TN2 Issue 1 18/19

2018/19 ISSUE ONE TN2MAGAZINE.IE

ART TELEVISION SEX FILM LITERATURE FOOD THEATRE FASHION GAMES MUSIC

EDITOR Maia Mathieu

editor@tn2magazine.ie

DEPUTY EDITOR Caroline O’Connor

deputy@tn2magazine.ie

BUSINESS MANAGER Celeste Dougherty business@tn2magazine.ie

WEBMASTER Alden Mathieu webmaster@tn2magazine.ie ART | art@tn2magazine.ie Nell Thomas, Rachael Gunning FASHION | fashion@tn2magazine.ie Caroline O’Connor Julia Geoghegan, Emily Nolan FILM | film@tn2magazine.ie Graham Kelly, Alice Whelan FOOD & DRINK | food@tn2magazine.ie Alden Mathieu, Maeve Lane, Amanda Cliffe GAMES/TECH | games@tn2magazine.ie Sam Hayes, Kylie McBride LITERATURE | literature@tn2magazine.ie Lauren Boland, Aifric Doherty, Mairead McCarthy

Think Burgers – Think BóBós We take big group bookings up to 40pp.

MUSIC | editor@tn2magazine.ie Naoise Osborne, Karen Treacy SEX/SEXUALITY | sex@tn2magazine.ie Hazel MacMahon, Maia Mathieu TELEVISION | television@tn2magazine.ie Arianne Dunne, Ursula Dale THEATRE | theatre@tn2magazine.ie Amyrose Forder, Larissa Brigatti ILLUSTRATIONS | illustrations@tn2magazine.ie Orla Brennan, Eimear Johnson PHOTOGRAPHER | photo@tn2magazine.ie Aoife Breen COPYEDITING | copy@tn2magazine.ie Hazel MacMahon, Arianne Dunne, Caroline O’Connor, Conor Courtney, Maia Mathieu SOCIAL MEDIA | Aoife Donnellan promotions@tn2magazine.ie

74 Middle Abbey St, D1 • 50-51 Dame St, D2 • 22 Wexford St, D2 www.bobos.ie

LAYOUT BY Maia Mathieu, Caroline O’Connor, Sorcha Kelly

Editorial

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Summer Gig Highlights

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A Guide to Dublin Galleries

6

Food Waste

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The Many Sides of Edward Norton

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5 Women in Fiction

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Florence Welch: Movement, Music & Meaning

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Pokemon Go: Two Years On

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Portraiture & Self-Image Through The Ages

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Statues of Women in Dublin

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Woman on the Fringe: Ruth McGowan interview

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Insatiable Bites Off More Than It Can Chew

25

Ladies, Are You Riding? (Sex)

27

Starved For Culture: Alternatives to Aramark

28

A Fresher’s Guide To Dublin (Map)

30

Rose Tinted Screens: The Games That Shaped Us

32

Foreign-Language TV

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Your Guide to the Fashion Nightlife of Dublin

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Mind-Benders and Mythologies: Dublin ComicCon

43

A Porn Of One’s Own

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Female Leadership in Dublin Theatre

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Featured Poet: Maya Bushell

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Reviews

50

Featured Artists

57

Endword: So, you want in on this?

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TN2 is funded partly by Trinity Publications, and claims no special rights or privileges.

All serious complaints may be directed towards chair@trinitypublications.ie or Chair, Trinity Publications, House 6, Trinity College, Dublin 2.

Appeals may be directed to the Press Council of Ireland.

Get involved with Trinity Publications through social media, or secretary@ trinitypublications.ie

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Letter from the W editor

elcome (back) to Freshers’ Week, 2018! You’re holding in your hands our first print edition of the 2018/19 academic year, but it’s the product of a team that’s been working together to create online content since last spring. So while this is -- to mess with the metaphor -- technically our first rodeo, there’s been other, virtual, practice rodeos going on for a while.

Summer Gig Highlights

TN2 began life as the arts section of our big sister, Trinity News, and has gone through various metamorphoses over its publishing career. You hear a lot about the ‘death of print’ when you’re getting into publishing, but the truth is that print isn’t so much dying as it is evolving. Online and print media each do better at different things. Our goal for this year is to allow that to be a strength rather than a weakness. Our website is updated between four and seven times a week and stays very current, but it’s also been important to us to put out the best print editions we can: there’s just some things a magazine can do that a website can’t.

This incarnation is our longest ever, at a whopping 60 pages.

We’re featuring not only articles from the best arts, culture and lifestyle journalists Trinity has to offer, but also some seriously cool illustrations from a team of artists who just blow my mind.

Our writing is the backbone but our illustrators make us look good.

And hey, maybe you are our next feature writer, reviewer, cover artist, illustrator or copyeditor, and you’re feeling a tingling sense of destiny as you’re reading this. Or maybe that’s just the free food from the Freshers’ Fair being less-than-fresh? No? Good. You’ll find information on getting involved with us towards the end of this issue and I look forward to meeting you.

EDITOR Maia Mathieu

editor@tn2magazine.ie

We’ve some real treats, from reflections on pop culture icons like Florence Welch, Edward Norton and Pokemon, to in-depth looks at foreign-language TV and alternatives to supporting Aramark with your coffee money. There’s reviews too, and Dublin-specific information on theatres and art galleries. I’ve had an incredible time poring over all of this material as it comes in, and I think you’re going to enjoy what we have for you. If you like what you see, check us out online.

Here’s to an excellent year.

• • •

Music 4

• •

EDITORIAL

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FVDED (July 6-7 2018) - a festival based in Surrey, Vancouver BC. Headlined by Kygo, photo by Naoise Osborne Taylor Swift Dublin - REPUTATION tour in Croke Park - photos by Graham Kelly Sziget (Aug 8-15 2018) - festival based in Budapest, headlined by Arctic Monkeys, Dua Lipa, Kendrick Lamar and more. Photos by Marina Livathinou Tipp Tops - small band, intimate performance in Portland, Oregon - Aug 7 2018 Longitude 2018 Seattle’s downtown summer sounds - photo by Naoise Osborne

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HUGH LANE GALLERY

Loughman, who uses subject matter taken from film to create atmospheric paintings in his ‘Proven Answers.’

Loughman’s exhibition culminates with the ‘Artist in Conversation’ event with curator Valerie Connor on the 12th of September.

Mart Gallery have artists studios throughout the city and exhibition rooms in an ex-fire station with double height space and recognisable red lifting doors which occasionally expose the space to the street. David Lunney is exhibiting from the middle of September with his show ‘Things Twice (Multiple Times).’ This exhibition will negotiate rhythm and pattern in Lunney’s unique mixedmedia style and muted tones. Mart have also recently launched a Smart talk series which goes on throughout the autumn and features presentations from the Craft Council of Ireland and a talk on ‘Cultural Engagement in the Age of Trump.’

Alongside the permanent fixtures at the Hugh Lane Gallery, this September they will also feature two exhibitions that use digital technology to provide a commentary on current political and social climate.

Rachel Maclean’s film piece ‘Spite Your Face’ uses multiple characters (all played by the artist) and parody in order to criticise consumer culture and the populism that contributed to Brexit and Trump’s election. Maclean uses makeup and costume to transform herself and green screen to place her characters in a virtual backdrop. Also on show is Doriean O’Malley’s ‘Prototypes’. O’Malley similarly situates her characters in virtual settings as well as against the backdrop of her home city of Berlin.

Multiple themes are explored and navigated by trans protagonists in several films.

WORDS BY NELL THOMAS ART BY LEIA MONTENEGRO

A Guide to Dublin Galleries IMMA

S

eptember in Dublin sees the close of summer exhibitions and the beginning of the autumn programme, and provides a good introduction to Dublin’s art scene for anyone new to it. Incorporating artists and influences from around the world, here are some exhibitions that are not to be missed.

Many of these shows are evocative of foreign places or reflect cultural artistic practices outside of Ireland, and so the September exhibition programme feels very outward7 looking just when many of us are returning to the city.

ART

Temple Bar Gallery and Studios have an atrium space programme which invites artists to negotiate a more transitional and unconventional area compared to the usual gallery layout. This summer, until September 15th, it hosts Miranda Blennerhassett’s‘Kambur,’ inspired by Icelandic knitting patterns.Also exhibiting is Stephen

KERLIN GALLERY

ART 6

IMMA hosts a retrospective of the Iranian artist Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian titled ‘Sunset, Sunrise’.

Having spent part of her career in New York, the name of the exhibition reflects the duality of her eastern and western influences. From her home country Iran, Farmanfarmaian uses native techniques of cut glass mosaic and traditional geometric patterns. IMMA frequently offers supporting events alongside their exhibitions, in this case, an artist’s response by fellow Iranian Roxana Manouchehri on the 5th of October looks to be a stand-out.Manouchehri will be providing insight into Farmanfarmaian’s traditional influences and her innovations, which had a profound effect on the next generation of artists.

Daniel Rios Rodriguez’s ‘Bite the Tongue’ at the Kerlin Gallery uses mixed media to evoke the heat of San Antonio where they were created. The Texan painter uses a saturated colour palette painted with black to resemble a kind of heat mirage. Rodriguez’s natural forms are paired with frames that tend to protrude in sharp shapes, suggesting the expanse and extremity of the landscape they convey.

At the National Gallery Roderic O’Connor invites viewers to see France through his vibrant lense, whilst the Chester Beatty presents us with another example of Japanese storytelling. The relationship between the ‘Roderic O’Conor and the Moderns’ exhibition and the featured artist’s sense of place is explored in a tour by Mags Harnett and Sandra Hickey entitled ‘France: the time, the place, the principles’. This takes place on the 13th of September at 18:20 and is free with an exhibition ticket for this date and time. At the Chester Beatty ‘The Valiant Adventures of Tawara Tōda’ is also on display until January. The Tawara Toda scrolls tell the story of the 10th century warrior and the trials he faces. The scroll is part of an ongoing restoration project and is a wonderful example of 17th century Japanese art.

food waste D

idn’t fancy finishing that plate of pasta or the crusts from your sandwich? Threw out that broccoli you bought in a moment of health consciousness but forgot about and it has now turned an off-putting shade of white? While these may be small quantities of waste, these little contributions to the rubbish dump amount to approximately one ton of food waste per Irish household every year. According to the Department of Communications, Climate Action and the Environment, only a fifth of the food we throw away is really inedible, like bones and banana skins. The rest are leftovers, trimmings and perishables.

By reducing the food we throw away at home, we can all help reduce food waste. However, the biggest contribution to food waste is not only by consumers, but from the very beginning of the food chain to the end. Farmers may cultivate crops which are never harvested, due to damage or drop in demand.

Supermarkets and retailers bin or reject enormous quantities of expired or ‘ugly’ foods. Restaurants and cafes also produce waste from throwing away customers’ leftovers or surplus perishables. This waste all along the food chain amounts to approximately one million tonnes of edible food being wasted every year in Ireland. But Ireland is not alone in this; this figure expands to 1.3 billion tonnes globally!

Food poverty Reducing waste is a cost-free method of mitigating climate change.

Furthermore, it can actually help you save money. Each household throws away around €400 - €1000 of food per year, amounting to €700 million in Ireland annually. Many families in Ireland do not have enough money to feed themselves: 10% of Irish people and more than 1 billion people globally experience food poverty. Doesn’t it seem crazy to waste food when there are people going hungry?

Solutions Many supermarkets, such as Lidl UK, have started stocking damaged or misshapen fruit and veg at discount prices in order to reduce the amount of food thrown away.

Lidl Ireland, in contrast to its British counterpart, doesn’t wish to start stocking ‘misshapen’ fruit and veg, as they already give these to charity. Lidl Ireland is part of a bigger charity project called Food Cloud, joined by Aldi and Tesco.

Food Cloud is a non-profit app which enables supermarkets, retailers and other food processors to donate food to local charities.

Organisations such as Food Cloud not only feed the hungry but also save retailers money, but these

charities receive only 10% of all food going to waste.

The government has responded by creating a Food Waste Charter, which was signed last year by some of Ireland’s biggest food retailers.

This charter aims to facilitate food waste reporting in order to reduce waste more efficiently. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) also launched its ‘Stop Food Waste’ campaign and website, with information about how to mitigate food waste. Educating individuals is also key, with events like the Zero Waste Festival, an inclusive day out for all ages, educating the Irish public about how to better utilise food that would be otherwise wasted, in an interactive way. Many other initiatives have been set up by the National Waste Prevention Programme (NWPP), such as Greenbusiness.ie, the online Tool for Resource Efficiency (TREE) and the SMILE Resource exchange.

Despite these projects, enormous quantities of edible food are wasted every year, and in order to make a difference we must all start wasting less. Here are three simple steps to help combat food waste: 1. Plan your weekly shop to avoid buying foods that will expire before you can use them.

2. Listen to grandma and finish your plate instead of snacking later...

3. If you really can’t finish your plate, store the leftovers in a container, they will make a great lunch/dinner for tomorrow! Or revamp them -- could they work in a pasta sauce, an omelette, or a sandwich?

WORDS BY AMANDA CLIFFE

E

dward Norton has to be one of the most underrated actors out there. Since he exploded onto the scene in his Primal Fear debut, he has acted with impressive consistency, never once giving a performance that fell short of his incredibly high standards.

His intelligence and charismatic acting style is a sight for sore eyes in a world where Sylvester Stallone is, somehow, still an actor.

It is impossible to encompass all of Norton’s fantastic performances in a short piece of writing, but I have attempted to discuss a few of his best-known and most enjoyable works.

Norton’s natural talent is evident in his film debut, Gregory Hoblit’s 1996 crime-thriller Primal Fear, for which he won a Golden Globe and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. Anybody who has so much as scratched the surface of Norton’s extensive filmography has probably noticed that his performance of characters with some sort of dissociative problem or who undergo a significant change in personality is, for some reason, a recurring theme. Well, this all started with Primal Fear. In this film, he plays Aaron Stampler, a seemingly shy and ingenuous altar boy who is accused of the murder of an Archbishop. The plot revolves around Stampler’s trial, in which a high-profile lawyer, played by Richard Gere, attempts to prove his innocence. However, it is soon revealed that there is much more to Stampler than meets the eye when his other, much more sinister, personality is revealed.

Full of dark secrets, dramatic court scenes and plot twists, and dealing with important themes such as religious corruption and sexual abuse, Primal Fear is well worth a watch. However, it is Norton’s flawless performance that propels the plot and makes it impossible to draw your eyes away from the screen. He stammers his way through the film with an air of utterly convincing sincerity, with every fibre of his being embodying the appearance of a frightened, guileless teenager. His performance of Stampler’s alter ego, the violent and malevolent Roy, is so dark and unnerving that you cannot help but feel uncomfortable when watching him. The contrast between these two personalities that he plays provides a preview of the huge range of roles that he went on to capably play over the course of his career.

WORDS BY ALISON TRAYNOR American History X, Tony Kaye’s 1998 crime and coming-of-age film is another mustsee work of Norton’s. It’s true that in this film he retains his prisoner’s uniform, but he has transformed his style in other ways; namely with a large swastika tattoo. He plays Derek Vinyard, a former neo-nazi and leader of a white supremacist gang who is imprisoned for manslaughter when he kills a black man who is attempting to steal his father’s truck. Derek is released from prison a changed man who no longer holds racist ideals, but he discovers that his younger brother Danny, played by Edward Furlong, has fallen back into his old ways. The film follows Derek’s attempts to dissuade Danny from going down the same path as him. Once again, Norton’s performance is captivating, and he was unsurprisingly nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor for the role.

The relationship depicted between the two brothers is truly touching (well, as touching as a relationship between a neo-Nazi and an ex neo-Nazi could be, that is). It provides a fascinating insight into the origins of racism and the way in which it can be passed down through the generations. It is commendable how Norton has the ability to take such an inherently dislikeable character and make him both sympathetic and engaging. You will probably find yourself rooting for Derek, and in turn rooting for Danny for the sake of Derek. It humanises people who have abhorrent views, not in a way that excuses it, but in a way that enables us to better understand its source and the ways in which it is inclined to intensify.

It is impossible to discuss Norton’s career without mentioning what is probably his bestknown role, that of the unnamed Narrator in David Fincher’s 1999 cult classic Fight Club. In this film, Norton plays a troubled insomniac who meets and begins living with a man named Tyler Durden, played by Brad Pitt. The two men form an underground fight club, which goes about as well as you can imagine. This club escalates into a much larger operation, aptly named Project Mayhem, and the narrator’s increasing dissociation from reality soon poses terrible problems, ending with one of the most iconic film twists of all time. At the time of its release, the film did not meet expectations in

This is your life and it’s ending one minute at a time.

Edward Norton as The Narrator, Fight Club.

FILM

FOOD 8

Environmental consequences Food waste may turn out to be worse for the environment than you think. Agriculture is one of the most polluting industries, and Ireland is one of the only countries in the world to produce more emissions from agriculture than from any other sector. Agriculture produces a third of all greenhouse gas emissions in

Ireland, mostly from methane (cow farts) and nitrous oxide (animal poo), both of which are more damaging to the atmosphere than carbon dioxide. Agriculture is generally extremely resource-intensive: over 300 million barrels of oil and 550 trillion litres of water are used to produce the food wasted globally every year. Considering rising sea levels, soil erosion and the massive drought affecting Europe during the heatwave this summer, is it really sustainable to waste all this food?

The Many Sides of Edward Norton

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Another standout performance of Norton’s career came in the shape of Scout Master Randy Ward in Wes Anderson’s 2012 coming-of-age film, Moonrise Kingdom.

Despite all of the macabre parts that he is known for, Norton slots in perfectly to the vibrant and eccentric world of Wes Anderson, showing his capacity to excel in a vast range of roles. This film is about two twelve year old misfits who fall in love and decide to run away together. With a storm rapidly approaching the island on which they live, a search party endeavour to find them before it is too late. It is a delightful film full of Anderson’s trademark quirky characters. Scout Master Ward is the leader of a scout group at Camp Ivanhoe and he organises a rescue mission with his scouts to find the runaways. It takes a certain sort of actor to be able to shine in a Wes Anderson film, as the director’s style is so unique and offbeat. Norton appears to revel in the distinctive script and with his illustrious charm and his considerable finesse, he ensures that Scout Master Ward is moulded into a classic Anderson FILM 10

ART BY EIMEAR JOHNSON

the box office, received mixed reviews from critics and was a source of controversy due to its depictions of violence, because naturally it was a real shock that a film called Fight Club actually had fighting in it! However, the reception to the film has considerably warmed over time and it is now generally viewed as one of the best films of the 1990’s. Despite its initial reception, Norton’s performance in Fight Club has consistently been lauded by audience and critics alike. At times, Fincher even encouraged method acting on set which is interesting to consider in terms of Norton’s performance. In fact, the famous scene in the car park when Norton hits Pitt’s ear was the result of an instruction to Norton from Fincher that Pitt was not aware of, meaning that Pitt’s indignant exclamation of “You hit me in the ear!” was his real reaction. Norton, a very unassuming-looking man, switches seamlessly between the exhausted insomniac, weeping in the arms of a man in a cancer support group, to the ruthless, bloodthirsty fighter who beats Jared Leto’s ‘Angel Face’ to a pulp because he “felt like destroying something beautiful.” As always, he is equally as convincing in both of these modes. Fight Club is a brilliant film that any self-respecting Edward Norton fan must watch.

character. It is impossible to imagine any other actor playing this role, because the overly earnest, sometimes incompetent and always eccentric Scout Master Ward is quite simply Norton through and through.

It is testament to his performance in this film that he was also recruited for Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel and later Isle of Dogs, which are also high on my list of recommendations.

One of Norton’s more recent performances was in Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s 2014 black comedy Birdman (or The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance), in which he plays Mike Shiner, a talented but erratic actor.

The premise of this excellent but bizarre film involves Riggan Thomson, a washedup Hollywood actor played by Michael Keaton, whose main claim to fame is that he played a character called ‘Birdman’ in a series of superhero films. Thomson is determined to reignite his career through his production of a Broadway play, which suffers various catastrophes along the way. All of this happens while he is haunted by an inner ‘Birdman’ voice that taunts him while he regularly visualises himself performing acts of telekinesis and levitation. It is very revealing that in a film this strange, Norton’s Mike Shiner is the first thing I remember when I think about it. Norton’s performance is cleverly nuanced throughout. He manages to make Mike Shiner so wonderfully obnoxious that he almost makes his neo-Nazi from American History X seem endearing, yet he also plays him as a character with hidden depths that are gradually revealed. One of the greatest things about Shiner is that he is king of the meltdown. The film is worth watching if only for the scene in which Shiner takes his stage directions a little too literally and becomes inebriated during a performance, which results in an extremely memorable “Did you replace my gin with water, man?” rant and a thorough thrashing of the set. Norton develops Shiner in an utterly believable way, enabling the audience to empathise with him despite his many negative qualities.

As he plays an actor, his acting skills and the true extent of his talent are consciously drawn attention to. He conveys a huge range of emotions in every glance and every word uttered. Once again, Norton was nominated for an Academy Award as Best Supporting Actor in this role. There appears to be no end to this man’s talents.

“Edward Norton’s performance of characters with some sort of dissociative problem or who undergo a significant change in personality is, for some reason, a recurring theme.”

An introduction to Gaitskill, Kleeman, McBride, Cline and Sabalo

You too can have a body like mine

5 WOMEN IN FICTION

I

remember in adolescence when I read female authors - a reading experience that may have been one of the finest of my life – after the final, glowing moments of an epilogue, turning the pages to the author bio pulled the brakes on my whirring imagination. It was not merely the shock of exiting the colourful world of fiction and reconciling that with the banality of a living person, but rather of being at odds between the intimacy of a reading experience and disassociation from the figure behind the words. The pictured writer always distant from me, despite our kindred journey through a world built from the fibres of her experience. My 15-year-old self was categorical about the image in front of me, always a version of the same theme; a fully-grown woman, often middle-aged. Speckled, scholarly. A certain mumsy quality about her. Not like me.

Mary Mary, quite contrary… to anything I’ve ever read.

Gaitskill writes about the dark side of art – that iffy tension between spiritual growth and feeding the monster.

Female friendship is central to the plot, but the narrative often meanders without becoming protracted. Gaitskill has a talent for piecing together unlikely elements of sensory experience into a coherent narrative – a trail of some of the most bizarre, flinchingly familiar synesthesia. Frustratingly, there is too much sense in its hopeless abstraction. Her fiction enthralls and enrages; a million lightbulb-moments, the taste of Eureka, and not an ounce of reconciliation.

You feel like water; a strange blend of total clarity, but total formlessness.

I wanted something to happen, but I didn’t know what.

I didn’t have the ambition to be an important person or a star. I wanted to live like music. I remember people walking around like they were wrapped in an invisible gauze of songs, one running into the next - songs about sex, pain, injustice, each song bursting with ideal characters that popped out and fell back as the person walked down the street or rode the bus.

CLOCKWISE FROM UPPER LEFT: Monica Sabolo, Emma Cline, Eimear McBride, Mary Gaitskill, Alexandra Kleeman

by Emma Cline

It sounds like the title of a fitness book - or maybe a satirical novel about fitness books - but Kleeman’s writing has seemed to transcends anything I’ve read about the experience of the body, and rarely ever references the external self. I cannot overemphasize the sheer genius of this book and how it captures the razor-sharp slights and assumptions to which women are subject in even their most intimate relationships.

On male-on-female projection, femaleon-female projection, and the descent into madness when girls start believing that they really are “just imagining it”. When we dilute the truth and choose to be nothing. Choose to be the emptiest.

It’s been three summers and I still can’t get this book out of my mind. Recently dubbed by Rolling Stone as “The Voice of a Generation”, Cline has somehow drawn the curtains on the minefield that is girlhood.

Set in 1969, the story fixes on the Manson Family’s most flatly imagined actors – the women. For me it felt like a stylistic hybrid between The Great Gatsby and The Virgin Suicides – if those sultry, Lolita-esque descriptions make you swoon, this is the one for you. Another one of Cline’s works which skirts around similar themes of girlhood is her short story “Marion”, half of which can be read here – really annoying if you’re not a subscriber, but the extract speaks for itself.

If your ability to power your way through a full-length book has weakened due to the technological age, the potency of a short story can be exactly what you need to get your literary kick.

The Lesser Bohemians

All this has nothing to do with me

by Eimear MacBride

My copy of this book is sheer vandalism.

It reunited me with my teenage habits: underlining, annotating, scollop-circling description after description.

Every sentence is interesting. The story follows an Arts student through her first few years at university - all the unsavory relationships, the total alienation, the yearning for meaning. MacBride takes “figurative” to a whole new level. She toys with font and moulds sentences to resemble the rhythms of consciousness. Described in one review as bearing “a distinct lack of God-almightyness”, MacBride’s bravery is accredited to the translucency of her deepest self-loathing, and her will to live meaningfully. A praise in the novel’s intro perfectly sums up the novel’s central theme, and the burdens of self-awareness that begin to manifest at university: “the paradox that is the shame that makes us behave shamefully.”

by Monica Sabolo

I tend to reject the notion that a novel can change your life. The way I understand what’s meant when people say “this book changed my life”, is that it probably acted as a magnifying glass to a lot of unresolved tension specific to a certain period of your life. Given that this book talks about the transition into young adulthood, it really may “change your life”. Originally in French, the translator chose to keep the language’s natural poeticism that’s often muted so as to be palatable in English. And it really works - mirroring that heightened sense of reality that is so much a part of early-twenties anxiety. On the premature plunge into the adult-world, and the “work-hard” antidote to all things frivolous proving as selfdestructive as any other. By the end, Sabolo has slayed a common caricature “that kind of girl”; the squealing, vapid nymphomaniac without a psychological past? She doesn’t exist.

WORDS BY AIFRIC DOHERTY

LITERATURE

LITERATURE 12

My gaze has softened with age – basically, I am no longer a demon – but it needn’t have. The rise of young female novelists releasing best-sellers has been a talking-point in publishing over the last several years. If reading solely male authors on principle was once considered borderline misogynistic, it is now widely considered ignorant. As Rhiannon Cosslett recently wrote, male authors are generally quicker to fall into the trap of ‘a universality of which women writers tend to steer well clear. If a man writes ‘The cat sat on the mat’ we admire the economy of his prose; if a woman does we find it banal. Saying “I don’t read women” just makes you look as though you lack curiosity.”’

Veronica

by Mary Gaitskill

“The rise of young female novelists releasing bestsellers has been a talking-point in publishing over the last several years. If reading solely male authors on principle was once considered borderline misogynistic, it is now widely considered ignorant.”

The Girls

by Alexandra Kleeman

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Florence Welch:

Movement, Music and Meaning

An analysis of Florence Welch’s exhilarating and unique performance style

I

n preparation for this article (but also because I’m a Florence + the Machine nerd) I spent hours poring over grainy and shaky footage, shot on iPhones by half drunk festival-goers, of Florence Welch’s performances during summer 2018. I have had to settle for watching the band on TV up until now, but I am counting down the days until I get to see them play this autumn in Dublin.

Each time I watch one of the band’s live performances, I am more in awe than ever. In awe of Welch’s energy; in awe of the seamless union of the visual and the aural; in awe of the way the performance tirelessly merges with the music to create something bigger.

Welch’s live style is unique and exhilarating, with a way of performing that makes it seem like she is not singing but becoming the song. She becomes a vessel for the music and the moment.

Welch’s performance style has changed very little since her early days. In 2010 - the band’s “Dog Days” - while Florence was still dancing across the stage, she perhaps seemed a little more reserved and held back (think 2010 Oxegen). Eight years on, however, her enjoyment is clearer, and the music seems more like an extension of herself. ‘High As Hope’, the band’s latest album, has been described as Welch’s most honest yet - she is the band’s primary songwriter as well as frontwoman - and onstage also she appears more comfortable, more sure of the way in which she wants to project and perform the band’s songs.

She has a way of merging movement and music seamlessly. She whirls across the stage, dancing and shimmering in front of adoring crowd after adoring crowd. She remains raised on pointed toes often, with fluttering and delicate fingers arching overhead.

Her movements are reminiscent of

contemporary ballet, and as such feel infused with the meanings of the songs themselves. Her dancing style is not unlike the choreography of Akram Khan (who fittingly, was involved in the choreography of the “Big God” music video, right off the back of his production of famed ballet Giselle), Welch seems to employ a series of different moves for each song. Her movements onstage are sudden and brash, desperate and aching, or light and airy, changing depending on the lyrics and the music in question.

They feel like natural and instinctive responses to them. Her performance of “Big God” at BBK Bilbao this year showed the potential of her physical interpretation of her lyrics, as did the performance of “100 Years” at GMA’s Summer Series. Welch was seen constantly darting back and forth across the stage, even breaking free of its borders and floating down towards the crowd of people below singing back to her, as if magnetically drawn to them.

Clothing is also important to Welch.

She always seems to look ethereal in draped and flowing vintage dresses, which move rhythmically and hypnotically with her, rather than impeding or restricting her performance.

The sweeping fabrics exaggerate her movements in a way which elevates her image. Welch has cultivated an otherworldly, ethereal image; in particularly magnificent performances, she looks like some sort of goddess or nymph, straight from Ovid’s Metamorphoses - like something straight from classical myth or art.

Of all the versions of Florence, the best has to be festival Florence. Standing up on an open-air stage with the wind whipping her hair, and thousands of people on the muddy grass crowding around to witness magic. In “Hunger”, Florence sings of thinking

“love was on the stage” and in giving herself to strangers. Nowhere is this experience more visible than in her festival performances.

There is a sense of Welch allowing herself to be subsumed into the song, the audience, and the energy. Festival Florence is beyond electric. She leaps about on huge stages, jumping up and down, not missing a single note. 2018’s BBC Radio 1 Biggest Weekend is a perfect example of this combination of control and electricity. There is something about these festival performances which is ethereal, delicate and incredibly powerful. Festival Florence is some kind of high priestess, and the audience is full of the devoted, along with the newly converted. In these synaesthetic performances, Florence lifts her host of believers with her, elevating those watching, and those performing with her, to something higher, something bigger, something better. Her haunting, unwavering voice becomes a cry, a call to arms. The shimmering, rolling, half-drunk audience of festivals are the perfect congregation, embracing her energy and returning it tenfold.

“Festival Florence is some kind of high priestess, and the audience is full of the thoroughly devoted, along with the newly converted.”

Welch may be singing to her devotees, but she herself is beyond devoted to the performance, to the craft and the art of the music. Her lyrics often begin as poetry, before being given musical backing. She is involved in the writing, production, vocals and percussion on just about every track. A lot of thought is put into music videos, which are ripe with metaphors and imagery, and consideration is put into the album art and the presentation of the physical album. But just as much energy and care is put into her live performances. Welch takes singing live as a chance to elevate and bring more to her songs. Singing live becomes an opportunity to bring the songs to life; they become more than simply something you can add to a playlist on Spotify. They become experiences.

Movement, sound, and more merge in each emotive and hypnotising moment.

WORDS BY NAOISE OSBORNE PHOTOGRAPHY FROM FLORENCE WELCH’S TWITTER

and also went against one of the most cherished aspects of the franchise, building a weird connection with the virtual monsters on screen (who doesn’t remember their first starter Pokémon, afterall?). It wasn’t long before causal players, and even avid players, got tired of the same one dimensional battles that they could not win.

Pokémon Go Two Years On

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For those of you who may have missed out on Pokémon Go (quite a remarkable feat if you did, even Hillary Clinton mentioned it during the 2016 American presidential elections.) the concept is simple. You walk around with your smartphone which is paired with

Google Maps, and you randomly encounter Pokémon to catch. By catching multiple Pokémon and transferring the extra ones you don’t want, you accumulate candy.

These candies can be used to level up your Pokémon, or evolve them into stronger Pokémon. This is akin to the bestselling series of RPGs. Battles in Pokémon Go take place at gyms, real world locations that players can claim for their team with the help of their Pokémon.

Controlling gyms allows you to accumulate coins which can be used to purchase in-game items that aid you in game.

The issues with Pokémon Go at launch, apart from the glaring technical stability issues, were much to do with this gym system. Gyms were packed with multiples of the same Pokémon, that were simply better than most.

Intelligent play and knowing the nuances of each Pokémon no longer mattered. There was no strategy in the games anymore. Simply having certain pokemon and tapping your screen, always guaranteed victory.

The game encouraged stacking the gyms with high power Pokémon such as Gyrados and Vaporeon.

This, in turn, allowed small groups of people to hold gyms indefinitely. They claimed in game rewards daily, making their Gyrados and Vaporeons even more powerful, strengthening their grip on the gyms.

Training in Pokémon Go was also not efficient, there was no way of grinding with your favourite pokemon to take down these stacked gyms. This was demoralising,

This problem was largely due to the coin system, which encouraged cheating and enabled the hoarding of in-game resources by a small number of players, and alienating everyone The last big change, and arguably else the most important, is the decision On top of this, the distribution of to foster a community. Several times Pokémon were horribly unbalanced. per day legendary Pokémon spawn at Rattatas, Pidgeys and Caterpies were the gyms for a short periods of time all most people would see for days but to catch them, you will need to on end. These Pokémon were also battle alongside other trainers. This extremely common in eggs (Pokémon has helped to bring back some of eggs can be acquired in-game and the camaraderie that was lost within have to be walked a certain distance days of the initial launch. There are to be hatched), and nothing was more also community days when a given frustrating than walking 2.5 or even Pokémon spawns more frequently, 10 kilometres to hatch an egg for a with the probability of finding a shiny (alternate) version of said Pokémon Pokémon you had no use for. increased. These events can be a lot These issues all combined to make a of fun and if you head up to your local game that was extremely unrewarding park, you’re sure to see many people and very stagnant. For most players, of all ages, genders and ethnicities there simply was no incentive to play getting excited over the new additions to their Pokédex. Niantic also issues anymore. global tasks, with global rewards, So what’s changed? How have Niantic to keep things interesting. All of switched up this grind? The first, these changes have helped greatly in and most important change was an making the game engaging and worth overhaul of the gym system. Now, returning to. The thrill of taking down Pokémon lose their strength (‘combat Mewtwo with a group of thirty like power’ or ‘CP’) over time. It can be minded Poké-nerds feels special and topped-up, but only in small amounts exhilarating, like fighting him in the by other players on the same team original colour games did, but with who are physically at the gym with the benefit of a shared experience. the new in-game berries. This means that the gyms change teams much Overall, Pokémon Go has come a long more frequently. You can only gain a way in the last two years. Its game maximum of fifty coins per Pokémon mechanics are developing and the in a given gym and you can only have grind-to-reward ratio is beginning to one of each species of Pokémon per balance out nicely. With the recent gym, regardless of how long it has been addition of trades and the upcoming there. This eliminates the problem of interactions between the app and the gym being held by the same type of the newest main RPG instalment on Pokémon for days on end, as whatever Nintendo Switch Pokémon Lets Go, Pokémon is placed by a team member it’s beginning to look like Niantic may finally deliver on their vision is there until defeated. and promises from the initial teaser On a day-to-day basis, Niantic have trailers. introduced ‘research tasks’. These tasks

It’s safe to say, that the week Pokémon Go was released, was the closest humanity had ever come to world peace. People were bonding in the streets over their latest and greatest finds, people of all ages were walking out in the summer heat to “catch ‘em all”.

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t’s safe to say, that the week Pokémon Go was released, was the closest humanity had ever come to world peace. People were bonding in the streets over their latest and greatest finds, people of all ages were walking out in the summer heat to “catch ‘em all”.

However, a few weeks on, the honeymoon period was over, and some obvious issues reared their head in the game. The servers were a mess and were constantly crashing. The grind of evolving certain Pokémon was tedious and often times, completely unrewarding. The lack of a rounded battle system and no trading system whatsoever, made the game feel like a Pokémon game in name only. Developer, Niantic did not help matters, remaining painfully disconnected from the user base and not giving any insight into how they planned on addressing these issues, if at all. Two years on, however, the game is more fun than it has ever been. The game has an enthusiastic, committed community of players.

In many ways this is the perfect time to jump back in, or even start playing for the first time. Due to many of the teething issues of the initial release having been addressed, and a plethora of new content being added, making Pokémon Go more appealing than ever.

range in difficulty and give various rewards, such as items, experience and sometimes even rare Pokémon.

A similar mechanism to many online freemium games such as Fortnite and League of Legends. Everyday that you complete a research task you receive a stamp, and when you collect seven you can claim the chance to battle a very rare Pokémon. This mechanic gives a great incentive to play daily and makes the completion of the Pokédex actually seem feasible, by rewarding encounters with Pokémon you may otherwise not encounter.

WORDS BY ANDREW BACON

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W

e are no stranger to the portrait as a generation.

Nearly daily, many of us end up commenting under a selfie of a friend or acquaintance, proclaiming their beauty, barraging them with semi-ironic emojis. Selfies are just the latest incarnation of an ageold impulse, to control one’s image (and sense of identity) through the medium of portraiture. However, the portrait, from Roman coins to Kardashian Instas, has rarely been an egalitarian medium of portrayal.

As street philosopher, mage, and rapper Cardi B noted on her 2017 hit ‘Bodak Yellow’ – “They see pictures, they say ‘goals’, b*tch I’m who they tryna be”. Braggadocious lyrics aside, portraiture as a medium of expressing identity has endured from antiquity to modernity.

How do people use their appearance to express an identity in portraits?

Egotism is in no way absent in Western Art. Roman patricians were particularly focused on posturing, and called on their artists to depict them as their favourite gods. Roman mintage displayed emperors and other powerful figures in austere sideprofile – these figures were literally currency. European art’s unfaltering preoccupation with the imperial past has inspired thousands of tronies (which are portraits of subjects playing characters through props and costume). Even in the modern age, we regularly (and maybe subconsciously) apply the use of props and backgrounds - similarly to portraits from early Renaissance period - to tell a story, or represent ourselves in a way that is satisfying and that aligns with our self-perception.

Compare Ingres’ portrait of Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte – seated in majesty on his imperial throne, swathed in ermine furs and crowned with golden laurels – to a short video uploaded by rapper Young Thug, flashing several hundred thousand dollars’ worth of glistening jewellery over blaring trap beats. Both are a potent form of self-expression. Both are a flaunting of a wealth and power that is simultaneously baffling and awe-inspiring to the viewer. We gaze dumbstruck at the splendour and stateliness of the imperial portrait, while we disdain similar displays of wealth demonstrated by modern artists in their own self-portraits.

Despite all this, the identities we glean from the latter figures is almost incomparable. Perhaps this is due to the preconceptions many hold towards those perceived as undeserving of such visual prestige, due to notions of class and respectability ingrained in societal values, or maybe it’s because of a distaste at their artistic mediums.

Frankly, I see little difference. To me, the famous photograph of rapper Cam’ron in a baby pink, hooded fur coat (with matching headband) taking a phone call on a coordinating pink flip phone is just as reminiscent of an era as a painting of a young Renaissance man clothed in leathers, velvets, and furs. Are our preconceptions of admirability skewed when it comes to the iconography implemented by modern stars?

Is the sniffy disdain many hold towards the medium of modern portraiture because we consider many to be unworthy of their self-appraisal?

From LA restrooms to Romanticist paintings of steamy Turkish washrooms from the early 1800s, iconography and use of props is still commonplace in portraiture. They serve to give the viewer thousands of visual clues about the subject’s status and ultimately their identity.

In the early 17th century, Peter Paul Rubens was commissioned to fill 24 gigantic canvases with portraits of Marie de’ Medici. She was a woman of aristocratic, but quite mundane, background who had married into the French monarchy. The artist took the liberty to elevate the subject’s life to that of one divinely ordained. Her painted portrait is presented to the King of France, Henry IV, by cherub Cupid and god of marriage Hymen.

Above her head, King and Queen of the gods, Jupiter and Juno, nod approvingly at her portrait and cast treacly smiles downward.

Is this just a huge caress of the ego for Marie? A wealthy and powerful woman like her could afford to have her rather dull life elevated to one comparable to these allegorical and classical figures. The series stylisation – which include a canvas, detailing Marie’s grandiose disembarking into France – is equally as outrageous.

They are comparable to a Hollywood star’s entrance onto the red carpet.

Victorious figures overhead trumpet her arrival, sea nymphs curl, writhe, and bask in her presence beneath the boat. A figure caped in blue velvet, adorned with gold fleur-de-lis, bows in deep respect as a consolidation of Marie being accepted into French political life, as well as the celestial otherworld. Despite the subject’s vanity, the artist plays a leading role in the theme’s execution. Was Rubens ensuring Marie was flexing on us mere mortals in order to safely collect his cheque? If so, he did a pretty good job. But Marie, despite the pomp, seems lost in the painting. She is but a void. The props are preeminent.

Paintings like this have none of the illusions of authenticity that we equate with modern portraits. We now are willing to see through the posturing painted into such quasifictional scenes.

The mediums which artists of the antique used to make their paintings satisfactory to a wide audience are intriguing and still employed

today. By distancing the subject of the portrait to the viewer – to give them a sense of the fictional or being untouchable – artists would depict them as classical figures or in far off and exotic geographical locations. The accessibility of devices and software which can take, edit and store hundreds of thousands of images of ourselves and others can lead to a crisis of identity for those seeking to curate themselves online.

It doesn’t take much for one to note the difference in opinion people have towards galleries full of portraits to an Instagram account full of selfies. Is the sniffy disdain many hold towards the medium of modern portraiture because we consider many to be unworthy of their self-appraisal?

The most enduring portraits throughout the ages are often those which are the most shocking, strange, and scandalous. Evocative portraits are those in which the subject has distinctive identity. Grace Jones with a flat topped haircut, pointy shoulder pads, cigarette dangling from her mouth; Andy Warhol’s carbon copy of Marilyn Monroe’s sultry and syrupy grin; the Mona Lisa’s knowing smile and watchful eyes; Che Guevara’s brazenly idealistic gaze, and finally Frida Kahlo with two unnerving animal friends balanced precariously on each shoulder.

When viewing a portrait, we attempt to relate to the figure, and distinguish ourselves from the subject. The artist helps us to uncover how we perceive our own identity in the way that they portray another. The paradox of portraiture is that the methods of depiction are often enduring, but the public perception to slight shifts in these depictions can generate tumult.

A classic example is the contrasting responses to Titian’s Venus of Urbino and Manet’s Olympia. This almost parallels the reception of portraits of modern beauty – from Kate Moss 20 years ago to Kim Kardashian now.

The gap has been closed between the painted portrait in a far-off palace to the selfie taken in one’s bedroom.

Does the concern in uncovering their identity lie in the fact that the viewer’s relationship with the subject is now all too personal?

WORDS BY RACHAEL GUNNING

ART

Portraiture & Self-Image Through the Ages

The subject (that is, the person posing for the portrait) now holds far more power than previously, in the execution of their likenesses. This has fuelled derision from those who consider self-portraiture in this direct and accessible way to be nothing but a deep-sea dive into a cesspool of narcissism. Much of their scorn is directed at young women, who are regularly seen as vapid, vacuous, and vain for their frequent selfies and exploration of identity through appearance. Simone de Beauvoir noted that women often turn inwards (regarding the way in which they

portray their identity through appearance) to gain a semblance of control over an environment in which control is fleeting. This is evident in the depictions of the feminine persona throughout the ages. Comparing Botticelli’s Venus Pudica (or modest Venus) to a mirror selfie of Kim Kardashian may seem incongruous.

But when deconstructed, huge similarities can be found. Both are in similar pose – but where Botticelli’s Venus demurely shields herself from our scrutiny, Kim pouts and is covered with garish black censorship stripes. Botticelli’s Venus exists in a blackened dreamscape. The viewer must project their fantasies upon her.

Kim is in a luxurious and intimate bathroom setting. Most of all, maybe the most impudent factor of Kim’s portrait (in comparison to the Venus figure) is that she is the one taking the photograph.

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STATUES OF WOMEN IN DUBLIN

STATUES OF WOMEN IN DUBLIN

There are 197 pieces of public art in Dublin. Only 9 are dedictated to women.

This is a statue of Oscar Wilde's wife, Constance Lloyd.

She is depicted beside her husband, unclothed and pregnant

Constance was a noted public speaker and suffragette.

She was more than an extension of her husband

What are we looking at?

PHOTOESSAY BY AOIFE BREEN

Only four of the statues of Dublin represent non-fictional women.

17% of Public Art in Dublin is by female artists.

Although this statue does represent ordinary women it never strays from the narrative of women as wives in traditional Irish society

''Two Irish Ladies', otherwise known as 'The hags with the bags'

Thisstatue staue on Tara St. of Constance Markievicz is one of those four This

Woman on the Fringe

In conversation with Fringe Festival Director & Trinity Alumna Ruth McGowan

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uth McGowan is the new festival director of Dublin Fringe Festival, which takes over Dublin City from Sep 8 – 23, for 16 days and nights. Ruth talks to TN2 about this year’s festival, gender balance in the arts industry and lists some of her director’s picks to help whet your appetite for the biggest month in culture, this September.

was done by a certain type of person. Things are changing.

Leadership can take many forms, there isn’t just one style or one right way of doing things. I aspire to an industry where lots of people, across the all spectrums of gender, class or background will have the opportunity to assume the privilege of being a leader, as well as manage all the responsibility that comes with it.

Do you consider Dublin theatre industry to be an equal one? Is it more/less equal than other cities?

No, because the world we live in still operates under hegemonies of all kinds. The playing field in most industries, including theatre, is not level. I am very glad to be working in a time of healthy revolution and progress, so things are changing for the better, and quickly. Fringe has equality in its DNA, it’s always been a place where radical women could thrive. However, that doesn’t mean we get to rest on our inclusive laurels. At Dublin Fringe Festival, when we talk about gender, we are always talking beyond the binary and thinking about intersectionality.

True equality means that we bring everyone with us. We champion voices that defy the mainstream and work hard to make sure the right person has the microphone when its time to speak up.

Do you think there are any particular difficulties associated with being a woman in theatre as opposed to other artistic industries?

Statistics always show playwriting as one of the most underrepresented categories for women in theatre.

There are directors, designers and performers making their mark and building careers, but largely not on work written by women. I believe film has a similar imbalance.

I find that interesting, because poetry and fiction have a much more equal representation of female authorship. So it would follow that something about the theatre and film industry in particular is inhospitable to women writers.

That problem urgently needs to be addressed, and it has a simple solution: hire women. You can see terrific work by playwrights like Erica Murray, Una McKevitt, Lauren Shannon Jones, Pea Dineen and Annie Keegan in this years Dublin Fringe Festival.

Which women are you looking forward to in this year’s Fringe Fest?

This year is a hot one – we have radical revisionist herstory from Peaches, the Glitterhole daddies putting the party in to politics and Pom Boyd performing sacred punk rituals in the Peacock. I am very proud to be working with our neighbours, Project Arts Centre to present the Irish premiere of Cock Cock.. Who’s There? by young Finnish artist Samira Elagoz. I wanted to bring this work to Dublin audiences, because its unmissable. Samira makes work of complexity, tenderness and humour that I hope will offer new perspectives on ongoing national conversations about sexual violence.

Do you intend to embrace female directors and playwrights in Fringe?

Yes, but that’s a given. 50/50 gender balance is the minimum, not a cause for applause. Ireland has extraordinary talent pool, it’s a pleasure to watch them work and support their creativity. We will continue to make sure that artists who are women, and artist who are trans and non-binary, are free to experiment and make ambitious artworks at Dublin Fringe Festival. I also want to advocate for their next steps with colleagues at home and abroad, ensuring that the Fringe platform launches them on to the biggest stages in the country and to major opportunities across Europe.

Want to know more? – check out fringefest.com

An Offensive Parody That Bites Off More Than it Can Chew

S

atire, done well, offers superb critique of the subject or society, which is why Netflix’s most recent fiasco Insatiable is such a crushing disappointment. It could have followed in the footsteps of classics like Monty Python or Father Ted, but instead the show latches onto its label of ‘black comedy’ as an excuse for distasteful and insulting humour, which is neither clever nor critical. The one star I give Insatiable is for its colourful and slightly over-the-top visuals, which could have been a great feature to a different, more refined show.

When the short trailer for Insatiable was released, the show was instantly controversial. People criticised the premise for body-shaming as it showed us ‘Fatty Patty’ (Debby Ryan), a high school student who loses weight after having her jaw wired shut (after a fight with a homeless man who tries to steal her chocolate bar) and re-emerges as the hot, confident new girl, ‘hungry’ for revenge. A black comedy about a bullied girl taking revenge on her peers could have been sensational: Insatiable is not. It’s a mess.

WORDS BY AMYROSE FORDER & LARISSA BRIGATTI

After all twelve of its tormenting instalments were out, fans shot back at claims of fatphobia, arguing that Patty’s bullies were the ones being shamed and that the show actually promoted body-confidence. Many referred specifically to one scene where Patty is told “Being skinny don’t mean shit if you’re ugly on the inside.” The show’s creator Lauren Gussis also jumped to its defence, sharing her own experiences with bullying and eating

WORDS BY URSULA DALE disorders on Twitter, later even going as far as to suggest that the show’s backlash was tantamount to censorship.

Citing personal experience with bullying seems like a lazy excuse, especially in the context of her otherwise unflinching defensiveness. By doing so, Gussis fails to acknowledge how potentially damaging her creation is: a creation targeted at a younger audience, centering on the dangerously misinformed idea that a former fat girl must have an insatiable appetite.

These defences, however, fail to take into account some of the problems inherent within the show that stem from the choice to cast a thin actress as Patty. Prior to her transformation, our bullied lead waddles across the screen in an ill-fitting and unproportioned fat suit, intended to garner audience sympathy. It’s a lazy shorthand which encourages the toxic ideology that any person who isn’t thin, or doesn’t conform to an acceptable body type, must be miserable. According to the show, ‘Fatty Patty’ only has a shot at winning pageants, getting a boyfriend or doing anything remotely of worth after she loses weight; this notion is further reinforced by the handy season-long sound bite “Skinny is magic.”

Ultimately, this drama about ‘self-acceptance’ hinges on a drastic bodily transformation and champions a form of self-worth based solely on physical appearance. Later in the series, Patty needs to rapidly lose ten pounds for an upcoming pageant and so, with the help of her supposed

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What are the defigurities/differences in being a woman in the theatre industry?

I get asked about my gender a lot. And I get asked about where my confidence comes from. Which I know are questions that the men aren’t being asked. I think that for a long time, leadership has looked a certain way because it

How did studying at Trinity impact you and your career?

Until I did my masters, I didn’t know anyone who worked in the arts full-time and wasn’t a performer. During my time in Trinity, I had a class called Contemporary Irish Theatre in Context which was taught by Chrissie Poulter.

Each week a different person would come in to speak to us about their work and I realised there was a thriving industry full of people making stuff happen. That class opened up career pathways that I didn’t know about or hadn’t considered possible until then – including my own as a dramaturg, producer and programmer.

INSATIABLE

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“If Insatiable encourages anything it’s self-loathing, not self-love.” friends, she starts heavily exercising and taking laxatives. Rather than interrogating this ‘need’, again the show posits drastic weight loss and as the only path to body confidence. If Insatiable encourages anything it’s self-loathing, not self-love.

Insatiable’s lack of creativity hides behind the label ‘satire’, claiming any offensive ideas purported by the characters are part of its process of ‘holding a mirror to society.’ When Patty develops a crush on her (adult) pageant coach, Bob (Dallas Roberts), she tells her friend Nonnie (Kimmy Shields) that she might have a shot with him because he’s a child molester. (The audience has previously been made aware that the accusations against Bob were false and the scene in which he is accused is framed as comedic.) I’m not sure which part of this joke is worse: Patty’s ‘funny’ low self-esteem leading her to pursue an alleged paedophile, or the light-heartedness with which she addresses the allegations. What sort of ‘satire of society’ is this joke is meant to represent? What is actually being parodied here?

Though diversity is not lacking in Insatiable, nuanced or respectful representation is. In one scene, clearly intended as part of the show’s ‘empowerment of the female body’ theme, Patty and a transgender woman compare themselves in a bathroom mirror, both expressing insecurities with their bodies. The woman Patty talks to is the only non-cis woman on the show, and almost everything she says is self-deprecating. After Patty talks about feeling she’ll never be thin or beautiful enough, her new friend talks about how she is insecure about the way her body looks and feeling she’ll never be “female enough.” I fail to see how it is ‘empowering’ to have the only trans woman on the show spend almost all her screen time hating her body. A lesson from a confident trans woman on loving yourself surely would have been a better way of inspiring

body-confidence. It’s profoundly disappointing that the show’s only moment of representation for the transgender community is one in which they hate their bodies. The sloppy writing of this scene and the thoughtless narrative it sustains outweighs any good intentions of inclusivity the writers may have had. Furthermore, the inclusion of the character Dee, who is proudly Black, fat and beautiful, is the show’s only brief nod to non-white body empowerment.

One of countless problems with Insatiable is that the show’s identity is lost to too many failed attempts to “poke the bear.” If its goal was to target fatphobia, why choose to have a thin actress play the main character? If it wanted to focus on body empowerment for all types of women, why anchor the show on a drastic body transformation? The erasure of bisexuality, casual homophobia and the objectification of women are all other threats to the show’s message of supposed ‘self-love and female empowerment.’ Patty’s new, thin body is given value, in part, because it’s finally approved of by the male gaze of her high school peers, which is, of course, all any woman could ever want. The narrative that the show perpetuates and its venomous ‘black comedy’ pushes an unhealthy and harmful message onto its viewers.

If you’re interested in watching something that deals with body issues in a nuanced and meaningful way, I recommend Dietland, a powerful and political show which focuses on body-love, feminism and so much more. For a younger take on body-acceptance you could try My Mad Fat Diary, which follows the emotional journey of sixteen-year-old Rae Earl.

It’s nineties backdrop also gives it an edgy and nostalgic feel.

●○○○○

Follow these QR codes to view trailers for Insatiable, Dietland & My Mad, Fat Diary

Articles will you tell you that in order to master the orgasm, you have to master masturbation. Well, I am definitely not here to tell you that you have to “know your body” to be able to climax because that’s bullshit.

As women, we have been reared for centuries on a dissuasion from pleasure, and fed a variety of myths about our ‘nature.’ One of these myths has been ingrained into us that it is difficult for (cis) women to orgasm.

The good news: anorgasmia, the medical inability to orgasm, often as a side-effect to medications or as part of another, underlying condition, is only found in about 4.7% of women so you probably do not have it.

Not everyone is into masturbating.

I mean, I’m all about a little flick and body empowerment and all, especially since it’s a great fuck you to the idea that women are supposed to be ashamed of their bodies and let men control them, but I rarely do it. Although, I admit if I wasn’t in a relationship I probably would feel the need to ladywank more. Either way, I really do think there is a fundamental difference between solo-sex and partnered-sex.

If you have a regular sex partner (relationship or otherwise), try to

WORDS BY AVELINE DAI

Ladies, Are You Riding? figure it out together because things you do to get yourself off probably won’t feel the same way as when they do it to you. That is one of the most exciting parts of sex - wondering if you touch this part of their body will they feel an electric current, or feel nothing. Is it going to take time to develop? Yes. Is is worth it? Yes! What else takes time? Foreplay! Do not skip this. Vaginas need plenty of stimulation to become aroused enough to lead to an vaginal orgasm.

Learn each others’ bodies and figure out what works best for you as a couple. If your partner is not willing to put in the time, they’re not worth anything long-term, or short-term.

Many of us, not just cis-women, need to feel safe and confident with their partner before they can give that part of themselves to them, and that takes time. It could even take a few months if you’ve just started dating someone new. Therefore, are you going to have the best orgasm with a guy you met that night at Coppers? Probably not.

Live your sexlife through this Jill Robinson quote, “There are too many mediocre things in life to deal with.

Love [or sex, for me] shouldn’t be one of them.” Sex is an experience, an intimate moment that two people share - it should be a joint exploration and pleasure. Give your partner a chance, and give yourself a chance, but do not put up with a lack or trying.

Few Things to Note About Orgasms: •

An orgasm feels like you need to pee. If you feel like you need to pee during sex - there you go!

Just relax your muscles as you would on the toilet and let the tension drip out of your vagina.

If you’re nervous whether this may actually be pee, just go to the bathroom beforehand in future.

•

Pee after intercourse to avoid getting a UTI. I cannot stress this enough - even if you don’t feel like you need to pee, trust me, you do.

•

If you’re not using condoms or pulling out, a lot of cum will dribble out - peeing and wiping will somewhat minimise this issue so you don’t start leaking.

•

(Yes, I of this

•

Men and women are biologically programmed to behave differently after sex. Women get a rush of love, and want to cuddle to feel warm and fuzzy. Men want to get more of the hit they felt when they came - which, more often than not, is sleep. All he wants is a “hug for her, and roll for you” situation (@RossGeller).

He doesn’t hate you, he’s just being a boy.

do is

realise a lot about peeing.)

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F

rom medieval ideas of the need to tame ‘lustful’ women to the whole ‘hysteria’ nonsense applied to women until the 20th century, we have a whole history to unpack regarding women’s sexuality and pleasure. Some destructive ideas, including those of Freud, linger in the discourse even though our 21st century rhetoric is decidedly proorgasm. These days, we’re all about the health benefits of the orgasm - deep relaxation, boosted oxytocin and even contributing to a more youthful appearance (and I would definitely take sex over expensive anti-ageing cream anyday). Sex has also become a less taboo topic, with real, genuine conversations evolving from behind closed doors to the public sphere. With this, women have taken better control of their sex lives and pleasure, and not feeling guilty or uncomfortable about it.

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“Cooking is universal; it is what makes us human.

An interviewee in direct provision said their children had never seen them cook a meal.”

is difficult to find exact numbers for how much Aramark has banked over the years, in 2016 alone the multinational received €5.2 million for housing approximately 850 refugees. As of June 2018, of the more than 5,500 asylum seekers in Ireland, almost a third are children under the age of 18. If this were truly a brief stop on the way to a fully-integrated life in Ireland, perhaps it would be defensible, but the statistics are staggering. People spend, on average, 3 years in these facilities, but hundreds have been held for more than 7 years. Children have been born on Irish soil and raised in direct provision.

Starved For Culture Cui bono? Aramark relies on the public’s general ignorance of conditions in direct provision while raking in the government cash.

M

y first reliable memory is of cake. Six days before my second birthday, I was presented by my aunt with a brown cat cake, iced in chocolate. I remember some of my gifts, the vague outlines of her apartment, but the cake stands out.

This is true of a great many cultures, I think. The way smell and taste evokes memories is universal. Even though people might leave their home country, or childhood religion, or lose fluency in their earliest language, there is still an unbroken thread running back if they are able to eat the way their family knows how. Cooking is universal; it is what makes us human. An interviewee in direct provision said their children had never seen them cook a meal.

Of the 33 direct provision centres in Ireland, the multinational juggernaut Aramark runs three on a for-profit basis. Like so many other things, direct provision was launched in 1999 and intended as a short-term solution, which over the intervening two decades has ossified into the “open prison” system that refugees are struggling with today.

Running the centres is big business, and Aramark’s catering contracts with prisons in the U.S. made them a natural fit for direct provision. While it

In lieu of a coffee from the Aramark-run Costa located within the Hamilton building, take a twominute walk in nearly any direction: The Science Gallery offers locally-roasted coffee; Offbeat Donuts does a great deal on coffee and a donut, both in their Pearse Station location and in the SU shops; Insomnia and The Pav are just around the corner.

For more substantial fare, nearby Zambrero offers burritos, tacos and bowls with a social conscience, and explicitly cater to vegan and coeliac diners; Chopped competitor KC Peaches hosts an impressive salad bar and a student discount; at Pig & Heifer, you can get a sandwich big enough to last you all day; and the SU Cafe in Goldsmith Hall is a reliable stop.

Or celebrate your ability to actually cook for yourself and bring something from home. You’ve got the opportunity to choose where and what to eat; make the right choice.

WORDS BY ALDEN MATHIEU ART BY LEIA MONTENEGRO

FOOD & DRINK

FOOD & DRINK 28

Pretty much all the quality holidays for me were the ones that came with festive dishes. Christmas was when my mother became a semi-professional confectioner overnight, making enormous quantities of fudge and peanut butter balls. Thanksgiving meant my paternal grandma’s pies -- pecan, pumpkin, apple, cherry, huckleberry, black walnut -- and my maternal grandma’s astronaut pseudo-food, her boxed mashed potatoes, tinned green bean casserole, dried Stove Top stuffing. Even everyday food stays with me: my great-grandma’s graham crackers sandwiched with homemade icing, invariably stored in an old red aluminum tin with a sliding lid; my aunt’s biscuits and gravy, heavy on the sausage; my dad’s weird liquidy first-attempt hummus, his sturdy loaves of brown bread, and the way he’d lecture me on the fundamentals of Cajun cooking, the mirepoix

of celery, onions and pepper. In a big way, most of the culture consciously transmitted to me was food.

While the right to work for asylum seekers has been recently and conditionally recognised, the more fundamental right to cook has not. Refugees in Aramark’s centres line up at three set times a day to be fed canteen-style, with no exceptions. “Frankly I feel like I am eating in Guantanamo... security people are standing there with walkie radios talking to each other. [...] The security standing there makes me nervous. They (security) turn off the light (in the dining room) at seven o’clock even if people are still eating, as dinner is 5pm to 7pm,” reports a refugee in Cork in Keelin Barry’s report What’s Food Got to Do With It? The Irish Refugee Council has documented cases of malnutrition amongst children and pregnant women. Refugees have repeatedly gone on hunger strikes at the low quality of food, and what food is available is criticized as bland, repetitive, medically unfit, culturally and religiously inappropriate, unsafely cooked, high in fat and sugar and low in nutrients. “I cannot be having just potatoes everyday with bread and butter - that’s what I am having...” reports another Cork refugee, in the absence of halal options. Those who attempt to circumvent the diktats and cook in secret have their cookers and food confiscated during the staff’s unannounced spot-checks of refugees’ rooms. Barry reports that one refugee she interviewed, “spoke about going out walking on the Cork roads near the Direct Provision centre in the evening to take his mind off his hunger.”

These aren’t criticisms of Aramark unique to its operations in Ireland, or unusual in their severity: Aramark’s American prison catering has matched its direct provision cuisine, underfeeding prisoners and causing diarrhea and vomiting with mouldy and maggot-infested food.

Aramark has operated the ‘Westland Eats’ restaurants (Costa, Freshii, Gastro) in the Hamilton Building since 2016, which has become a focus of the Aramark Off Our Campus activist group. Since 2014, TCDSU has a long-term mandate to campaign against direct provision; and since earlier this year, a requirement to lobby against renewing Aramark’s contract with College, which runs out in 2021.

Additionally, Aramark bought the Avoca retail chain in 2015 and in 2016 entered into a ‘five-year strategic partnership’ with Chopped, the popular salad outlets dotted around the city. While direct action and pressuring authorities to cancel contracts is a vocal and visible way to protest Aramark profiting off human misery, boycotting Aramark-operated outlets is accessible to everyone.

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MAP & WORDS BY AOIFE BREEN

Bunsen: People have debated at length over the best student-friendly dining experience in Dublin, from which Bunsen has always risen to the top. Their top value student deal is matched only by their mouthwatering juicy burgers, all of which are made to order.

St Stephen’s Green: We all need a break from the hustle and bustle of city life. Originally a Victorian park, Stephen’s Green has been a respite for Dubliners for generations. Nothing truly beats lounging on the many patches of grass on a cool autumn day.

Just don’t feed the seagulls.

IFI: People will tell you to steer clear of Temple Bar, but the tourist trap should not be overlooked as it has some truly hidden gems. The IFI is a great spot to watch up and coming films, as well as oldies. With a great student deal on Mondays, there is no excuse to not kick back and enjoy the popcorn.

Vintage Town: Dublin is full to the brim of vintage clothing shops. To get your thrift on there’s nowhere better to start than Temple Bar. With vintage cornerstone such as Tola, Nine Crows and Lucy’s Lounge there’s no limit to what you may find.

Project Arts Centre: Theatre, Dance, Art, Project really has it all. Ireland’s leading centre for contemporary art always has something going on, with over 600 shows annually. It makes a great night out or even just a wander around.

Accents: We are truly spoiled for choice when it comes to independent coffee shops in Dublin however one stands out from the rest. Accents boasts great coffee, a wide range of teas and a cosy and tranquil atmosphere. Open late until 11pm, it makes the perfect study (or procrastination) spot.

Alfies and Grogans: Enough with the relaxing venues of the day; let’s move on to nightlife. If there is one thing that dominates Dublin, it’s pubs. Alfie’s is a great spot for cheap cocktails and small bites, perfect for drinks with friends. If you’re looking for a more traditional Irish setting however, Grogans is the place to be. It’s one of the city’s most popular pubs, and a great spot for people watching.

Hideout: Ever just want to relax with friends, shoot some pool and enjoy the atmosphere? Well, in Hideout you can!

With student rates and even a BYOB option, it marks the perfect spot for a unique socialising experience.

Dublin may be a small city but it has a lot to offer. With so much going on it can be overwhelming, especially to wide-eyed and bushy-tailed freshers walking through front gate. But luckily for you we have created an all you need to know guide to Dublin which will have you feeling like a local in no time.

Rose Tinted Screens The Games that Shaped Us as Players Spider-Man (2000)

Sony Playstation

By Sean Clerkin Insomniac Games’ exciting new Spider-Man game has me feeling nostalgic for simpler times.

Neversoft (known for the Tony Hawk Pro Skater series) released their first Spider-Man game in 2000 on a multitude of platforms. I played the game on the original Playstation.

This game holds a special place in my heart for many reasons, but chief among them is that it is yet to be surpassed as a comic-book inspired video game. Chock full of eccentric villains and crossovers with other comic book characters, I have this game to thank for my introduction to the Fantastic Four, Daredevil, Captain America, and The Punisher.

The game oozes style and the cartoonish camp of comic books. Upon starting your journey, you’re greeted by a voiceover from original Spider-Man writer Stan Lee himself, who rejoices at the adventure you’re about to experience. He explains that Spider-Man’s villains are collaborating to cover New York City in a dense poisonous fog, and how Spidey is about to face an elaborate series of over-the-top encounters with his greatest adversaries.

Neversoft’s Spider-Man did something which licensed games tend to miss. It perfectly translated its source material from the comic-book panel to the joypad.

Everything from the controls, to the voice acting, feels true to the character.

Pokémon Diamond/Pearl (2006/2007) Nintendo DS

By Sam Hayes

Much mystery surrounded video games for me in my youth. I received my first console at age seven. Before that point, I have memories of my friends’ houses, playing Lego Star Wars and The Simpsons Hit and Run on PS2. I never played for long, giving these games a vast feeling. I was acutely aware that these worlds extended far beyond that which I saw. As such, when I received my black Nintendo DS Lite, the prospect of finally being able to explore the worlds of this mysterious medium was tantalising. While this predated the rise of Let’s Plays, for me watching people inhabit fantastical words was solely the realm of television and film, only games could put the audience in the driver’s seat.

Though Pokémon Diamond/Pearl was not my first game, it was the first with a world in which I got lost.

The game’s theme of mythology made for a fictional region with history and legendary creatures to seek.

Furthermore, the path to those Pokémon was the player’s to forge. From the beginning, my first Pokémon was my choice, and indeed, so was my entire team. As children we wish to explore, but much of our freedom is dictated by our parents. Where we can go and what we can do is limited. This was the draw of Pokémon for me. I could explore a world that my imagination had extended far beyond the cartridge at my whim, and forge my Trainer’s identity.

This adventure lust is a draw for me in games to this day. From The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild to Steamworld Dig and Metroid, nothing beats discovery, and the popularity of Bethesda games, such as Skyrim and Fallout, shows that I am not alone in this feeling.

Few adaptations have ever got it right, but those that do are always memorable.

Medal of Honor (1999)

Dragon Age: Origins (2009)

The original Medal of Honor was released in 1999 and was developed by Dreamworks Interactive at the behest of Steven Spielberg, who had recently released Saving Private Ryan.

My introduction to the Dragon Age (DA) series was through my cousin, Kaitlin, who is obsessed with it. She’s played through every character path and companion romance plot line, and I wouldn’t even be able to guess how many hours she’s clocked in DA Origins.

Sony Playstation

By Eoghan McConnell

The game puts the player into the boots of OSS agent Jimmy Patterson at the height of the Second World War. Dropped behind enemy lines, Patterson embarks on a dangerous mission to sabotage the Nazi war machine at every turn, from infiltrating U-Boats to blowing up a V2 launch facility.

It was truly tense for a six year old. Most of the levels take place at night, or in cramped mines, sewers, and bunkers. This compensates for the Playstation’s limited draw distance, but it creates an immersive atmosphere aided by Michael Giacchino’s excellent score and truly breathtaking sound design. Guns in Medal of Honor are well researched from a historical perspective, but still they feel genuinely powerful and dangerous. Similarly, the way the AI reacts to the player is surprising even by today’s standards. German soldiers respond like real people to threats, running for cover or throwing and kicking grenades back at the player. The death animations are realistic for their time, and gruesome for a game with no blood or gore. The damage you inflict still seems painful, with only a straight headshot guaranteeing a one-shot kill.

I think any current developers making a game set during WWII should take notes from the original Medal of Honor games and what they did right.

A problem with the series in later years was its failure to adapt to changing standards in shooters, especially with the arrival of the original Halo: Combat Evolved. If someone were to make a title similar to the original, but with the full scope of current technology, they might well have a masterpiece on their hands. Many modern shooters function, but lack the creative love Medal of Honor embodied.

PlayStation 3

By Kylie McBride

For me, video games were a fun pastime, a few hours put into completing a dungeon or working through an area and I was content. Level finished, achievement unlocked, attention moving on.

Needless to say, I had never played an RPG. Kaitlin wasn’t deterred by my obvious lack of engagement, encouraging me to play and eventually shoving me her spare copy of DA Origins and sending me on my way.

I’ll be honest here, it took me four months to finish.

My Human Mage roamed Ferelden at a snail’s pace, my habit of playing a few hours here or there had not changed, but my experience was completely different. The sole idea of being able to choose a backstory for your character to come from fascinated me, and building on top of that with choices of who lives, who dies, and who you build a relationship with, all blew my mind. Your choices mattered, where you invested your time was worth something, the relationships and plotlines I’d built weren’t something I could just walk away from. A strong narrative paired with the freedom to find your own way was captivating for someone who was so used to subpar linear storylines.

When I got the title card at the end of the game, it felt like something I’d earned. It was an exhausting, months long, ordeal, but one that had completely transformed how I would play video games moving forward. I’m not quite as proud every time the credits roll on a finished game, but I still credit DA Origins for getting me there.

A strong narrative paired with the freedom to find your own way was captivating.

GAMES & TECHNOLOGY

GAMES & TECHNOLOGY 32

For me, watching people inhabit fantastical words was solely the realm of television and film: only games could put the audience in the driver’s seat.

A selection of TN2’s games writers reflect on the games that informed our tastes.

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“Parisian police drama Spiral has had a louche, on-again offagain relationship with existing since about 2005.”

Why foreign-language TV should be your next binge-watch WORDS BY ARIANNE DUNNE ART BY AISLING MARTIN

I

t’s time for your next binge watch. You’re doing your best wine mom, with your feet up and some food on. But what to watch?

Consider: foreign-language TV. I know, I know, subtitles are scary, but it will be worth your while. Once the domain of insufferable hipsters and long-suffering language students, it’s now an ever-expanding currency of exchange in a multicultural world. So why should you make time for it?

Foreign language entertainment forces you to pay attention. You can’t have one eye on your ex’s Instagram when you actually have to focus on the episode in front of you. Relying on snippets of dialogue or fleeting glances just doesn’t work when there’s another language or subtitles involved. Perhaps related to the fact that you’re actually immersing yourself from start to finish: some of this stuff is actually gripping. It gives your brain something to get stuck into; you suddenly notice expression, gesture, landscape, pacing.

You see how other cultures deal with ideas of politics, sex, gender, faith, love. How do they ask questions of themselves? Is this show playing catch-up to some English language equivalent, or is it miles ahead? Most importantly, it’s a chance to enjoy something fresh and new, whether it’s a soapy romance or a tense thriller. Maybe the show you’ve always dreamed of is out there – you just have to look a little further afield to find it.

After all, some international sensations have already made their way into our regular viewing.

Twenty-first century television has been fascinated by Scandinavian noir, a particularly bleak style of crime drama. Swedish-Danish coproduction The Bridge was (and is) still being shown on the BBC when it was subjected to a kind of parallel adaptation in the form of Anglo-French remake The Tunnel. Kenneth Branagh hasn’t acted on the small screen since Wallander, a near-iconic drama about a Swedish detective who lives in a permanent state of greyscale existential crisis and sounds suspiciously like he went to RADA.

In case you thought Scandinavian television was only for blazer-bedecked professional women and those couples who work through entire series in tandem (“the couple that boxsets together stays together”?), the youth have been getting in on the act, too. Skam, - a Norwegian web series about ethereally beautiful, upper middle-class Oslo high schoolers and their aspirationally angsty inner lives - spread with the air of a giddy secret, albeit one half the teenagers in Europe were in on.

It must have felt at once grown-up and deliciously adult-free. It combined the up-close-andpersonal style of scripted reality with a cool-toned colour palette and high-drama storylines, with each series focused on one character, including lipstick-loaded Noora (Josefine Frida Pettersen) and brassy hijab-wearing Sana (Iman Meskini).

If you’re more of a historical drama fan, a recent trend in Spanish television has you covered. Set in sixteenth century royal courts, shows like Isabel and Carlos, rey emperador (“Charles, King Emperor”) are reminiscent of the soapy, heyday of The Tudors. Fans of Downton Abbey and Endeavour will recognise the stylings of Gran Hotel (“Grand Hotel”), a mystery-heavy upstairs-downstairs drama set in 1906. Present-day thriller Money Heist (a frankly nonsensical retitling of the much more evocative La casa del papel, “The house of paper”) is Netflix’s most-watched non-English language series; however, snapping at its heels is period drama Cable Girls. Set in a dark and stylish 1920s Madrid, it follows four working women as they keep secrets and get caught up in a surprising number of crimes. If you can, watch it in Spanish with subtitles; the American dub is extremely

TELEVISION

TELEVISION 34

One of the first new foreign-language productions of the 2010s to really cause a stir in Englishspeaking countries was Borgen, a Danish political drama which imagined the rise of a fictional female prime minister, Birgitte Nyborg (Sidse Babett Knudsen, lately seen in HBO’s Westworld).

If Scandal is the stroppy younger sister who goes

screeching down the street at 3am with her high heels in the air, Borgen is the straitlaced older sibling who went to college and got a proper job. All no-nonsense suit jackets and smooth camerawork, it was intelligent, strangely prescient (Denmark elected its first female prime minister for real two years into the series’ run) and even a bit sexy.

It was graded with a peculiar kind of loneliness, as characters grappled with political fractures, tense relationships, and immense ambition - this was, after all, an image of Denmark before the international rebrand of hygge (a cultural concept centred around moments of cosiness and charm).

As a bonus, pre-Game of Thrones Pilou Asbaek stars as media advisor Kasper, who has a troubling ability to turn describing the mechanics of a John F. Kennedy speech into chat-up lines.

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disconcerting. Narcos and Sense8 alum Miguel Ángel Silvestre is the heir to a prestigious fashion house caught up in a cross-class love story in 1950s-set telenovela Velvet; a 1960s-set spin-off, Velvet Colección (“Velvet Collection”) is about to enter its second season. The crosscentury historical-fantasy epic El Ministerio del Tiempo (“The Ministry of Time”), sees a sixteenth-century soldier join forces with a nineteenth-century student and a twentyfirst century paramedic as part of a secret organisation who guard the doors of time.

“If Scandal is the stroppy younger sister who goes screeching down the street at 3am with her high heels in the air, Borgen is the straitlaced older sibling who went to college and got a proper job.”

TELEVSION 36

This leaning towards period drama is still going strong, with shows like La Peste (“The Plague”), a crime drama set in Inquisition-infested 1590s Seville, and La otra mirada (“The Other Look”), set in a 1920s school for young women, added to the slate in 2018. It’s not just Spain, either. Also in 2018, Brazil added historicalfantasy telenovelas including ratings success O Tempo não Para (“Time Doesn’t Stop”), about an 1886 shipwreck whose victims, trapped in ice, are brought back to life in the modern day, and Deus Salve O Rei (“God Save the King”), a pseudo-medieval melodrama about a king who gives up his throne for a commoner and the chaos it causes.

Historical drama Charité may have a French title, but it’s actually a German production, named after the famous Berlin hospital. Set in 1888 amidst a bustle of Nobel Prize-winning medical breakthroughs and industrialisation, it centres on new nurse Ida (Alicia von Rittberg). It was created by Ghanaian-British writer Michaela Coel, best known for her work on offbeat BAFTA-winning comedy Chewing Gum. For Coel, this was a versatile genreswerve not unlike that of cult dark comedy Fleabag creator Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s move to edgy spy drama Killing Eve. For actual French dramas, there’s political thriller Spin (the English title for Les Hommes de l’ombre, “The Shadow Men”), set in the wake of a French president’s assassination. Mr Selfridge and Beowulf actor Grégory Fitoussi stars as Ludovic, a spin doctor with a penchant for fast cars and liaisons, locked in rivalry with his former mentor. Whereas Danish, the spaghetti hoops of languages, has to be overcome in Borgen, in French everything they say sounds either deadly serious or like ordering hotel breakfast. Spiral, a Parisian police drama which has had a louche, on-again off-again relationship with existing since 2005 and airs on BBC Four, went into production of a seventh series earlier this year. This drama isn’t afraid of its blunt female lead or killing off fan-favourite good guys; it’s a gritty shock to the system in the patterned world of the police procedural.

Looking for something a little lighter?

Look no further than the recent explosion in popularity of South Korean K-dramas.

You can’t flick through any TV guide in Western media these days without landing on something dark and critically acclaimed Stranger Things, The Handmaid’s Tale, Game of Thrones, Black Mirror. K-dramas, in contrast, offer solace in the feel-good factor. While distinctive in style and culture, many forefront a romance or a predictable set-up; both 2009’s Boys Over Flowers and 2016’s W Two Worlds, for example, feature a heroine with a quirky personality who is poor or working-class who meets a handsome, rich and ludicrously cocky love interest. These formulae aren’t just pulled from anywhere; due to the nature of K-drama shooting and writing schedules, many have a strong element of fan participation, with plots written to fulfil audiences’ wishes. The range of K-dramas available is increasing, too; some recent additions to Netflix include Strong Girl Bong-soon, about the romantic and familial tribulations of a young woman born with superhuman strength, and Something in the Rain, one of the highest rated K-dramas of the year so far.

RE-FASHIONED

It is notoriously difficult to carry straight-up comedy across cultures. Humour can be so tied up in specific cultural experiences and national identity that its effects are dampened in translation. Drama just seems easier to market. India’s fabulously-costumed Razia Sultan – a medieval historical drama about the first female ruler of the Delhi Sultanate - has been running since 2015 and earned an intro from Bollywood icon Shah Rukh Khan, but comedian Aditi Mittal’s effortlessly bilingual Netflix special Things They Wouldn’t Let Me Say remains a hidden gem. Circling back to Denmark, filthy feminist comedy-drama Rita think Bad Teacher meets Catastrophe – aired its fourth season in 2017. For something a little gentler, try Nativity!-style spin-off Hjordis.

So before you go back to watching reruns of Grey’s Anatomy or longing for the next series of Queer Eye, fill your time with some of these international alternatives. Whether you want to bring back the guilty pleasure or impress your friends with your newfound sense of culture, embrace the subtitles: there’s a whole world of sensational storytelling out there.

ADDITIONAL REPORTING

BY LAURA DONNELLY

CAL WEARS coffee hareems side taped with yellow and black arrows. Black and white print tshirt. Accessorised with a strong black belt (model’s own) and collar bondage with leash chain.

Outfit available from Fresh Temple Bar.

Your guide to the fashion nightlife of Dublin View the full shoot online at Tn2Magazine.ie this month

OPPOSITE CLOCKWISE FROM BOTTOM L E F T :

R I G H T DAVID WEARS a vintage long sleeved shirt from Tola Vintage teamed with the model’s own black Levi’s. The outfit is accentuated by the unique handcustomed vintage denim jacket created instore at Fresh Temple Bar.

Vintage:

D A V I D W E A R S oversized vintage shirt and purple beret available from Tola Vintage.

CHICHI W E A R S oversized v i n t a g e sports coat styled by the model as a dress. Available from Tola Vintage with belt available from Fresh Temple Bar.

Cropped :

E N Y A W E A R S choker necklace from Fresh Temple Bar with Praydanna flame crop top.

M A R T A W E A R S Praydanna tartan crop top with suede skort from Tola Vintage.

A B O V E ENYA WEARS a purple red crop top with matching hareem pants from Fresh Temple Bar. This coord is accessorised with a chain-laiden belt from Fresh and thin retro sunglasses from Tola.

R e w o r k i n g :

L E F T ENYA MATCHES the Praydanna flames crop top with a red tennis skirt from Tola vintage along with the statement choker from Fresh.

MARTA WEARS Fresh Temple Bar’s Autumn-Winter festival and nightwear range. The cropped yellow hoodie adds a pop of colour to the relaxed black-and-white jogger. With a matching pair of white sunglasses, we recommend adding a stong lipstick.

CAL WEARS a brand new statement piece from Fresh Temple Bar consisting of a white, long-sleeved fishnet top, black leather body harness and blue khaki combat trousers.

Comfort and fashion meet with an option to swap the body harness in favour of some statement gold jewellery for a more everyday-lecture look.

B E L O W CHICHI REWORKS the Fresh Temple Bar outfit. Cal and Chichi collaborate with Fresh to reject fashion’s outmoded gender boundaries. ChiChi models the fishnet top with an optional white vest top underneath.

Depending on the desired look and the comfort of the wearer: coloured tank tops, nipple coverings, or bralettes could be worn under the fishnet top.

Autumnal Yellow:

DAVID WEARS a Tola Vintage sunset-orange bicycle top, with zip-up high collar detail. An unusual piece with pockets on the lower back and a woolen look. Here, it is styled with a reversible Camel cigarettes branded jacket also available from Tola Vintage.

The Little Black + White Dress:

CHICHI WEARS a spaghetti string pinafore with a black and white gingham pattern from Praydanna. With an interesting tie detail at the back, this dress is a statement piece by itself, or best accessorised with gold crystal-inspired jewellery, cross body statement pieces and pop-coloured eye make-up.

Mind-Benders and Mythologies The Passionate Developers at Dublin Comicon

D

ublin Comicon this year was a veritable sensory overload. The Dublin Convention Centre was thronged with people and this extended to the surrounding area with numerous people carrying tokens of their affection for various pop-culture properties. A carnival of cosplayers dressed up as everything imaginable from Mario to Marvel. It would be amiss of me not to give particular mention to, a man in Fallout power armour that must have stood at well over two metres as well as a Kratos (God of War) cosplayer in body paint with an appropriately styled beard to match the latest game.

While I could continue to wax about the positive atmosphere created by people from all walks of life young and old or about the fascinating panel which I attended about the genre of horror across video games, literature and film, I feel most compelled to discuss the subject of the section.

PHOTOGRAPHY + DIRECTION Aoife Breen STYLING + DIRECTION Caroline O’ Connor / Emily Nolan / Julia Geoghegan / Sorcha Ní Cheallaigh MUA Cal Hennessy MODELS Cal Hennessy / Chiamaka Amadi / David Flood / Enya O’Connell-Hussey / Marta Zhuravetska FASHION Fresh Temple Bar / Praydanna / Tola Vintage

Mr. Grayscale is a game which I played at Gamers Expo Ireland (GXI) and I am happy to report that it has only become more polished since. Developer, Erie Studios concocted the idea of phasing between a lighter inner level and darker outer level during a game jam and have since proceeded to twist that concept in every way imaginable. Imagine running along the tops of boxes only to leap onto one and then falling through it at the press of a button to reach the goal. They said that they are aiming for a release in January 2019 and I, for one cannot wait.

I did not have a chance to play any of the numerous other games which surrounded me in this exciting corner of Comicon. I did see developers such as Squid Monkey Studios, whose ambitious inter-galactic action game (which has been renamed from Final Horizon to Arc Survivor) is looking more impressive than ever. One thing is certain however, the future of the Irish independent game scene is bright.

WORDS BY SAM HAYES

GAMES & TECHNOLOGY

On the first floor, down a hallway to the left was a room bustling with up and coming independent developers and each was bubbling with passion. In particular I was astounded by the number of oneperson teams who had started as a passion project.

One person company Storm Force NW Game Development is preparing to release their first game.

Programmer and designer, Dermot Sweeny helming the project and along with the help of a freelance writer, is attempting to make an ambitious RPG based around curse stones of Irish superstition. You play through the story of a woman returning to the west of Ireland under mysterious circumstances. Sweeny also promised an interesting play on time, but chose not to elaborate further. The scope of the project is truly impressive for what is predominantly a one-man team, though Sweeney is using clever short cuts, such as painting its terrain over Ordnance Survey maps.

Fadó is also an RPG made by one person. Fionn Keeley is developing a top down RPG with a more traditional flavour that sees the player taking the role of one of four characters from Irish mythology. In my session I took control of Fionn McCúl and caught and battled the Salmon of Knowledge. Yes, you heard correctly, this is a game in which the player fights the Salmon of Knowledge. If that is not a selling point I can scarcely imagine what is. The fishing reminded me of the Pokémon series and when I inquired Keeley cited it as an influence along with classic Final Fantasy games.

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“There is a stereotype that women want kinder, gentler, more romantic porn; some women do, but not all women. Feminist pornographers don’t want to do away with sexual power dynamics; many of us want to explore them in an explicitly consensual and more diverse, nuanced, non-stereotypical way.”

Feminist pornographers don’t want to do away with sexual power dynamics; many of us want to explore them in an explicitly consensual and more diverse, nuanced, non-stereotypical way.”

WORDS BY MAIA MATHIEU

A Porn of One’s Own P ornography is the theory; rape is the practice,” wrote Robin Morgan, former editor of Ms. in the late seventies. In 1981, Andrea Dworkin, noted anti-porn feminist, took it a step further, arguing that women “will know that we are free when the pornography no longer exists.” There was certainly a growing trend of anti-porn feminism at the time that sometimes even veered towards anti-sex in general, and anti-heterosex in particular. In her 1987 book Intercourse, Dworkin observed that, due to the inherent power imbalance between men and women within a heteropatriarchal society, female sexual subordination was central to all expressions of heteroseuality and reinforced within all mainstream culture from porn to classic literature. Within this framework, the idea of genuine consent was, therefore, problematic at best.

“When we find gender disparities in other sectors—from literary journalism to tech—we urge industry leaders to assess the problem and encourage women to lean in. But when it comes to porn, the impulse is to just shut the

Twenty-plus years on, pornography is still considered the ultimate realm of ‘the male gaze’, and, in this highlyconnected era, no one is shocked to learn that most boys, on average, start consuming porn at around age ten or eleven.

Nevertheless, feminist porn has made some strides in the meantime, despite still being far from the mainstream.

Fifty Shades of A Total Mess Grey essentially created the genre ‘Mommy porn’ and opened up a lot of people’s eyes to the fact that women are interested in erotic content, but the questions still loom large: what exactly is feminist porn? Isn’t that a contradiction in terms?

“Feminist porn,” writes Madison Young (pornographic actress/director and sex educator), “takes a cultural form that has historically been seen as the purview of men. It reworks sexual images and conventions to explore new and more diverse kinds of desires.” In essence, it removes what feminist critic Laura Mulvey calls ‘the male gaze’ from the driver’s seat, and brings a more egalitarian sensibility to the experience of consuming smut. But that’s not to say that all feminist porn amounts to a more explicit kind of chick-flick.

According to Tristan Taormino, feminist pornographer and co-editor of The Feminist Porn Book, “There is a stereotype that women want kinder, gentler, more romantic porn; some women do, but not all women.

Melissa Gira Grant, writing for The Guardian, points out, “Feminist porn is no longer a debatable reality; it has become a matter of discussing how it will be organized, and who will get paid, and for doing what. Questions of labor, rightly, now come before stakes-free grandstanding about the meaning of a facial cum shot. Why were we so hung up on what’s on a model’s face and how it got there, rather than what’s in her contract and how she negotiated it?”

Madeline Marlowe, a professional dominatrix and longtime BDSM director, thinks that non-kink-based porn sets should learn to be as meticulous about consent as the BDSM porn sets she runs. One of her safeguards is that she emails performers extensive checklists ahead of time - and then checks in on the list before the scene itself.

“We’re dealing with human beings and their bodies,” she says. “Headspace can change day to day.”

The defining traits of feminist pornography are then not just the creation of progressive, intersectional content that features representation of different body types and ethnicities without fetishising the performers because of their difference, but the care put into the production side of things. Are the performers being treated with dignity and are their limits being respected? In a feminist environment, the safety and well-being of the performers is paramount.

In 2006, the Good For Her sex-shop in Toronto, Canada, created the Feminist Porn Awards which have run every

You’re not alone if you were wondering about how porn could possibly be feminist and honestly, consuming porn is a very personal choice. It’s good to know, though, that there are measures in place that can help you get off on your porn without the guilt of possibly contributing to the net amounts of misogyny and abuse in the world.

Personally, I’m nearly as wary of anti-porn rhetoric that ultimately only serves to disempower women in their workplace as I am of contributing to the other systemic abuses in the adult entertainment industry.

If you’re curious about feminist porn, you might want to look into: The Feminist Porn Book, edited by Tristan Taormino, for more perspectives on this. Or http://puckerup.com/ feminist-porn/tristans-films/ Smart Ass productions, for some of her movies. http://www.feministpornawards.com/ approved feminist porn.

for

industry-

http://sssh.com/ a porn site for women, founded by Angie Rowntree, a feminist porn filmmaker who sees her role as director as including being the on-set advocate for her performers. http://www.pinklabel.tv/ is a user-friendly site that allows you to browse for free before renting movies. Their collection is extremely queer friendly and a lot of their directors are women of color, queer women, and trans women.

N.B. Most of the feminist porn you find on free porn sites is stolen. The money in this side of the industry isn’t as massive as it is in mainstream porn, so, just like you may choose to spend more on ethical purchases in other fields, you’re going to need to pay for your ethical porn.

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However, in the early nineties, queer activist Gayle Rubin made an entirely different argument. “Part of the modern ideology of sex is that lust is the province of men, purity that of women. It is no accident that pornography and perversions have been considered part of the male domain.

In the sex industry, women have been excluded from most production and consumption,” and, therefore, if sexism and misogynistic violence were rampant in porn movies and the adult entertainment industry, the solution was to bring more women - as writers, directors, producers and consumers not just performers.

whole thing down,” writes Amanda Hess for Slate. “That’s unfortunate, because it reinforces the expectation that women can only ever be innocent bystanders to sexual material, never producers or consumers in their own right.”

So, if removing overtones of dominance and submission isn’t the key to making pornography feminist, what is?

Not shockingly, the keystone of making feminist porn comes from understanding that sex work is work, and worker deserve dignity, agency and compensation for what they do. Think of it like this: is your sweatshop produced t-shirt from a large chain who stole the catchy design and empowering slogan from an independent artist feminist?

Or is the fair-trade cotton t-shirt made in an unionised environment and sold in a way that benefits the workers, artists and creatives involved more so? If ethical fashion is in the production, so is ethical porn.

year since. It’s probably the closest thing there is to an accepted criteria for what makes porn feminist. To be nominated for an award, Good for Her requires that: • A woman had a hand in the production, writing, direction, etc. of the work.

• It depicts genuine female pleasure.

• It expands the boundaries of sexual representation on film and challenges stereotypes that are often found in mainstream porn.

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WORDS BY AMYROSE FORDER & LARISSA BRIGATTI

The Influence of Female Leadership in Dublin Theatre

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Looking at the emerging spectrum of powerful women in our contemporary theatre we could not hesitate to mention the current Artistic Director of The Gate Theatre, Selina Cartmell. She is the first female artistic director in the Gate Theatre since its foundation in 1928; the precursor artistic directors were Michael MacLiammoir, Hilton Edwards, and infamously Michael Colgan. Selina Cartmell is a great influence for other women who have been conquering leading positions following on from the #Wakingthefeminists movement which has been supporting women and empowering their voices not only in Dublin theatre but in life.

2015’s #WakingTheFeminists movement is undoubtedly a cornerstone of Dublin theatre’s road to equality. Catalysed by the Abbey Theatre’s male-centric 1916 Centenary programme, in which nine out of ten plays were written by men, the movement saw protests from frustrated women and men in the Arts industry (as well as businessmen, politicians, and figures of our society) searching for an equal voice for an equal Ireland. The grassroots campaign went on to win the distinguished Lilly Award for its digital presence, but more importantly pried open the eyes of a country and industry to its unequal ways. The effects were immediate: the Abbey’s Guidelines for Gender Equality were published nine months later, and other Dublin institutes seemed to more obviously promote their female workers and artists.

“The Red Shoes” is a great performance example under not only the artistic direction of Selina Cartmell, but it was mainly created by a female artistic team— choreographer Liz Roche and set and costume designer Monica Frawley.

The potential 2017-2018 performances season opened an incredible platform for female directors, playwright and designers. Cartmell is also embracing classic and contemporary works under some equitable points of view - which is pivotal for the contemporary culture, the education of equality in the Arts for the future, and acknowledgement of women artists in history. Hence, it is right to confirm that Selina Cartmell is an inspiring woman in theatre who is changing the traditional theatre structure and encouraging more women artists to not only have a voice in the artistic world but also to lead and create its new forms.

More recently, last month Minister for Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht Josepha Madigan launched a new strategy for gender equality in Irish theatre. Ten theatre organisations, including the Abbey, The Gate, Dublin Theatre Festival and Rough Magic have publicly committed themselves to implementing a fifty-fifty gender balance within five years. While it is exciting to see the government promoting the Arts after over a decade of funding cutbacks, policies are only hear-say until they become actions. The proposed means include unconscious bias training for all theatre production staff, and gender blind casting. #WakingTheFeminists is undoubtedly to thank for this vocal, public promise to a more equal workplace.

One of Cartmell’s academic achievements is her degree in Drama and History of Art from Trinity College Dublin and the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama.

Cartmell was a freelance director, artistic director of Siren Productions since 2004, and she had directed three shows for the Gate before taking on the role of Artistic Director.

Furthermore, it is not just women in high-powered leadership roles influencing the shows we see. Women are making their own way into the artistic world, they are making their voices heard, sharing their own perspectives on life and changing theatre history, all from backstage.

Catherine Royle shared a bit of her own experiences of being a woman in the theatre industry with us. Catherine is the Producer for Funny Women in Ireland, she briefly performed in small theatre productions during college but now dedicates her time to working with up and coming women in comedy.

Catherine says: “Producing shows for women in comedy has been a really interesting experience. I started this

void of oblivion for decades. She lectures the module Women in Theatre which was not going to be offered to 2018 students due to the low number of takers, but Drama Students signed a petition requiring the return of the module. More optimistically, there will also be a wider inclusion of female writers for other modules in the institution, it is understandable that there were much more male writers and artists considering the circumstances in which women lived in yet the inclusion and acknowledgment of more women artists in the current education would encourage and empower future women artists.

In a different field, Melissa Sihra is Assistant Professor of Drama at Trinity College Dublin,an acclaimed Dramaturg and above all is a great example of women theatre makers in the academic field. Her main researches include the matters of Feminism, Women in Theatre and Performance, gender studies, and the Irish Theatre— with an exceptional interest in the work of Marina Carr and Lady Gregory.

She is also editor of WOMEN IN IRISH DRAMA: A CENTURY OF AUTHORSHIP AND REPRESENTATION (Palgrave Macmillan 2007), a collection of over 250 women playwrights. Professor Sihra attempts to underscore the importance of role of women in theatre, specially women playwrights whose voices and works were shoved into the

So, it is clear that there is absolutely no shortage of talented and eager women pushing themselves and their ideas in our industry, and Ruth McGowan is but one of them. She says: “Our industry is full of brilliant thought-leaders and inspiring makers. This month as festival preparations hit their peak, I have to shout out the team of extraordinary women I work with at Fringe year round – Shannon Lacek, Kate O’ Leary, Ewa Senger and Aisling O’ Brien.

You will not find more determination and heart in any room in the country than you do in our office.” It would do well to remember and acknowledge these women, onstage and backstage, working to deliver our society with theatre worth screaming about.

EXTRA: Freshers’ Fringe As a Fresher, or even if you are just new to the Dublin theatre scene, let me assure you that Dublin Fringe Festival is the perfect way to get acquainted with this vibrant and welcoming industry. More than just a cliché, there really is something for theatre and non-theatre goers - I recommend scouring through their website or programme to see what tickles your fancy. Fringe shows are usually a less formal experience than regular theatre, encompassing funky venues and experimental production in an effort to excite and entice. Shows are cheap, atmosphere is great, what more could you want! Don’t forget to review for us if you do see anything.

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ith this year’s Dublin Fringe Festival fast approaching (8-23 September), all eyes are on one woman: Ruth McGowan. (Check out our interview, p24!) Behind every fabulous performance and wacky script on the bill, is McGowan backing the idea wholeheartedly. This her first year as Festival Director of the Fringe, taking over from a list including Wolfgang Hoffman and Kris Nelson. The past few years has seen an emergence of powerful female leaders given the space and responsibility to lead an industry to the best of their ability.

A TCD alum, on the eve of McGowan’s premier Fringe, her aim is for “our festival to be a place for artists where anything is possible. As a result of that goal, the Fringe team often take on impossible tasks. I am grateful to work with such highly skilled experts, who are also brilliant problem solvers and true allies of artists.” McGowan is part of a wonderful list of influential women in Dublin at the moment, a posse including Selina Cartmell, Melissa Sihra, and the #WakingTheFeminists movement.

journey expecting some backlash but I’ve received very little of it. I think that women on the stage is a really powerful thing and people are becoming more and more excited to see women in a variety of roles. I think it’s empowering for women to both be involved and see other women performing. I genuinely believe it’s valuable for everyone to see women branch out of stereotypical roles and take on more challenging opportunities. Between comedy and theatre there are so many growing opportunities for this and although women do experience backlash, I think the most important thing is to create a safe space for women to express themselves.”

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under heavy rain she falls, a steady inclination toward the ground. no beauty soft or slight— her head breaks open and drowns us all.

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WORDS BY MAYA BUSHELL ART BY CAROLINE O’CONNOR

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Album of the Summer: Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino Arctic Monkeys

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t is their most polarising album yet, but for me, the album of the summer is undoubtedly Arctic Monkeys’ Tranquility Base Hotel and Casino. Not being an album of instant gratification, but a glorious conceptual slow-burner, it has the capacity to fulfil you throughout the summer and beyond. Your initial reaction might be one of bemusement, with its far-out fusion of jazz, psychedelia, glam and lounge pop. It demands commitment from its listener, but when all of its little pieces of cosmic dust merge to form something tangible, you are left with a truly rewarding collection of songs.

Paradoxically, the overwhelming success of Arctic Monkeys’ previous album, AM, could have posed problems. After all, where else is there to go following such a brilliant album? Yet, Arctic Monkeys knew exactly where they wanted to go, and that place happened to be outer space. Even casual fans know that their sound changes almost as frequently as Alex Turner’s terrible hairstyles, but nobody could have foreseen this complete musical metamorphosis. Everybody’s favourite musical shape-shifters have gone intergalactic.

The instrumental aspect of the album is essentially used to showcase Turner’s lyrics. It was written on piano, and their usually dynamic drum beats and prominent guitar riffs have taken a back seat. Instead, the album becomes Turner’s own private space odyssey. Its similarities to the subjects that David Bowie explored are obvious, yet the role Turner plays is a far cry from Ziggy Stardust. In ‘Star Treatment’, we learn that he is “Back down to earth with a lounge singer shimmer”, adopting the persona of a suave artiste, performing in a lunar hotel lounge, self-assuredly crooning his way through every song.

WORDS BY ALISON TRAYNOR

Milkman

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enzel Curry should cut the concept.

TA1300, his third studio album, divided over three discs, embodying the light, grey and dark sides of Curry’s persona, tires of anything resembling a unifying theme three tracks in. The light side of TA1300 alone (with its mostly breezy R&B, House and Nostalgia tinged beats, brandishes some twisted and fragmented narratives amidst the usual slew of casual braggadocio.

The first two tracks of the light side document Curry’s naïve attempts to console an abused lover, bungling his consolations and breaking his own heart “watching your destiny fold in the grip of my palms/ Paper planes being thrown on the side of the lawn”. These tracks highlight the dark lyricism present throughout; though, running these tender and poetic opines to ex-lovers into a silly bling anthem, such as the garish ‘‘Cash Maniac,’’ is close to tasteless.

That aside, TAA1300 is by no means a bad album. Curry’s brilliance lies in his ability to inhabit a multitude of styles and flows over a short running time. Starting with his intensely personal poetry (‘‘TABOO’’), maturing to reflections on societal injustices, Curry proves both poignant and incisive with his pen. Attempting to relate these aspects of his writing, Curry even clumsily compares America to an abuse victim (‘‘SIRENS’’). However, where Curry’s ink blots the page, his voice is still heard loud and clear thanks to his brilliant vocal inflections and flawless ability to switch up flow (‘‘SWITCH IT UP’’).

The production throughout the album is brilliant. A smorgasbord of quantised Soundcloud beats: bubbly synth loops gnarled by dirty 808s, the beats growing in aggression and noise throughout; perhaps the only element of TA1300 sticking to the three disk blueprint.

‘VENGEANCE’’ has an unexpected JPEGMAFIA feature, fresh from the release of his own album, Veteran (which currently tops my album of the year list), continuing his Kanye worship with an inversion of the uplifting hook of ‘‘We Don’t Care’, “We wasn’t supposed to make it past twenty-five”, is followed with pleas to die, suiting the monstrous production behind him.

Tacit nods to the theme that was promised are a nice touch, but appear as aesthetic choices, things simply added in post-production. The ghostly vocals on ‘VENGEANCE’ peel away into soulful instrumentation, reminiscent of the opening tracks. But these aren’t adequate reasons to pore over the album for tacit links between songs, as any links found would be superficial, an injustice to the sheer focus and enjoyability that Curry provides us instead on each individual track. WORDS BY RUAIDHRI KIERSEY

Anna Burns

Notes to Self Emilie Pine

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riting is a way of making sense of the world, a way of processing—of possessing—thought and emotion, a way of making something worthwhile out of pain,” writes Irish academic Emilie Pine in Notes to Self, her debut collection of essays that is bold in its articulation of pain and its willingness to embrace all of its complexities.

Pine’s disarmingly simple prose offers a raw, unflinching, and often tender account of her life story. Organised thematically rather than chronologically, the essays map the pain-staking and fluctuating processes by which she has come to a sense of understanding and acceptance.

Her first essay, ‘Notes on Intemperance’, which charts her fraught relationship with her father and his alcoholism, is frank and candid in its tone, encapsulated aptly in the opening sentence, “[B]y the time we find him, he has been lying in a small pool of his own shit for several hours.” Strikingly devoid of self-pity and unapologetic in exploring her anger, grief, frustration and insecurity, Pine begins as she means to continue, no longer willing to shrink and silence herself and her experiences.

The collection continues with a heart-wrenching account of her struggles with infertility and miscarriage in ‘From the Baby Years’ and brings a particularly Irish perspective to the issue of reproductive justice and bodily autonomy prior to the referendum and the dehumanising effects of the eighth amendment. The issue of bodily autonomy and self-esteem becomes a recurrent theme in the essays as Pine uses personal anecdotes to provide a broader commentary on problems such as body-shaming and period-shaming. She is refreshing in her honest account of the difficulties involved in applying body positivity and feminist ideals in a society that profits from women’s self-doubt. Indeed, Pine’s willingness to tease out the nuances of her feminist credentials as well as coming to terms with past experiences of sexual violence highlights the timeliness of this collection in the wake of movements such as Times Up and #MeToo, and reiterates the power of women’s voices to resonate deeply with others.

While Pine confesses to only giving the reader access to the “bad bits” of her life story, the collection is at times humorous in its frankness, showcasing the absurdity involved in even the most bleak of situations as well as the evident joy of catharsis in acknowledging the fear of allowing yourself to be vulnerable but doing it anyway.

WORDS BY CIARA FORRISTAL

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decided to read Anna Burns’ newest novel Milkman after it was recently longlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2018.

Opening Milkman, I knew very little about the book, and I think by the time I read the final pages I knew even less. Bear with me – that’s not a bad thing.

Milkman is dazzlingly and deliciously unclear. The story twists and bends and deflects and hides, and nothing is linear. Everything is obscured, from the characters known only through pseudonyms, (“middle sister”, “maybeboyfriend”, “Somebody McSomebody”) to the tumultuous 1990s Belfast backdrop, which is never referred to by name, raising questions about the significance of identity and personhood.

Fundamental to Milkman is the concept of difference.

Fear of difference, fear of being different, fear of being perceived as different. The novel opens on the narrator, known as middle sister, describing her discomfort at being the centre of the town’s idle talk. Soon you’ll tumble into a world where “over the water” and “over the street” are the mantras of everyday life. In leaving Belfast unnamed, the politics of “over the street” differences become not only a question of religion, but of normative pressures that cross community lines.

At one point, middle sister’s thoughts land on a nearby residential road, dubbed by the community as the “red light street.” Unmarried couples, two couples of gay men, and one woman living with two men, all reside here - the street has become an epicentre of difference. Dwelling on her neighbours, middle sister pictures their response to the so-called red light street: “I don’t want to judge… but it has to be judged, judged harshly, and then condemned.”

It’s this kind of hypocrisy and fear of difference that brings a healthy dose of reality to Milkman amidst some more absurd moments (like when middle sister’s maybeboyfriend’s parents abandon their young children to become world-famous ballroom dancers) and creates a jarring sense of recognisability for readers.

Do not expect a clear-cut plot or a neat three-act structure: it’s not what Milkman is here for. As a reader, I found this had its pros and cons. The story can be hard to follow at times, even tedious, with all its diversions. But if you accept that Milkman is the story of a living, breathing city, and all the twists and turns that entails - written with an excellent, finely-tuned style and distinct feminist overtones to boot - you’ll quickly see why it’s one of the most lauded novels of the year.

WORDS BY LAUREN BOLAND

REVIEWS

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The lyrics are as imaginative and as witty as ever. Full of free-association, they sound like what might happen if Virginia Woolf and Douglas Adams formed a space pop band. They constantly wander and digress “Bear with me man, I lost my train of thought.” Thematically, they tackle everything from politics and technology to fame. Nobody escapes Turner’s satirical clutches, including himself “I want to make a simple point about peace and love / But in a sexy way where it’s not obvious.” On ‘Science Fiction’, he sings “But I’ve a feeling that the whole thing / May well just end up too clever for its own good.” This is also an apt analysis of the album, but in the best way possible.

TA1300

Denzel Curry

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Korean Food In Dublin AN OVERVIEW

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’m about to impart some wisdom, so listen up: Korean is IN. And if you didn’t know, now you know. Korea is the source of the hottest cultural exports right now, from film to food. In that vein, I have been on a weeklong hansik (traditional Korean cuisine) bender, forming the quintessential list. The search for good bibimbap is a noble quest. The classic Korean coastal dish of white rice topped with veggies and chili paste is a Western favourite, featured on many a menu. But if you want it served more traditionally, Han Sung on Great Strand Street, a hideout at the back of the Asian market, is where to go. The place is deliciously cramped and delightfully authentic. In this canteen-style eatery, they serve food on a tray and the bibimbap in a sweltering granite bowl. It is decked with beef slices, julienned vegetables, and a lusciously runny egg. Just smash the yolk, pour the chilli, and you are good to go. Hot and spicy, your only option is to shovel it down, a task made easier by the fact that,even traditionally, it is eaten with a spoon.

Brothers Dosirak are proud providers of ‘lunch-box’ Korean, which we la-la-love. It is yet another obscurelylocated grubbery, hiding at the back of Super Asian Foods on Capel Street. The place is small and even a spot at the counter is coveted -- but these are preferable anyway since you’re looking right into the kitchen. The sibilance of the bubbling water and the hazy orange flames would be atmosphere enough. Yet still they plate to impress, with aesthetic meal presentation on long wooden trays, ticking nearly all the boxes: rice, meat or fish, veg, kimchi (spicy fermented cabbage), and even dessert. They are championing simple flavours and essential nourishment.

Really, you can’t beat it.

If you really want to push the boat out, try Arisu on Capel Street for Korean BBQ. Bulgogi (grilled beef), a traditionally Northern dish, makes a dazzling appearance. Its marinade performs a dulcet serenade as it sizzles on the grill. Or stop in at Kimchi Hophouse for japchae, Korea’s special occasion food, stir-fried glass noodles slick with sesame and soy. Oh, and don’t forget friends! Get some soju (a clear spirit, traditionally served neat) and have a laugh, but receive it with both hands -- we are not barbarians.

Roderic O’Conor and the Moderns

(THE AUTHENTIC STUFF. NOT JUST BURRITOS.)

‘Hola, buenos días!’

H

ugo Camacho Romero, the charming proprietor, seems like he is floating through the restaurant.

Even while speaking to me, he is passing food over to the people beside us, finding chairs for newcomers, and unpacking Jarritos, the fluorescent Mexican soft drink, onto the counter. The chatter of English and Spanish drifts over the ranchera music.

I am at Café Azteca, where the wide-ranging, multiregional menu is challenging the Tex-Mex trend. It is headed by a chef whose goal is the protection of its authentic foods, even the post-colonial traditions of the Aztecs. The foundation of traditional dishes is the corn, he tells me, demonstrating the process of nixtamalisation (alkaline treatment of corn) by squeezing corn until it’s clear. And everything depends on the chillies.

Navigating the menu is educational. Mole poblano sauce, is an international favourite and ravishing on enchiladas.

But the toned-down, more subtle flavours of home cooking feel somewhat foreign. A less obscure option on the menu is the deep-fried burrito, influenced by proximity to the U.S. border to the North. The pibil version, a crusty tortilla shell with a slow roasted Yucatán pork filling, is very flavoursome.

For people who eat it so often, it is amazing how little we know about Mexican food. It is a shame that this multicultural city offers so little in the way of authenticity.

The burritos we enjoy on lunch deals barely touch on Mexico’s gastronomic diversity.

Another place that is fighting the good fight is El Grito in Temple Bar. This place is a port of call for many expats in Dublin. The six-seated place is tiny and feels even smaller when you are sitting down, struggling to physically tackle their portions amongst the hum and throb of passing trade.

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The National Gallery

he National Gallery of Ireland has had a very colourful few months. Fresh off the heels of the Emil Node: Colour is Life, comes the bright and energetic: Roderic O’Conor and the Moderns. This exhibition has been highly anticipated, being the first show in over thirty years to heavily feature the works of O’Conor. O’Conor is one of the most enigmatic Irish artists out there, yet his work is fairly underrepresented in the capital, many of the works stemming from private collections. Of course, he is not alone, with work by the legendary Van Gogh and Gauguin also on display, as well as other key figures in the Pont-Aven movement. The result is a room full to the brim of vibrant, striking, and memorable pieces.

At the heart of this exhibition is the small Breton town of Pont-Aven and its subsequent effects on artists and art lovers alike. From landscape to still lifes, and small intimate portraits, all aspects of life at Pont-Aven are brought to light. In many ways the town served as a playground for artists, a place where they could experiment with new techniques and subjects. This is particularly clear in O’Conor’s own work, his paintings show a huge range in style, from those close to the Parisian Impressionist scene, to paintings composed of a “striped” effect pioneered by himself and close friend Cuno Amiet. Each room is in fact dedicated to new approaches in his style. Stand out pieces include many of O’Conor’s colourful and otherworldly landscapes, as well as the huge Homage to Gauguin, a Last-Supper like painting dedicated to the deceased artist, a must see to any lover of Synthetism.

Although this exhibition boasts a broad range of artists with contrasting styles, they are all brought together in their expressive use of colour and appreciation for the French countryside. This common bond is enough to transport viewers into a different time and place in history entirely. Upon leaving this show many visitors, such as myself, may be inclined to look into flights to Pont-Aven.

My personal favourite is the gringa, a toasted tortilla, heavily loaded with cheese and pork, zested with lemon and spiced up with the fresh salsa on the counter. Behind the cashier a rotisserie spins slowly, with everything from chicken chipotle to Mexican chorizo. You won’t be surprised that this is where many local chefs like to come. First-timers should try the tacos al pastor. The Central Mexican speciality is five soft tacos topped with fruity, slow-roasted pork, complemented by cheese and guacamole. With their very reasonable prices, you should be running there right now, if only to try and get a seat at this very colourful, sensory overloading, establishment.

WORDS BY CÉIRE CAREY

The Playboy of the Western World

Dlr Mill Theatre Directed by Kate Canning

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he Playboy of the Western World, written

by John Millington Synge, was first performed in the Abbey Theatre in 1907.

Ireland was still under English rule, thoughts of rebellion were beginning to rumble, and many felt that Synge’s choice to write a play about Ireland and its culture in English was devaluing to the Irish language. On the second night of the performance the stage was stormed by Irish nationalists. Due to my knowledge there was no such uproar during this run of the play (16th-18th August), but instead the audience was treated to a stellar performance with a play steeped in Irish history.

The traditional layout in dlr Mill Theatre in Dundrum was completely transformed by the set designer Bairbre Murray to create a more intimate experience between the audience and the actors (including Rachel O’Connell and Ethan Dillon). This provided a more detailed perspective on the lives they lived, allowing the audience to see the intricate work done on their costumes by the production crew. The production took an unusual turn by using the actors to produce most of the sounds within the play. The start of the play incorporated all of the actor’s singing abilities by having some sing and some contribute to the music by making a variety of vocal acrobatic noises.

The performance managed to captivate the audience’s attention by not only focusing on the history of the piece but also on the contemporary relevance on the themes within the play. As Ireland was and still is a Catholic country, the main focus of the story where Christopher kills his dad should be shamed - however, we find him being idolized by the people in his town. Considering the ten commandments such as “honor thy father and mother…” and “thou shalt not kill” the actions of the village people and of Christopher go against the religious beliefs of the time. With the upcoming visit of Pope Francis to Ireland the audience had a heightened sense of the theme of religion as in a particular scene where Christopher takes the Lord’s name in vain, something that even now is shamed by the Catholic Church. Choosing not to omit this line shows a changed Ireland which is brought to life

by Sunflower Productions.

This production of The Playboy of the Western World served justice to JM Synge’s original script. The actors brought the traditional sentiments of the Irish culture to life on stage and evoked a sense of Irish nationalism and pride in everyone who saw the piece.

WORDS BY ORLA BRENNAN

WORDS BY LARISSA BRIGATTI

REVIEWS

REVIEWS 52

Mexican Food In Dublin

53

WORDS BY URSULA DALE

Good Girls Netflix

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Netflix’s recent ventures with nonconformist casting, such as female-led sci-fi film Annihilation, seem like a step in the right direction for women in TV. Good Girls is one such venture. Its leading women provide humour and awe in equal measure.

The series kicks off with a comic supermarket robbery, the trio storming into the aptly named Fine & Frugal with balaclavas, marigolds, and toy guns. Slowly, we receive insight into our antiheroines’ motivations. Annie (Mae Whitman) grapples with her genderqueer child’s bullies, her rich ex-husband’s vies for custody and a wearisome, minimum wage service job. Waitress Ruby (Retta) faces insults from spoiled local teenagers and can barely afford her daughter’s medication. Housewife Beth (Christina Hendricks), after discovering her partner’s lies, must embrace her new criminal regime and provide for her family when her idiotic, prodigal husband cannot. These women bring new meaning to the gendered cliché of ‘juggling’, balancing work and motherhood with a life of crime.

After the debacle surrounding the 2016 Ghostbusters reboot, all-female casts have been a controversial topic.

Good Girls, despite its flaws, is an example of why the push for more women on-screen is essential. One valid criticism is that Retta’s talent is underutilised as Ruby, who seems to be afforded fewer comedic opportunities than her co-stars.

Nonetheless, the show explores a mass of issues, including misogyny and assault. The men that the trio encounter underestimate them, judge them, and try to exploit them.

David Hornsby deserves acclaim for his performance as sadistic store manager Boomer, whose excuse for sexual assault is that, “Women like that kind of attention”.

When these women are faced with the prospect of losing everything to a gang of men, they show their strength.

The stakes rise as the women swap washing laundry for ‘washing’ counterfeit money, which proves dangerous but lucrative. While ostensibly a comedy, the show is unafraid to put its leads in morally complicated positions.

RTÉ 2

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After bidding farewell to core characters Mike Ross (Patrick Adams) and Rachel Zane (Meghan Markle), who left to pursue new jobs in Seattle at the end of season seven, Suits returned to TV screens this year for an eighth season. Ross told mentor and friend Harvey Specter (Gabriel Macht) then that ‘We’re not coming back’, seemingly dampening the possibility of any future return. Given that the show’s selling point was originally Ross’s arrival at a prestigious law firm despite never having attended law school, his departure has forced the show to reevaluate the direction it wants to take, so that the eighth season won’t be its last.

Fittingly, the eighth season sees characters struggling to find their feet. These individuals are acutely aware of their own roles, but struggling in the balancing act with close competitors. The show confidently asks - and answers the question of where are we going from here? Rather than trying to stick with who and what we’re used to - a fatal flaw among many shows when cast-members leave, in my opinion - Suits allows itself to evolve. Fresh characters and storylines are injected into the familiar office. This season opens with the idea of an acquisition, and with it, a leadership struggle which demands the audience’s attention. A merger introduces new characters, tensions, and conflicts. The absence of Ross and Zane is referred to, but it doesn’t feel as though the show misses them in the way we might have expected.

The cast expands with the addition of the formidable Samantha Wheeler (Katherine Heigl), as well as the promotion of venerable lawyer Robert Zane (Wendell Pierce), and Louis Litt love interest Sheila Sazs (Rachael Harris) to series regulars. From the outset, it’s clear that these characters aren’t here to replace anyone, but to carve their own paths and bring a much-needed breath of fresh air to the series.

Fans of the show are rewarded for their patience.

Characters from seasons one are finally being given their due; whether that be an acknowledgement of their value in the firm or a developing relationship. The show also deals with more personal issues, such as violence and fertility, that it seemed hesitant to address before.

Aware that the eyes of audiences everywhere would be on them after a royal departure, Suits has stepped up its game, and looks set to cement itself as one of TV’s best ongoing legal dramas.

Ant-Man & The Wasp dir. Peyton Reed

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As the 20th instalment in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, AntMan and the Wasp (AMATW) finds itself in the Thanosshaped shadow of its record-breaking peers. With the charismatic Paul Rudd and Marvel’s first-ever female colead in Evangeline Lilly as The Wasp, it’s an entertaining way to pass two hours; but ultimately, even Rudd’s charm can’t quite pull the film from an average affair to a great one.

Scott Lang is two years into his house arrest, following the events of Civil War, when he is visited by former associates Hank Pym (Michael Douglas) and Hope Van Dyne (Lilly).

They believe Hope’s mother Janet Van Dyne (Michelle Pfeiffer) is still alive in the super-mysterious and superglossed-over “Quantum Realm”, setting the trio set on a time-sensitive rescue mission while haunted by ghosts of their past and present.

Any film needing three sets of villains to pull it through a 125-minute runtime is going to struggle. The primary antagonist, Ghost, a gender-swapped version of the comics’ original male character, refreshingly seeks not world domination, but Ant-Man’s tech in order to save her own life. However, Hannah John-Kamen’s underwhelming performance resembles a surly teenager more than a terrifying spectre. The film misses a key opportunity to prove female roles are just as compelling as its male ones.

Marvel makes a safe choice with director Peyton Reed’s return, resulting in a safe sequel; AMATW fails to break ground in the way Black Panther and Infinity War did, and it’s ironically harder to believe the realistic setting of San Francisco in a universe where spiders grant superpowers and the Guardians fight evil through the power of dance. However, AMATW should be praised for its cinematography. The action sequences seem lifted straight from their comic book origins, especially with the use of everyday items blown up to gigantic scale - from your average salt shaker to a purple-and-orange flamelicked Hot Wheels. The use of CGI in AMATW hits that rare spot where it truly adds to the film and never distracts the audience by looking out of place.

AMATW is a well-rounded sequel and will entertain audiences; with Rudd and Lilly sheer joy at donning their suits and trading electric quips, it’s easy to see why.

However, there is a lingering feeling that this film only exists to set up the more anticipated Avengers 4, and even the fantastical special effects can’t hide that. It may not be remembered as the greatest superhero film of all time, but it sure is fun while it lasts.

WORDS BY EIMEAR JOHNSON

Black ‘47

dir. Lance Daly.

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Black ‘47 has been described as a western about the Great Famine. It tells the story of a lone gunslinger on a deadeyed revenge rampage and the law-man sent to bring him down. The law is corrupt, the land desolate and wild, the men are taciturn, brutal, brooding. The one woman with any dialogue meets a tragic end, so there’s no innovation there. The innovation comes in setting it in Ireland, where the indigenous population being brutally subjected by the settlers are Irish, not, for example, Native American or Australian Aboriginal, and in shifting your sympathies away from the oppressors.

Feeney (James Frecheville), our lone gunslinger, is a Connacht Ranger returned home to find the English have devastated his homeland and murdered his family. The film follows him working through an Arya Stark-style hitlist of everyone who wronged Ireland during the Famine.

He is less a fleshed-out character than an avenging angel.

Opposing Feeney, at least nominally, is Hugo Weaving doing his best lower-class English accent as Hannah, the troubled law-man who has been drafted in to track down and stop him.

Weaving and Frecheville are the binary stars of the story: the most interesting scenes happen when they’re on screen together. Various well-known Irish actors come and go in small roles: blink and you’ll miss Brendan Gleeson, and Stephen Rea as as a translator who joins the English when they hit the Gaeltacht. This left me to wonder about the Antipodean leads. They’re good, Weaving especially, but were there no Irish actors to tell this very Irish story? It is a story Irish enough that I wonder how well it translates abroad, where the context is less apparent.

While Black ‘47 fails to innovate on the western genre aside from moving locations, it feels like a timely piece for a modern Irish audience. It is full of lingering shots of ‘tumbled’, roofless cottages as the backdrop for starving, homeless people. The endless parade of blame-dodging by those in authority, who were “just following orders” that made them complicit in the tragedy around them, feels pointed. Where the film lingers in the maudlin, knowing anything about the Famine helps temper any knee-jerk impulse to snigger; being aware of the parallels between the man-made horror of the Famine and the man-made nature of the many crises facing modern Ireland will give you chills.

WORDS BY MAIA MATHIEU

REVIEWS

REVIEWS 54

Good Girls encourages breaking the mould of typical American TV comedies. The diversity feels organic, the character development is meaningful, and the writing is politically charged but genuinely funny. It highlights ways in which modern women can still be made to feel as commodities, subject to the whims of men who, in the words of Mary Pat (Allison Tolman), “Want things but don’t have the right to take them.” With some fine-tuning, these Good Girls could be great.

WORDS BY LOUISE LAWLESS

Suits

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Orla Brennan Orla has always had a passion for art and crafting. She is currently studying art history and has started to take drawing and painting in her stride. Acrylic and oil pastel are her go-tos for their bright colours. She is the current Head of Illustrations at TN2 and wants this year’s magazines to be full to the brim of student-led artwork!

Aisling Martin Aisling has loved art as far back as she can remember. After studying it in school, her work in TN2 is her first outside project. In terms of colour it’s either all or nothing, vivid colours or monochrome. She got involved with TN2 because she likes being able to think outside the box with project guidelines and interpret other people’s work in her own way.

Caroline O’Connor Caroline studied at art college for two years and now studies art history.She has a keen interest textiles and pottery but when drawing mostly use watercolours or markers. Her current art project is learning how to make handmade papers & actually got involved in TN2 after admiring its nice paper quality (no joke!)

Leia Angélica Montenegro Fernández Leia is a Chilean-Irish self taught artist and illustrator, working mostly in ink, oil, watercolour and recently discovered the wonderful world of digital art. She is in the throws of organizing her first illustration exhibition at the Chilean Embassy in Dublin later this year! You can check out more of her work @LeiaColours in Instagram.

Eimear Johnson Chronic doodler and self confessed cat lady, Eimear is this year’s Deputy Head of Illustrations. With a detailed style of drawing, you’ll often find her with hundreds of coloured pencils around; she swears that having 6 shades of blue is necessary. She’s looking forward to the year ahead and can’t wait to see all the different styles of artwork our students have to offer!

Aoife Breen is TN2’s Head of Photography for this year. Her work is highlighted in the photo-essay and also the fashion shoot. To see more of her photography, check out her Instagram @margaretaoife.

e u s s i s i h t n i s t s i t r a d e r u Feat If you would like to see your art in a future issue of TN2, send Orla Brennan an email at illustrations@tn2magazine.ie or use this QR code to join the illustrators Facebook group.

FOR FOOD LOVERS BY FOOD LOVERS

s destination for n i l ’ b u D

ENDWORD

So, you want in on this?

A message from the Editor, Maia Mathieu

W

ell, you’ve made it to the end of the first issue of TN2 for the 2018/19 academic year - hopefully you had as much fun reading it as we did making it, and maybe now you’re thinking, I could do that. Maybe even I could do that better. You know what? Maybe you could - and maybe, just maybe, you should.

TN2 accepts submissions in the form of articles/reviews, photography, and illustrations. Whether you’re reviewing a book, recapping a television series, sharing your thoughts on the latest food or fashion trends, or you’ve been to a cultural event that we need to hear about, we’d be delighted to receive it! What if you want to write for us, but you don’t know what you want to write about? Well, if you head to Facebook, all of our sections have groups run by their section editors, and often, our section editors often keep a curated list of topics they’d love to see written about! https://www.facebook.com/ groups/tn2piratecrew201819 is the main FB group. (Use the left QR code to head on over immediately!

within the Trinity Community. Your work makes us beautiful! Whether you’ve a oneoff piece for us or would be interested in connecting on a more long-term basis to illustrate our ongoing articles, get in touch!

Student publication can be just as rewarding for artists as it is for writers!

Either way, there’s a whole page on our website with all the details you might want to know about how to go about getting involved: http://www.tn2magazine. ie/write-for-us/ (Use the right QR Code below!)

All of the periodicals published by Trinity Publications are entirely student-run and completely independent from any oversight from the college - check out the Piranha, you’ll see what I mean. Every single writer, illustrator, editor, and photographer whose work you see in here was once just like you, flipping through one of the publications and deciding they wanted in. And we’d be absolutely thrilled to have you join the team.

Most of what makes your college experience wonderful is the connections you make with And, hey, we’re not just looking to bring like-minded people (the rest of it is free food, in writers to join our motley crew. TN2 but you generally need to join Societies for are always delighted to receive pitches and that, too), so it’s well worth getting in touch submissions from photographers and artists if you’re interested.

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