for a previous-generation version. These are some of the classic case studies used to argue that a commitment to old hardware holds the industry back. There are more examples this generation, in games like Watch Dogs Legion and Spider Man: Miles Morales. Despite the advent of hardware accelerated ray-tracing on new consoles, the developers of these games were forced to create other lighting solutions in order to release on previous-generation machines. While it is undoubtedly true, the problem with this argument is it ignores everything but graphical fidelity, as if that is the only way games can benefit from development exclusively on new hardware.

It is seldom mentioned that, just as new software can suffer from running on old hardware, the reverse can also be true. Toward the end of the seventh generation, countless PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 systems finally threw in the towel to the Yellow Light and Red Ring of Death respectively, as developers pushed their cooling systems to the limit. My own original PS3 was a casualty, ascending to the great recycling centre in the sky at the hands of Bioshock Infinite in 2014. The deluge of melted consoles is proof of the fact that advancement in software can outstrip even the most future-proof hardware. As another example, my original PS3, as I bought it in 2007, would not have been able to even install Grand Theft Auto V if its 60GB hard drive hadn’t been upgraded.

PS4

20

PS5

Hardware issues aside, clinging on to old systems can hamper the actual development process as well as the fidelity of the final game. There is no better exemplar of this than the now infamous launch of Cyberpunk 2077, which was plagued with game-breaking bugs, graphical glitches and unacceptable performance on Xbox One and PS4. One reason behind the botched launch was the absurd number of platforms the game targeted. In order to release on all major platforms, the team had to concurrently develop for ten versions of the game - PS4, PS4 Pro, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox One S, Xbox One X, Xbox Series S, Xbox Series X, Google Stadia and PC. If you had a hard time keeping track while reading that list, just imagine the herculean task that the relatively small Q.A. and programing teams at CD Projekt Red needed to juggle. This is not to say that the launch would have been any less disastrous if it took place on fewer platforms, but the rumoured rocky development process could undoubtedly have been smoother if the previous generation versions had been axed - cutting the number of target platforms in half. Of course, that could never have happened as CD Projekt Red’s financial incentive to release a previous-generation version was too great to ignore. 8 million copies of Cyberpunk 2077 were pre-ordered before launch, many of which were PS4 or Xbox One versions. The potential cost of not shipping the game on previous generation hardware meant that the team had to attempt the impossible task of making the game run on seven-year-old consoles.

Unfortunately, not much can be done to entice large developers away from older consoles, which tend to have far more units sold through to consumers than newer hardware. More units in the wild means more people who can buy your game. So here is my proposal. Hardware manufacturers need to set a trend. Platform holders like Sony and Microsoft should direct their first party studios to move exclusively to new consoles as soon as the development tools are available. This would mean that many millions of players would not be able to play brand new games on their 6-year-old machines. I understand that such a situation would not be popular, but to the sceptics, I say this; Those next-generation exclusive games will never go anywhere - they’ll be ready and waiting whenever gamers may get their hands on a new console, be it one, two, three or ten years into a new generation, perhaps even at a cheaper price. My hope is that this platform-led move would set an expectation among gamers that new hardware means new games that can only be played there. This would be the only way to ensure developers have the freedom to let their project be unbridled by hardware limitations.

Xbox X Series

21

Games

Social Constructs: What Do Towns and Cities in Games Represent?

The town is a space so common in both our lives and video games. As such, it may sound strange for me to suggest examining what the portrayals of towns in video games actually say more broadly, but I think that we often overlook these ubiquitous elements of game design and in so doing, fail to see how these games can shape the way we view equivalent spaces in the real world.

Many old RPGs center around fantasy or sci-fi battles. In games such as old Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest titles the player usually commanded a small band of heroes, who would save the world by vanquishing monsters and other threats.

These monsters often exclusively inhabited the wilderness however The town therefore serves as a landmark to chart the player’s progress and a place for much needed rest and relaxation. A place to heal and procure supplies for a lengthy venture through the next monster infested wilderness. The strongest feeling of relief I ever got from such a town was in Snowpoint City in Pokémon Diamond and Pearl (2007). This city comes at the end of the equal part hostile and wondrous route 216, the longest route in the game. After battling Pokémon on such a long route, with the falling snow slowing my Pokémon Trainer’s run to a crawl, the welcome sight of the Pokémon world’s excellent nationalised healthcare system (or the Pokémon Centre) was a relief. We need to be careful however, that we do not uncritically view this as solely a dramatic dichotomy. The positioning of nature as a hostile location and the town as a place where humans can walk around free of the stress of facing monsters has a political dimension, and an ecophobic one at that. While the politics of the nature, civilization dichotomy in games could warrant a book in and of itself, I think broadly it is simplistic to condemn ALL games that feature hostility in nature unilaterally, as stories in which humans have had to struggle against harsh landscapes are not inherently problematic. The issue is when a text portrays nature as a malicious force, out to get humans. To be brief I think the fact that Pokémon are equal part foe and friend, combined with the beauty of the landscape, establishes nature as something to be respected for both its beauty and power.

It is also not totally representative to paint the town exclusively as a safe space. Some games seek to shatter the illusion of civilization as inviting. Earthbound (1995) is a coming of age game in which the child protagonists are exposed first hand to the seedy elements of the adult world. The game’s final boss Giygas was inspired, according to the game’s director Shigasato Itoi, by an experience where he walked into the wrong screen at the cinema as a child. The film he walked in on was Kenpei to Barabara Shibijin (1957), and what he saw was a traumatic scene that he interperated as a rape scene (though this film does not contain a rape scene). This scene clearly discomforted the 8 year old Itoi and as such his gothic RPG focuses on the loss of innocence. Many of the enemies are adults such as policemen and gangsters. These characters often roam the streets of the game’s various towns, breaking down the established barrier of safety that the player may have associated with places of civilization. When the player sees certain characters roaming the overworld it may sooner prompt a response of crossing the street rather than walking up and talking to every stranger as they would in most RPGs. This was actually a radical departure for the time, but since then more games have played with this concept of urban conflict such as, Batman Arkham City (BAC) (2011). In Arkham City the streets have been given over to gangs and super villains. This game displays this suburb of Gotham as a hotbed of urban decay and crime. At the beginning, Bruce Wayne says in a speech to the media: 22

“Imprisoned behind these walls, gang leaders are fighting a bloody war in the middle of our once great city.

Every inmate from Arkham Asylum and Blackgate Prison has been relocated to this facility. How can this be safe for the people of Gotham?”

This speech could have served as a jumping off point for an interesting critique of failing prison systems and social supports, but in the context of this game, I believe it presents a fundamentally ignorant perspective. In the previous game, Batman Arkham Asylum (2009), as well as the series of comics upon which the game is based, Arkham Asylum is rarely depicted as a functioning psychiatric hospital and much more often perpetuates the cycles of crime that plague Gotham City. In the above passage we see Bruce Wayne (Batman) the protagonist, present Arkham Asylum as preferable to this new reformed “super prison” as the game calls it. The reference to the crime existing in the heart of the city also suggests that Wayne’s fundamental problem with Arkham City is that it gives over control of part of the city to the crime. Creating a ghetto where gangs rule in close proximity to the less criminal central district. Wayne’s question of “How can this can be safe for the people of Gotham?” also turns the inmates into a dangerous ‘other’ and not fully fledged members of civil society. The player knows Wayne is Batman and that his preferred method of dealing with crime is punching it in the face (which constitutes most of the gameplay). In combination with his rhetoric suggests a “tough on crime” policy ala the kind employed by the War on Drugs. The game displays however, little awareness of the impact of such policies. The War on Drugs was a policy adopted under the Nixon administration in the US. According to the article ‘How the War on Drugs Damages Black Social Mobility’ by Jonathon Rothwell, saw incarceration rates of black males double between the 70s and 2014. This happened despite a decrease in the amount of arrests relating to violent crime. The result is that black people are 3.6 times more likely to be arrested for selling drugs, despite black adolescents being 32% less likely to sell drugs. It’s difficult to paint a full picture in this article, so I do encourage you to do your own reading. I use these statistics merely to illustrate that the overt allusions to real world justice by BAC invites comparisons to real world “tough on crime” policies, which rarely address the underlying reasons why people commit crimes, and often do not punish appropriately or productively. Batman may fight super villains, but BAC as a text equates them with real criminals. The problem is not that the game says we need to deal with crime, the problem is the strategy it endorses.

In summary, many classically styled Japanese RPGs show the town as a place to restore in between the perilous and wondrous adventures through wild spaces. Games like Earthbound disestablish this by exploring an urban environment where any interaction with an adult can be frightening and potentially violent. This violent urban environment has been explored in more recent games, but such an exploration must be cognisant of the causes of urban crime and effective solutions for addressing it which BAC fails to do. Ultimately towns and cities are collections of humans and as such their construction (philosophical and physical) is representative of our experience of society.

WORDS BY SAM HAYES

23

Literature

Flash Fiction// ‘In Untended’ Tugboat

Alex gets the Navy ship by the bum and pulls it out into the middle of the channel. This is Navy ship P62, which Danika tells me used to be the new one but now they send to pick up migrants in the Mediterranean, like a slotted spoon. I correct her and say refugees but she corrects me back, with definitions.

Danika is a better person than I am but you won’t get to see that here. I watch Alex do her business so Danika won’t feel pressurised, but I give up after a while because they’re just sitting there, midstream, while someone goes and does something.

“I don’t know if I could choose a last meal, but I could definitely pick the side dishes,” says the TV chef on Danika’s laptop. They are both making a hollandaise sauce you can keep overnight and then reheat, but the chef never finishes his because Danika pegs him back to the start.

“Danika, did you hear that? Did you not think that was hilarious?”

“What? Oh yeah, yeah. I’ve watched it a few times.” Danika is good at everything except cooking, which is what she’s doing now. When you’re good at almost everything, you most enjoy doing the things you’re bad at. She is standing at the countertop now with another version of herself, one who’s bad at things and of whom nothing is expected. Her house is quieter than mine even though she lives closer to the city. Her father once insinuated that their windows are so good and so soundproof that they’re technically illegal, or he outbid the children’s hospital for them or something. He’s gone now, he and his wife, chasing sunbursts round the Cape of Good Hope.

Danika reckoned this was the right time for her first serious boyfriend – the cat, as they say, being out – and Kasper obliged and he is deadly, deadly serious – so serious that he is, in fact, a man, of almost thirty-one, and Photo says things like I Understand. © Hans

I go back to the bay window in the hope someHillething’s gone wrong out there but all that’s happened waert is P62 has turned a broadside to us and its sailors are hanging little stoppers off the edge. They’re turning it, I realise. It’s a manoeuvre. P62, like any Navy ship, is painted grey so it blends in with the Irish Sea. I point out to myself that Tugboat Alex is really more of a ship than a boat. Danika has lived in the harbour’s lower reaches long enough that she knows things like this already. The river is very high today, after the rains, and probably Tugboat Alex is reversing like crazy to keep P62 on track against the wash of wind and water that’s coming downstream against them. Tide also maybe, who knows.

We’ll hand in our dissertations soon and it has come to my attention that Danika may be just someone I look at and smile at and wave at as I pass out to sea.

“Colin, come here.” She wants to show me something: the stringy bit of the egg, ribbonish and too white.

“This is the chalaza, which anchors the yoke to the shell. We remove it to ensure uniform texture.” She says chalaza like Hebrew scripture.

“That’s crazy. All of what you just said there is crazy.”

“I’m concerned about the Thai green curry. I don’t know does Kasper like spice.”

24

“You like spice,” I say. It is easy to be brave on someone else’s behalf. Kasper cooked spinach soufflé for the two of them on their first proper date, which means he’s in the lead. Danika is always trying to make herself disappear, and you have to make her reappear, like throwing paint at the Invisible Man: you can’t acknowledge her without smearing her. One afternoon a lot like this one, she lay next to me and I heard her eyelash scrope the pillow. I made my excuses and went home. “To be honest that man seems like he could handle anything.”

Danika doesn’t tell me that really he’s sensitive under all that, which I was expecting her to. When her dad is home, she forgets that he likes me and she keeps me away from the garden studio, where he paints, blindfolded. People I suppose reckon the action of his wrist has something to tell them about the meaning of life or art or suffering or “the embouchure of experience,” as someone once actually put it. I believe that was Ger Kaufman. A foghorn goes off and I belt back to the window, thinking maybe some sailboat has interposed itself between Alex and her charge and will tangle its mast in the unsnappable rope between them or get plucked from the water by a mechanical arm distending from somewhere hidden aboard P62 and hauled up to be scowled at by the captain through the window of the bridge. The captain will have jowls, which say something about a man before he ever opens his mouth. It’s OK to judge a man like that by his appearance.

“They are only testing, you muppet.” The foghorn goes again and the water turns blinding white. Tugboat Alex has little helper boats that are the same colour as she is. They circle her, looking to nudge. I’m jealous.

“Will you see her again, Colin?”

“Nah, we’re not right I’m afraid.”

Jealous not of others but of other selves who lead lives equally bursting with satisfaction. Or who’ve snapped their hawsers or curdled in the bay or gulped their way upriver. Or joined the Navy and are out there now in the cold, whorling around with Alex in tow.

“Tugboat Alex is really more of a ship isn’t it?”

“My dad did a show once where he ferried sixteen people called Alex out to that tugboat and had them each smash a small bottle of champagne over the gunwales.”

“What did that one mean?”

“It was part of the Dredger Trilogy. Kasper was there, taking photographs.” She shows me a picture of Kasper, when he was our age, on a RIB off the side of and below the Alex, pretending to smash his own camera off its steel underbelly. He is leaning out very far, dangerously, and must have hooked his feet into something, or have someone holding him, hidden out of sight for a moment. “It was in a sense our first meeting.”

“For a photographer Kasper is a great man for the posing isn’t he?”

“Yes, he has a great sense of occasion.”

“You should let me do this before I leave. You need to shower, you look horrible.”

“Thank you.”

There is still something the matter out there, some hold up. There may be a crisis: sirens shut out by the glass. There are sailors on board who’ve not found themselves in untended waters and are thankful for it. Danika goes to get ready and I will receive Kasper if he comes early, tell him the one about Danika falling asleep under a car outside the Sagrada Familia; she specified I am to tell it and she is to protest, later, when he brings it up. It is possible that if I open the window the scene before me will be one in which there is much panic and shrill voices or just the sound of wind through stick trees or a raucous shanty yon deck.

“Bang!” says the TV chef. “There’s your hollandaise.”

WORDS BY FIACHRA KELLEHER

25

Literature

Bryan Washington’s Memorial // A Review T

he couple of Bryan Washington’s Memorial have a problem: they still love each other and they both know it. This is the complication of the novel as told by Benson, whose boyfriend, Mike, flies transcontinental to his distant, ailing father and leaves Benson to host his nettlesome mother. This is Washington’s debut novel which many readers of his first short fiction collection, Lot, have been waiting for impatiently.

Memorial’s plot is strikingly contemporary and fashionably meandering. What makes this novel fly is how it deploys its modern uncertainties for dramatic effect. More impressively, it elegantly side steps traditional tropes of queer storytelling. Generally — and I am generalising — in lieu of any gender disparity, homosexual relationships are often energised in fiction by a reductive investigation of the power dynamic: who is the yin/yang, alpha/beta, top/bottom. Most of the time, this works itself into the back-and-forth sawing of a power struggle, a hyper-masculine tug-of-war. However, Washington cheerfully circumnavigates these pitfalls and finds literary treasure by doing the opposite. Mike and Benson do not want to be the powerful one in the relationship. Instead the novel’s emotional movement comes from each of them ditching responsibility to the other with the speed of a sailor tossing buckets of water from his sinking ship.

To have any power is to have all of the power, the power to fix things or to end things, and when a relationship is so close to the rocks, the responsibility of steering the thing to safety is not enviable. In Memorial, Benson and Mike’s homosexuality is not used self-consciously to zest a conventional love story — being gay is actually something that privately bores them — and it is written as such. It is not obstructive or heavy in the narrative.

Washington gracefully pens a novel that engages a relationship in all of its features and feelings, developing the investigation of character steadily and along so many connecting threads that one has the impression Washington is creating a chain-link fence — a fence that will either protect them, or mark the space between them. The experiences of Benson and Mike can be tragic at times, but this is because life is tragic, not love.

Two things have run amuck in the popular literary fiction of the last half-decade: complicated father figures, and good sex. Some novels, Sally Rooney’s Conversations with Friends and Anne Enright’s Actress have obliquely related these things, this novel is one of them. The first of the novel’s love scenes, or more appropriately, scenes of sex, is on page 16. In it there are smashing chests and descriptions of “kneading dough,” but there is also, more seriously, a refreshing way of writing sex. Sometimes sexual experiences in Memorial are written to convey something, but most of the time they are not. This is a refreshing push-back against the recent trend in literary fiction to pathologise sex in the name of emotional transparency or thematic consistency. There is no attempt here to ritualise or even pathologise these moments of intimacy, they are done for the characters to feel good, for as long as they feel good.

26

Relationships are the locomotive of this novel and although Benson and Mike’s relationship is central, Washington also acknowledges the fundamental truth, you cannot talk comprehensively about a man without, at some stage, talking about his mother. Mothers make so much sense to their children, because they are the only people they need make see sense. Mike’s mother takes his place in his shared flat with Benson while Mike takes to his dad’s deathbed. Benson hasn’t met Mitsuko before that moment but over their time in the flat he sees she is a nice woman, a woman with fancy clothes and Japanese manners. Spouses and mothers share one definite heartbreak: you can do it all for the one you love and it can still somehow not be enough.

This domestic love triangle generates the emotional energy of the novel and Washington channels it well.

As its title suggests, Memorial deals with matters of death, and by extension, matters of inheritance. There are few works of fiction that are not about death. Many of those I have read use dying or bereavement for dramatic effect, to ground the plot in a seriousness and add weight to the emotional responses of the characters. Washington does something similar here but it is done in a way that tastefully complements the many themes of masculinity and ways of living that Mike and Benson are trying not to deal with in the novel. “You’re all like your fathers”, Mike’s mother says to Benson when frying pork cutlets. This observation is true and, by virtue, difficult. Mike flies across the ocean to see his father on principle, to prove to him that they’re nothing alike, Mike wants to show he doesn’t abandon those he loves. The irony is sorely obvious.

It is through dealing with this difficulty that Washington covers some relatively fresh ground. As the novel begins and develops, it appears to be taking a shot at depicting a sensible masculinity, but this is a strain of thought that becomes muddled and ultimately compromised by the flaws of the characters. What begins as an effort to break into a new sort of masculinity leads to a rediscovery of masculine sensibility. In a way, it makes sense: characters in fiction are people too, not screens for us to project our fantasies of gender onto.

The novel beautifully confuses normal things, exploring the unreality of life during a relationship and its fallout and this seems to be the mission statement of the book. It keenly addresses how your understanding of your own experiences are refracted through your partner’s judgement before they reach yours, stretching and shrinking some things like a funhouse mirror. This confusion seeps down to a structural level within the prose, dissolving boundaries and snapping syntax at sometimes odd and convoluted moments while reading. A lot of the dialogue, though spoken by the same person, is indented in a way that would usually suggest a change in speaker. It seems very modern, reading like multiple messages from the same person in an app. For the first time in some time, I was reminded that a novel is a piece of engineering, a device crafted with a structure and inlaid with devices and cycles.

Washington’s most successful feat in the novel is his careful rendering of powerlessness. Washington seeds self-doubt, confusion and alienation into the narration just as it is absorbed by Benson. Both the reader and Benson struggle for their own authoritative version of events in a fight that resembles the cautious process of peeling apart what you know from what you feel. The novel understands life and love. Washington dramatises the reality that neither one is an easy thing to be subjected to. That you don’t know why it started, what it continues for, and how it ends.

WORDS BY SHANE MURPHY

27

Music

Dream Festival: we will return to the muddy fields and sweaty tents once again

What would you change about festivals once they start?

Relinquishing any shred of street cred I may have ever had, I must first confess that I am not in fact a music festival

veteran, having only attended a single festival (*cough* Electric Picnic *cough*). At least I can say that I never hit up Longitude though, so that’s something. My memories from the weekend vary wildly but they all had one thing in common: my friend Julie. We went to EP together directly after spending a week holidaying up on the coast of Donegal, sharing a tiny two-man tent after sharing a room together for five days. (By the way, a two-man tent should not be called a two-man tent - those f**kers can hardly fit one medium-sized girl not to mention two of them and a big bag of cans).

Anyway, Julie and I rocked up to EP with our tent and two massive bags filled with clothes that were wholly unsuitable for the Irish climate, more spirits than we could have ever drunk, and a ridiculous number of cans.

Our first port of call was the train to Portlaoise from Donegal. We lugged our massive bags on a 20-minute walk to the station and proceeded to miss said train. Come an hour later we hop on the next one and off to Laois we go. Given our later-than-expected arrival, we didn’t manage to get as good a camping position as we hoped, and ended up in the dreaded beside-the-toilets spot.

Never. Camp. Beside. The. Portaloos.

Hundreds of thousands of youths putting god knows what into their bodies for days on end can’t end well for the poor toilets. Day one was relatively bearable but by the morning of day two, it was Pong Kong outside our tent. Sorry festival organisers, but I think we can all agree that we are happy to sacrifice the bloody merry-go-round for some genuinely functional toilets. I can’t believe I had to wait in line to enter those cubicles of doom. Sometimes, when one of my pals went into a cubicle and were taking a minute, I honestly had a thought that they had passed out due to toxic fume inhalation. We’re not asking for much people, just some toilets that work please, and toilet paper would be a huge plus too.

Now that we have functional toilets, let’s continue. So Julie and I have found a spot in which we think our tent will fit. We whip out the tent materials and attempt, for the first time ever, to assemble a tent. It is at this moment that we realise that we have brought with us a tent with a broken pole. Yes, my dad asked me if I made sure everything was fully functional, yes I smoothly lied to him and performed approximately zero checks on our camping materials. Julie and I were in a bit of a bother about the whole ‘not having a place to live’ situation, and we had roped our camping neighbours in to aid us in our quandary. The four of us decided that the best course of action was to duct tape the entire pole, stick it in and hope for the best (please, get your minds out of the gutter).

We did exactly that and by some miracle, the tent survived the entire weekend. Julie and I realised at that moment that with duct tape, anything is possible. We spent the weekend attempting to convince anyone we came into contact with that we had discovered the answer to everything. We even fashioned, unasked, a shot glass made of duct tape for a random man in the woods to drink his poitín from. In my ideal festival, there would be a duct tape station where those poor souls who failed to bring the sticky stuff can source some to mend anything and everything.

28

Rewinding a bit to when we managed to convince our camping neighbours to help us solve our housing issues, I must mention that this was the beginning of a beautiful friendship that has lasted to this very day.

Seeing as all our friends were working at the festival to get in for free and hence staying in a separate campsite, we were very excited about making some new friends a bit closer to home. I hate to say it but from day two onwards, the tension was rising between me and Julie. I began to despise the fact that she always walked slightly ahead of me regardless of whether she actually knew where we were going, and she started to hate that I could not for the life of me make a quick decision about anything. We needed a buffer badly, and we soon realised that our new friends were not just keeping the fury that was brewing between me and Julie under wraps, but somehow managed to make us have some good feelings towards each other as well. In my dream festival, Saorlas and Seans live beside every person to make their festival experience all that they could ever want and more.

To be honest, I wouldn’t change much else about festivals at all. The mud, the sweat, the love booming from all around, the music, the laughter and the fun, the being within two metres of people, the teens pressed up against you shifting each other, the horrendous dancers banging into you, waking up in the morning with a wicked hangover. This is the quintessential festival experience, so really all I want is for festivals to come back. I can take the noxious fumes, the broken tents, I could even put up with Julie for another weekend. We love and miss you, festivals, and we’ll be waiting for you when you return.

WORDS BY LAOISE LYNCH 29

Music

Was Mark Fisher right about pop music?

The critical theorist claimed the 2000s would soon be recognised as a low point for popular music.

Mark

Fisher was a writer and teacher, whose books are often cited as some of the best introductions to critical theory. His brilliant Capitalist Realism explores how capitalism is commonly regarded as the only ‘realistic’ economic system. It is not that everyone agrees capitalism is fantastic, or even good, but it’s widely accepted that there’s no alternative. Fisher explores this through discussion of popular media, and his experience of teaching in England.

Fisher’s second book Ghosts of my Life focuses on the mostly negative cultural effects of capitalist realism. Fisher thought our inability to imagine alternative futures has stultified popular culture, particularly music. All pop culture can do is repackage what already exists, hence the fashion for endless revivals. Just look at contemporary artists like Dua Lipa, Fontaines D.C., Miley Cyrus, and Jessie Ware. They’ve all released albums in 2020 that intentionally evoke music from the 70s and 80s.

Fisher contends “21st century culture is marked by… anachronism and inertia” and “the period from roughly 2003 to the present will be recognised — not in the far distant future, but very soon — as the worst period for popular culture since the 1950s.” This statement was made in 2014, so seven years on seems a fair time to ask whether Fisher’s prediction came true.

From my point of view, the idea that the period of 2003 to 2013 was culturally stagnant is ridiculous. There are plenty of artists from that period whose music I love, and still listen to today. Frank Ocean’s Channel Orange, Death Grips Exmilitary, and Why?’s Alopecia are all examples of albums from these years that I consider great. Significantly, all three albums belong broadly to the genre of hip-hop, which flourished in this decade. There are plenty of other artists whose music from this period I like: Joanna Newsom, Animal Collective, Modest Mouse, FKA Twigs, Oneohtrix Point Never, Sufjan Stevens etc.

30

Was Fisher not aware of these artists? Surely, he couldn’t insist in good faith that Death Grips, Oneohtrix Point Never and Animal Collective were uncreative or unoriginal. Perhaps he considered these artists too niche to count as part of popular culture? If so, his position was misguided. Yes, they’re not being played in supermarkets (though you’d be surprised), but these bands have a definite presence in our music culture, even if it’s just through influencing the sounds of the most popular artists.

But more to the point, a firm distinction between “mainstream” and “underground” culture is no longer tenable in the twenty-first century. Once, you could point to what played on the radio, MTV or Top of the Pops as “the mainstream”. And what was played on pirate radios, in secret raves, what was traded in mixtapes was “the underground”. When the internet came to be most people’s primary source of media, these distinctions were largely eroded.

There are more bands making and distributing music now than ever before. As such, there are a lot more niches and subgenres. The way the internet allows people of similar interests to form communities has created whole subcultures around types of music that could never have even gotten studio time in the 60s.

What Fisher perceived to be a stagnation was really a moment of transition. Contemporary bands don’t need to sign to a label, or have a radio hit, in order to find a listenership. The way music is produced and distributed changed rapidly in the period Fisher was writing. A brave new digital world was being created and populated.

Was the music of 2003 to 2013 bad? Or was it good? To my mind, this is a stupid way to approach music culture. There were so many artists active in this year, that you could spend a lifetime just trying to listen to them all. At the end of that lifetime, why would you even want to lump them all together? The definitive characteristic of the 2000s might have been its lack of a single dominant style, saving hip-hop, but rather that so many different styles were germinating.

The thing that makes me scratch my head when I read Fisher’s music criticism is that he infuriates himself over the blandest music of the period. For example, he discusses the Black Eyed Peas song ‘I Gotta Feeling’, writing, “In spite of the track’s declamatory repetition, there’s a fragile, fugitive quality about the pleasures ‘I Gotta Feeling’ so confidently expects… [It] comes off more like a memory of a past pleasure than an anticipation of a pleasure that is yet to be felt.” There is no evidence, not even a quotation from the lyrics, to support these claims.

Fisher attributes to the song subtle emotions it simply doesn’t have, as if to justify the time he wasted listening to it.

Why does he insist on searching for hidden sadness in ‘I Gotta Feeling’ when he could listen to the explicit despair of Have a Nice Life’s album Deathconsciousness from the previous year? Because one is more popular, and therefore of more importance to the culture? The mainstream has always been the place where genuine emotion goes to die. Who is looking to Black Eyed Peas for spiritual food but Fisher himself? Nobody is expecting to walk into Spar and have their soul ripped in half by the beautiful music coming through the speakers.

Fisher’s claim is shaky, and I think he was too smart not to realise it. I don’t think he truly believed these claims about music stagnating. Rather, I think it was a provocation. He wanted his readers and students to look at our culture critically, and question whether capitalism was really as beneficial for our mental health and our art as it is for our businesses. He wanted people to question, to argue, and to think. But this goal was accomplished at the expense of dismissing and insulting a whole generation of musicians, who are genuinely making some great art, and of giving intellectual support to all those people on internet forums who complain they were “born in the wrong generation”. And for that, it’s hard to forgive him.

WORDS BY BEN PANTREY 31

Sex

Living With a Significant Other

There are big steps in life which tend to happen during your late teens and early twenties, like going to college,

getting your first job, and moving out of your childhood home. I took this last step six months ago by moving in with my boyfriend. Let’s call him John. My decision might sound a bit strange as I am only 21 and John and I had only been dating for a year when we decided to move in together. But, before you dismiss me as completely insane, let me tell you about my experience so far...

There were a couple of reasons why I decided to move in with my boyfriend. For starters, John and I found ourselves in a difficult position during the first lockdown. We lived 20km away from each other. As we all know, during level 5 lockdowns you couldn’t travel further than 5km from where you live. I have never cared so much about this small distance until the pandemic hit and then it seemed like 20km was across the Atlantic.

Even if the lockdowns ceased, it dawned on us that we wouldn’t be able to spend much time together. John finished college last summer, and started working in September. We were both aware that there are plenty of couples that both work 9-5 jobs and still live in different places and are much older than us, but John wanted to move out of his family home and inevitably I would spend most of my time at his place. So it made much more sense to just move in together.

Living with John was a bit strange at first. The fact that I needed to do all of my own washing felt bizarre and, of course, there’s no mum-made dinners for you. In the beginning, I felt like I needed to do all the cleaning and cooking because I felt guilty. John works 9-5 and sometimes on the weekends. He actually earns money while I have found it hard to get a job due to Covid-19. I still contribute to the rent but I just felt guilty. I wanted to do everything because I didn’t want it to seem like I was just lounging around the house. I would get really frustrated if my boyfriend said that he wanted to clean the kitchen because it felt like I was doing a bad job.

The biggest argument John and I had was with regards to cleaning. I admit that I am not the most organised person in the world, but John is. He even organises the cupboards and makes them look aesthetically pleasing. Clearly, this was not the case and after about two pretty big fights, I came to the conclusion that if we both worked 9-5 jobs and earned the same amount of money, he would have to help me with cleaning and cooking. I was vehemently stuck in a position of a 1950s housewife mentality that I put myself in. I didn’t have to do all the cleaning in the house if we both lived there. College is also work so I shouldn’t expect myself to do everything from laundry to cleaning the toilet in the first place. Also John likes cleaning because it relaxes him (I know, it's bizarre) so there’s no reason for stopping him.

After surmounting that little hurdle, living with John has been easy as can be. I am still amazed by this, especially when we see each other 24/7. I think this is largely because we give each other necessary personal space. We have found our own little hobbies to keep us entertained in the day. This means that we can enjoy each other’s company even more in the evenings, as we watch tv shows together, drink wine, eat a ridiculous amount of cheese, and chat about how we want to decorate our place. I keep thinking that moving in with John might be the best decision I have ever made.

That being said, although moving in together was a good decision for me and John, it might not be a good idea for every couple. Every couple operates on their own timeline, and it might take years for some couples to be ready to move in together. This does not mean that these couples are less valid or wrong for each other, they just need extra time. This is before you factor in the outrageous living costs in Dublin, which make it impossible for the majority of people to move out of their family home.

If you are considering moving in with your partner, though, please do heed this one bit of advice: take your time with the decision and consider all options while still putting emphasis on what ultimately makes you happy.

32

WORDS BY GABRIELA GRZYWACZ

‘driver’s license’ and the drama that has dominated the internet

Last

month, Olivia Rodrigo released her debut single, ‘driver’s licence’. The song dominated the charts, topping the Billboard 100, and breaking the Spotify record for the most single-day streams on its fourth day of release.

Seventeen-year-old Rodrigo, who was most famous for her role on the Disney+ programme High School Musical: The Musical: The Series became an overnight sensation. Social media soon began to speculate over the meaning of the song.

If you’ve been living under a rock for the past month, unaware of the alleged drama, here’s a quick recap. In ‘driver’s licence,’ Rodrigo sings about recent heartbreak. Her former beau seemingly leaves her for an older “blonde girl” who is “everything [she’s] insecure about”. Before the song’s release, there were already rumours that Rodrigo was involved with her co-star, Joshua Bassett. Bassett was then photographed with Sabrina Carpenter who, incidentally, is twenty-one years old and blonde. Coincidence? It doesn’t seem likely when there have already been a string of songs released that seem to take digs at the other members of the party. Most infamously, Carpenter released “Skin,” which is essentially about getting into a new relationship and trying not to let your partner’s clingy ex bother you. Interestingly, while the trio haven’t confirmed the rumours, they also haven’t explicitly denied them.

There has been backlash to drama, mainly from those who believe it’s all a publicity stunt. Some have also criticised the public for their ‘overinvestment.’ Carpenter and Bassett both fell victim to hateful online comments. Some people have started binging HSMTMTS for additional background information. There have been thousands of TikToks made about the drama, with humorous skits imagining Bassett’s reaction to Rodrigo’s song and users compiling ‘evidence’ from the Instagram pages of those involved. The videos that I find the most interesting, however, are the ones of young adults recording themselves explaining the drama to friends and family members whilst ‘driver’s licence’ plays in the background. These YAs appear to be extremely invested. Obviously, people do exaggerate for comedy online. However, I am also forced to remember the voice-notes I sent my boyfriend explaining the situation, as well as the monologue I launched into when my mother heard me listening to the song and asked me about the artist.

As I spent most of my formative years on Tumblr, obsessive preoccupation with celebrity drama isn’t so strange to me.

After all, I spent a significant amount of my early teenage years analysing the eye colours of Taylor Swift’s ex-boyfriends so I could decide which guy she was singing about. Widespread public obsession with celebrity relationships isn’t a recent phenomenon either. The fictional feud between Angelina Jolie and Jennifer Aniston over their relationships with Brad Pitt dominated celebrity news back in the noughties. Is there anything different about the Olivia/Joshua/Sabrina drama?

I think so. While my younger self was overly-invested in Taylor Swift’s love life, this only came once I was a fan of her music. Jolie and Aniston were two of the biggest names of the 2000s. Conversely, the majority of us - myself included - didn’t know who any of these Disney ‘stars’ were before ‘driver’s licence’ came out, as their shows were after our time. This is purely hypothetical, of course, but I do wonder if this phenomenon has something to do with Covid-19’s effects on our personal lives.

The pandemic is effecting everyone differently, but many YAs have found themselves in a particular kind of limbo.

When college moved online, I, like many students, decided to move back home to the countryside with my parents.

I’ve been in my old bedroom for months, surrounded by remnants of my teenage years including, but not limited to, posters of All Time Low, and old LC notes I’m still too traumatised to sort through. Many college students and recent graduates have talked about losing independence and feeling deeply isolated after moving back home. Our romantic lives have also suffered. It’s almost impossible to meet new people, and Zoom dates just really aren’t the same.

I’m in a long-term relationship and struggling with the distance from my boyfriend. Besides these challenges, there’s less drama happening in our own lives. While this is ostensibly a positive change, I do think there’s a part of us that wants to indulge in some messy gossip - especially as many of us feel like we are reverting back to our teenage selves.

Maybe we’re trying to fill a void, maybe we’re reliving our messy teenage heartbreaks in a way we wouldn’t have if we were living out our twenties normally. Or, maybe, we’ve just fallen prey to a clever marketing scheme. In any event it seems unfair to this generation to judge us for ‘overinvestment’ in some stranger’s drama. Let’s face it; we don’t have much else 33 going on at the moment.

WORDS BY MARY-KATE O'HARTE

Sex

What's Your

Love Language?

The

concept of love languages, while in no way a new idea, has in recent years become quite the romantic phenomenon. Some people swear by them to the point where they consider them to be the foundation of any successful relationship. Others view them as vapid mores of the dating world. Then there are those who haven’t got a clue about what love languages even are. Regardless of what bracket you may fall into, it is extremely likely that you respond to at least one love language even if you don’t actively recognise them.

So what are love languages exactly?

The five love languages originated in a book of the same name by Dr. Gary Chapman back in 1995. They are: Words of Affirmation For some people, actions don’t always speak louder than words and they’d much rather hear you express your love verbally. These people respond best to words of praise and encouragement like: “You’re beautiful”, “I’m so proud of you”, or “You’re such an amazing person.” This love language doesn’t rely solely on the spoken word - it can also take the form of written notes, or text messages.

Acts of Service With ‘Acts of Service’, action is all it takes to show your partner your affection. Often-times this manifests as small tasks, like making your partner coffee or being the person who catches spiders for them, but grander acts are a welcome form of love too. Something like changing their tyres or cooking them dinner shows that you are willing to give up your time for them, and that you know them well enough to know what will make them happy, and simply make their day easier.

Receiving Gifts Receiving gifts can sometimes be seen as a shallow love language, when in reality it’s just as valid as any other. These gifts don’t have to be expensive or gaudy, rather it is the act of giving itself that reassures your partner of your love.

Those who respond well to this love language will often drop hints as to the kind of gifts they would like to receive.

Receiving these gifts makes them feel heard and valued by their partner. When it comes to this love language, the process of gift giving and receiving is just as important as the gift itself. Whether these gifts are as simple as your partner’s favourite food, or as extravagant as jewellery, what matters is that the gift reflects them and demonstrates your affection.

34

Quality Time Quality time is as straight-forward as it sounds; some people simply need to spend time with their partners in order to to feel loved. This doesn’t necessarily mean elaborate dates or going out together constantly - for someone whose love language is quality time, a day spent together at home is more than satisfactory. The motivation behind this love language is that you want to feel close to your partner. You might achieve this by studying together, or calling each other up to talk about your day. The ‘quality time’ love language is all about appreciating each other's presence and staying in the moment, regardless of what form that moment may take.

Physical Touch If physical touch is your primary love language, it means that you respond best to physical acts of love, over other forms. It’s important to note that this love language is by no means restricted to acts of sexual pleasure; it can involve holding hands, touching your loved one’s shoulder in a gesture of comfort or support, or kissing their forehead. People who identify physical touch as their love language are likely quite comfortable when it comes to public displays of affection. In fact, PDA can be a way of reassuring them about the state of your relationship. Of course, communication is key when navigating this love language. It is important to ensure that you continue to check that your partner is comfortable in any given situation, and that all touch is consensual.

The concept of love languages has become much more popular in recent years. Despite first being proposed back in 1995, the idea of love languages has only taken off relatively recently, perhaps because previously they were seen as arbitrary or unnecessary. This newfound popularity may be chalked up to the fact that, now more than ever, people like to know more about themselves. Like any personality test or horoscope, identifying your love language can help you better understand yourself, and, moreover, help you decide what you value most in romantic relationships. Belief in the notion of love languages gives people a sense of comfort. They feel that the way they respond to certain acts is totally. Thus, there is no guilt surrounding what they need from their partners.

Knowing your love languages can only bolster your relationships. Educating yourself about love languages can help you to better communicate with your partner. It can also guide you as to how you can make yourself and your partner feel more comfortable and better appreciated in your relationship.

If you choose to acknowledge love languages within your relationship, it is worth keeping in mind that you and your partner may not speak the same one. Therefore, as important as it is to figure out what your own love language is, we cannot stress enough that it is just as important to learn what your partner’s one is. It’s vital that the recognition of love languages is reciprocal. It can’t be one-sided, there needs to be an equal balance of giving and taking among those involved. I’m not exactly sure if it’s normal practice to inform someone outright what your love language is but by all means go for it! (Open and honest communication is always a good thing!) You don’t even need to frame the conversation within the given terminology - you can simply just tell your partner what makes you feel loved. Don’t worry if such blatant communication is not your style, as it’s likely that you and your partner will discover one another’s love languages over time. As you get to know each other better, you’ll pick up on what makes each of you feel valued and supported, the knowledge of which is bound to be a healthy foundation for any relationship!

However, these may be factors you already consider in your relationship, without terming it “catering to your partner's love language.” The five love languages simply lay out the different ways in which we show and receive affection. If anything, the concept provides us with vocabulary to help navigate and express feelings which we already, perhaps subconsciously, experience. In fact, love languages can be applied, in many ways, to all relationships, not just those of a romantic nature.

If you’d like to learn more, why not take one of the many quizzes out there, and find out what your love language is: https://www.5lovelanguages.com/quizzes/ https://thetab.com/uk/2020/04/28/love-languages-quiz-we-can-tell-you-your-love-language-154073

WORDS BY CAROLINE EBBS AND KARLA HIGGINS 35

Theatre

The Promises of the Embodiment

(nature, representation and otherness in the age of the surveillance) WORDS BY GIORGIOMARIA CORNELIO

This

sketch of the artifactuality of nature and the apparatus of bodily production helps us toward another important point: the corporeality of theory. Overwhelmingly, theory is bodily, and theory is literal.

Theory is not about matters distant from the lived body; quite the opposite. Theory is anything but disembodied.

Donna Haraway, “The Promises of Monsters: A Regenerative Politics for Inappropriate/d Others” in The Haraway Reader To think about a body is to think about a mobile configuration of forces, a political membrane that is continuously traversed by a series of telluric, archetypal, anatomical and political intensities. When we look at the migration from a system of representation to another, we can see how the artefactual character of the body is immediately revealed. For example, the prodigious amalgam of creatures contained in the Medieval bestiaries or the multiplicity of variations of the Zodiacal Man (1.1) can help us to understand both the power of the proliferation of an aberration and how a theory can literally change the very membrane of nature, which is never just given, but always recreated according to the acrobatical logic of the hybridization, of the contamination and of the epidemic distribution of different beliefs. In this regard, the modern idea of nature as a fixed reality is a consequence of the despotic medicalization of the organism, and of the creation of a naturalistic and normative legitimation of the body toward which the human being is forced to tend. The so-called abnormal or perverse body and the consequences of an embodied/performative theory of the deformity as a way to deterritorialize the organism are the main points of this article.

1.1 Zodiac Man, from 15th century book Les Très Riches Heures du duc de Berry (Musee Conde, Chantilly) (left) 1.2 De Hyena Onocentaurus, Tractatus de naturis animalium (right)

The 12th century can be regarded as a turning point of the philosophical, theological and juridical regimentation of life.

Prior to this century, there was no such thing as a death penalty for the sodomitic act just for being simply unnatural.

Even Justinian the Great, who in 533 established the death by burning as a punishment for all the homosexual relations, placed those relation in the same category as adultery, thus denying any specificity of the crime. Furthermore, the fascination for the natural behaviour has no legitimation whatsoever in the Sacred Scriptures, except for some controversial passages of Saint Paul and for a series of apocryphal texts such as The Epistle of Barnabas (II century AD), where a misinterpretation of the Mosaic prohibitions about the animals (like the Hyena) (1.2) is turned into a moral indication:

36

Again, neither shalt thou eat the hyena; thou shalt not, saith He, become an adulterer or a fornicator, neither shalt thou resemble such persons. Why so? Because this animal changeth its nature year by year, and becometh at one time male and at another female.

The Epistle of Barnabas

The Epistle is now considered nothing more than a mishmash of wrong theological assumptions, but it had a great influence on the Early Church Fathers, and even on the composition of the Physiologus, a didactic compendiary of the universe (including animals, birds and also fantastic creatures) that had been an incredibly popular manuscript throughout the Middle Ages and a feverish source of a multiplicity of allegorical legends - like the one of the phoenix that rises from its ashes.

A new performative theory of the body cannot just distantiate itself from this archaeology of the knowledge, but it must upturn the idea of naturality using the deformed power of the monster as the subject of the promise of a new, still nameless potentiality, i.e., of a potentiality that preserves a horizon of actuality without completing realizing it (1.3). A nomadic organism is both in the middle of an almost centrifugal movement and always in transition (without the necessity of reaching a stasis). It belongs to the unforeseen landscape of a freedom without specific appellatives, i.e., a freedom beyond any deterministic trajectory and any hierarchical distinction based on anthropocentric measures. In this regard, this performative theory works as an edificatory possibility that uses the deconstructionist approach as an ongoing process, thus overcoming the (simplistic) dialectic distinctions between creation and de-creation. At the same time, it requires a violent detachment not only from to the fixated premises of the biology, but also from the nihilistic and the postmodernist loop, that we can escape only through the creation of a rift within the circularity of the capitalistic market and its sterile appropriation of the future.

Therefore, we need a cooperation between a revolutionary archaeology and an active proliferation of new embodied theories; only this cooperation could forge fluxes of regenerative possibilities beyond the capitalistic abolition of the pure otherness and beyond the established “natural” boundaries. The philosopher Donna Haraway ulteriorly clarifies this point:

Organisms are biological embodiments; as natural-technical entities, they are not pre-existing plants, animals, protistes, etc., with boundaries already established and awaiting the right kind of instrument to note them correctly. Organisms emerge from a discursive process. Biology is a discourse, not the living world itself.

Donna Haraway, “The Promises of Monsters: A Regenerative Politics for Inappropriate/d Others,” in The Haraway Reader 1.3 Joel-Peter Witkin, Untitled

The question of the despotic knowledge, the negation of nature as a discursive process and the invention of pre-existing/certified boundaries are matters of primary importance. A similar biopolitical process links the invention of the naturality of the 13th century to the persecution of the witches between the 15th and the 18th century. This persecution illustrates how a series of knowledges (herbcraft, hallucinogens, sexual spells) were taken away from the women of the lower class in order to reinforce an hegemonic system of control of the information, that was thus distributed between the taxonomic realm of science and the moralistic imposition of the Christian religion.

In the second part of the 20th century, several radical feminists have tried to re-open the horizontal archive of the history, showing both the nomological power of the documentation of the witch-hunt (like the infamous Malleus Maleficarum) and its effect on the delegitimization of the woman. The eradication of this form of popular knowledge and ecology was an essential step toward the colonization of the imaginary and toward the massive development of the capitalistic machine. The American ativist Starhawk offer a proper analysis of this phenomenon in her book Dreaming the Dark (Magic, Sex, and Politics):

37

Theatre The Witch persecutions were tied to another of the far- reaching changes in consciousness that occurred during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The rise of professionalism in many arenas of life meant that activities and services that people had always performed for themselves or for their neighbors and families were taken over by a body of paid experts, who were licensed or otherwise recognized as being the guardians of an officially approved and restricted body of knowledge. […] Witches’ powers, whether used for harming or for healing, were branded as evil because they came from an unapproved source.

Starhawk, Dreaming the Dark: Magic, Sex, and Politics 1.4 Genesis Breyer P-Orridge, Portrait

If contemporary theatrical and performative researches are particularly interested in alchemy and witchcraft is because -beyond the capitalistic exoticisation of the magic- those elements offer new perspectives for the reinvention of the body and for the violation of its representational techniques: androgyny, prosthetic potentiality, body without organs (1.4).

This multiplicity of perspectives makes possible to effectively retrieve an almost amniotic stage of the existence, where the organism ceases to be a “sealed coffin” and becomes an incubator for a body-to-come. A perfect example can be found in the figure of Genesis Breyer P-Orridge, the English musician, performance artist, occultist and founder of the COUM Transmissions collective (1.5), where he combined the legacy of the Homo Magus Aleister Crowley (“Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law”), the cut-up techniques of William S. Burroughs and Brion Gysin, the influence of the Fluxus movement and the bodily reflection of the Viennese Actionists. Genesis’ entire work can be seen as this attempt to violate the normative frame of human society: “[…] To leave this sealed coffin that is my body, to find an accelerator to project my brain, bypassing the tedium of mechanistic evolution, into deepest omniversal space, into immortality”.

After the marriage with Lady Jaye (in 1995), Genesis also inaugurated the Pandrogeny Project, an attempt to create a “third gender” through a shared assemblage of their bodies and through a creative and machinic use of the plastic surgery (1.6). The natural organism is deformed and reinvented: a pure otherness can finally manifest itself beyond the dichotomy between original and copy. The Platonism ends its domain.

1.5 Coum, Genesis P-Orridge and Cosey Fanni Tutti (left) 1.6 Genesis P-Orridge with with Lady Jaye (right)

38

The way Genesis and Lady Jane upturned the normal and “corrective” conception of the surgical devices could be a great inspiration for the overcoming of the biopolitical frame in the age of the complete medicalization, where the biological record is immediately turned into its politic and economic dimension. The capitalistic surveillance of the life continuously operates in order to reterritorialize even the most revolutionary technological and surgical discoveries. In Homo Sacer, Giorgio Agamben denounced this medicalization through a quotation of Hans Reiter, a physician who was also president of the Reich Health Office and who already anticipated the consequences of the medical control: “We are approaching a logical synthesis of biology and economy.”

Consequently, every performative act must open new sceneries of investigation: the question is not only to discover new radical theories, but also to study how those theories are embodied and represented. In this regard, an essential source for this entire article has been the work of Paul Preciado, a transgender philosopher that decided to write his book Testo Junkie (Sex, Drugs, and Biopolitics in The Pharmacopornographic Era) as a body-essay, as a performative effort and as an act of hackering the body through a not-regulated injection of testosterone. In this text, Preciado explores the changings of his body, the modern miniaturization of the system of controls, the philosophical and political significance of the reproductive technologies, together with a series of other questions about our modern age: “Who has access to hormone treatments? According to which clinical diagnosis? How do class and race modify the distribution and the access to technologies of production of gender?”. (1.7) 1.7 Paul Preciado, Portrait (left) 1.8 Madame Delait, Called the Bearded Lady (before the clinical discovery of the Hirsutism) (right)

In the same text, Preciado develops further the deconstruction of the masculinity and femininity, tracing the roots of their the fictional background and also their retro-active power, i.e., the power of being defined not through a real formulation, but through the creation of a pathological, molecular solution, which is particularly true when we think about the idea of transsexual transition as a horizontal, linear and institutional passage from one point to another. But how is a genre institutionally measured? The “sex change” has always been part of the clinical realm, and the codification of the body works as a taxonomic and statal machine:

Whereas the nose is regulated by a pharmacopornographic power in which an organ is considered to be private property and merchandise, the genitals are still imprisoned in a premodern, sovereign, and nearly theocratic power regime that considers them to be the property of the state and dependent on unchanging transcendental law.

Therefore, theatre and performance reveal themselves as the most revolutionary tools of our contemporary society.

Being outside of the pathological and daily realm, they embrace a perpetual condition of anti-normative mutation. Like the masked Dionysius, the performer is gifted with the potentiality of Other, of the Stranger, of the Freak (1.3) (1.8) before the invention of the clinical gaze, i.e., the potentiality of being the embodied promise of an Otherness that does not need to be fulfilled. Just a promise, but inexhaustible.

39

TV

The Best and Worst TV Boyfriends They can be sweet, aloof, or a little bit of both, but behind every great female character, thanks to stereotypes and

outdated gender norms, there is usually a boyfriend. While they often serve as mediocre sidekicks on the small screen, a select few, for better or worse, stand out from all the rest. In honour of Valentine’s Day: isolation edition, I have picked out some of the most noteworthy love interests TV has to offer.

Jim Halpert, The Office (U.S.) Jim Halpert (John Krasinski) is a quintessential TV boyfriend. The patience and dedication he displays during his seemingly endless wait for Pam (Jenna Fischer) is truly admirable, and every longing stare and nervous glance in her direction makes it clear that he is in it for the long haul. However, despite the fairytale ending this couple earns, I can’t help but think he would have been just as undeterred had his persistence been received differently

by Pam. Such obsession is important to take note of, but thankfully Jim pulls off so many elaborate pranks and heartfelt speeches that this notion is soon forgotten. Although a little boring at times, it is clear that he is a solid, dependable choice of partner. 7/10

Damon Salvatore, The Vampire Diaries Widely known as TV’s ‘sexiest’ vampire, filling the Edward Cullen-shaped hole in teenage hearts from 2009 to 2017, Damon Salvatore (Ian Somerhalder) is revered in the series as Elena’s (Nina Dobrev) soulmate. However, he is not the only leading man in her life, often competing for her affections in the early days against his little brother Stefan (Paul Wesley), who is simply too boring to make this list. Going against the opinions of the hordes of diehard ‘Delena’ shippers, I feel I need to make a stand; Damon is not a great guy. The slightest tiff with Elena is enough to send him into a murderous rage, including tormenting those she cares about, as his thirst for vengeance is on par with his thirst for blood. It is obvious throughout the series that he cares for little else other than Elena, which likely accounts for much of his impulsivity and selfishness. As such, his ‘bad boy’ persona runs deeper than the fast cars and leather jackets, with his toxic and manipulative behaviour far outweighing his looks, making him a walking red flag. 3/10

Nick Miller, New Girl The central love interest of titular character Jessica Day (Zooey Deschanel), Nick Miller (Jake Johnson) may initially appear as a sarcastic, lazy man-child, but I would argue that despite these flaws, he is still one of the most romantic TV boyfriends. From the very moment he meets Jessica he is besotted, and continues this devotion, both as a friend and as a boyfriend, right throughout the series. This type of swoon-worthy passion is common in on-screen boyfriends, but rarely is it so endearing. Nick Miller could easily make this list just for orchestrating the most romantic first kiss in TV history alone, but his many small gestures, including the admission that he saved the coin that was in his pocket when they first kissed and kept it with him always, solidify his place. Additionally, a man incapable of lying thanks to some tell-tale excessive sweating makes for an ideal boyfriend, even if he doesn’t have a bank account. 9/10

40

Ross Geller, Friends It is an argument as timeless as the series itself, but while many believe Ross (David Schwimmer) and Rachel (Jennifer Aniston) were meant to be, I believe Rachel deserved so much better. Ross commits many unforgivable sins during the course of the show, including the infamous pros and cons list and the “we were on a break” fiasco, which coupled with his jealous nature leave very little to be desired. It still shocks me to this day that the romantic climax of the show is Ross swooping in at the last minute to selfishly convince Rachel to give up her dream job.

Since Ross has such a prehistoric attitude when it comes to modern women pursuing their own careers, maybe he should have stuck to fossils. 2/10

Patrick Brewer, Schitt’s Creek There is no on-screen love more pure than that of David Rose (Dan Levy) and Patrick Brewer (Noah Reid). While both men play a part in the success of this relationship, it is Patrick’s patience and acceptance of David’s dramatic, eccentric nature that earns him a spot on this list. David is highly strung and a handful to deal with, but Patrick manages this side of him with ease, never asking him to change. He is also a master of grand gestures, from typical tear-inducing serenades, to the more outlandish, such as secretly trying to buy a house just because David said it looked nice. With a keen business acumen and a love for David’s family to boot, Patrick is the blueprint for the perfect love interest. 10/10

Joe Goldberg, You TV boyfriends do not get much worse than Joe Goldberg (Penn Badgley). Compulsive lying and relentless stalking would be bad enough, but the serial killing is the icing on the cake. Friends, family, the objects of his affection themselves, there is no line that Joe won’t cross when it comes to murder. This ‘spontaneous’ nature, to put it kindly, does not a reliable boyfriend make. Joe is a classic case of abuse mistaken for love, both by other characters, and unfortunately, many viewers of the show. As such, the use of the term ‘boyfriend’ in this instance is an unfortunate misnomer. 0/10

WORDS BY CIARA CONNOLLY

ART BY NANAMI ANDO NIC SUIBHNE 41

TV

The Real Housewives

of The Other Side “Lucifer has many faces.”

The only episode of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills (or of anywhere else) that I’ve ever seen is the director’s

cut of season one episode nine. As much as I love it, I have no desire to watch anything else in the series: it’s a perfectly satisfying experience all on its own. The only reason I’d watch another episode is if I knew that it too involved the wives dipping their toes into the supernatural. Season one episode nine, ‘The Dinner Party From Hell’, is the episode where the wives dine with a woman who believes that she can communicate with the dead.

With discussions as relatable as “how soon after your friend is murdered is it appropriate to pose for Playboy?” and “is it impolite to ask someone at a dinner party to do their job for free when they’re off the clock?” (even if their job is speaking with the dead), the episode starts incredibly well. This is what I assume happens in every episode: proof that being rich makes you completely inscrutable to normal people. But the introduction of ghosts, into what would have been an explosive row even without them, is just genius. I haven’t watched the episode that deals with the argument they’re referencing, and since they aren’t desperately trying to exorcise Lisa Vanderpump in it I will probably never watch it. Maybe Kyle Richards really did slight her frenemy and purposely make her feel that she wasn’t wanted, or maybe Camille Grammar was pulling the whole thing out of thin air. Honestly, I think having that mystery as the backdrop for the ghost whisperer choosing violence fits the tone of the episode perfectly.

Congratulations to whatever hardworking producer thought the wives should get to meet the medium who inspired the TV show Medium.

Best of all, they got the medium drunk, and introduced her to people she believed to be taking advantage of her friend, a deadly combination for this woman. The duality of a person who can talk to those who have passed on and also vapes is dizzying enough. To then watch her say to the woman who she believes to have insulted her friend that the spirit realm informed her that said woman’s husband will never emotionally fulfil her and that, once the kids move out, they’ll have nothing in common is honestly astonishing. How do you rebuff something like that? If you don’t have a direct line to the divine, you can’t fact-check. Your only proof is ever having met your husband and having seen the two of of you together. Watching these two verbally spar renders every other episode of this show obsolete to me. If Kyle can go toe-to-toe with a woman who can momentarily raise the dead, why would I bother watching her take on those whose only superpower is wealth?

42

The more I watch this episode, the more I wish we lived in a universe where it had impacted the plethora of ghost hunting shows we have available. Imagining the impact the show could have had fills me with glee: Shane Madej of Buzzfeed Unsolved fame proclaiming that he doesn’t believe in ghosts, with Ryan Bergara vaping and archly stating that “Lucifer has many faces” in response. Or the Finding Bigfoot team holding enormous cocktails, cursing out a ‘squatch witness whose image of Bigfoot didn’t match their own. Using a Ouija board not to gather evidence over whether ghosts exist, but to call out dead relatives for saying that your new show Ghost Hunters was going to crash and burn That version of reality holds a special place in my heart. In an alternate reality, I’ve seen every episode of Keeping Up With The Kardashians, because Kris Jenner believes the show’s existence is due to a pact she made with the devil.

The premise of ‘The Dinner Party From Hell’ is simply excellent for reality TV and fiction alike. In a world in which some people, for reasons unknown, can contact the underworld, why wouldn’t they use those contacts for petty drama? Imagine, if you will, a world in which some people have extraordinary abilities, and they use them while saying things like: “I can tell you when she will die and what will happen to her family. I love that about me!” Why should the confirmed existence of supernatural elements force a show to be about the nature of good and evil and saving the world against the forces of darkness? Is it not enough to watch a fairy and a demon televise their wedding, only to divorce 72 days later?

I’m not a massive fan of the ‘chosen one’ trope. I like things a little messier than that. The idea that someone who can see beyond this mortal world would use the knowledge gleaned from her phone calls to the undiscovered country to say that her enemy’s husband “likes his nannies”, when their family doesn’t employ any nannies, is deeply pleasing to me. Rich bored housewives wouldn’t be any better with extrasensory perception or superpowers, they’d still be just as embarrassing and petty, except that they’d force ghosts to get in on the action with us. There’s something real about that. And, as I’ve already said, incredibly entertaining.

WORDS BY GILLIAN DOYLE 43

ALT.

ODE TO A CITY:

DUBLIN

I’ve never known Dublin outside of the pandemic. I’ve never experienced the city at its ‘peak’, on a rugby weekend

thronged with fans and revellers. But somehow returning to Dublin, after only four months in the city and having unfortunately been caught up in the post-Christmas travel ban, fills me with a paradoxical sense of homecoming.

Something about the way that the city is articulated - wide, open streets peppered with cut-throughs and alleyways – is welcoming, as if it was designed to evoke a sense of freedom and curiosity. The city’s contradictions are part of what makes it such an evocative place, its mishmash of Georgian, industrial and modern architecture thrown together in quick succession conjures a sense of its patchwork history. In this sense, Dublin is a city of parts, a city of multiplicities. Perhaps this is why, even in a pandemic, Dublin has continued to feel welcoming to outsiders like me. Returning to Dublin means re-joining the community of city-dwellers that walk anonymously side-by-side in the streets. Coming from a small, rural community this can feel like release from a suffocating environment where every dog-walk could lead to a high school reunion. The joy of cities is in its business, its action, but even in a pandemic when Dublin has been forced to slow down the city hums with a sense of resilience and warmth.

And this is why I don’t need to see Dublin post-pandemic to know what it’s really like, to observe what’s underneath the surface, because if in the most challenging of times Dublin can uplift and charm even the most uncertain newcomer then it will always remain a city of welcome.

WORDS BY ECHO CALLAGHAN

left home at thirteen for boarding school in a different country, I would call myself a veteran at long distance friendships. When you’re thirteen no one tells you that keeping in touch with people takes effort, and with considerably less access to social media as I have now, I wasn’t the best at keeping in contact.

Nowadays, I can stay connected with people who are far away or who I might not otherwise speak to, feeling involved and showing interest in their lives with a reaction to their Instagram story. I’ve grown used to having friends who live abroad, so going home for the lockdown last year was not so different to most school/university holidays. I found it funny how much everyone wanted to FaceTime, because I’d always lived abroad but had never called friends so much, nevermind done Zoom quizzes. I think because the end of our time at University coincided with the lockdown, everyone was eager to keep in touch.

From previous experience I wondered how long this would last.

I complain about having friends who live far away, but I was the one who decided to do a Masters in a different country. It’s easy to look back on the good times when you’re in a new, uncertain place, and it’s hard to find a balance between not disregarding previous friendships and not moving on from the past. Moving away helped me see how my friends and I reciprocated the efforts to maintain our relationship. Some unexpectedly sent me real life mail; whereas others regularly react to my Instagram stories, supporting whatever I show I’m up to on social media. Some friends I never text but then call more regularly than others, some I text everyday but never call.

I communicate with some friends simply by tagging them in multiple Facebook memes (I’m sorry if that’s you).

Although I personally prefer texting to talking, I try and call my friends regularly, because it feels more personal. However, it can take a lot of energy to communicate different experiences across the phone to friends who aren’t there, because they need background information which wouldn’t be necessary if they were around. And so, to avoid boring them, I end up scaling down my stories, talking quickly or changing the conversation. I think this is also why our calls now seem to follow a pattern: we ask each other how we’re doing, and since everyone is in lockdown and not doing much, we end up reminiscing.

All of this has led me to realise that you don’t have to keep in constant contact with someone to stay friends with them and that your best friends might not be the people you speak to most. My home friends now are few, but we’ve known each other for so long that we know our friendship is stable enough to sustain periods without talking.You may not feel like Facetiming everyday, but you might just show a friend support by reacting to their story. We’re lucky to have forms of communication 44 which allow us to reach friends when we need to but also when we have the energy to.

WORDS BY VIRGINIA BERNARDI ART BY LOLA FLEMING

Having

Nurturing Friendships from Afar

Big Tech's Political Peformativity WORDS BY DAVID WOLFE

The recent decision by several social media companies to ban Donald Trump from their platforms was met with

mixed reactions from both supporters and critics of the former president. While many praised the move after Trump’s repeated claims of election fraud and endorsement of violence on Capitol Hill, others, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, criticised the move as a threat to free speech and an open Internet. Some of those who welcomed the decision simultaneously criticised Twitter’s actions as too little, too late, and accused the platform of performatively jumping on an anti-Trump bandwagon in the twilight of his presidency.

Above all, what the move highlighted was the inevitable political role that social media and tech giants play, and called into question the authority of regulation of online spaces. Can tech giants be trusted to regulate their own platforms independently? When they fail to do so, who decides who should and shouldn’t be given a voice in the online sphere?

Despite Merkel’s objections, claims that online regulations violate the “fundamental right to free speech” are somewhat untenable. The right to free speech simply protects a citizen’s right to speak without fear of state persecution. It does not require that we be allowed say whatever we like, wherever we like without fear of personal consequences, or allow us to bypass the terms of service to which we agree when utilizing the services of any private company – sure, screaming at the top of one’s lungs in big Tesco may not necessarily be illegal, but that doesn’t mean you won’t be removed from the shop by privately employed security fairly promptly. In this capacity, social media companies were well within their rights to suspend Trump from their platforms; the problem is, this minimal action doesn’t go far enough to minimise the damage already done. The eventual Trump ban did not arise out of concern for democracy, but rather an opportunistic publicity stunt in the closing weeks of Trump’s administration. Many were quick to criticize the platforms’ delay in taking such action, pointing to Trump’s long record of dangerous Tweets, including his downplaying of the severity of the pandemic, as far back as his Islamophobic Obama-bashing. Facebook’s own laissez-faire approach to misinformation on its site has long been hotly debated, blamed by many for the rise of Trumpism among the media-illiterate of America. Both companies have defended past inaction, citing a public-interest policy of allowing world leaders to reach constituents through their platforms, whatever they may say.

In many ways, the rise of Trump felt like a uniquely American phenomenon. In Ireland, the chances of a casual anti-Trump remark generating a negative reaction are slim – “Sure isn’t he ridiculous? And the state of his fake tan…” Among the vast majority of Irish people, Trump is viewed as at best comically incapable, and at worst dangerously malevolent; the notion of 75 million Americans voting for him seemed ridiculous. However, when the issue at hand is just slightly closer to home, we fail to realise just how often we fall victim to the same kind of fake news and right-wing misinformation.

After the tragic killing of George Nkencho in December, lies and misinformation were shared widely on social media in Ireland, defaming Nkencho’s character. One particular image which alleged that Nkencho had a serious criminal record, was shared over 2,400 times on social media. Not a word of this post was true; yet in the fear and anxiety surrounding a challenging situation, thousands of Irish people were taken in by unsupported claims on social media. This incident alone speaks volumes about the potentially dangerous power of unchecked and deregulated social media platforms.

Clearly, social media companies are either incapable or unwilling to monitor and regulate their own platforms. The banning of Donald Trump barely scratches the surface of combating misinformation, serving only to harden die-hard supporters against perceived threats to free speech, and falsely reassure naïve social media users that the platforms which they use are effectively policed and monitored. The fact of the situation is that tech giants inevitably play a role in politics; a role which they have continually failed to wield responsibly. While these companies should be made subject to penalisation, the vast nature of the internet makes regulation a near-impossible task for even those willing to do so. Governments are themselves limited in their capacity to counter the problem. What is needed is not to make social media a more reliable or responsible source of information, but to reduce its influence as one. Investment in reliable, accessible journalism, and encouraging a sensible scepticism in social media users will do more to combat the political power of tech giants than even the strictest regulatory measures ever could.

45

ALT.

The Billionaire Debate: Are ethical billionaires a myth?

A

westruck by the power of billionaires, people often idolize figures like Elon Musk for their entrepreneurial skills and strive towards the same. However, for many the word conjures up feelings of exasperation, and they become allured by the ‘eat the rich’ agenda. The billionaire debate has divided a vast amount of people, particularly in recent years as the super-rich get even richer and the wealth gap continues to widen to record levels. The pandemic has made us keenly aware of our reliance on companies like Amazon, consequently drawing our attention towards Jeff Bezos and the insurmountable wealth held by a minority of super-rich people. This new-found, heightened sense of awareness has brought to light both Bezos’ individual profiteering in the last year and the unethical state of his worker’s conditions, which leaves one wondering- could one ever be an ethical billionaire?

The varied effects of Covid-19 have truly shed a light on the current social wealth inequalities prevalent in the world. Jeff Bezos, to name but one culprit, has amassed significant wealth in the last year through Amazon, by using the pandemic as leverage to exploit vulnerable customers at no personal cost. Before the pandemic, Bezos earned $5005 on average per day, and in 2020 he was raking in a grand total of $321 million daily, but at what ethical cost? By selling essential PPE kits at exorbitant prices, heads of massive organisations were building an empire at the expense of others. Millions have lost work and are facing eviction and poverty and yet billionaires are at an advantage, profiting off the misfortune of the masses. Consider this: what could be ethical about the vast majority of global wealth being hoarded in the hands of a few? Billionaires are innately immoral because of the sheer concentration of wealth they represent which is accumulated at the expense of others, exploitation of labour is almost inevitable to ever make such an incomprehensible amount of money.

46

As I type this very sentence, the constant battle between Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk to claim the title of the world’s richest person rages on and with every passing second the figures representing their obscene wealth continue to fluctuate. Having already secured first place on the charts, Jeff Bezos, founder, CEO and president of Amazon, was the first ever ‘centi-billionaire’ on the Forbes wealth index, a new word created to encapsulate the extent of his ever-increasing net worth, which currently sits at around $184.9 billion. Elon Musk is a fresher face on the multi-billionaire scene but has managed to amass a similar net worth of $184.6 billion, a whopping $140 billion of which was accumulated in 2020 alone. Both have come under fire for suppressing their workers’ attempts to unionise on multiple occasions. Unionisation has many important humanist effects- leading to an overall increase in job satisfaction and helping to eradicate wage inequality; the suppression of these efforts shows a lack of regard for employee welfare and fulfillment. Workers at Tesla that have tried to voice concerns about unsafe factory working conditions or engaged in pro-union conversation or support have been silenced by ‘intimidation tactics’ such as the prospect of being fired, the reasons for mass-firing of workers who have shown support for pro-union ideals in the past sometimes being masked by a failure to meet performance expectations. Despite Musk’s declaration that the company is union-neutral, it is clear that they have strong anti-union sentiments and actively engage in scaremongering approaches to quell employee complaints. Amazon employees face a similar dilemma, with no worker’s union in place even after numerous strikes and attempts to organise one in recent years. The last notable strikes took place on a global scale around Black Friday 2020-with trade unions and warehouse workers from Bangladesh, India, France, Spain, the U.S., the U.K. and beyond taking part. This international coalition participated in coordinated work stoppages and strikes under the slogan ‘Make Amazon Pay’, the scale of which has not been seen before. ‘Make Amazon Pay’ laid forth a number of reasonable demands to the corporation including: improving pay and health and safety conditions, permission for workers to unionise, ending harassment and surveillance and ensured job security, to name but a few.

In spite of all this, Elon Musk seems to have maintained an almost untouchable celebrity-like allure. On the contrary, Bezos continues to be painted as evil and inhumane- what is it that sets these two equally morally questionable characters apart? The media has portrayed Elon Musk as a charismatic entrepreneur with his quirky online musings, as opposed to the scheming money-making mastermind image of Bezos, making him appear more relatable than his competitor. However, there is a danger of being lured into this false sense of security and camaraderie with billionaires, Musk claims to be a socialist but this persona is a facade to mask the ruthless venture capitalist he really is; the way in which Musk portrays himself online is not a true reflection of how he conducts his businesses. It is important to be mindful of the many faces of billionaires like Musk as what they usually say is meticulously crafted to appeal to their target audience and uphold a reputation that will make them money.

One might argue that billionaires make a valuable contribution to philanthropic causes, but this really only serves to whitewash their reputation to continue their exploitative pursuit of wealth. Philanthropic agendas are often merely used as a disguise for tax avoidance, particularly in the art world. The super-rich both collect and donate priceless art for their own benefit; the practice makes them appear charitable and cultured, whilst also subtly flaunting their wealth even though it is a ploy to reduce their tax burden.

Loopholes in international tax laws and the unregulated nature of the art market serve as the perfect mechanism to aid tax avoidance, with billionaires being known to hoard millions worth of art in yachts offshore.

In 2019, Jeff Bezos donated $98.5 million to charitable organisations across the U.S. that help the homeless - so thoughtful, right? However, when you put it into perspective this is a miniscule portion of approximately 0.9% of his 109 billion dollar net worth at the time of the donation, which might I add has since soared to even more unfathomable heights. This is the equivalent of the average earning American donating $45. We need to stop applauding billionaires for performative acts of kindness such as these when they do not even do the bare minimum of providing their employees with a wage that reflects their work. These seemingly charitable actions amount to nothing more than meaningless lip service, not the thoughtful and generous gestures that we are constantly led to believe they are.

WORDS BY ELLA SLOANE

47

Gaeilge

Scannáin le Feachaint Orthu agus Tú ag Cniotáil FOCAIL LE ROBERT GIBBONS

Níl orm a rá leat go bhfuilimid i lár dianghlasála eile. I rith an chéad dhianghlasála, d’fhéach mé, den chuid is mó, ar scannáin den chéad scoth dar leis an daonra ginearálta: The Godfather, Sorry to Bother You, John Wick. I rith an dara cheann, d’fhéach mé ar scannáin a bhí chomh huafásach gur bhain mé taitneamh astu: Paul Blart: Mall Cop, The Internship, Dark Phoenix. Ach anois, táim ag iarraidh díriú ar scannáin atá saghas idir an dá chineál siúd: scannáin gur féidir leat breathnú orthu agus tú ag cniotáil. Is scannáin maithe iad seo cinnte, ach níl ort d’aire iomlán a thabhairt dóibh.

The Big Short Tá an scannán seo i mbéal an phobail le déanaí, ach níl mé chun labhairt faoi Gamestonks san alt seo (níl an suim nó an t-eolas agam). Is scannán fíorasach atá ann faoi na cúiseanna a bhaineann leis an gcúlú eacnamaíochta i 2008. Déarfainn go bhfuil a lán daoine ann cosúil liomsa a bhfuil aithne acu ar an gcúlú eacnamaíochta gan tuiscint cheart a bheith acu air. Anois, tá tuiscint éigin agam air! Is scannán foirfe é seo le breathnú air agus tú ag cniotáil; don chuid is mó de, níl ann ach daoine ag comhrá in oifigí. Ní gá a bheith dírithe ar an scáthlán - is féidir leat féachaint ar tionscnamh cniotnála agus éisteacht le guth Ryan Gosling agus é ag miniú an stocmhargaidh duit.

Darkman Ní raibh aithne ar bith agam ar an scannán seo, ach tháinig mé air oíche amháin agus mé ag scrolláil ar Amazon. Is scannán superhero ó 1990 é le Liam Neeson. Tá an phríomhpháirt ag Frances MacDormand agus is é Sam Raimi an stiúrthóir, sular ghlac sé páirt i Spider-Man, dár ndóigh. Is pulp den scoth atá ann, dorcha agus melodramatic, mar dhea.

Ní dhéanfaí scannáin mar seo sa lá atá inniu ann agus ceapaim muna raibh mé ag cniotáil, bheadh tuairim i bhfad ní ba ghairbhe agam air. Is scannán foirfe é mura bhfuil tú ach ag iarraidh leath-aire a thabhairt air. Freisin cé atá ann nach dtaitníonn Liam Neeson óg leo?

Into the Inferno Is scannán fáisnéise é seo faoi bholcáin agus a gcaidreamh leis na daonra atá ina gconaí gar dóibh. Is é Werner Herzog an stiúrthóir. Bhí a fhios agam go raibh an-tóir air mar stiúrthóir, ach anois tuigim cén fáth. Ó thús go deireadh, bhí mise faoi gheasa ag an scannán seo. Is é ar cheann de na scannáin fáisnéise is machnamhaí, cliste atá feicthe agam riamh. Tá Herzog in ann dul ó thír amháin go tír eile, ón lá atá inniu ann go míle bhliain ó shin go héasca, ag tarraingt na snáitheanna seo le chéile, cosúil leis an gcniotáil í féin! Níl mé in ann é a mhiniú go díreach, ach cuireann an scannán seo ar mo shuaimhneas mé. Freisin, i mo thuairim, tá an guth is fearr ar an domhan ag Werner Herzog. Is aoibhinn liom a bheith ag éisteacht leis ar ábhar ar bith.

Russian Doll Anois, chun an liosta a chríochnú, scannán nach bhfuil ina scannán ar chor a bith ach clár teilifíse. Is clár grinn-drámaíochta, ficsean eolaíochta atá i gceist. An fáth gur chuir mé scannán air ná go d’fhéach mé ar an rud ar fad in aon oíche amháin. An scéal ná go bhfuil Nadia greamaithe in am amháin, a breithlá, agus gach uair a fhaigheann sí bás, tosaíonn an lá arís. Tá sé cosúil le Groundhog Day le Bill Murray, ach i bhfad níos dorcha (agus níos suimiúla, dar liomsa). Is é ar cheann de na cláir teilifíse is fearr ar Netflix faoi láthair. Tá sé thar moladh beirte, gan dabht.

Sin iad roinnt de na scannáin is fearr, dar liomsa, le féachaint orthu agus tú ag cniotáil. Tá a fhios agam gur alt saghas éadrom, leath-dairíre é seo, ach táim ag iarraidh a rá go molaim an cniotáil do gach éinne. Sna laethanta seo, bíonn sé an-deacair ar fad aire a thabhairt do do mheabharshláinte. Tá gach rud neamhchinnte agus cuireann sé sin faitíos orm (agus ar a lán daoine eile cinnte.) Ní réiteach iomlán é an cniotáil, ach cabhraíonn sé liom agus tá seans ann go gcabhródh sé leatsa freisin. Ar aon nós, tóg go bog é. Ar scáth a chéile a mhaireann na daoine.

48

Oscar Wilde: Mairtíreach de Chearta Daonna Léargas ar cheann de na scéalta grá is tragóidí i stair na tíre

Tá

TG4 ag foilsiú clár faisnéise faoi láthair faoi na scéalta grá is cáiliúla i stair na hÉireann. Tugtar léargas ar chomhghnásanna sóisialta agus moráltacht na sochaí san am atá caite. Is dócha gurb é an scéal is conspóidí, a thaispeánann éagóir fhollasach, ná an caidreamh coiscthe idir Oscar Wilde agus an Tiarna Alfred Douglas.

Is é Oscar Wilde ceann de na scríbhneoirí is cáiliúla in Éirinn. Fiú ó fhuair sé bás i 1900, tá a chuid scríbhneoireachta fós i mbéal an phobail agus tá nasc aige le Coláiste na Trionóide mar iarscoláire. In ainneoin a cháile intleachtúil, chríochnaigh a shaol ar nóta tragóideach agus is siombal comhaimseartha é do leatrom atá fós ar dhaoine homaighnéasacha.

Déanann an clár iniúchadh ar shaol Wilde díreach ón tús ach b’iad na tréimhsí ba thábhachtaí ina shaol ná na blianta a chaith sé i Londain, an áit ina bhfuair sé eispéireas neamhshrianta ar chúrsaí grá. Nuair a bhí sé ag staidéar in Oxford i 1874, maisíodh a sheomra le bláthanna ildaite agus ní raibh sé cúthaileach a fhíorphearsantacht a léiriú. Níor thaitin leis na coimeádaigh in Oxford an easpa measa a bhí aige do chultúr na fearúlachta a bhí i bhfeidhm i Sasana Victeoiriach.

Thuig Wilde na dualgais a bhí aige agus é pósta le Constance Lloyd. Ba fhear teaghlaigh maith é ach nuair a bhí sé i Londain, bhí beatha níos tarraingtí aige. Fuair a chuid scríbhneoirechta ní ba mhó aitheantais le linn na tréimhse seo. I 1890, scríobh sé a úrscéal cáiliúil, The Picture of Dorian Gray, agus sa bhliain chéanna, bhuail sé le fear a d’athródh a shaol go deo: an Tiarna Alfred Douglas.

Chuir Wilde “the real Dorian Gray” ar an bhfear mealltach seo, a bhí ina scoláire filíochta in Oxford. Bhí a gcaidreamh pléascach agus dáinséarach. Fuair an bheirt acu taithí ar thaobh dorcha na cathrach trí chlubanna sóisialta agus striapachais. Bhí Wilde ag forbairt mar dhrámadóir agus é ag baint sult as an gcáil a bhí aige. Ba é an peaca ba mheasa ag an am sin ná chun dul i gcoinne na gnáthmhoráltachta ach ní raibh sé riamh i gceist aige a ghrá d’Alfred a choinneáil faoi cheilt. Bhí déistin ar chuid mhór den tsochaí, go háirithe ar athair Alfred, Marquess of Queensburg, fear garbh, barbartha.

Rinne sé iarracht Wilde a náiriú agus deireadh a chur lena ghairm litríochta ach theip ar a bhagairtí. I 1893, thrasnaigh Wilde an líne nuair a roinn sé grianghraf proifisiúnta dá féin agus dá leannán “Bosie” (leasainm a bhí aige do Alfred). Ba ráiteas é an grianghraf a thaispeáin nach mbrisfí an caidreamh grámhar, paiseanta seo. Ach ní raibh a fhios ag Wilde cad a bhí i ndán dó.

Nuair a mhaslaigh athair Alfred gnéasacht Wilde go poiblí i 1895, rinne Wilde iarracht an dlí a chur air.

Roimh i bhfad, ghlac an Stát páirt sa choimhlint agus ciontaíodh Wilde mar gheall ar a “ró-mhígheanas” (“gross indecency”). Chaith an fear dhá bhliain leis féin sa phríosún agus é scriosta de bharr daorobair. Cé go raibh seans aige tamall a chaitheamh le Alfred tar éis sin, scar siad óna chéile don uair dheireanach mar gheall ar an bhfaitíos a bhí ar Alfred roimh a athair. Fuair Wilde bás i bPáras, fear ró-óg, a bhí scriosta agus briste.

Cailleadh an Tiarna Alfred Douglas i 1945 agus deirtear nach raibh sé mar an gcéanna ón lá a chaill sé a fhíorghrá.

Ar an drochuair, ní raibh an grá idir na fir seo leath chomh láidir agus a bhí cumhacht an údaráis leatromaigh.

Léirítear an chaoi a d’fhulaing neart daoine mar gheall ar easpa tuisceana agus easpa daonnachta. Ach is rud cumhachtach é go bhfuil tionchar Wilde fós le feiceáil sna laethanta seo - ba mairtíreach de chearta daonna é agus rinneadh éagóir ollmhór air, ach is fíor a rá go mbeadh sé bródúil dá bhfeicfeadh sé an t-athrú moráltachta sa tsochaí inniu.

Níl seo ach scéal spéisiúil amháin sa tsraith nua “Scéalta Grá na hÉireann”. Pléitear lánúineacha cáiliúla eile, cosúil le Kitty Kiernan agus Micheál Ó Coileáin, agus is ceacht é an clár ar stair na tíre freisin. Craoltar éipeasóid nua gach seachtain agus tá siad uilig ar fáil ar Seinnteoir TG4 (www.tg4.ie).

FOCAIL LE ELAINE NIC ÉIL

49

PHOTOS BY MEGAN O’ROURKE

Lá Fhéile Vailintín Faoi Mhaise Duit!

Twitter: @tn2magazine Instagram: @tn2magazine Facebook: TN2 Magazine

Want to write or illustrate for TN2 Magazine?

Email editor@tn2magazine.ie to find out how to get involved.

TN2 is also looking to fill the following roles:

Theatre Deputy Editor If you're interested joining our team, send a cover letter to the email address listed above.