The winter Olympics are in February, and the big sport to watch is always figure skating. There are so many variations (women, men, couples) that figure skating will be on for the entire two weeks of the Olympics. A big change has been made to the figure skating rules that the audience will surely notice. The skaters are now allowed to have words in their music for their routines. This will create a new dynamic to the figure skating competitions.
Popular figure skating music in the past has been to popular music that is easy to recognize without the words. This includes popular movie soundtracks like “Pirates of the Caribbean”, or popular songs from musicals like “The Sound of Music” or “Fiddler on the Roof”, or even popular hit songs like “If I Were a Rich Man”. Classical music is also a popular choice for figure skaters. These songs appealed to the crowd because they could enjoy the figure skating routine and the music.
The International Skating Union allowed for words to now be incorporated in their music to try and innovate the sport. Figure Skating was losing viewers and made this move to try and attract some new fans. Now the skaters can skate to new and popular music that more people can recognize. Some skaters, like Jimmy Ma, are embracing the change and skating to very modern music. Ma has performed to an Eminem medley and to “Turn Down For What” in the past two years. He has said that his choices of music is to bring in more fans and to show that figure skating is a cool and modern sport. His goal is to turn some heads and get people to pay more attention to ice skating. Others music choices aren’t so bold, they still have lyrics in their routine but nothing too modern or different for the figure skating world.
Though many are embracing this new rule, it is not a requirement. Skaters can still skate to instrumental music, it depends on each skaters preference.
I have been thinking recently about all the words that we leave unsaid. All the thoughts that we don’t dare give voice to because they are too strange, too embarrassing, too true. We say other things instead that are less burdened by meaning. We say things that may only half-convey all that we are feeling, especially to those we feel the most about. Perhaps I have always assumed that those who love me, who know me don’t need the affirmation of mere words. My parents must know that I love them. My sister must know that I miss her. So, I don’t say these things as I leave them standing behind those flimsy elastic barriers at the airport. But I remember that moment later, when I’m on the plane, on the bus to Ann Arbor. Of course, I will have the chance to tell my parents that I miss them, that I love them, that I will return in a few months. I am lucky because I have technologies within arm’s reach that would be impossible to imagine even fifty years ago.
There are so many moments to come. But I am so afraid that I will ever be able to express what they mean to me. I haven’t told them about that one grey morning last semester, when I woke up aching for the aura of security and comfort that I feel when they are nearby. I haven’t told them about all the late nights, when I have wished myself back home. This was my decision, after all. To come to college more than two thousand miles away. To plant myself in a new land and prove that I could grow independent and strong. But there must be some weakness within me, for I cannot find the words to say.
My parents don’t know how to find this blog. Yet more words that will be left unheard. I imagine their silent, inky forms floating all around us. Their weight pulling down elevators of reticent passengers. Their shapes clogging the air between two strangers sitting side by side, for hours without paying the barest attention to the other. And other times, words come all too easily. They turn the air red with their anger. Those are to be regretted too, in time. Either said or unsaid, words haunt me with their subtle power, their dangerous potential. And they urge me to speak.
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.
*Take two on my attempt to see Loving Vincent: On a Friday afternoon post orgo final, I set out to the Michigan Theater once again to see Loving Vincent, this time accompanied by a couple friends I picked up along the way. Three tickets to Loving Vincent and here we go.*
Loving Vincent is the world’s first ever film to be entirely painted. This was not done to set a record, but rather because the creators believe that you cannot truly tell Vincent’s story without his paintings.
“We cannot speak other than by our paintings.”
-Vincent van Gogh
Director Dorotea Kobiela followed her passion for painting until she the luster of the film industry drew her away. Then, realizing her passion once again, she merged film with painting to create a one of a kind production. After filming actors in Gdansk and Wroclaw, a team of over 100 artists literally painted over the 65,000 plus frames one by one, and over a 1,000 canvas and years of intensive labor, this story came to life.
I felt as though the movie was centered around his death. Likewise, the character of Margaret, played by Saoirse Ronan, inquires why Armand, played by Douglas Booth, is far more invested in learning about Vincent’s death than his life. Why is it that we focus on his death but seem to pay less attention to his life? Death is strange. It’s strange that we scale a life based on a timeline. By this, I am bringing attention to the first fact you typically learn about someone: their birth date and their death date. Look at Wikipedia. Look at any reference on someone. It gives you a range of years to start the biography. A quantity almost makes a life seem measurable when with all the layers to someone oh my god how can we even try measure a life?
When people die, the living replay memories from the life of whom they mourn until slowly these memories fade. Memories faded and mantras forgotten. After time, the memory of person all together dwindles, sort of an object permanence effect in a way; this is one of the most terrifying aspects about dying. With artists, however, they become significant when they die. That birth-death span seems irrelevant. Think about it. How many people knew Vincent van Gogh when he was alive versus how many people know Vincent van Gogh now? When artists themselves are gone, a message from them begins through their masterpieces. Granted the way Vincent thinks, would he have considered himself alive during that year range we see on Wikipedia? Or has he finally found life through his paintings? Strange it is.
Perhaps this is why the movie focused around his death, because leaving behind only his work focused the world’s attention on his purpose, thus it was the gateway that enabled Vincent van Gogh to finally teach the world his message all along. What is this message? Surely, I do not know. Though, when you study a painting of his, then maybe you will know. This seems to hold pattern with any kind of artist: Beethoven, Elliott Smith, Albert Einstein, Vincent van Gogh. Wherever their creativity lies, this is where they see something that the rest of us cannot, and they pour their whole life expressing that something.
I mentioned the creators said “you cannot truly tell Vincent’s story without his paintings.” Through his paintings, Vincent has been alive long after his death. You might even say he has found a way to immortality. If you think about it like this, we can all live forever…so in order to tell your story, what would your “paintings” be?
From Black Friday to January first, Holiday music and movies are playing nonstop in stores and on TV. Most of the classic holiday movies also have very popular songs to accompany them. Here is list of classic holiday songs and the movies that accompany them:
Rudolph, the red nosed reindeer
The popular song, “Rudolph the red nosed reindeer” actually came from a book written in 1939 by Robert May. The song was created in 1949 by Johnny Marks. The first claymation movie adaptation was created in 1964.
Santa clause is coming to town
The song “Santa Claus Is Coming To Town” was written in 1934 by John Frederick Coots. The claymation movie was made in 1970 starring Kris Kringle, A.K.A. Santa Claus, and his journey of becoming Santa. A book was written in 2008 to accompany the song and movie.
Frosty the snowman
The song “Frosty The Snowman” was written in 1950 by Walter E Rollins. The first movie adaptation was a 2D animation created in 1969. Many more movies have been created after this showing Frosty’s life and featuring the song. There have also been countless books that depict his life as it is laid out in the song.
Little drummer boy
The song “Little Drummer Boy” was written in 1941 by Harry Simeone, Katherine Kennicott Davis, and Henry Onorati. The claymation movie were released in 1968. Ezra Jack Keats wrote the book adaptation in the same year,1968.
The Year Without a Santa Claus
The classic songs “Heat Miser” and “Snow Miser” were in the claymation movie “The Year Without A Santa Claus”. The movie was created in 1974. Unlike the other classic Holiday songs on this list, the songs were written for the movie and become classics and popular through the movie.
Grandma Got run over by a reindeer
The song “Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer” was written in 1979 by Randy Brooks. The animated movie adaptation was created in 2000. This newer movie has quickly become a classic for people under 30, with the movie appearing on Cartoon Network frequently over the Holiday season.
Jingle Bells
The song “Jingle Bells” was written in 1857 by James Pierpont(not the man Pierpont Commons in named after). The song was originally called “One Horse Open Sleigh”. There have been many movie adaptations of this song, and many other movies have used the song to add a Holiday feeling to them. “Jingle Bells” was the first song to be broadcast from outer space. The two astronauts sang the song to mission control with bells and a harmonica after pulling a prank on them!
It is that time of year again. No, I’m not talking about Christmas. Everyone at the University, professors, and students alike, have only one thing on their mind. Its finals season and suddenly, many things have decreased in importance. Food is eaten at faster rates and lesser frequencies. If we could change human anatomy to accommodate even fewer hours of sleep, we would. If we could stop the Earth’s rotation, so that the next day of tests and deadlines would never come, we would. Even the strongest force in the universe could not tear us away from our laptops, our math notes, our unfinished papers. We are racing toward the finish line of another year and more crucially, another semester. New classes loom ominously on the horizon, but the only future that matters now is the next due date. We finish one assignment only to start the next. And there are so many assignments.
Perhaps that is what makes it both the best and worst time to be a writer. Everyone has some paper that needs to be written, meaning at least, there is a great quantity of writing is being done. The quality, however, can be questionable, when one is frantically typing to meet a word or page-count. There is simply no time to carefully consider structure or tone when one has another test at the end of the week. Although I finally get to write at this time of year, I also find myself without words. I realize that I have spewed them all out over the course of endless reflections and short essays for classes over the year. My brain only returns old ideas gone sour and dusty math equations. Writing out of desperation instead of inspiration turns the experience into some new and strange torture. The process of writing, already frustrating at times, now transforms into a slow march toward an unseen destination. I type out words only to be disgusted at their inanity, their pompousness. I usually delete everything. That is why I always dally over every paper, shelve my English assignments. I want to enjoy this process, no matter how tedious it may seem. Every forward step through that flood of reluctance and impatience is a triumph. Writing during finals seems like cheating instead. I am not doing the necessary work. Instead, I rush my thoughts onto paper without reflection. Turning in a rushed paper is cutting the conversation midway before anything of importance has even been said. Perhaps it is not the appropriate time to be reflecting on the writing process. Sometimes, things just must be accomplished. It is better to have something written then nothing at all. Yet, I worry that this is teaching us all the wrong things about writing. Writing is not quick and easy. It is not some frozen dinner, to be popped in to the microwave for five minutes, and popped out, perfectly done. Writing is agonizingly slow. And I love it.
