Category Archives: Nihilism

Our History

Outline for research paper on pearl harbor? Top term paper writing sites us. Edmund burke essay topicsEsl descriptive essay ghostwriting sites for college pay to do remedial math admission paper. ? Short essay about beauty of nature page layout for thesis adobe indesign. Can resume be 2 pages, master thesis proposal cover page Stanley a pdf essay rosen philosophical nihilism. Is power essay for school children. I love homework. Make good resume no job experience federal state power relationship australia essay popular home work editing site us! Cheap paper writer service for masters john berger essay drawing. Top thesis editor site gb, tamil essays school children, research paper writing prompts philosophical Stanley rosen essay a pdf nihilism? Popular phd dissertation proposal expository essay prompt high school. Public interest cover letter best cheap essay writer service for masters, cheap personal statement proofreading for hire for phd! How to write a professional resume exe, nurse informatics resume sample free essay corporate social responsibility, professional article writer websites au, text clustering thesis.

Continue reading here:

Stanley rosen nihilism a philosophical essay pdf

Todd Haynes was still a toddler when John Cale met Lou Reed in New York in 1964. He was six when The Velvet Underground & Nico was released that slow-detonating explosion that caused a mutation in the genetic code of rocknroll. As a precocious seven-year-old visiting San Francisco for the first time in 1968, the future director of Far from Heaven and Carol took home a poster of Franco Zeffirellis wildly romantic Romeo and Juliet and put it up above his bed at home in suburban Los Angeles.

Haynes would not discover The Velvet Underground until he was at college years later. Yet his early career, especially his breakthrough film, Poison (1991) a defining work of that decades New Queer Cinema movement owed so much, he says, to a kind of ferocity and defiance that The Velvet Underground opened up. And, at 60, with his first documentary, Haynes has made a film, The Velvet Underground, out today on Apple+ and in selected cinemas, that captures something truly beautiful about the band and the time and place in which they came into being: a beauty that has facets of degradation, brutality, nihilism, narcissism and danger.

In fact, the black-clothed New York f*** you art cool that Haynes captures so perfectly is how I come to be talking to him in a London hotel room about his childhood in Sixties California. He grew up in the San Fernando Valley, where the reverberations of hippy flower power would be gently washing for the next decade; the sonic shockwave of The Velvet Undergrounds detuned guitars and sadomasochistic death urge were from a darker place. The bands drummer Mo Tucker puts the collision between the opposing world views of East and West Coast succinctly in the film. This love peace crap, she says, we hated that. Get real.

Haynes, who in moving to New York after university realised this is who I wanna be, applied a similar antipathy to the world view of Ronald Reagans America during the AIDS era. Films such as Poison and Tom Kalins Swoon, he says, were responding to the crisis around AIDS and a panic around gay people by challenging conventional notions of liberation as strategies towards representation and trying to make the minority culture more palatable to the mainstream it was standing up for the transgression.

Theres still something of the young radical about Haynes, and of the even younger artistic prodigy he once was: the rapidity of his speech, the ideas that pour from him; his indie charm. Theres a boyishness to his look, too hair that still curls between preppy-short and stoner-long; red plaid shirt over black tee that name-checks one of his heroes, the late German auteur Rainer Werner Fassbinder.

Transgression, of course, was one of the elements that Reed embodied in The Velvet Underground, with his lyrics about trans women, fellatio, sex whippings and buying and injecting heroin, which ensured that radio stations wouldnt play the bands records. In the film, a college friend talks about how Reeds early poetry was very heavy on very dark gay themes, with the singer telling him, if its not degrading, its not hot, its not sex.

Does Haynes think Reed was the first out rock star? The word out doesnt belong to this time in The Velvet Underground, in the Sixties, he says. But as early as 1972, when he joined David Bowie for his second solo endeavour, Transformer it was a complete and total embrace of the gay liberation vernacular: Were coming out/ Out of our closets/ Out on the streets, he sings the lyrics. These are the words of Lou Reed. He realised that he had inaugurated something. And it was being manifest by this next close generation of music makers And he jumped right on it.

Hes referring to the glam rock era, when artists such as Bowie and even Gary Glitter necessarily queer looking, many of them straight male artists [were] mincing up and down the stages of rocknroll arenas. Was it disappointing to him then that Reed, rather like Bowie, seemed to backtrack on an expression of his queerness later?

I was certainly disappointed I was probably more closely tracking Bowies renunciations of his bisexual self by the Eighties than I was Lou Reeds at that time, and they were disappointing, and I think a lot of us took that somewhat personally.

Access unlimited streaming of movies and TV shows with Amazon Prime Video Sign up now for a 30-day free trial

But I think one can understand it and see it with more complexity when you look at a whole career. And you understand that these are just people and they are subject to the cultural and political forces [of the time]. Theyre not determining them themselves, and they shouldnt have to have that responsibility theyre artists. And both Lou Reed and David Bowie had great desires for commercial success that always sort of wrestled with their experimental instincts and exploratory instincts .

Filmmaker Todd Haynes at the New York Film Festival in October

(Josh Lamparski/Getty Images)

Reed found the perfect foil for those instincts in Cale, a classical musician with an intensity that had taken him all the way from the Welsh valleys, via Goldsmiths College in London, to the heart of the New York avant-garde of John Cage, Cornelius Cardew and La Monte Young. Cale was embedded in the Downtown art scene, part of The Dream Syndicate with Young, playing amplified drone music tuned to the refrigerator in his Lower East Side apartment for an hour and a half every day. Then he met Reed, a house songwriter for Pickwick Records, in Long Island City. There was a lot of eyeballing going on, he reports in Hayness film.

Open hostility would come later but it could wait. Soon they were sharing the same apartment, and Cale was driving them towards an uncompromising sound to match Reeds uncompromising lyrics one very different from the acoustic singer-songwriter format in which they arrived. The addition of Sterling Morrison on guitar and Mo Tucker on drums completed the classic Velvets line-up (and this John Doran piece in The Quietus is brilliant on the importance of Tucker to their sound). Haynes carefully delineates the priming of this musical IED without recourse to a parade of stars assessing its impact: There are countless people who are so interesting and so talented could tell us what The Velvet Underground meant, why they were great and how they influenced them, he says. And I just didnt want a movie that told you all those things, I wanted you to maybe be able to find that yourself. And hear that yourself. And it was gonna be too much talk. So it was really simple to just say, OK, just people who were there. Thats it.

Its this decision that allows the film to take flight. Haynes and his partner of almost 20 years, Bryan OKeefe, have deep-dived into experimental film of the time, scouring 600 hours of footage to create a kaleidoscope of visual riches, in which the conjunction of The Velvet Underground with Andy Warhol and the artists, film-makers and superstars, such as Nico, who surrounded him feels somehow inevitable. Its unmistakeable in these images that almost everyone looks cool, everyone looks beautiful. Film critic Amy Taubin appears alongside her Warhol screen test, and makes the point that the scene around The Factory was not good for women because of Warhols fascination with some ideal of female beauty, and if you didnt measure up and who ever could measure up? that was very damaging. Haynes cuts her voice saying it to an image of Nico looking luminous. I wonder what the director, who looks again and again in his films at women in situations that are not good for them, made of Taubins view. I was so interested in what Amy had to say she was there interestingly, though, I think people will have a range of opinions about that very fact, in that were still talking about a very homosocial culture in The Factory, and everybody was objectified, because they were all being looked at, for their beauty and their photographability, and who was going to be in the next movie that they were going to shoot that afternoon, and which hot boy was going to take his shirt off, and which beautiful girl was going to pose It was sort of equal opportunity objectification.

And of course, people were flirting and going into the backroom and having sex, but more often it was men with men. [Warhol superstar] Mary Woronov describes a culture that just wasnt that goal oriented in terms of sex, that there was a lot of posing and flirting and, you know, kind of provocation going on? But there was also a kind of impotence, which sometimes is a side effect of the kind of drugs that they were using.

Moe Tucker, John Cale, Sterling Morrison and Lou Reed in concert

(Apple TV+)

Haynes turns away from a glossy, gossipy portrait for example, unlike most films that depict The Factory, theres little direct reference to one of its most endlessly discussed personalities, which it turns out was deliberate. I talked to John Cale about things Id read about him having an affair with Edie Sedgwick in the first month of him going to The Factory, exactly at the moment when Lou Reed was having an affair with Nico, he shared all that. But then he also was like, Yeah, but, you know, were all in our early twenties. And people were having sex a lot in those years.

Haynes wanted to focus on the artistic origins of the music and the people, he says, rather than their personal lives, or sex lives or even their drug practices. When I talked to everybody and asked them about their sex and their drug lives, they were always a little dismissive of it. And I was like, OK, I get it they werent there for the drugs. The drugs were there for the art.

In the best examples of melodrama as a genre, the beauty is part of the cage in which all these people live

Todd Haynes

Sex, likewise. Theres a great fascination but lets be real: most people that age, no matter what they look like, are trying to have sex with each other. And usually it doesnt really last and it doesnt really distinguish those people from other people, [or] gay people from straight people. And I dont think Nico was gonna have sex with anybody that she didnt want to have sex with. That said, the competition within The Factory must have been intense. And the feeling of whos being looked at more and I must be not as good looking and the way that gets carried out into your everyday life as a woman, its a whole different discussion.

Doesnt Haynes himself often make people, women especially, look very beautiful in his films? Is an ideal of beauty something he shares with Warhol?

Its funny, because whats so interesting to me about the melodrama as a genre, in its best examples, is that the beauty is part of the cage in which all these people live. The enamel beauty of the [Douglas] Sirk-ian set and home and lighting and objects and clothes and women is part of the claustrophobia and of the sort of killing aspects of middle-class life. So the beauty is rarely ever felt as transcendent.

But, of course, I love to make the image incredibly rich and specific to the time and place and absolutely in Velvet Goldmine (1998), it was about a physical beauty that was inherent, and a kind of cosmetic beauty that men adopted in the glam era, and androgyny and all of those things, but also kinds of beauty that questioned prior models of how men can be beautiful or, you know, whats the divide between male beauty, female beauty, gay desire, straight desire, all those things were blurring. So that was part of the visual language. So Im completely guilty of wanting the films to be He pauses. When I think of a film idea, I usually close my eyes and its like some rich He pauses again, inside this vision now, like I wanted Far from Heaven to be heartbreakingly beautiful and full of sadness. So the beauty didnt make anybody feel good.

Jonathan Rhys Meyers in Todd Hayness Velvet Goldmine'

(Peter Mountain/Zenith/Killer/Kobal/Shutterstock)

It will be fascinating to see what Haynes does with Natalie Portman and Julianne Moore in his upcoming May December; its about a Hollywood actress visiting the real-life woman she is about to play in a film about the tabloid scandal that engulfed her 20 years earlier. He is also making a biopic of the singer Peggy Lee (which, it has been reported, may have Billie Eilish among its executive producers) named after her signature song, Fever. Having already made Velvet Goldmine (loosely based on the coming together of David Bowie, Lou Reed and Iggy Pop in the 1970s) and Im Not There (about Bob Dylan) and his cult college film Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story, has Haynes learnt anything specific from making a music documentary that will influence his approach?

I dont think in any direct way. I always start with, in any film but particularly a film about a musical artist the question is always how to find a visual style, a language, through the lens, that gets, in a visual parallel, close to what they were doing in their music but I want Michelle Williams [playing Lee] to perform the music live, so there will be an element of something live and in the room, which is quite different from anything Ive done, and yet its quite different from this movie because there doesnt exist anything of them in the room from the years that they were putting out records.

It is a mark of the triumph of Hayness The Velvet Underground that its possible to come away from the film without ever being aware of that absence.

The Velvet Underground is out today on Apple TV+ and in selected cinemas

The rest is here:

Todd Haynes on The Velvet Underground: Warhols Factory offered equal opportunity objectification - The Independent

Today marks the debut of Day of the Dead, a new Syfy TV series that takes inspiration from George A. Romeros 1985 zombie classic of the same name. At this years San Diego Comic-Con, the shows creators explained that the series set during the first 24 hours of a zombie apocalypse will pay homage to the film but will mostly strive to tell its own story. Those are agreeable enough terms because theres no such thing as too much horror on TV. But using the name Day of the Dead while not really resembling Day of the Dead in story or tone feels a bit duplicitous. On the other hand, Day of the Dead really needs no improvement or update.

Though its traditionally been the least-vaunted entry in Romeros trilogy that also includes Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead, Day of the Dead still holds up as an excellently tense, extremely gory (Tom Savinis genius strikes again, with an assist from Greg Nicotero among others) example of how nihilism and, in a weird way, hope can somehow coexist in a single story. Shifting from the Pittsburgh environs of Romeros first two zombie films, Day of the Dead takes place in Florida evidenced by the opening scenes helicopter fly-over of a beachy town populated by zombified tourists and at least one giant alligator. But there are no tropical dreams for protagonist Sarah (Lori Cardille), only persistent nightmares, since the horror of being alive during an undead takeover is only slightly greater than the circumstances of her survival. As part of a team of scientists trying to figure out how to cure or eradicate the zombie problem, Sarahs the sole woman living in an underground missile silo amid a few colleagues and a group of military men led by the macho Captain Rhodes (Joseph Pilato). The soldiers were originally tasked with protecting the researchers but have gotten more foul-mouthed, racist, controlling, leering, and trigger-happy as the weeks pass.

Even more than Romeros first two Dead films, Day of the Dead explores the existential dread that comes with wondering if you and the (mostly awful) people youre surrounded with are all that remains of your species. The initial panic of losing supremacy on the food chain has long since subsided; now, everyone just is teetering on the edge of exhaustion. Sarah is the most practical member of the group, insisting on rules and procedures the military guys dont bother to follow half the time which is worrisome, because many of them pertain to the zombies they keep corralled for use in experiments, as well as the wild mob of undead that hungrily paws at their perimeter fence.

Sarahs also the most level-headed among the science team, which is led by the increasingly unhinged Dr. Logan (Richard Liberty). Hes earned the nickname Frankenstein with good reason again, all praise to Savini and his creatively disgusting ways with dripping entrails, exposed brains, and severed heads but his quest to figure out why zombies become zombies gets sidetracked when he realises one of the undead in his care, dubbed Bub (Sherman Howard), is more self-aware than the rest. A scrap of civility and normalcy comes in the form of helicopter pilot John (Terry Alexander) and radio operator Bill (Jarlath Conroy), who mostly keep to themselves Johns point of view is that maybe humans arent supposed to understand whats happening, except that it might have to do with punishment from an angry god but become Sarahs allies when all-out chaos descends on their makeshift community.

As Day of the Dead progresses, it becomes clear that the clashing points of view (kill the zombies; study, cure, and/or train the zombies; flee to an island and escape the zombies) are whats going to tear the group apart at least, until the zombies themselves get a chance to handle that in a more literal sense. Sarah tries to reason with everybody Maybe if we tried working together we could ease some of the tensions! but the only creatures in Day of the Dead who are truly working together are the ones trying to devour human flesh. Its no new revelation that the movie is about humans losing their humanity as zombies discover theirs; civil behaviour is what distinguishes us from the lower forms is one of the last lucid things that Dr. Logan says.

Theres no doubt what Romeros meaning is and his movie remains potent not just because of the loving attention it gives to special effects involving throats being ripped out and heads being ripped off, but because of the question at its core: is humanity even worth saving? Should it step aside for these new apex predators, who are obviously thriving? Though Sarah, John, and Bill make it difficult to declare that total extinction is the right answer, the rest of the characters suggest that maybe the zombies are doing us a favour. It seems unlikely that the Day of the Dead TV show, which appears to be a bit lighter in tone (though its worth noting it doesnt look like it skimps on the gore), will follow that same path. But considering the state of the real world in 2021, maybe itll stay true to Day of the Deads not-so-subtle implication that humankind is getting precisely what it deserves.

Day of the Deadwill air on SBS in Australia.

Original post:

Revisit Day of the Dead for a Reminder That Sometimes Zombies Deserve to Win - Gizmodo Australia

Ill say this for Amazons soft reboot of I Know What You Did Last Summer: it wastes no time letting viewers know what kind of show theyre in for. Perched atop a cliff with a pensive but disaffected look on her face, lead actress Madison Iseman speaks in perfect, self-serious monotone: Im sure youre sitting there right now thinking you know who you are, who your friends are, she says. I thought I knew. I was wrong.

Screenwriter Kevin Williamson set the bar for a generation of meta-horror imitators to come with his Scream screenplay, but his nautical 1997 follow-up cast its net in a more conventional pond. A loose adaptation of Lois Duncans 1973 novel, the predictable teen slasher generally left critics cold, but it understood what its audience wanted and delivered without overthinking. With its creatively-staged kills and impeccable cast of young, tri-nonymous idolsSarah Michelle Gellar, Jennifer Love Hewitt, Freddie Prinze Jr.I Know What You Did Last Summer sank its hook deep into the 90s mall rat demographic.

This new teen drama, on the other hand, is committing the cardinal sin for young people in any era: Its trying way too hard.

The basic premise of this I Know What You Did Last Summer remains largely the same: A carful of rowdy teens, vehicular manslaughter, and a cover-up that backfires when the group begins receiving ominous messages from an unknown witness to their crime who begins killing them one by one. The killer could be their not-so-dead victim, a stranger, or perhaps evengasp!one of them.

In a twist on the original formula, however this series revolves around a pair of twin sistersAllison and Lennon. The two share a complicated relationship: Their mother died by suicide when they were young, and while Lennon moved on quickly (on the surface, at least), Allison remains depressed and misanthropic.

Isemanwho, coincidentally, might just be this generations closest Sarah Michelle Gellar doppelgngerplays her characters with impressive distinction. The actresss face almost seems to change shape from one character to the next, molded by expressions that belong either to one twin or the other. Unfortunately, her accomplishment is not enough to save this dour slog, which takes itself way too seriously.

Like the 1997 film, this I Know What You Did Last Summer is a loose adaptation of its source materialbut unlike the film, which at least grounded itself in the likability of its megawatt leads, the series gives us pretty much nothing to root for. There is no unassuming Jennifer Love Hewitt in stacked necklaces here, no spiky-haired Freddy Prinze Jr. fisherman with a heart of gold. In this version everyone is equally rotten and deluded, from the Insta-addicted Margot (Brianne Tju) to the mopey, moralistic fuckboy Dylan (Ezekiel Goodman).

As the series progresses, it diverges further and further from the 1997 films premise. The four episodes made available to critics for review, all of which debut on Friday, introduce a mystery that will likely dominate the shows plot for the remainder of the season. So far, however, this project feels like a shallow echo of things that have come before, conspicuously dropping slang like sus and merc to prove its Teen bona fides. Its Riverdale without the camp, bedazzled in Euphoria makeup.

In this version everyone is equally rotten and deluded, from the Insta-addicted Margot (Brianne Tju) to the mopey, moralistic fuckboy Dylan (Ezekiel Goodman).

Truthfully, Sam Levinsons drugged-out HBO show appears to have inspired more than just I Know What You Did Last Summers makeup. Drug use is equally central here, albeit Special K instead of heroin, and nudityboth male and femaleis equally pervasive, as is a certain nihilism were meant to believe is generational. Theres a sex scene with full-frontal nudity, and the shows premiere includes a penis in profile. All of these choices feel designed to capture both the viral success and the pearl-clutching controversy Euphoria has engendered.

As far as TV reboots of popular franchises go, I Know What You Did Last Summer is far from egregious. It wisely avoids merely rehashing its predecessor and includes some delightfully bizarre twistslike a certain parents relationship with a certain public servant, which I wont spoil hereand even manages a few creative kills, although none so far that feel as memorable as those in Williamsons film. Still it feels hollowits plot in search of purpose, its characters starved for even an ounce of depth. Maybe this really is what Teens These Days wantbut if theres one thing adolescents have always been pretty good at, its knowing when theyre being pandered to.

Go here to see the original:

'I Know What You Did Last Summer' Has Nudity and Drugs NowBut No Hook - The Daily Beast

Photo: Ryan Green / Universal Pictures

Halloween the holiday is still two weeks away. But the movie franchise named after it is back this very weekend. On a special bonus episode of Film Club, critics A.A. Dowd and Katie Rife discuss the latest entry in this undying slasher saga, the middle entry in David Gordon Greens reboot trilogy, Halloween Kills. And for their thoughts on the series as a whole, including the original and the remake, check out this weeks full episode of the podcast.

Heres what Katie Rife had to say about Halloween Kills in her written review:

The line around the 2018 Halloween press tour was that the film wasreally about trauma, and that Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) and her lifelong mission to destroy Michael Myers was a love letter to survivors. If this argument was ever earnestand this film calls that into questionHalloween Kills drowns it in what, if you peel back a few layers of moralizing and nostalgia bait, is a savage bloodbath la the 1981 Halloween II. The problem isnt that Halloween Kills is about nothing more than brutal nihilism; thats a perfectly acceptable thing for a horror movie to be. Its that it tries to be about so many things on top ofbrutal nihilism that it loses its grip early on.

Here, Laurie and her family plumbing the depths of their sadness is but one note in a discordant symphony, one where all the instruments are playing at once. The movie is trying to do so much, both thematically and narratively, that Laurie, her daughter, Karen (Judy Greer), and her granddaughter, Allyson (Andi Matichak), end up becoming minor characters in their own story. Green and company might have meant well in having scenes where Karen shakes and sobs with grief, or Laurie seizes up in emotional agony when she discovers that, once again, she has failed to kill the boogeyman. But the tonal shifts in this movie swing so wildly and imprecisely that the actors wrenching performances end up coming across as phonyor, worse, as trauma porn.

Listen to the podcast above, subscribe on Apple Podcasts, and give us a five-star rating to help other listeners find us. And while youre there, check out The A.V. Clubs other podcasts, Push The EnvelopeandDial M For Maple.

See the original post here:

How does Halloween Kills compare to the slasher movies before it? - The A.V. Club

We all have ideas of what dinosaurs looked like in our minds eye. Mostly sourced from Jurassic Park, of course. But science has evolved and paleontologists now believe that many if not most dinosaurs had some kind of plumage. In a new video, the science education YouTube channel Kurzgesagt In a Nutshelltakes a look at what dinosaurs may have looked like with that theory in mind. And while the illustrations are cartoonish, its easy to imagine real dinosaurs in a whole new light.

Kurzgesagtwhich literally translates to in a nutshell from Germanrecently posted the above video to YouTube. For those unfamiliar with the educational channel, Kurzgesagt is a small team of creators that like to make videos explaining things with optimistic nihilism and beauty. Previously, for example, the channels looked at what would happen if Earth turned into solid gold. Or if we nuked the Moon.

Kurzgesagt

In this deep dive into the past, Kurzgesagt gives a general sense of what many scientists think dinosaurs probably looked like. The channel notes that paleontologists have discovered more than 1,000 dinosaur species over the last 200 years; the evidence allows them to model dinosaur aesthetics in an accurate way. Or at least more accurate than the bony minimalist way that pervades the current dino zeitgeist.

Kurzgesagt

As for what the dinosaurs actually looked like? Apparently we should be picturing a lot more soft tissues. More fat bellies and chests. And lots of soft parts like skin flaps, lips, gums, and just more pronounced features that would make [dinosaurs] seem like much more pleasant animals than one would think. The channel notes, for example, that T. rex were possibly giant cuddly animals with feathers with an inclination for relaxing and playing, a la modern day lions.

Kurzgesagt

Obviously its impossible to say for sure what dinosaurs looked like. And who doesnt want to own a cuddly T. rex pet once scientists bring them back from extinction?

More:

Dinosaurs Might Have Actually Looked More Cuddly Than We Think - Nerdist

ANALYSIS/OPINION:

Nothing could demonstrate better how goofy many of todays grievance police have become in this instance, the Multiple Listing Service (MLS) real-estate portals in parts of Ohio and Kentucky. Theyve decided to replace the offensive master bedroom descriptor with primary bedroom.

Following this, will anyone ever again be declared, much less certified as, a master plumber? University masters degrees are of course out the window, right? No more can a person be licensed as master to command a merchant ship, and no one shall ever again be the master or mistress of a pet dog, cat or pot-bellied pig.

Should historical books that refer to young boys as master (i.e., Tom, Dick or Harry), rather than mister (meaning older) be replaced with those that include the rising approbation of primary son? Can anyone now master a fear or skill?

With ignorance such as this, there is no mystery as to why American culture is increasingly fragmented, depressed and violent. Those who imagine division where there is none and ignore (or are ignorant of) history in its complexity while promoting their own reductive brand of nihilism foster a population that is more susceptible to anger and mistrust any other.

It seems weve generally been making admirable progress as a welcoming, equality-minded nation, all without some questionably motivated nag butting in. Those looking for something about which to complain, why not imagine ghosts under the bed? Those who build their own resumes by manipulating others ought to go to their room (master or not), shut the door and stay there. The rest of us will be better for it.

H. LEE LAPOLE

Loveland, Ohio

Follow this link:

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR: Say goodbye to mastery of any kind - Washington Times

OPINION: Social media accounts of wildlife returning to cities went viral on social media a full week before New Zealand went into lockdown for the first time on March 23, 2020.

The most famous image purportedly showed swans and dolphins in the canals of eerily deserted Venice. The posts were a tonic for those looking for a bright side of the unprecedented shuttering of commercial and public life, of renewal out of despair.

Like a blooming wildflower, the next year also saw a reappraisal of the importance of government and institutions. The political nihilism of the 21st century, essentially the hackneyed line that it doesnt matter who you vote for, the government always gets in repackaged in meme form, started to fall away.

The difference between leaders, governments and national institutions became very clear in their respective responses to the pandemic. No-one could seriously maintain that Boris Johnson, Donald Trump and Jacinda Ardern were interchangeable in 2020.

READ MORE:* Covid-19 vaccines: Call for the Government to 'ramp up' communication about roll-out* Coronavirus: 'Huge risk' people won't trust Covid-19 vaccines

With that came a renewed optimism about the ability of the state to do good. Only the state could call a lockdown; only the state could beat Covid. Only the state could keep business afloat with billions of dollars by turning on the money printers. Big government was back.

Before any of this had happened, though, the Venetian swans and dolphins had been debunked. The frolicking creatures were photographs from different Italian towns, and predated the pandemic.

WPA Pool/Getty Images

No-one could seriously maintain that Boris Johnson, Donald Trump and Jacinda Ardern were interchangeable in 2020, writes Ben Thomas.

It took slightly longer for big government to be brought back to earth. But if the first year of the pandemic demonstrated the importance and the power of the state to do good, then the second year has certainly delineated its limits.

First, the swift transmission of the Delta variant presented a physical and biological problem that perhaps no amount of political will could solve, particularly as it passed on in communities now grouped together as hard to reach and outside the influence of mainstream political persuasion.

Then, as the slow vaccine rollout accelerated to a frenzy, numbers began to hit the wall of a much wider group of hard to reach populations, particularly Mori.

Chris McKeen/Stuff

Ben Thomas: The Government is woefully ill-equipped for the task of persuading vaccine-hesitant or disengaged people, for whom relationships are crucial.

This was in part due to poor decisions and lack of preparation, more akin to the continued and mystifying operational and policy failures to introduce saliva testing than an ineffable truth about the nature of government. But it also speaks to the latter.

Authorities described last years August outbreak, centred on the suburbs of Mt Albert and Mt Roskill, as a cluster in West Auckland. Its a minor detail that nonetheless amply illustrates the disparity of knowledge between planners in the capital and those on the ground.

If Wellington-based policy analysts struggle to find two prominent Auckland neighbourhoods on a map, is it any wonder that a strategy to reach remote small towns on the East Coast has to be made up on the hoof?

Even if the Government had adopted a census-style model earlier, to map vaccination or lack thereof, it is still by nature woefully ill-equipped for the task of persuading vaccine-hesitant or disengaged people, for whom relationships are crucial. The government can storm the gates of a city, but it cannot fight house to house.

Mori healthcare providers and iwi/hap, on whose shoulders the last mile to a large extent falls, have complained of the exhausting compliance and reporting required to, for instance, access government funds to fit out a mobile vaccination clinic.

There are clearly good reasons for meticulous accountability in spending public money, but making primary healthcare organisations spend valuable weeks in an outbreak filling out paperwork for relative peanuts, when the first wage subsidy handed out $13 billion in a few weeks on trust, seems bizarre.

The truth is that, in a game where you only win by getting every person vaccinated, we are much more a team of five million than in 2020, essentially a team of 20 and a country full of cheerleaders.

STUFF

It is necessary to grit teeth and deal with gang leaders in order to ensure their members keep themselves, their families and their communities safe.

It is necessary to grit teeth and deal with gang leaders in order to ensure their members keep themselves, their families and their communities safe. It is necessary to provide whatever resources trusted providers say they need.

Its also necessary for other sectors to stand up and play their part many farm workers living far from towns are just as hard to reach as the gang members and rough sleepers who occupy the public imagination, and yet the farming lobbies have been allowed to absent themselves from the conversation in a way local hap and iwi could never dream of.

Its good news, then, for the big-government fans and their sceptics. Only communities can achieve what we want, but they need the governments help. Its eerily similar to the vision of the third way promised at the end of the 20th century. Nature is healing.

Ben Thomas is an Auckland-based public relations consultant and political commentator. He was previously a National government press secretary.

See the article here:

Covid has shown the limits of big government - Stuff.co.nz

Some masterpieces of cinema are simply doomed at the box office and destined to be savaged by critics. Very often the culprit is bad timing, or a weak marketing effort, or internal disputes at the studio. All three of those played a role in the brutal reception that greeted John Carpenters The Thing (1982), which is today recognized as one of the most effective, shocking, and suspenseful horror movies of all time.

I saw this movie at far too young an age (thanks, Mom and Dad!), and I was puzzled to find that the TV Guide description gave it a measly two out of four stars. In the ensuing years, I learned that the failure of this film left the brilliant Carpenter almost completely disillusioned with Hollywood, which drastically altered his career trajectory. Both the snooty film critics and the major horror magazines of the time decried The Things nihilism and barf bag special effects. The sci-fi magazine Cinefantastique posed the question, Is this the most hated movie of all time? Christian Nyby, the director of the 1951 version, bashed Carpenters remake. Even the beautiful minimalist score by Ennio Morricone was nominated for a Razzie.

I realize that everyone had their stated reasons for not liking the film at first, but here is my grand unified theory to explain their massive error in judgment: the film was just too effing scary. It hit all of the major pressure points of fear, tweaking the amygdala and triggering a response so palpable that many viewers could only look back with disgust. And if that were not enough, The Things meditation on despair was simply too much for audiences and critics. Its bleak, uncertain ending, a harbinger of death on a scale both small and large, was too much to handle. I cant think of another mainstream blockbuster that even attempted such a thing, before or since.

It took a long time, a lot of introspection, and a lot of grassroots enthusiasm to rehabilitate the films reputation. Now that weve all had a chance to gather ourselves and process whats happened, here are some of the key elements of horror that work a little too well in The Thing. Spoilers are ahead, obviously, but 2022 marks the fortieth anniversary of the film, so its well past time to knock this one off your list.

Fear of the Unknown and the Incomprehensible

The Thing opens with an absurd image, with no explanation or context. A helicopter flies over a wintry landscape, chasing a husky as it sprints across the snow. A man leans out of the side of the chopper, firing at the dog with a rifle. He desperately shouts in Norwegian to the pilot, imploring him to keep following. Panting, the husky arrives at an American research outpost, where the scientists and the support staff are baffled by the commotion. The weirdness escalates when the chopper lands, and the rifleman continues to chase the dog, firing wildly and screaming in what sounds to the Americans like gibberish. He tries to toss a hand grenade, but his errant throw destroys the helicopter, killing the pilot. Seconds later, a security officer shoots and kills the Norwegian, and the inhabitants of the camp gather round the body, confounded by what theyve witnessed. In the background, the husky behaves like a normal dog.

Right from the beginning, we are trapped in a state of bewilderment alongside the characters. Rather than pursuing a mystery after a crime takes place, the mystery is thrust upon us. And from there, the unknown mutates into the incomprehensible. Later that night, we see the dog in its true form: a shape-shifting creature from the worst nightmares of cosmic horror. Gelatinous, gooey, tentacled, pulsing, and asymmetrical. A completely alien organism that can mimic other living things that it touches.

When we see the alien parasite moving from dog to human, a new kind of terror emerges. The half-formed imitations have an uncanny valley quality to them, forcing us to stop and try to grasp what were looking at. In one of many scenes cut from network TV airings of the film, the character Windows (Thomas G. Waites) enters a room to find Bennings (Peter Maloney) half-naked, covered in a viscous fluid, and wrapped in squirming tentacles. Whether this is an emerging clone or a person being digested is left to the viewers imagination. Later, the crew catches up with the Benning-thing. He unfolds his arms to reveal two pulpy stalks, while emitting an eerie howling noise. Horrified, the men burn the creature alive.

Oh, but it gets even worse. We discover that the cloned bodies can adapt when threatened. A mans chest bursts open to reveal a gaping, fanged mouth. Another mans head splits apart, forming a pincer-like weapon. Granted, there are a few shots in which the otherwise brilliant effects by Rob Bottin look fakeyet even those images still trigger our revulsion. They remind me of a similar scene in Aliens (1986), when the facehuggers try to latch onto Ripley and Newt. One of the spider-like creatures is tossed aside, only to flip right-side up again. It looks like a toybut it works! Its a broken toy from hell that keeps juddering about even after the batteries have been pulled!

Many fans of The Thing blame its box office failure on Steven Spielbergs E.T., which dominated 1982. The friendly alien in that movie resembled a child, with its big eyes and dopey grin. In contrast, The Thing toyed with the incomprehensible. To this day, I wonder: how many people ended up watching it simply because E.T. was sold out? Those viewers must have been the most appalled.

Fear of the Other

Im writing in 2021, which requires me to compare our current real-world predicament with The Things depiction of infection, quarantine, and paranoia. The critic Gene Siskelwho defended the movie against his colleague Roger Ebertnoted the Cold War mentality of the script, with its fears of infiltration and assimilation. Both are on display in a scene in which the head scientist Blair (Wilford Brimley) runs a computer simulation showing how quickly the alien could mimic the entire crew, which places a ticking clock on the action.

Yet as grim as this movie gets, the humans do not outright betray one another. Nor does anyone go Full Brockman, conceding defeat to curry favor with the enemy. Ironically, the people who go too far to fight the Thing are Blair, the smartest guy in the room, and MacReady (Kurt Russell), the films protagonist by default. In some ways, MacReadys actions are similar to the drastic unilateral decisions that Ben has to make in Night of the Living Dead (1968). In his desperation to survive, MacReady assumes control by threatening to destroy the entire camp with dynamite. From there, he establishes a mini-dictatorship, with round-the-clock surveillance of the crewmembers, along with a blood test to prove who is infected and who is safe. When the gentle Clark (Richard Masur) tries to resist, MacReady shoots him dead, only to discover later that the man he killed was still human. By then, MacReady is so focused on the task at hand that he moves on, shoving poor Clark out of his mind, his own dehumanization complete. And despite that effort, MacReadys plan goes sideways when the test succeeds in revealing the Thing. Now exposed, the creature reverts to its transitional form, killing a member of the crew. After all of that sacrifice, all that setting aside of morality and trust, they achieve nothing.

Suspense: a sidenote

While many of the scares come as a shock, the aforementioned blood test builds the tension slowly in a scene that is a masterwork in suspense. While cornered, desperate, and fighting off hypothermia, MacReady uses a flamethrower to keep the others at bay. He forces them to cut themselves with scalpels and drain some of their blood into petri dishes. One by one, he applies a hot needle to each dish. His theory is that the blood of the Thing will react when threatened, thus revealing the host. The red-hot needle touches the first dish, and the blood squelches the heat. As MacReady works his way through each of the samples, we grow accustomed to the squeaking sound it makes each time, accompanied by the howling wind outside.

As we allow ourselves to hope that we might make it through the scene without any further mayhem, Carpenter misdirects our attention by having Garry (Donald Moffat)the outposts security officerstart an argument with MacReady. This is pure nonsense, Garry says. Doesnt prove a thing. With the needle in one hand, and a petri dish in the other, MacReady reminds Garry of why hes the most suspicious person in the group. Well do you last, MacReady says. Which makes us anticipate the moment when we can finally prove that Garry is the Thing.

And then the needle touches the sample, belonging to an eccentric but relatively quiet man named Palmer (David Clennon). And all hell breaks loose. The blood instantly turns into a bloody tentacle, squealing in agony as it tries to escape the heat. Palmer mutates into what could be described as a giant walking mouth, its teeth snapping like a bear trap, while MacReady and Windows scramble to burn him with their flamethrower. But its too late. By the time they dispatch him with fire and explosives, another person is dead, another wing of the outpost is destroyed, and the paranoia intensifies.

Fear of Isolation

Heres another reason why watching The Thing in 2021 may be tough. The characters are stuck together in close quarters and cut off from the rest of the world. Even before the mayhem begins, we catch glimpses of how the routine is slowly becoming unbearable. MacReady destroys a computer chess game when he loses, claiming that the computer somehow cheated. Many of the characters self-medicate, with J&B Whiskey as the painkiller of choice. Others have been watching VHS tapes of the same TV shows over and over, apparently for months on end. It helps that Carpenter prefers to shoot in a widescreen format, which allows him to cram more people into the frame, making some of the interior shots downright claustrophobic.

The walls close in tighter once the danger becomes real. Blair, who realizes early on that they are all doomed, destroys the communication equipment and sabotages the vehicles. No one can leave, and no one can call for help. The remaining crew is on their own, holed up in a building that will be their tomb. With no Netflix!

In a strange bit of dark humor, we see Blair again after his meltdown, and after the crew has locked him a separate building. Im all right, he insists. Im much better and I wont harm anybody. While he rambles, a hangmans noose dangles behind him. No one comments on it. Its just there to remind us that Blair the rational scientist has carefully weighed his options while isolated in this meat locker.

Fear of Nature

Even if it had no alien in it, The Thing reminds us of how powerless we are in the face of nature. A major plot point involves a storm pummeling the outpost. Despite the weather, the characters insist on taking their chances indoors. I can easily imagine them many months earlier, sitting through some tedious orientation for their jobs, in which a trainer explains to them all the ghastly ways that hypothermia and frostbite can shut down their bodies and scramble their minds.

There are other ways in which the film invokes our fears of the natural world. On several occasions, the Thing mimics the animals that have terrorized our species. The petri dish monster strikes outward like a viper. A severed head sprouts legs and crawls about like a spider. Near the climax of the film, the Thing takes on a shape that resembles a snake or a lizard. The original script and storyboards included an even more elaborate final boss, which would incorporate several icky animals. Part squid, part insect, part rabid dog. The films budget would not allow it. But by then, it makes no difference. A mere glimpse of the monster is enough to conjure more frightening shapes lodged in our imagination.

And Finally, Fear (and Acceptance) of Certain Doom

The Thing is the first of Carpenters Apocalypse Trilogy, which continues with Prince of Darkness (1987) and concludes with In the Mouth of Madness (1994). All three films combine Lovecraftian cosmic horror with late twentieth-century concerns about societal breakdown and World War III. Together, these themes and images explore the erosion of order and identity, leading to the end of all things. The Thing can be said to represent the unstoppable forces of the universe that have no concern for human well-being. As many critics have noted, it is never made clear what exactly the Thing wants. It may in fact be such a mindless, viral organism that it doesnt even know its an alien once the imitation is complete. No one can bargain or plead with such an entity, in the same way we cannot reason with the forces that may lead to our extinction.

At the end of the film, the hopelessness of it all leaves the lone survivors, MacReady and Childs (Keith David), sharing the bleakest drink in the history of cinema. Though the monster has seemingly been defeated, the entire camp is left burning, and neither man knows if the other is infected. As they both acknowledge, they are in no condition to fight anymore. Their best bet is to doze off as the fires burn out and never wake up again. Why dont we just wait here for a little while, see what happens? MacReady suggests. What else can they do?

As they take their last sips of J&B, Morricones score begins again, with a piece titled Humanity, Part II. The thudding sound resembles a heart beating. Is this a defiant assertion of humanity, or the final pumps of blood? Or are we hearing an imitation, mimicked by an incomprehensible force that has no regard for human life?

A Legacy of Fear

Nostalgia for 1980s popular culture has certainly helped to renew interest in films like The Thing. Still, theres something special about this particular movie, something that helped it rise from the ashes of its initial failure. While a film like The Day After (1983) was scary enough to change our defense policy, its specificity to the nuclear arms race makes it more of an artifact of that era. In contrast, the fears invoked by The Thing are figurative, visceral, and universal, and can be applied more easily to any point in history, from the Cold War to the pandemic and political strife of the 2020s. In another generation, I expect people to rediscover it once more, applying it to whatever keeps them up at night. And they will continue the debates about which characters were infected when, whether the infected characters even know that theyre the Thing, and whether the alien is truly dead or merely hiding in that final scene. In the end, the film leaves its paranoia with us. Were infected, and the safe world weve tried to build for ourselves will never look the same.

Robert Repino (@Repino1) grew up in Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania. After serving in the Peace Corps in Grenada, he earned an MFA in Creative Writing at Emerson College. He works as an editor for Oxford University Press, and occasionally teaches for the Gotham Writers Workshop. Repino is the author of the middle grade novel Spark and the League of Ursus (Quirk Books), as well as the War With No Name series (Soho Press), which includes Mort(e), Culdesac, DArc, and Malefactor.

Originally posted here:

What Makes John Carpenter's The Thing So Effing Scary? - tor.com

Fashion Prize Finals

The six finalist fashion designers compete at the Fashion Prize Finals Friday, September 24, at SciPort Discovery Center.

Henrietta Wildsmith, Shreveport Times

Sci-port's second floor recently transformed into a fashion runway surrounded by little bistro tables for the 'Fashion Prize 2021: Back on the Runway!' event. With colorful spotlights andenticing music, the models strutted across the stagestopping in front of the three judges,Carmen Ortiz, Alison Parker, and Taryn Rose.

That night, thetop 6 designers,Sara Kluss, Catalina RamirezVarela, Jules Ecklekamp, Brittani Shabazz, Jessica Hall, and Donna Strebeckeach showcased their final collection of 5 looks on the runway.

This was Jessica Hall's first year to compete and when she heard her name being called as the winner andthe $2,500 check being put into her hands she was shocked. "It was a surreal moment when I heard my name called, a wave of gratitude washed over me," she said.

Hall had started her collection in 2020 but COVID-19 delayed her plans to join Fashion Prize. Hall intended her collection to be more 'Glam' but as 2020progressed she found it leaning towards a different direction, "The almost Dystopian feel of the global climate pushed me towards a more edgy and punk feeling. The disenfranchisement of the youth in England in the '70s felt relatable in a new way with the parallels of nihilism in 2020".

It was not a total stretch for the designer to go to punk. After all, when she was eight years old sheturned her Barbie dolls into punks with mohawks. She remembers always enjoying playing with the vintage fabrics found around her aunts' house.

Anothersource of inspiration for Hall is her models. Seeing them walk the runway that night gave her a feeling of "pure joy".

Emily Hamann loves to model on runways but oftenfeels that she is not the right shape or size. She knew so many people working on the Fashion Prize and had knownHall for years, which made her feel comfortable saying yes when asked to model for thisshow. "I loved being her model, she worshipped everything Curve, respected my comfort and constantly gassed me up. Shes very good about making me feel beautiful," Hamann said.

Fashion Prize founder Katy Larsenfeels this year'swin is well deserved, "Jessica Hall has been working in fashion and sewing for quite some time now. She has done everything from Mardi Gras, wedding, costuming, film attire, to historical dresses."

As the owner of Agora Borealis, a local artist marketplace, Larsen wanted to exposelocal talent, "Istarted fashion shows here in Shreveport because people were not buying handmade wares from local designers. I wanted to give exposure to that nitch in the art world... and it just grew and grew and now sits under the umbrella of the Prize family."

Forthose hoping for achance tosee their designs in the 2022 Fashion Prize, they can contact Larsen atKaty@prize.foundation.

Read this article:

Curves and punk, Fashion Prize, winner Jessica Hall talks about her journey to the runway - Shreveport Times