Ana is an English major with plans of becoming a lawyer if her writing career doesn’t take off. She is passionate about literature, film and comics. She also enjoys anime and K-pop and would be eager to discuss her favorites with you.
When I was still a film critic for The Michigan Daily, I went to a film festival at The Michigan Theater showing classic 1980’s films starring the Brat Pack as part of its “Kids in America: 80’s Teen Classics”. The theater didn’t publish why these films were being shown in the midst of Halloween (even after I sent them an email, the assholes), but their pervasive influence in pop culture from enduring quotes to merchandise is proof their legacy lives on.
Of course, a showcase of these movies would be incomplete without discussing the work of director-screenwriter and Michigan native John Hughes. He is said to be the pioneer of the teen film genre for good reason. His careful attention to organic dialogue is consistent throughout his repertoire. But what sets Hughes’ films apart is that he gives his teenage protagonists the respect they deserve. There is never a hint of condescending even in the midst of teenage problems one quickly outgrows after graduation.
Something I appreciate of his work is that he used vastly different protagonists to tap into different facets of American ideals in adolescence. “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off”. I have heard friends and celebrities alike call the film their favorite of all time due to the quintessentially American joie de vivre it conveys. If a baseball game, an art museum and fine dining is supposed to be the epitome of the good life in America, then I am underwhelmed. Lots of people have attained these ideals, as fortunate as they may be. But the way Ferris sticks it to The Man by refusing to take an exam on a subject he plans on never using is what keeps the film timeless. It kept the movie for me from being a purely hedonistic romp through Chicago to an escapist trip the “everyteen” protagonist deserves as they make their way through the awkward stage of not being a child yet not quite being an autonomous adult.
The grandeur of “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off”’s plot distracts from one of Hughes’s strengths that keep his legacy alive: having a keen eye for high school social hierarchy. “Sixteen Candles” and “Pretty in Pink”, both starring Molly Ringwald, feel a lot like the same film on the surface. The well-trodden tale of a girl pining for a boy who is unattainable due to age or socioeconomic status could have easily fallen flat as a cliche romance starring teenagers. But the world in these films are so lushly populated by opinionated friends and family that the societal pressures driving the heroines’ decisions recreates those faced by teenagers in real life.
In the same vein, the director-screenwriter had a keen appreciation for the stock characters that populate American narratives of high school. This is showcased best in his classic “The Breakfast Club”. Having essentially caricatures of the five kinds of people you meet in high school forced into interacting with one another might sound lacking in depth. But the honest backstories and sincere performances elevate it to a gripping look at detention as a microcosm of high school social ills that ring true today. Though a friend of mine recalls laughing hysterically at the scene where the club divulges why they were in detention in the first place (after smoking weed no less), I was moved deeply. Here was a screenplay that understood how teenagers present themselves. Moreover, here was a movie that knew that teenagers’ problems are as real as those of any adult drama.
YA author John Green seems to have carried on Hughes’s torch in contemporary times, not only in content but in commercial success as well. Green’s novels and indeed the YA genre in general transcend their target audience to assimilate into America’s mass culture, much like Hughes’s films did thirty years ago. So while there is no obvious reason why to screen teen films from the 1980’s in October, there is never a wrong time to do so. Adolescence is an exciting time. Capturing the period you have your whole life ahead of as you begin to gain independence lends irresistible optimism and romanticism to any story, regardless of who experiences it.
2017 was an incredible year for the K-pop group BTS, and as a fan who discovered them right as they broke through in America I must remind myself how much the boys accomplished in the first year of me knowing them. The seven-member boy band broke a slew of records for their genre, from having the highest-charting album on the Billboard 200 to being the first group to break the top 40 on the Billboard Hot 100 with the lead single “DNA”.
The cause of their dizzying ascent to success in America can be traced to the commercial and critical success of their previous LP “Wings”, which saw a surge in their fanbase that led to their win at the Billboard Music Awards for Top Social Artist. Though the prize was social media award, it fueled interest in the band that led to collaborations with the likes of the Chainsmokers, Steve Aoki and Fall Out Boy while becoming popular enough to be invited onto the Late Late Show with James Corden, Jimmy Kimmel Live and The Ellen DeGeneres Show.
As any seasoned K-pop stan can tell you, BTS is not the first K-pop group to achieve attention in America. A case in point from the time before the global hit “Gangnam Style” is the tragedy of the Wondergirls’ career, who gave up a spot at the top of the charts in Korea in order to start a name for themselves in America. But despite heavy promotions on late-night talk shows and a TV movie starring the girl group that aired on Nickelodeon, the Wondergirls effectively flopped with the release of their pioneering English-language single “Nobody“. They then returned to Korea having made inroads in the States for the future of K-pop but with little compensation.
Think pieces have reached a consensus on what sets BTS apart: a down-to-earth public image, raw and sincere lyrics about the tribulations of youth, and a prolific use of social media. The effectiveness of their large social media presence can be evidenced by the fact they are the most-followed Korean Twitter account and were the most tweeted artist of the year. But what will the future bring them as they verge into territory no K-pop group has gone before?
I believe that BTS fans (called “ARMY”) will continue to support the boys as long as they continue to be true to themselves. It is the only thing that has stayed consistent in their music as their discography has morphed from hip-hop to electro-pop with experimentation in rock and R&B in-between. The way the members contribute to the songwriting of their sincere music has allowed an organic relationship to form between BTS and ARMY as both grow up, and there is no doubt seeing the work members have created on their own that they are full of more heartfelt reflections on life yet.
This band is one of the few musicians I personally follow because they inspire me to raise my voice in my own writing as a young person trying to follow my own path. Their uplifting message comes across as genuine from young men who had the odds against them when they debuted in a small company in 2013, to being on the brink of world domination as they conquer the Japanese music market (the second largest in the world after the US) as the year’s best-selling foreign artist. May their reign be long and prosperous.
YouTuber Logan Paul has stirred controversy at the start of the new year after filming a vlog in Aokigahara, a forest in Japan that is a popular location for suicide attempts. Paul, who is 22, caught on camera the dead body of a man who hanged himself in the forest and made this the thumbnail of the since-deleted video. The intense criticism he received led him to write and film an apology that focused on the intent of his actions rather than their impact. This not only put into question the boundaries of the new Internet celebrity in the digital age, but it also made me ask more broadly how Americans engage with Japanese culture.
As someone who is diagnosed with major depression disorder and has been hospitalized twice for suicidal ideation, I do not take lightly to the claims that Paul laughed and smiled when he found a dead body in the Suicide Forest. Against my better judgement, I took the risk to my mental health and watched the video myself. What I found was less offensive and yet more dangerous than what I heard claimed. It is difficult to summarize a 14-minute(!) video, so I will consolidate my reactions instead.
Source: YouTube
Logan Paul is an idiot. He tries to set a respectful tone in the video by doing things like have trigger warnings and giving affirmations for those who are struggling with mental illness to seek help. And he clarifies that his laughter and smiles after finding the corpse come from his use of humor as a defense mechanism, which I believe. But his lack of consideration for people who are mentally ill in real life is evident by the fact he would videotape A LOCATION FAMOUS FOR SUICIDE ATTEMPTS in the first place. You do not visit a place of death for pleasure; that’s morbid. You do not maintain your lucrative brand by showing off a place of death (regardless of the fact the video was not monetized); that’s unethical.
The fact Paul says he visited Aokigahara because he wanted to end the year on an introspective and quiet note is offensive. The mentally ill and disabled are not here to make you, the neurotypical and able-bodied, feel better by showering us with pity without listening to our needs to make our lives easier. That would be enough to see that Paul was not respectful of the suicidal in the forest since the conception of his plan.
Source: YouTube
But then he crosses a line as a YouTuber (having foregone basic humanity long before this point) when he demonstrates that his interest in visiting was, in part, to maintain the attention and expectations of his fan base. Though his followers have argued that he should not be blamed for randomly capturing a corpse on film because he vlogs his life everyday, Paul’s self-serving interest is evident when he ignores one of his friend’s request to turn off the camera and leave. Instead, Paul walks to the dead body, bringing the camera along with him for the ride, only saving the viewer from having to see the corpse with a text screen explaining that doing so would violate YouTube’s guidelines. I was at a loss as to why he would do this when he looked so visibly distressed throughout the entire ordeal until the end of the video, when Paul reminds the audience he had made a commitment in one of his first vlogs to entertain his audience everyday. This somehow seems to be his excuse as to why he found himself in such a terrible predicament: he insists on sharing the “positive” and “negative” times of his life because he and his fans are family (the Logang) and this is “part of it”.
I am disgusted at the thought of impressionable young people learning about suicide and mental illness from this man-child. Scarier still is seeing members of the Logang defending him because he was doing his best to please as an entertainer when he stumbled across the body. I could write for a long time as to how fucked up this near-sighted vision of celebrity is, but I believe it has been better said by people before me. I would like to use this space as a blog dedicated to the arts to focus on how our media informed Paul’s decision to go to Aokigahara in the first place, which he said was based on what he had seen in books and movies.
“The Forest”. Source: The Mary Sue
When he said this I immediately thought of the 2016 film “The Forest”. The film loses itself in its attempts to scare with traditional-looking ghosts appearing from thin air while it illustrates the landmark’s role in Japanese folklore and contemporary society. This matches Paul’s description of wanting to visit Aokigahara because he heard it was haunted by the tormented souls of the dead suicidal who try to tempt visitors off the trail, presumably to meet the same fate.
The movie stars an American protagonist named Sara (Natalie Dormer, “Elementary”) who receives a call from police informing her that her twin, Jess (also played by Dormer), is assumed to be dead after having last been seen in the Suicide Forest. She goes to Japan to find her, driven to explore the forest in spite of countless of warnings to not go off her path at the risk of making herself vulnerable to being terrorized by the angry spirits that live there. At the hotel she is staying at, she meets travel journalist Aiden (Tyler Kinney, “Rock the Kasbah”) who knows a guide who can assist them navigate the forest. Once she begins exploring the forest with Aiden and tour guide Michi (Yukiyoshi Ozawa), traditional Japanese ghosts and American demons begin to haunt her. Once one of the angry spirits of the forest warn her to not trust Aiden, she loses her peace of mind and becomes increasingly paranoid.
The superficial jump scares used are pointless and only serve to conform to the horror genre, echoing Paul’s interest in exploring the “haunted” aspect of the forest’s reputation without being prepared to face the real life tragedy that inspires it. The sudden apparitions of traditional Japanese ghosts and modern American demons in “The Forest” invoke short-lived fear in an otherwise dull film, showing the same lack of respect on the part of the director that Paul displayed in thinking that co-opting and exploiting icons of a foreign country’s social issues is somehow an appropriate subject for cheap and otherwise unoriginal entertainment.
The fearful tone of “The Forest” is poorly conveyed through closeups of branches and insects, and ghostly wails in the wind, which are not scary in the least. Additionally, several aspects of the real forest are distorted, making the purpose of exploring the tragic location unclear. Not surprisingly, the normal forest (even with an unfortunate association) is not scary by itself. The film decides to take creative license in an effort to bolster screen time by having Sara see that various corpses of people who committed suicide in the forest are held at the Aokigahara Visitor Center, which blatantly contradicts the fact that in real life the Japanese government and police work hard to conceal the dead bodies in order to not only avoid attracting more people contemplating suicide, but also to deter potential tourists like Sara due to the notoriety of its basin. Logan Paul is more than willing to play fast and loose with the meaning of the Suicide Forest as well, failing to make the connection of the sad suicides he’s heard of and the ghosts that are said to haunt Aokigahara as a result.
Something that I fear is that people struggling with mental illness will only ever be seen as weak and objects of sympathy, which is a key issue I take with Paul’s brand of raising awareness and “The Forest”’s plot development. The gruesome death of Sara and Jess’s parents in the movie is referred to throughout the film for no apparent reason. It’s confusing purpose finally appears right at the nihilistic end. Sara is warned by locals that she possesses “inner sadness” and that she should think twice about embarking on her journey. It is implied she begins to be haunted by the angry spirits of those who committed suicide once she enters the forest due to her being incapable of coping with her loss. To the movie’s credit, this defies my expectation that the loss was that of her sister due to the sheer amount of time spent on establishing the close relationship she has with Jess. But once the significance of her parents’ death is revealed, it makes her suffering at Aokigahara seem justified for being innately weak, devaluing her noble mission and painting every victim of suicide as the product of avoidable emotional damage. This is a grave misconception considering that most people with depression cannot trace their mental illness to a direct cause, which is irrelevant because even if there was a cause feeling depressed for long period of times is not healthy and deserves attention and care regardless of circumstances.
The movie overall is anti-climactic in the extreme despite its rich source material, much like Paul’s vlog. Not once does the YouTuber bring up the high suicide rates in Japan that allowed the creation of such a place like Aokigahara to exist in the first place. The lack of depth is a direct result of the stigma of mental illness that both works perpetuate. Paul in his video did not even stay in the forest to camp as he had intended, failing to realize his goal of ghost-hunting due to him going unprepared to face reality. “The Forest” ends with (spoiler) Sara annoyingly having no impact in the disappearance of her sister while still having invited the spirits of the forest to plague her anyway, equating the devastating deaths by suicide of the ghosts in Aokigahara with her untimely demise that she chose while in a perfectly healthy state of mind. Moral of the story: the media can take its lazy sensationaliztion of deadly illnesses and shove it up their ass.
What I think makes midnight movies so special is that they remind me that art is a communal experience. Hearing people interact with the movie heads-on reminds you that you, the audience, have a say in supporting work you like and rejecting work you don’t. The last time I felt glad I was watching a movie in a movie theater was when I saw “Get Out” (spoilers ahead). When the police car pulled up at the end of the film with Chris over the body of his now-dead girlfriend, the entire audience audibly gasped. I was scared myself, worried our hero would get framed and his evil girlfriend’s family would win after all. But when Chris’s friend Rod the TSA officer emerged instead the entire theater was filled with moved, genuine applause. It was a magical moment that spoke to how the film touched a nerve in today’s political climate that I would not have been able to experience for myself had I seen it alone. I can only assume this must have made the midnight circuit very empowering for film-goers in an era before social media could affirm my experience or prove once again I am surrounded by idiots. But what I find fascinating with my exposure to two such cult classics is how darn mean people get when watching something they paid to see.
The two midnight movies I have seen are “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” and “The Room”, which both required an audience to make the experience memorable because of how bad they are.
The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Source: Intergalacticrobot
My main problem with “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” is that it is completely composed of B-film horror and sci-fi tropes. This is completely understandable because it is a satire of B-films in the horror and sci-fi genres. And yet, it just wasn’t that fun for me to watch after already being very familiar with the films it was parodying. Plus, I felt that the song numbers from the original musical translated very poorly to the movie’s cramped mansion of Dr. Frank-n-Furter. But seeing it shadow-acted live was truly a spectacle. It was great fun to see people mock every memorably cheesy line and throw the same stuff at the screen that was being thrown in the movie. At first, I thought it was a little harsh to hear people constantly berating the film in unison. If it was that bad, why did so many people come to see it? But I quickly learned that the movie was just plain fun to bash. I, of course, would be remiss if I didn’t mention how fun it was as a queer person to see so many fabulous LGBT people dress like the characters of “Rocky Horror” to see the fabulously campy movie. But I think that the over-the-top plot was what made it the original midnight movie in the first place.
The Room. Source: The Daily Beast
“The Room”, which came out nearly thirty years later, follows the precedent set by “Rocky Horror” due to how unbelievably bizarre it is. It is one of the most iconic midnight movies I have heard of, and interestingly enough its fame is specifically attributed to how awful it is unintentionally. It is brazenly bad, from the writing to the acting, to the point that the fact it managed to come to a coherent end at all (despite its many non-related story-lines) is impressive. But hearing people mimic Tommy Wiseau’s strange delivery (“Oh hi, Mark!”) and even stranger action, like throwing footballs across the theater every time Wiseau tosses the pigskin with friends on-screen for some inexplicable reason, made me better appreciate and laugh at the strangeness of “The Room”, to the point I felt I was taking part in some film-loving tradition bigger than myself. That’s saying a lot for someone who usually watches indie movies alone.
Of course, not all midnight movies follow the mold I came up with above. Other midnight movies I’ve seen (“Eraserhead”, “Cannibal Holocaust” and “Pink Flamingos” in case you don’t want to sleep easy tonight) are NOT meant to be seen with people you care about, or anyone, really, for very different reasons. These lead me to suspect that perhaps there are different kinds of midnight movies: ones you can laugh at and ones that leave you feeling weird on the inside because of the harsh depictions of sexuality and violence. In these cases, I am happy I saw these movies alone so no one will know (with you being the exception, my dear reader). Regardless, midnight movies are a testament to the power film can have on people’s sense of boundaries when it comes to them and the art they consume, and I look forward to the midnight movies of the future. I just hope they’ll be on the funny side.
After showing several warnings that this game is not advised for children and those with depression or anxiety, the 2017 video game “Doki Doki Literature Club” begins by almost boring you to tears with a typical story for a dating sim. You are a remarkably unremarkable male high school student in Japan with a love of manga. Your neighbor and closest friend, a cute and ditzy girl named Sayori, drags you to her literature club after school out of a shared concern for your lack of social skills. There you meet her equally cute friends who you are obviously smitten with as they fit anime tropes: president and queen bee Monika, tsundere Natsuki and mysterious Yuri. You are forced to play the game straight, meaning repeatedly playing an almost dull mini-game where you form a poem by strategically picking words from lists in order to win over the girl of your dreams.
In the droning rhythm of the game, little hints that something is off are something you shrug off. But they’re not quite subtle enough. There is clearly something wrong with the girls that they keep hinting at. And yet you must continue forward with the story, as you are rarely given the opportunity to engage the girls on a more personal level. The game starts acting wonky as well, and makes you start questioning your sanity. Does the cheerful music keep getting distorted? (Yes.) Are there supposed to be “errors” in coding that makes the normally sweet girls’ dialogue shockingly dark? (Yes.) Do the glitches when the girls appear scrambled or out of place happen intentionally? (Yes.) And yet you still feel secure as you continue this mindless journey schmoozing the anime girls as you discuss writing poetry, because nothing this pastel can get under your skin like it claims. Right?
Wrong. Spoiler alert: the horror in “Doki Doki Literature Club” is revealed slowly by undoing what you know about the story, and then goes a terrifying level further by undoing what you know on a technical level about the game itself.
The cute girls of the literature club all kill themselves and in a way that implicates you in their death. It is shockingly dark in and of itself to find out that each of them is hiding dark secrets. Sayori has been struggling with depression for years. Natsuki is neglected and physically abused by her father. Yuri cuts herself. The way these sweet two-dimensional girls are dealing with all-too real issues is shocking and unnerving.
Yet what is weird is that the errors in the computer game makes them reveal this to you. Sayori screams in pain when you share your interest in the other girls before she reveals she likes you. And then she hangs herself as the music distorts, restarting the game! Natsuki’s eyes change animation style as they pop and bleed after you give her a poem tailored with a different girl in mind. And then she snaps her own neck before her figure is pushed to the front of the screen, restarting the game! Yuri has blood running from cuts all down her arm after she gets excited and dashes out of class to be left alone. And then she clunkily stabs her otherwise static body after she confesses her feelings to you! No matter what you do, the game’s glitching pushes the horror from the imagery of the characters committing suicide to a profound moral guilt as you are made complicit in the demise of these girls who have no other choice but to love you. But it gets worse still. Why did this happen?
Because Monika knows you’re out there, and she wants you all to herself. Yes, you, behind the screen, even though she knows you may not be a boy and that the name your computer is registered under is not the one you used in the game for immersion. She did all of that to her so-called friends. For you. And so she proceeds to destroy all the sets and characters in the game until she is in a timeless void in space with unending time to spend. With you.
The unnerving obsession that is made grotesque in this game speaks to the excessive romanticizing of dating in general. Thankfully, I put the game to rest by deleting Monika’s character file on my computer, effectively killing her. This was a small feat, as the game hints at this time after time. But I could not kill the sleep-stealing fear she instilled in my heart.
I love a good laugh, but I’m a tough critic. As a result, it can be hard for me to find a nice comedy to watch when too many that get heavily promoted are gross or overtly problematic. What has shocked me in my question to find smart comedy is when the comedy doesn’t look like comedy at all.
My first experience with this paradox was in 2003, when I was around four. One afternoon my parents, cultured as they were, mistakenly rented the French animated film “The Triplettes of Belleville” for me and my even younger brothers to watch. They had rented “Finding Nemo” as well. I clearly remember my parents leaving my brothers and I with my grandmother with the request that we try to watch the French film first since we had already seen so many Pixar movies. I eagerly put on “The Triplettes of Belleville”, wanting to not only obey my parents but to watch that little clownfish be found by his dad again.
I was horrified by the French film. The bleak world depicted by animator Sylvain Chomet was depressing, and most of the characters looked evil. The French song featured in the film “Belleville Rendez-vous” was unintelligible to me at the time, but the wailing notes matched with the nightmarish art of the movie was enough to send me over the edge. I stopped the movie within five minutes and made my case that he movie was horrifying to my parents. I watched it all of 14 years later at age 20 and was again scared watching it, not surprised to learn that it is rated PG-13.
The plot is notably minimalist with little if any dialogue: a presumably French cyclist raised by his supportive grandmother has his chance to make his dream of becoming a champion cyclist come true, until he is kidnapped by what looks like the French mafia and held captive in Belleville, a faux New York City filled with stereotypical fat Americans. His grandmother comes to his rescue, accompanied by three aged, former singers known as the titular triplets of Belleville.
What kept my attention throughout the movie was the varied yet scary character designs. They are hellish, from the deformed cyclist’s incredibly muscular legs legs somehow connected to his terribly thin torso, to the closed eyes and hunched shoulders of the witch-like triplets of Belleville. The dark colors and sketchy figures present in this world, from sexualized prostitutes to grim-faced gunmen who kill in cold-blood, added to the fear factor. And yet, to my surprise, the film is labelled a comedy! I concede that the whimsical way the plot is developed in “The Triplets of Belleville” explains its classification.
I believe “The Triplets of Belleville” is an anomaly as far as comedy films go, as other comedy films I have watched that have been questioned for their humor have made me laugh. One is this year’s smash success “Get Out”, which has recently stirred controversy because it was entered as a submission to the comedy category for best picture at the Golden Globes. The plot was so nuanced and developed that it did not feel like it depended on humor to succeed per se, but it did make the film incredibly unique by masterfully intertwining the two genres. And, every joke was uproariously on point. But it is a horror film at heart, and I can understand why the comedy label may feel a bit of a stretch, even though there is no horror category that it can be submitted to.
Chris under a trance in “Get Out”. Source: Bago Games via Flickr.
This made me think of another film that was deemed too dark for a comedy: the 1971 film “Harold and Maude”, a romantic comedy-drama about a 20-year-old man obsessed with death and a 79-year-old woman who loves life (an old manic pixie dream girl, if you will). Roger Ebert panned the film, giving it one and a half stars out of four saying: “Death can be as funny as most things in life, I suppose, but not the way Harold and Maude go about it.” I was horrified by the beginning when our protagonist simulates hanging himself, and would jump when I saw how his subsequent suicide “attempts” become increasingly outlandish as he scares off potential girlfriends arranged by his unfazed mother. And yet the comedy of seeing the varied reactions from the interested girls was captivating, and built up to the climax when (spoiler alert) Harold loses the love of his life to suicide. This was the moment I learned the meaning of black comedy, as I pealed with laughter at the same time I cupped my mouth in horror and sank in my seat out of sadness. I respect Ebert’s opinion informed by his near-encyclopedic knowledge of film, but I do believe more credit is due to a movie that pulls off such a remarkable feat.
Harold and Maude. Source: Craig Duffy via Flickr.
In conclusion, I do not know what to make of these comedy films that struck me as unusual. Their dark styles do not hinder the message of their plots, but still made me uneasy while watching. I believe this is symptomatic of merging different elements of the comedic with the tragic, and I look forward to seeing even more genre-bending comedies as I continue my quest for a good laugh.
