Category: Arts

• How to give your videos that sweet sweet cinematic look

  October 17, 2024 1:47 pm Comments Off on How to give your videos that sweet sweet cinematic look

  A few weeks ago, I said to a friend: “I haven’t had a single coherent thought in years.” 
  When I said it, I meant the comment as ironic and self-deprecating, not to be taken seriously or to linger in the conversation for more than a few seconds. But for some reason, it’s stuck in my mind, and the more I think about it, the more I worry I might have been right. I say that I write (and occasionally, if I am feeling bold, I say that I am a writer), but really, most of the time I spend ‘writing’ is time spent fiddling with existing work, shifting things around, trying a new word here or there, but never really making something new. Whenever I discuss writing with others, I feel like I’m describing a process in the past tense: ‘I used to do this,’ or ‘I would always try to make it feel this way.’ 
  When I’m procrastinating or bored, I watch a lot of short films, especially student short films. Apart from being helpful instruction for future personal projects and often very entertaining in their own right, there’s a particular kind of janky sincerity about student filmmaking that’s uniquely appealing. These shorts are often the first tentative gestures of creative expression, swirling thoughts and ideas being pulled into a sort of order, unsteady, speaking with a voice struggling to be heard through the cliches that need to be sorted out organically with time. Often, when watching the shorts that now-successful filmmakers made at school or with a few friends over a weekend, you can see glimmers of what they would go on to create. 
  One of Martin Scorsese’s first films (not to set the bar too high off the bat) was just him sitting down and interviewing his parents for 40 minutes. Right there, in the gritty footage of a pokey New York City apartment, is the blueprint for the paradoxical blunt sensitivity that Scorsese paints like no one else. Watching amateur short films feels like brushing dirt from a historical artefact; they allow you to discover stories and context beyond what the object itself tells. 
  Not that every short film is good, or even competent. For every short film made by one of the most talented directors in the history of cinema, there are an uncountable number of films that are instantly forgettable, trite, and even annoying. But even atrocious shorts can recommend themselves on the basis that they made it out of the filmmaker’s head and onto the screen. For every one of those films, there are probably a thousand more that never made it that far. 
  What I’m getting at by all this is that I think there’s a lot of value to be found in amateur art, not just as the person making the art but as a viewer. They recommend a method of creative engagement that is more compassionate to the one we instinctively extend towards movies we see at the cinema, one that examines potential and not failure. It encourages me to push back against my instincts that everything I make has to be profound and perfect. It is enough to have made something that didn’t exist in the world beforehand. When I watch a film made with access to the same resources I do, their various amateurisms reassure instead of discourage.
  Here’s another thing I watch a lot, and of which I carry a much less favourable opinion: filmmaking tutorials on YouTube. A necessary evil if I want to learn how to use DaVinci Resolve, but one that always leaves an unpleasant aftertaste. All these videos teach is how to emulate and reproduce. A video titled ‘How to make your shots look cinematic’ can’t possibly do what it says, because ‘cinematic’ isn’t really a specific visual style. 
  But worse, it actively misleads us about where art’s real pleasure and importance come from. Teal/orange colour grading and camera lens recommendations can only get you so far. What gets me about these videos is how cynical they are about why people might want to be creative. Or rather, that they reflect a broader trend towards artistic commodification that makes me deeply uncomfortable. These videos don’t help people to tell stories; they teach them how to make content. (Content, that awful, awful word I have started to hate more than is perhaps reasonable. It is simultaneously meaningless and yet all-encompassing, a tool of destructive generalisation that reduces all the work to which it subjects itself down to something with the sole purpose of filling a gap where profit can be made. The phrase ‘content creation’ is a bitter oxymoron. If your goal is to make content, chances are you won’t end up with anything new.) When it comes to filmmaking, as with writing, there’s absolutely value in attempting to mimic a certain style. The problems start when that emulation is framed as the end of the road. Once you have achieved the elusive ‘cinematic look’ (once you have bought the expensive camera lens and lighting setup), what happens next? A film can be composed of a hundred beautifully considered images that are completely empty and which mean nothing. 
  That, I think, must be the reason why I’ve started to become hesitant to make anything new. It’s every creative’s nightmare to earnestly pour your whole self into a piece of art, only to find that it’s instantly forgotten, or worse, reviled. How to cope? Films, books, and music are churned out, then chewed and spat out within weeks or months. It’s hard to attempt originality in good faith when the only things we see that gain any traction are recycled pictures of the same old; it’s even more difficult to see the things you create as having any sort of impact when it feels like it’s impossible for cultural longevity to attach itself to anything. Part of the answer is probably spending less time on YouTube, but I think I also need to think about the end goal of creative endeavour through a more charitable lens. I want to be able to make crappy writing and film without being self-conscious. We are all under the same stifling pressure to turn any inkling of creative energy into a product that can support our careers, or change the world. I don’t want to make bad art, but I’ve got to stop being afraid of the growing pains.

  Michael Reid

• The Jazz of Nala Sinepho: A soundtrack for the age of core-core and introspection

  12:04 pm Comments Off on The Jazz of Nala Sinepho: A soundtrack for the age of core-core and introspection

  The world moves too fast. Each day bleeds into the next. Lectures bleed into work, work bleeds into sleep, sleep bleeds into breakfast, Monday bleeds into Friday, and eventually, life will bleed into death.
  The world moves too fast. Faster than ever. Advanced technology has enabled us to do more than ever before, but just as we have become able to do more, so too has each day become an instrument for completing a growing to-do list, upon which crucial time for ourselves rarely makes an appearance.
  The music of experimental Jazz musician Nala Sinephro provides a refreshing answer to the increasingly chaotic world we live in.
  Nala Sinephro’s Jazz
  Jazz has always pushed boundaries. Playing with increasingly complex musical arrangements and improvisations is the genre’s bread and butter. While these elements are certainly not lacking in Sinephro’s jazz, they are aided by a characteristic style of meditative calm.
  Among a series of tightly crafted ambient, and yet emotionally charged soundscapes, adventures into melody and rhythm are timely responses to our world; a world increasingly saturated with noise and jargon.
  Space 1.8
  In 2021, Sinephro came out with her debut album Space 1.8, blending the ethereal tones of the harp with powerful jazz improvisations and synths into a sound that was — and still is — fresh and distinct.
  Alongside collaborators Nubya Garcia and the Ezra Collective, Space 1.8 moved away from the bombastic and instead looked to evoke introspection and reflection. With each track, Sinephro crafted a spiritual space, both open and calm. The album was a pivotal release, striking a chord with listeners around the globe, and breaking new ground in both the jazz and the ambient genres.
  Endlessness
  Now, her second album, Endlessness, is here. Sinephro pushes her experimental ethos even further, in a 45-minute exploration of jazz stripped to its ambient core. Shimmering arpeggios, yearning saxophones and pulsating rhythms decorate the bones of the project, while thematic throughlines of recurrence colour Sinephro’s reborn sonic cosmos.
  While Space 1.8 offered continuous variation, Endlessness is wholly minimalistic. A single arpeggio motif guides us through the album and results in a deeply cohesive and meditative experience, though some may find this a repetitive trap.
  And yet, it is this very sense of repetition that I find deeply intentional, mirroring contemporary cultural shifts in the digital world, especially viral online artistic movements like core-core.  
  Core-core and Introspection
  It is in core-core that seemingly random, often emotionally charged images and sounds are paired to invoke a mellow appreciation of our shared human experience, helping us process and navigate a world of overstimulation, nostalgia, and often overwhelming existential helplessness.
  Both core-core and Sinephro make heavy use of recurrence, spontaneity, and subtle emotional shifts. Both ultimately function by taking something simple — be it an image, a video, a melody or a motif — and developing it into something deep and meaningful through prolonged repetition, layering and an emphasis on difference.
  In both core-core and Sinephro’s jazz, simplicity is utilised as a powerful tool for emotional resonance, invoking an atmosphere that is equally soothing and haunting.
  As core-core engages us, it creates a space for reflection. Sinephro’s Jazz does the same. We are offered a peaceful refuge from an increasingly fragmented life, from our penchant for instant gratification and endless doom scrolling. Sinephro’s music encourages us to slow down, to focus on each note, on each moment that captivates us, and also to appreciate all the space in between.
  In a world where our attention is constantly pulled in multiple directions, we often need a counterpoint, or perhaps a cure. Something just like this, which demands of each of us patience, and rewards those capable of giving it with peace, if only for a little while.
  Ultimately, in an era of information overload, Nala Sinephro’s music captures a cultural moment where introspection, minimalism, and fluidity are central to how we should be navigating the world. Both of her albums, Space 1.8 and Endlessness, provide much-needed room for reflection. Whether it’s through the loops of a synth arpeggio or the hypnotic pull of a jazz motif, her work aligns with the current cultural landscape — offering, in the vein of core-core, a soundtrack for those seeking solace in a world of never-ending noise.
  For those who feel overwhelmed, I ask that you listen.
  Slow down, breathe, and listen.

  Emanuel Foundas

• Woroni Board of Editors Semester 1 2025- Candidates

  October 10, 2024 7:35 pm Comments Off on Woroni Board of Editors Semester 1 2025- Candidates

  During the week of 14-18 October (week 12), students have the opportunity to elect editors to the ANU Student Media Board. The link to vote will be emailed to all ANU students on Monday 14 October. All ANU students are eligible to vote. Any questions relating to the election process should be directed to Returning Officer Richelle Hilton at Richelle.Hilton@anu.edu.auThe nominees for each position and their bios are listed here:
   
  Candidates for Managing Editor

   
  1. Joseph Mann
  I’ve been a dedicated and hard-working news reporter in the Woroni News team for over a year now. I am deeply passionate about continuing the Board’s amazing work to keep Woroni and community media flourishing and sustainable. I propose building stronger connections with ANU clubs and societies, to expand our equipment hire services and student publication grants. This could include lending out cameras to balls for our Lookbook or other events for a “what happened this week” feature or publishing a “what’s on” feature. I also propose to find new and expanded (but still ethical) sources of revenue for ANUSM and student media and events on campus. This could include seeking grants and endowments from community organisations or opening up Woroni for tax-deductible donations from the public like other non-profit outlets like The Conversation and Overland. Finally, I propose working with our general editors to build stronger connections with local media and arts practitioners to build a stronger professional development stream for our sub-editors. Some of our best moments over the last two years have included working with media organisations for field trips and other Stujo orgs for our recent conference and I wish for this work to continue.
  Note: In line with Section 9.2 b) of the ANUSM Electoral Regulations, the ANUSM Board would like to disclose the following Conflicts of Interest for Joseph Mann: Member of the ACT Labor Party; Treasurer of the Canberra North Branch.

   
  2. Paris Chia
  I have worked in the Woroni TV team for a year and a half now, in the process growing familiar with the operations of Woroni and student media management. Over the years I have come to understand how much work goes on behind the scenes to keep Woroni running; on a more foundational level than content production, the Managing Editor is vital in ensuring that our funding is utilised in its fullest capacity to allow our teams to deliver quality content to the student body. As Managing Editor, I will dedicate my time to ensuring the financial sustainability of ANU’s Student Media. I understand the workflow, culture and media production values of Woroni, as well as what is logistically required in order to enable such creative endeavours. Following in the footsteps of our previous Managing Editors, I pledge to responsibly manage the business side of Woroni’s operations according to my experience both within Woroni and as a Commerce student currently interning in marketing. My experience producing content in the TV Team has been highly enjoyable, and I would be honoured to join the board as a supporting figure that continues to allow Woroni to flourish.
  Candidates for Content Editor

   
  1. Aala Cheema
  I have been on the Woroni content team for 2.5 years. I started as a sub-editor and have been serving as a senior sub-editor for 1.5 years. I have extensive experience at Woroni.During my time, I have sourced, edited, and written a plethora of articles in a variety of forms and genres. I believe I am well-equipped to lead the content team. I have learnt from and developed my skills through observing the four content editors I have worked under. My vision for the content team consists of greater outreach for magazine submissions. I want to liaise with the Disabilities, Environment, International students, Queer*, Women’s, Indigenous, BIPOC and Parents and Carers departments to ensure that the content Woroni produces encompasses the diversity of experiences on campus and amplifies minority voices. I also want to encourage students to submit to Woroni outside of the magazine cycles to have their work published online. I want to encourage a diversity of fiction and non-fiction forms, with a particular focus on non-traditional and multi-modal forms. I wish to showcase the work of talented photographers, playwrights, comics, satirists, screenwriters, songwriters, and artists, alongside the exceptional writers that make up the ANU student population.

  2. Jaden Ogwayo
  I would be thrilled to run for the position of Content Editor for Woroni in 2025. This year, after several months of submitting to the magazine, I joined on as a Content subeditor. Most of my work involves contributing personal essays, articles, and poetry, and, additionally, as a sub-editor, I source pieces from external students to include in the magazine. Ensuring Woroni is composed by students, for students, is at the heart of my approach to being a Content sub-editor, and even before I got the role, I endeavoured to tap several people I knew to contribute to the magazine to continually widen our scope. For instance, in our forthcoming magazine Upside-Down, I managed to source 10 pieces and pitches. Having recently attended the Student Journalism Conference hosted by USyd, and having contributed significantly over the past year to Woroni (with 13 pieces published this year), I’m confident that I’m qualified to be a great Content Editor who already has ideas for themes, pieces, and outreach to increase student consumption and contribution.
   
  Candidates for TV Editor

   
  1. Paris Chia
  In the past year and a half, I have worked a variety of roles on the Woroni TV team, on a range of contents including creative and news videos both long-form and short-form. During this time, I have grown and developed alongside many talented and enthusiastic individuals. The diversity of backgrounds, interests and creative minds that collect in the Woroni TV team have shaped me in turn, and I have had the great honour of leading a team of said individuals this semester as Executive Producer. As TV Editor, I wish to focus on developing the technical skills of the team as a guiding presence in achieving their creative visions. Further, I plan to extend the scope of the TV Team’s content by collaborating with other Woroni portfolios, such as with the News Team to presenting relevant and timely campus updates in alternative formats. From where we stand today, I wish to bring Woroni TV further into the fold of ANU student life by connecting directly with our audience through our content. I will lead the Woroni TV team to produce entertaining and informative videos that showcase the value of media in recolouring our lives.

   
  2. Arabella Ritchie
  I have served as the Woroni TV Editor for the past year and would absolutely love the opportunity to extend my tenure. Over the past year, I’ve had the privilege of recruiting and training a talented and dedicated team. I’ve focused on rebuilding the TV portfolio, streamlining our production processes, and maintaining high-quality standards for all our content output. Looking ahead, I’m eager to further amplify Woroni TV’s presence within the ANU community and continue the exciting work we’ve set in motion. I’m excited about the potential to further develop the portfolio. I believe we’re only just beginning to tap into the full potential of what Woroni TV can achieve, and I would love the chance to see that through. Additionally, as a member of the board, I am eager to continue engaging with Woroni’s organisational aspects. Woroni thrives on students’ passion, pouring creativity into every article, video, and radio show. Woroni is more than just a student newspaper – it’s a living, breathing showcase of student talent and imagination. It would be an honour to continue contributing to the growth of this dynamic organisation.
   
  Candidates for Communications Editor

   
  1. Zoe Vaughan
  I have had a wonderful time working as Events Officer with Woroni’s Communications Team over this semester, and am now keen to step up and take furthe responsibility as Communications Editor. I am a proactive and organised creative with an unmatched enthusiasm for every project I take on. With an established set of journalistic skills, I intend to lead through a collaborative approach across the board. I want to see the members of the Comms. Team be given the opportunity to showcase their talents, to learn new skills and develop their existing skillsets. I look forward to supporting the Comms. Team in their development as media professionals and engaging with the student body to promote Woroni and ANU’s student media.

   
  2. Benjamin Van Der Niet
  I would like to nominate for Communications Editor. I have been a photographer for Woroni for two years, becoming a member of the Communications Team when it began this semester. I am a fifth-year music and engineering student, in the final stages of my Music Honours Degree and have another year of my Engineering studies in aerospace to complete. My participation in Woroni as a photographer has allowed me to develop my photography through attending a wide range of events and taking images for different purposes. In the position, I aim to strengthen the value of the communications team output and experience, in the process developing my knowledge of advertising and managing a social media presence. I have clear ideas for the direction that the team could undertake including increasing the regular posts. I would like to see broader and more in-depth engagement with clubs and societies and specific demographics that would benefit from representation in media, for example, students at the school of music, various engineering clubs including but not limited to the Formula Student (FSAE) team and theatre (beyond the reviews already facilitated). I would like to see more colour and soft news in Woroni’s social media.
   
  Candidates for Art Editor (uncontested)

   
  1. Lee-Francis Evatt
  As an Bachelor of Visual Arts student I have noticed the ongoing disconnect between the general university and the ANU School of Art and Design. If I become the Arts Editor for Woroni I would like to seek to close this gap. A simple way of doing this is by being an active participant with in the art community. I have done this by organising art events that are inclusive to all students such as the ANU Film Festival as well as facilitating various art workshops under the Art School Collective. These events seek to connect Visual Art students with the broader community. I believe running occasional events such as art workshops for Woroni would further encourage submission. I love working across visual mediums and see that the visual appearance of Woroni to be core to it’s professional look as a magazine. Additionally I see the importance of the visual aspects of marketing for promoting it and have experience in that field. I am currently learning how to do motion graphics and animation and I believe these skills may boost Woroni’s image.

  Woroni Editor

• Examining the ANU English Major: Diversity, Hegemony and Inclusion

  September 15, 2024 3:04 pm Comments Off on Examining the ANU English Major: Diversity, Hegemony and Inclusion

  How diverse are the ANU English courses currently on offer? Why does this matter?
  The English major, claims the ANU College of Arts and Social Sciences, offers a wide range of courses reflecting the diversity of the discipline of literary studies in English (per ANU Programs and Courses). However, it is no secret that institutionalised literary studies has a history of being complicit in the promotion of particular cultural perspectives and cultural projects associated with dominant discourse. So, how does the ANU English major fit into all of this?
  …
  Hegemony is the power of the ruling class to convince other classes that its interests are the interests of all. This term was coined by Marxist philosopher Antonio Gramsci, who investigated how the ruling class succeeds in promoting its own interests in society. Gramsci observed that the ruling class’ domination need not be exerted by force, nor even necessarily by active persuasion. Instead, they exercise a more subtle and conclusive power over the economy, over state apparatuses; education; using the media and the means of cultural production to present the ruling class’s interests as the common interests of the people, it is thus taken for granted. This process of naturalisation means that many principles of cultural inclusion or exclusion remain unexamined.
  Literature has been mobilised as a discourse so that no matter what cultural diversity its particular aesthetic and formal configurations might reflect, it ends up serving the geopolitical and sociocultural ends of institutions often at odds with what that literature sets out to accomplish. This can be seen in the historical use of the English language to reinforce cultural influence over non-English speaking linguistic communities. This occurred under the Charter Act of 1813, when the British Administration attempted to reinforce British values among Indian people during the Raj (rule of the British Crown on the Indian subcontinent). English literature became a vehicle for imperial authority. It was conceived as a dynamic force. Depending on how it was read, by whom and under what conditions, its influence could be pervasive and nuanced. Ways of reading, it was understood, drastically change what the reader perceives to be the meaning or message of texts. 
  In Indian Education: Minute of the 2nd of February (1835) British politician and historian Thomas Babington Macaulay argued that since “a single shelf of a good European library was worth the whole native literature of India”, the only purpose of British education in India was the creation of Indian intermediaries who could be “a class of interpreters between the millions whom we govern; a class of persons, Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals and in intellect”. His program of cultural conditioning needed a secular curriculum, and the English literary canon was thus introduced into India well before it became a part of the general education system in Britain. It has been argued that the cultural authority of Shakespeare, Spenser, Sterne and Milton and the later works of Eliot, Bronte, Dickens and Hardy, together with the way Indian readers were taught to look at them perpetuated the history of colonial expropriation, material exploitation and class and race oppression underpinning European world dominance. 
  Indeed, a later evaluation of the hegemonic cultural control exercised by the British Administration notes its effectiveness in deploying the discourse of English literature. As it was disseminated, so too were attendant spiritual values, cultural assumptions, social discriminations, racial prejudices, and humanistic values which remained uncontested. In other circumstances, if read differently and without the support of Anglo-Saxon hegemony, “Britishness” may not have been read as the embodiment of universal values and the Englishman may not have been construed through literature as the epitome of civilised behaviour. In institutions with the intent to educate, these texts were taught by teachers so that they had specific, culturally acceptable meanings — ones that disallowed alternative or resistant readings. This is an example of literature being used hegemonically. But only because it was taught so, did it do so. These teachings are not necessarily complete or total; for example, a reader can still be inculcated into a hegemonic position through reading a novel resistantly to ideas of gender, but perhaps not being able to read ideas about race resistantly. As former British prime minister Benjamin Disraeli said in his novel Tancred (1881): “The East is a career.”
  Thus, lecture halls and classrooms are places of unequal power (and have been for hundreds of years) and that the texts that students are directed to, the way these texts are taught and the lenses through which they are read can be vital to the process of establishing and maintaining socio-political control of cultural production. What then can be said about the diversity of the courses offered at ANU?
  In fact, when I first came to ANU, I had hopes of being an English major. But in my first two years, I encountered significant difficulty with the small course offerings, and honestly felt like I had been cheated by the Programs and Courses pages which made English seem like a vibrant and fascinating area of study. I ended up doing courses that I had little personal investment in, and reading texts that I felt did not expand my worldview and challenge me in the ways I had hoped. 
  Now, having completed a minor in English, it seems like there are many more English courses on offer and the claim that CASS makes above about its diversity is closer to being satisfied. But I am still asking myself questions about whether English courses and reading lists — no matter if they are created by a single professor/convener/lecturer, or indeed by the faculty as a whole — replicate and reinforce distinct ideas about the place of literature and language in contemporary, post-colonial Australia.
  Looking at the courses on offer this semester, there are many that can be determined to be in alignment with ideas of diversity, inclusion and reading outside of the narrow box of canonicity. Notably, ‘Strange Home: Rethinking Australian Literature’ rests on the notion that literature shapes social words and there is scope to understand and examine the breadth of cultural production in modern Australia. On the other hand, ‘Jane Austen History and Fiction’ has, at least in my opinion, a different kind of importance. 
  At face value, it could be seen to be the antithesis of diversity; students read five novels by Austen and focus on Britain at the time, as well as Austen’s own literary and historical significance. Sounds like a possible exercise in hegemony, right? The course could, at least potentially, be a class examining the supreme status of early British work, and reinforce these ideas about the innate cultural and social value of early British works that are often already deeply embedded within (institutionalised) literary studies. Austen’s works are so canonical, so clearly recognised over time by institutions of cultural production that readers come to them with so many unexamined assumptions. These texts have a populist meaning that is largely disconnected from the texts themselves. Austen’s works have received a great deal of approval from the standpoint of cultural heritage as well as significant popular currency. Pride and Prejudice, for example, is a deeply entrenched canonical work with an entire industry behind it. Even if you haven’t read Pride and Prejudice, you probably know something about the plot and the characters, maybe you’ve even watched the BBC series, or the film, or perhaps you’re familiar with Bridget Jones. In these circumstances it is possible to say that the reader has been given all the information they need regarding how to value the text and its messages before they even read the novel. It is because of this that I find the offering of this course to be counter-hegemonic, and inclusive, at least potentially. Especially because a work like Pride and Prejudice is inexorably located in particular moments in British cultural history, to read it from an Australian 21st Century perspective in a British settler-invaded nation shaped in so many ways by British cultural imperialism, can inform a legitimate non-hegemonic strategy. The fact that the course list for the English major contains courses that have the ability — both overtly and subtly — to engage critically with important moments in literary history grants students and staff the ability to think deeply and examine critically the work in question and its context. This is clearly an exercise in deconstructing hegemony.
  My reading is supported by the ‘living tree’ of Canadian Law doctrine, which refers to a method of constitutional interpretation that allows for future change and evolution of statutes and interpretations while still acknowledging the original intentions of these texts. Some Canadian Law experts firmly believe that literary works operate in a similar way, with readers bringing to them what they know, how they read, their aesthetic preferences, and the political ideologies that govern their lives. According to Canadian Law expert, Benjamin Authers, the author of a text plants a seed that has the ability to grow or wither with the reader. People read as communities. Explicit examples of such communities include a book club, an English class, or a public reading of a work. “But even when they are reading independently, people read as part of their own cultural context, engaging with a text in complex ways,” says Authers. Understanding and appreciating a piece of literature is determined by how one can transfer the concepts and words to new situations. During this process, several types of interaction happen; interaction between experience and the text, interaction between author’s culture and reader and interaction of the reader with other readers.
  Accordingly, when choosing courses off the English major list, I encourage you to think about how one course, when paired with another, can disrupt, reinforce, challenge or pluralise the learnings gained from your other English courses. Even though texts can align themselves with hegemonic views, be written to serve a particular “purpose” or may be used as instruments of cultural dominance but hegemony itself is not an in-dwelling property that emanates from their pages. Students of English are granted the opportunity to examine and disrupt power on every page. 
  “Books are mirrors, you only see in them what you already have inside you,” wrote author Carlos Ruiz Zafrón in The Shadow of the Wind.

  Rosie Bendo

• Is This the Film of the Summer!?

  May 13, 2024 1:42 pm Comments Off on Is This the Film of the Summer!?

  I downloaded Letterboxd in November. For the uninitiated, Letterboxd is an app where you can rate and review and add new movies that you watch to your watched list. I wasn’t bothered with the rate or review function, to date I’ve only reviewed two movies. No, the downloading of this app precipitated the awakening of something much worse: a deeply competitive streak centred around beating everyone in my life in one category: number of movies watched. 
  Many late nights followed as I tried to remember obscure childhood movies to add to my watched list, and a burning desire was born to watch every new film released in cinema. A desire that I indulged as much as I could. I haven’t reviewed these films on Letterboxd, so what follows is a Woroni Exclusive (that no one asked for).
  Here is my review of every movie I watched in cinema this summer, in the order that I watched them. 
  BIG SPOILERS AHEAD
  __
  The Boy and the Heron 
  This didn’t have the same magic as the rest of Haiyo Miyazaki’s filmography. But the five minutes of screen time Florence Pugh’s character had made me very happy.
   
  The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes
  As someone who read the book… boy am I glad they didn’t include Snow’s internal monologue in this movie. It allowed me to focus on what’s really important: the #slay of his silly little outfits. 
   
  Saltburn 
  I watched this sitting in between my parents. Still loved it. I honestly can’t articulate why I love this film except to say, visually, intellectually, spiritually, conceptually, hornily, I loved it. I have a crush on every single person involved in the making of this film. I want to kiss them all directly on the brain. 
   
  Poor Things 
  I also watched this sitting in between my parents. This was worse. However, Emma Stone was incredible. The sets, costumes, world building and cinematography were similarly inspired. What I can’t get past is that they showed us a woman who had had her unborn child’s brain transplanted into her head and then we were expected to find it attractive when we saw her masturbate and have copious amounts of sex (with the brain, mannerisms and speech of a toddler). It’s important to note that the narrative does not condemn these men for finding her childlike personality attractive. I’m all for celebrating womens’ sexuality and sexual liberation, just maybe not when their vocabulary still includes the words “goo goo” and “gaa gaa.” The second half when her brain matures was great!! I’m just side eyeing the baby sex part. 
   
  Trolls
  This was not released in cinemas this summer. In fact, it was released in 2016. I just felt it needed to be included in this list. Me and my Dad watched it the day after we saw Poor Things, in an attempt to heal from the trauma. It did not work. In fact it nearly made me delete Letterboxd and swear off movies altogether. I rate this movie negative 5. Do not interact. 
   
  Next Goal Wins 
  So cute! Truly a Taika Watiti film. While it didn’t hit like Boy or Hunt for the Wilderpeople, it more successfully healed the Poor Things trauma than Trolls did (this wasn’t hard). 
   
  Dream Scenario
  I didn’t expect watching Nicolas Cage cum untouched as a girl takes his belt off during an ill-advised failed affair then farting loudly and running away to be as funny as it was. Say that sentence twice, my GOD. I enjoyed this film. The tram ride home (again with my parents, yikes) was silent but in a vaguely good way?
   
  Bottoms 
  I wanted to love this movie but just… didn’t. I think it was a me problem? This film was like a cake which had all the right ingredients and followed the correct method but then the oven was a bitch and didn’t like it. I’m the oven.
   
  Anyone But You 
  Such a cute romcom, truly one of the better of its genre to come out in a while. And may I say, a Shakespeare retelling to rival 10 Things I Hate About You. The lines that came directly from the play made me happy, but it was also equally as enjoyable for people who were unfamiliar with the play. Really fun. I loved that it was set in Australia. Added a certain ‘je ne sais quoi’.
   
  Napoleon
  JOKES I did not watch this movie. A 3 hour long, historically inaccurate Ridley Scott film? Not even adding another notch to my Letterboxd bed post could entice me.
   
  Wonka 
  As soon as the film finished the girl behind me said, “thank GOD that’s over”. I did not agree with her. I thought it had the perfect amount of whimsy and fun. My mother, who is the biggest Timothee Chalamet fan in the world, gives it 5 stars. 
   
  Mean Girls 
  This was… boring and unnecessary. Auliʻi Cravalho as Janice was a standout performance though.
   
  The Holdovers
  For all sad nerds, this movie is like Dead Poets Society but if all the characters were cantankerous assholes (affectionate). I was hungry when I arrived at the cinema so I spent a lot of the movie thinking about the sausages they showed in the establishing shot of the kitchen. On the way home (via Coles to buy sausages) I figured out what I thought of the film: it had a beautiful soul. You could tell a lot of heart went into making it, the use of film rather than digital, the editing, the soundtrack, the performances. I forgot I was watching a film made in this millennium and not an actual film from 1970. Super lovely. 
   
  Priscilla
  Like Mean Girls, this movie was boring and unnecessary. It tried to say something new about Priscilla and Elvis’ combined legacy but failed. It meandered. 
   
  All of Us Strangers
  This movie made me grin from ear to ear and also clutch my chest like I was dying of heartbreak. It was filmed so beautifully. It looked warm, and felt like a hug goodbye. Every performance was intentional and masterful and the result was truly breathtaking. But for my own mental health, I will never ever rewatch it.
   
  May December
  I had a really embarrassing asthma attack in the middle of this movie (ironic since the main character suffers from chronic asthma herself) and had to leave. I never saw the ending and can’t bring myself to stream it and find out. It was well acted but didn’t compel me.
   
  Anatomy of a Fall
  Holy shit. When I wasn’t distracted by how beautiful Vincent, played by Swann Aulaud, was (seriously, he is stunning, and what nice hair), I was jaw-open marvelling at what a great film this was. The pacing especially was perfect. It managed to be interesting and compelling as well as thoughtful and picturesque. Highly recommend it. 
  __
  Honourable mentions go to two of the ads I had to see at every single one of these screenings:
  The confusing Budget Direct ad which featured an evil sentient pool cleaner (?). Stay weird Budget Direct.
  The Toyota Hilux ad about a divorced couple refinding their love for one another through sharing joint custody of their car. This ad made me tear up. 
  __
  Is there a single thematic takeaway from this experience? Any additional wisdom I have gained by conquering these 15 films? Not really. But it was a fun way to while away the summer.

  Hannah Bachelard

• Roots and Ruptures: The Alchemy of Home

  April 12, 2024 1:16 am Comments Off on Roots and Ruptures: The Alchemy of Home

  The air is bitter, but it’s not the acrid bitterness that assaults your soul, no. This bitterness is a soft reminder of the colossally suffocating warmth of familiarity. It is easy to lose oneself amidst Delhi’s enchanting chaos, but I, like others here, had grown to find solace in this dulcet cacophony.
  Canberra is a complete contrast. It’s eerily quiet at times, the shops shut by 6 pm for some godforsaken reason, and almost very little unfolds in its confines. Don’t get me wrong, I love being here. I find great peace in its scenic divinity. But I also find myself yearning for the absolutely unfiltered energy that Delhi radiates. I miss the vibrant traffic and the babel of people shouting and cussing at each other and the long queues outside chhole-bhature stalls every Sunday morning.
  Canberra’s too pristine and decent for my Delhi senses. I don’t even know how to function in such a low Air Quality Index. 
  But more importantly, Canberra doesn’t know me and I don’t know it either. There’s this dreadful sense of mutual unfamiliarity and a fear that we’ll always remain strangers, or perhaps, at best, friendly acquaintances. And most importantly, I’m uncertain if Delhi will continue to recognise me like it used to.
  I went home last break as a familiar face, but upon reaching home, the harsh reality dawned on me that by the next visit around I would probably become a guest- a distant friend you vaguely remember sitting with in class, but it could easily just be a lucid dream.
  So, added to my list of things to overthink before bed is now this grappling sense of home and belonging. 18 years of existence yet, nobody ever bothered to teach me how to handle this dilemma of selfhood.
  What is home now that the comfort of familiarity has been snatched away?
  I’ve always believed in the succour of solidarity. You could be going through the shittiest time of your life, but knowing that there is someone out there who relates to your anguish will always be highly comforting. So, I took my baggage of emotional quandaries to go have a chat with some friends over at the ANU International Students’ Department.
  Delving into the depths of our experiences on the concept of home, I spoke to Maythem Al-Anpaqi, a second-year Bachelor of Medical Science student from Iraq. Sitting next to him and speaking to him, I could sense this undaunted resolution that radiates from his very being. Within a minute of our conversation, I could gauge the deep sense of purpose that he carries along. It is inspiring. He tells me about his struggles at ANU. He speaks about this feeling of isolation that he experienced his first semester, and you could see me frantically nodding my head in agreement. However, joining societies and clubs and making conscious efforts to become a part of the ANU community, he claims, has helped significantly in dealing with the alienation. A year in, Maythem’s zeal to contribute and volunteer in the community has helped him successfully find his place.
  I ask him what home is, he doesn’t have to think before saying ‘It’s about being a part of something’, you can tell this isn’t the first time he’s thought about it.
  ‘So, when you ask me where I’m from, I say I’m from Iraq because I’m part of that something, part of that country. So, I feel like if you’re part of something that’s how you feel at home and that’s how you find home.’
  I’m bewildered by how he’s found peace with home, the same peace I’ve been yearning for. He tells me it’s because very early on he came to terms with the fact that sacrifices are indispensable. He needs to move forward to succeed. This, he has realized, is the only way he can return to his family and country in a better position. He needs to sacrifice the comfort of home to grow.
  I know he’s right and I know it is a great privilege for us to be here but it feels almost sacrilegious, losing a part of our identities for a better future.
  Today, Maythem has found home in the peaceful moments spent sitting by the Centre for Islamic Studies, his bonds with people at ANU, and the books on his shelf that will always serve as a cherished reminder of the golden time he spent wandering around the lanes of Al-Mutanabbi. Home is no longer a place but a feeling of comfort and solitude.
  He tells me to think of this time as a mission, he tells me to channel the innate human greed, the greed to succeed, the greed to provide a better future for myself, my family, and my country. That, he believes, is what will ultimately help me adjust.
  I then had the pleasure of conversing with Harshita Pathak, a second-year Law/Commerce student hailing from India.
  As soon as I brought up the topic of home, her eyes gleamed like stars on a full moon night. She shared with me the profound transformation in her notion of home over the past year. She spoke of the simple joys that evoke a sense of homeliness now. The soft warmth of having a cup of chai with her friends, strolling around the campus, video calls with her family, or the sublime bliss of cooking up a meal with her friends. Harshita has found little fragments of home in the mundanity of life at ANU, underscoring the crucial role her friends played in helping her build a sanctuary that is now distinctively hers.
  I asked her about her time in India during the break, and her face was tinged with bittersweet melancholia. She described the dread of the ticking clock; and how she returned timebound to the place where she grew up. Her days were filled with the arduous countdown of when she was to bid farewell all over again. 
  Like me, she has developed this aching fear that she’ll lose the emotional connection with home over time. But she finds repose in her family’s constant reassurance and encouragement.
  From a little girl in Rajasthan who always craved the comfort of a permanent abode, she is now a woman with a spirit that glows with hope and optimism, trying to navigate the dynamicity of home.
  Her piece of advice is to trust that you will find your people and your place no matter how impossible it may seem right now.
  My final destination was Madelynn Zhang, a fourth-year Bachelor of Commerce student from China.
  Call it the last semester jitters or whatever, but when Madelynn spoke about home, there was this aura of deep poignancy and sensitivity. After being away from home since she was just 14, she reminisces about it with a blend of nostalgia and retrospection. She has realised in all this time that it is frivolous to consider a place home. Home for Madelynn is her family.
  ‘Family’s all I got when my lease is ending soon and I can’t get a job.’
  Talking about her time in China over the break, she tells me how devastating it is to see everything you’ve known change. The streets she grew up in are not the same anymore, they are not hers anymore. How do you even cope with this feeling of alienation from a place you once called home? Finding a place at ANU has been challenging for her, but she does claim that the international student community helped ease the journey. She finds it easy to connect with other international students despite the varied cultural backgrounds but because of this shared sense of struggle.
  Her final piece of advice to all those struggling with this newfound rootlessness is to just remember to stay connected to your family, they might just be the only constant.
  After all of this existential façade, my fears still haven’t waned but I think I might know what home is now. You know how they say all roads lead to Rome? Well, Rome is home. Where do all your roads lead you to? Where do you end up without trying, without fail, every time?
  While thinking about all of this is daunting, we need to realise that home cannot be snatched away from us. We are all mosaics of the people we meet and the experiences we go through. Home will always be a part of you.  All we can really do is carry along all these ruptured shards of what once was home and weave out our own little tapestry of home wherever we go.
  Alright so, final advice? Firstly, we’re all in this together, as cliché as it might be. It’s important to realise the beauty of shared human experiences, no feeling or experience you’re going through right now is new. People have been here, they’ve done this and so will you.
  Secondly, you and your family have put in a lot of effort, time and money for you to be here, the least you can do for yourself and them is to make the most of this experience. Put yourself out there. Join a club, make plans to hang out with that friend, talk to the person next to you in your tute or just get out of bed today. Think of it this way, with a community as vast as we have here, nothing you do is relevant enough for people to remember. It is okay to embarrass yourself, simply because nobody knows you here, so who cares?
  Lastly and most importantly, call your family! Like right now, do it. Stop pretending to be strong, seriously, just go cry to your mom about this. There is nothing else that would make you feel better. This isn’t just your first time away from them, it’s also their first time away from you.
  You’ve got this!

  Anuva Rai

• Glimpsing the Sun

  March 19, 2024 5:46 pm Comments Off on Glimpsing the Sun

  Jonathan Glazer’s recent The Zone of Interest (now showing at Palace and Dendy) is a Holocaust film without a Holocaust. 
  Ostensibly, the film is a snapshot of the family life of Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höss in late 1943. Höss reads bedtime stories to his daughter, is given a canoe for his birthday, and teases his wife, Hedwig, about her laugh. She catches up with her mother, gossips with other Nazi wives, and teaches her sons the art of gardening.
  But the Höss home is adjacent to the death camp; their garden shares an adjoining wall with Auschwitz I. Like the family, we are blind to the Holocaust next door. But we are not deaf to it. The sounds of industrial slaughter — screams, gunshots, trains hissing, crematorium crunching, and less identifiable noises — are played, ceaselessly, throughout the film. They are ambient. 
  Against the visuals of idyllic domesticity, this brutal soundscape has a jarring, alienating effect. You almost wonder whether you’re overhearing Dune 2 next door, or if Palace is undergoing particularly quarrelsome renovations. When the film arrives on HBO Max next month, I’m sure some laptop viewers will assume a long-forgotten YouTube tab is piping up.
  It has been said of Holocaust literature that ‘one does not look directly at the sun’. So Glazer listens. (The quote is attributed to Aharon Appelfeld. Unfortunately, there’s no record of him saying it.) But the sensory element — the abbreviation of the Shoah to the sound of the Shoah — is not the director’s only trick. He also steals glimpses; at the risk of extending the metaphor ad nauseam, he uses sunglasses. These are irony, microcosm, and childhood.
  The original Zone of Interest (2014), by Martin Amis, is a vicious, obscene, absurd satire of the Holocaust. Its only major similarity with our film is that it stars Höss (or a thinly fictionalised version of him). Other than this, it’s a completely different story. So why does Glazer present his film as an adaptation?
  I think the film preserves, in ice, the satirical quality of the book. It is not a funny film, of course — you should walk home silent and horrified — but I hope I’m not splitting hairs too finely when I say that it is ironic, or comic in form. When Rudolf (only this film can make you first-name a Nuremberg defendant) is transferred to Berlin, his wife throws a fit and begs to stay at Auschwitz:

  “This is our home. We’re living how we dreamed we would…out of the city finally, and our children strong and healthy and happy.”
  I thought Rudolf would ignore this odious appeal. But he makes an arrangement. The family will remain at Auschwitz, as knowing and profiting neighbours of genocide, while Rudolf lives and works in the capital. There is something very blackly comic about a family choosing to live at Auschwitz because they really like the property.
  Later, as Hedwig is giving her mother a tour of the garden, the familiar gunshots suddenly crescendo. Both women notice. Trying in vain to return her mother’s attention to the pot plants, Hedwig speaks louder and gestures desperately.
  The old lady wonders aloud:
  ‘Maybe Esther Silberman is over there. The one I used to clean for. She was the one who had the book readings…Bolshevik stuff. Jewish stuff.
  And I got outbid on her curtains at the street auction.’
  Another time, we hear a story about the same sordid appropriations. A Nazi wife was given a choice of Jewish-owned dresses, but ‘chose one that belonged to some little Jewess half her size’. She said it’d make her lose weight. 
  These stories aren’t funny; but they have a comic structure and pacing to them. They are almost-jokes, with almost-punchlines.
  While Rudolf is on assignment in Berlin, he phones home to tell Hedwig about a high-society Nazi party he attended:
  ‘I was too busy thinking how I’d gas everyone in the room. Very difficult, logistically, because of its high ceiling.’
  I venture that this is a distinctly Jewish irony. The pogrom punchline, the ghetto guffaw, the work-camp wise-crack. The whole absurd situation of the film — the distasteful, oblivious indulgence of the Hösses — satirises the wilful, terrible ignorance of the German people; and, finally, the satire and the irony become indistinguishable from the horror.
  In the fifth season of Seinfeld, Jerry famously makes out in the theatre during Schindler’s List. Coincidentally, I’m sure, the irony is impressed on the audience in a manner peculiarly reminiscent of The Zone of Interest. We see Jerry French kissing (or “necking”, as his mother later says with a shudder), but hear woeful music and barked German. These are the same sounds which are keeping Rudolf Höss’ daughter awake at night. Both Glazer and Seinfeld embody the Jewish tradition of Holocaust satire which softens, but never sanitises, the tragedy.
  (Not even Spielberg could look directly at the sun. Between shoots of Schindler’s List, he would watch Seinfeld reruns to cheer himself up.)
  Glazer’s second pair of sunglasses is microcosm. Pay close enough attention to the Höss garden, and you begin to make out a Holocaust in miniature. There is a train set in the garden; we see train smoke over the walls. There is an outdoor shower. Burnt human remains from next door are used to fertilise the soil. On his 41st birthday, Rudolf is walked out blindfolded onto the lawn — only to be shown his present, a canoe. That afternoon, Rudolf has meetings with engineers about the design of the furnaces; Hedwig boasts about the garden being ‘all [her] design’. She calls her husband a ‘busy bee at work’ while we watch bees among the flowers. She educates her son in the proper identification of weeds. Later, he locks his brother in the greenhouse. In one particularly memorable scene, swelling death screams accompany closeup stills of chrysanthemums and white and purple dahlias — Jewish lives. Later, Rudolf sends a memo to his SS subordinates restricting the picking of flowers. It is dreadfully suggestive of arguments between Nazi departments over access to prisoner labour. This is a horticultural Holocaust: a tinted mirror which helps Glazer safely observe the “sun” and its squalid details.
  Glazer’s last trick is childhood. There are four children in the film, and their reactions to the adult horrors around them epitomise the reactions to the Nazi regime.
  The first is the fantasy of rebellion. In haunting thermal-image scenes, a young Polish girl sneaks, incredibly, into the camp work area. She leaves a trail of half-buried apples for the prisoners. As a voice-over, Rudolf Höss reads the bedtime story of Hansel and Gretel to his daughter. The girl’s quest culminates in the discovery of a sequestered poem, which is duly and movingly recited. The hopeful fantasy of this sequence is annihilated when one of the Höss boys (onscreen) hears a soldier (offscreen) explaining why he shot someone:
  ‘Fighting over an apple, Commandant.’
  In the Ost, in the Bloodlands, native (especially Polish) resistance was daring but always viciously punished. In a way, the story of the little Polish girl is a fairytale version of the Warsaw Uprising, and the subsequent retaliatory obliteration of the city. As Rudolf recites in the voice-over: ‘The witch got cooked alive as a punishment for her horrible deeds.’
  Rudolf’s children are analogues for the German people: they are emotionally stunted, traumatised young Nazis. (There is no Boy-in-the-Striped-Pyjamas fantasy of young German innocence. A wise choice, given the historical controversy that book provoked.) 
  After one boy hears the apple-fighter being killed, he mutters to himself ‘Don’t do that again.’ Who is he talking to? Is he telling himself not to pay attention again to the happenings next door? Or is he mimicking the commands of the guards? Later, we see him sitting on his bed, hissing the sounds of the gas chambers.
  Another time, he is woken up by his brother’s bedside lamp.
  ‘I’m looking.’
  ‘At what?’
  ‘Teeth.’
  In the next scene, the boy’s phrase is tellingly echoed by his sister, clearly also traumatised, who has a habit of sleepwalking. Rudolf discovers her in the middle of the night in a trance.
  ‘What are you doing there?’
  ‘I’m passing out sugars.’
  ‘To who?’
  ‘I’m looking.’
  Like the Polish girl, Rudolf’s daughter sees (or rather, hears) the humanity of the internees. But her insomniac mourning, and her charity, are undirected. Perhaps Glazer is talking about the Germans who suspected something rotten in the East but never did anything substantial about it.
  When asked in an interview why he called his book The Zone of Interest, Amis explained that it had a threefold meaning. The name refers to the Nazi administrative term (Interessengebiet) for the depopulated and patrolled area around Auschwitz; to the zone of fascination, both for Amis himself and our culture at large; to the revealing moral zone where people discover themselves. In his own Zone of Interest, Glazer uses children to populate this last zone.
  So Glazer listens and dons sunglasses. Somehow, though, he finds hope at the end of all this oblique appraisal. Rudolf, stuck in Berlin, is descending stairs when something catches his eye. We cut to the present: cleaners in jeans wiping the floors of the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum. We see the suitcases and pyjamas and crutches and shoes and portraits of the prisoners. The cleaners mop away. It’s a long scene. One reviewer put it perfectly: ‘the banality of good’ to challenge Arendt’s ‘banality of evil’.
  And when the camera returns to Rudolf, the sounds of cleaning — of expiation — seem to stay with him. Just as we could not shake the sounds of evil, Rudolf Höss cannot shake the sounds of good. Just as our culture cannot shake the memory of the Holocaust, Höss could not, in Glazer’s telling, shake the premonitions of liberation.
  This attitude of hope has its source in the production of the film, I suspect. Alexandria Bystroń-Kołodziejczyk (a gloriously, proudly unpronounceable Polish name) was the real Polish resistance fighter who snuck apples into Auschwitz and saved the poem of Joseph Wulf. Glazer met her weeks before she died — enough time to arrange shooting in the house she lived in, and to use her dress and bike as props in the movie. He told the Guardian that, without her, he could not have made the film. It would have been ‘utter darkness’. 
  In his Oscars acceptance speech, his hands trembled, but Glazer didn’t stutter.
  ‘Alexandria Bystroń-Kołodziejczyk, the girl who glows in the film as she did in life, chose to [resist]. I dedicate this to her memory and her resistance.’

  Patrick Fullilove

• Screeching Halt

  March 14, 2024 1:46 pm Comments Off on Screeching Halt

  Have you ever been listening to a song and are so taken aback by an unhinged lyric that you have to go back and check that it’s exactly as insane as you thought it was? Yeah, me too. Typically I don’t listen very closely to the lyrics of songs. However, every so often, there’s one so special it requires recognition. Here is a collection of a few of my favourite lyrics that have stopped me in my tracks (pun intended).
  If you, like me, have a middle-aged white Australian father, you’ve probably been forced to listen to a lot of Triple J over the years. When I was fifteen, Pond came out with their album The Weather and to say my dad was obsessed is an understatement. This meant anytime one of their songs was played on Triple J, my dad would turn it up and sing along — horribly off-key, mind you. Truly nothing is more horrifying as a teenager than hearing your dad fucking belting the line, ‘in between my penis and chin/is camembert and shame’ (Pond, Sweep Me Off My Feet). The moment has never left my brain since and probably never will.
  Being on Youtube in the mid to late 2010s, you may have come across the animation community and its even smaller subset, the animated meme community. Me and my brother fucking loved to show each other the most stupid videos from there, like Momotaro by Ap Selene and Vivziepop’s Timber. I still maintain that some of those songs were good. One of our absolute favourites was the reanimation of Pokemon Sun and Moon characters to You Reposted in the Wrong Neighbourhood by Shokk. The image of Professor Kukui dancing hard to ‘I’m a menace, a dentist, an oral hygienist’ is timeless. The original may have been deleted, but I still go back to reuploads every now and again.
  For one of my introductory courses in first year, the professor would play the music video for a song at the beginning of each module (so usually one or two a class) that was in some way related to the content we would be learning. We were forced to listen to all manner of wild songs at 8 am on a Tuesday morning, but I can’t deny that they were part of the reason I loved that class and went to every lecture, even with that brutal start time. One of the most memorable was the 17th song in which the line, ‘I’m learning to hate all the things that used to be great when I used to be bent!’ was uttered. Honestly, the entire song, I Want to Be Straight by Ian Dury (ft. The Blockheads) is mad, so I would encourage watching the music video or even just listening if you feel so inclined.
  In the past couple of months, a lot of my friends have moved houses and as the fantastic friend that I am, I helped. On one of these expeditions, after we had moved most of the boxes into the new place, we were taking a break and listening to the radio (which station I couldn’t tell you for the life of me). We were sweaty, exhausted and overheated. Basically we were delirious, which means that only something truly out of pocket would’ve shaken us out of our stupor. It was actually an earlier lyric from the song that caught our attention (breathing out a hole in my lung) but the later lyric is one that stuck with us so bad we immediately had to look it up to make sure we didn’t hallucinate what we had heard. We hadn’t, and that lyric was; ‘I’m a sex change and a damsel with no heroine’, from Silverchair’s Straight Lines. 
  When I told my dad about this collection of silly song lyrics that he had originally prompted, he was at first amused but then said he had the perfect song to add to it. He was right. The entire song is a collection of lyrics that I’m frankly astounded made it past a producer but the one I’ve chosen is tame enough that it’s entertaining but not batshit enough to be concerning – like some of the rest of the song is. That lyric is ‘I like football and porno and books about war/ I got an average house, with a nice hardwood floor’ from Dennis Leary’s song Asshole.
  Those are all lyrics that have really stuck with me, but there are others that I believe deserve an honourable mention:
   
  ‘May God rest that twink, he is no more’ – Lynks, USE IT OR LOSE IT.
   
  ‘Jerry Lee Lewis was the devil’ – Ministry, Jesus Built My Hotrod.
   
  ‘Sipping tea by the fire is swell/ pushing people in is fun as well!’ – Starkid, Different as Can Be.
   
  ‘I get eaten by the worms/ and weird fishes’ – Radiohead, Weird Fishes.
   
  ‘I have a big gun/ took it from my Lord’ – MELL, Red fraction.
   
  ‘Doctor holding a big bottle of tonic but the bottle’s full of rings and the doctor is Sonic’ – Tom Cardy (ft bdg), Beautiful Mind.
   
  ‘And I’ll blend up that rainbow above you/ and shoot it through your veins’ – Owl City, Rainbow Veins.
   
  ‘I got money and fame and fancy clothes/ I got a cat food sponsor deal’ – 2winz², Just One Day.
   
  ‘Your waitress was miserable and so was your food’ – Alex Turner, Piledriver Waltz.
   
  ‘He keeps begging me to eat me out, I said, / “You gotta take my tampon out with your mouth”’ – Ayesha Erotica, S&M remix.
   
  ‘Sixty-nine is the only dinner for two’ – Childish Gambino, Heartbeat.
   
  ‘Bish I’m a star but not Patrick’ – Lisa (BLACKPINK), Ddux4 (JP. Ver).
   
  ‘The whole world is my daddy / wabi sabi papi’ – Okay Kaya, Mother Nature’s Bitch.
   
  ‘Pick my shorts out my ass with my blood-stained hands’ – Ashnikko, Cheerleader.
   
  ‘You won’t doo-doo me, I smell TNT’ – Kendrick Lemar, United In Grief.

  Annie Little

• A Reflection on “Before the Coffee Gets Cold”

  1:14 pm Comments Off on A Reflection on “Before the Coffee Gets Cold”

  Recently, I read the book Before the Coffee Gets Cold, the first in a four-book series. Before the Coffee Gets Cold was written by Toshikazu Kawaguchi in 2015. The latest instalment, Before We Say Goodbye, was published in 2021. I can’t shed any light on the last three books (I am a slow reader, after all), but I will share my thoughts on the first book.
  Before The Coffee Gets Cold, in brief, explores the lives of four different people and their reasons for wanting to temporarily travel back in time, whether to amend a wrong, find closure or address a regret. Doing so will have no impact on the present time. To travel back in time, one must visit a particular cafe and abide by a set of rules that make it seemingly pointless to travel back in time, turning many away.
  For example, one’s actions in the past won’t be able to change the future — this turns away many prospective time travellers. What is the point of travelling back in time if not to change the present time? However, as the book explores, the purpose of time travel in these cases is to become more at peace with one’s actions. Perhaps to gain some clarity on a situation they handled poorly in the first instance. For example, an older sister, Hirai, makes amends with her late younger sister (Kumi), guiding Hirai down a path to be part of her previously estranged parents’ lives. A woman (Fumiko) gains clarity on her boyfriend’s (Goro’s) hurried exit from her life, providing her with hope that they will reconcile in the future.
  Maybe the present time isn’t directly changed (say by Kumi’s life being saved) but indirectly, through one’s new choices and actions shaped by their experiences in the past (i.e. Hirai choosing to make amends with her parents, which she likely would not have done without travelling back to speak to Kumi one last time). In the heat of the moment, we tend to lose sight of what’s important, of what’s actually going on. Our judgement is so easily clouded. As a consequence, we can often walk away from interactions, situations and relationships without closure. We walk away without understanding what might have been, closing off future possibilities. Such as in the case of Fumiko and Goro. Had Fumiko not travelled back in time, she would have been unaware that Goro planned to come back in three years, that there’s hope for the two of them. The opportunity to go back in time to gain clarity, change one’s actions, and see what could’ve been appears to be life-changing in the case of these four characters in Before the Coffee Gets Cold.
  The cafe also dictates that an individual who wishes to travel back in time must sit in one particular seat and, when they have travelled back in time, cannot leave that seat. As such, the person you wish to meet with in the past must also know of and have attended the cafe when you travel back in time. This rule has allowed the author to truly focus on the human relationships within the story, the conversations within the cafe’s context, and how the cafe’s staff care for each character. In this way, it almost feels like these characters are linked across time, making the novel particularly unique in its use of time travel. 
  How time travel is explored in this book suggests that perhaps one cannot rewrite their entire history, but perhaps their history with one particular person… or at least understand it more than they did previously. Like putting on a different pair of sunglasses and seeing the world in a slightly different tint. A new perspective. Sitting in the same seat (or similar) as the first time one experienced the conversation allows them to have that new perspective. As opposed to time travelling to a time or place that they’ve never been to.
  All in all, Before the Coffee Gets Cold is a short and introspective novel that explores the depth of human relationships and raises questions of regret, closure and missed opportunity. I look forward to reading the rest of this series by Toshikazu Kawaguchi.

  Remi Lynch

• Lion Taming

  12:04 pm Comments Off on Lion Taming

  1794, France.
  My breath comes out in puffs of frozen mist, dispersing through my squashed snout in an undignified rasp as my paws clatter across the snow-blanketed ground. Lilou giggles. Bursts of joy crackle in my chest like sherbet lemons eaten in early spring. As we wind through side alleys and muddy streets, I can taste the crispness of the winter wind on my tongue. As we enter the bustling market the snow turns to sludge beneath my feet and the flakes on my nose turn to nothing. I am hit with a wall of smell, my nose twitching, readjusting after the cool whiteness of the park. My nose catches red fires burning, steam as pink flesh heats, the rank mossy smell of wet wool drying. I try not to catch the sticky plum scent of blood splashed across the cobbles in the square after the guillotine has done its violent work. Paris. 
  When we make it home, Lilou’s mother offers her a bowl of soup and a hunk of stale bread softened in the broth. It barely tastes like meat for all the times those old mutton bones have been boiled. After swallowing my own morsel in one bite, I lie with my empty belly against the stone ground, the warmth from the fire bleeding through my fur. I watch Lilou’s father knead loaf after load of bread, and I allow myself to think, just briefly, of my Mary. Of how she used to work, with the same single-minded concentration pinching her brow, but instead of a rolling pin and dough as her tools, a quill and ink.
  Her publisher gave me to her in 1787, just after she had written her first book. To such a practical woman, I must have seemed utterly ridiculous with my wrinkled face and curled tail. Dogs were meant to be useful, and I certainly was not. Mary was a writer. I used to be able to see the thoughts clattering around her head as she paced around our small room, stepping over my stout body when I got in the way. She would write for hours, and I would feel the hunger settle into the pit of my stomach like a stone. I used to wind my body around her feet like a cat and yap at her heels until she stopped and breathed. She would blink, looking around the room to reacquaint herself with her surroundings before finally looking down at me. She would scratch behind my ears and walk to the kitchen to prepare our dinner. Every night, I sat under the table as she fed me off her plate, curled around her feet, keeping them warm in the winter and turning them sticky with sweat in the summer. 
  When Mary’s fellow revolutionaries dined with us, they would talk for hours with frenzied excitement; honey-scented wine poured endlessly into glasses while honey-scented words flowed endlessly from their mouths. 
  Now, I long for the taste of candied figs, buttery and crunchy, eaten from ink-stained hands. Although there are different, simpler pleasures now. When Lilou’s family piles into one bed, flesh on fur, sharing heat, everyone’s scent intermingles. Those large hearts beating. I always used to sleep on the floor when I was with Mary. 
  As soon as Vindication was published, Mary was racked with a need to experience the world and an absolute hunger for the tumultuous politics of revolution. She was a hyena in petticoats snapping at the heels of change. Endless talk with her friends turned into plans to travel to Paris. The day of the journey was the worst of my life. As we crossed the Channel, the rolling of the waves made my stomach revolt. My only reprieve was that Mary sat with me, stroking my head as time crept by in a haze, perforated only by the sharp, acrid smell of vomit and sea air. 
  Mary and I stayed with her friend from the French National Convention for a few months. They talked, plotted and planned, spoke with excitement and rage, ate, drank, and wrote. But soon, the great change they loved so much turned against them; they were no longer radical enough to keep up with a revolution that demanded the blood of her own children. And so Mary fled in the middle of the night, leaving me behind as she went. Late at night, when everyone is asleep, I like to think she was sad about leaving me, that she might regret it dearly, and that she truly believed that one day she would come back for me. 
  Sometimes, I catch tension in the air, the brief moment where everything seems to stop, just like it did before Mary left. The air shakes with it, the molecules stilling as sideways looks are exchanged, eyes are narrowed, and words are whispered. I catch it sometimes when Lilou’s mother and father stay up late more and more frequently, a single candle illuminating the worry etched on their faces. 
  I know Lilou’s father has been hoarding grain and keeping bread for the family. I know that one day the tension will spill over and people will know. When they turn their revolutionary ire on this family we will all be swallowed up. I think about leaving in the night and finding a new home. Then I feel Lilou’s chest rise and fall next to me. I smell her warm breath, and I know I won’t flee, not like Mary. I will stay here with my Lilou. Just maybe I will show the courage of my lion-hunting ancestors, and I will keep her safe. But for now, I lower my head onto the bed, close my eyes, and sleep another night.

  Hannah Bachelard