Tag: halloween
The Lighthouse: A Master-Class in Immersion
Immersion – A state of being deeply engaged or involved mentally
Last Friday I decided on a whim to go see The Lighthouse at the Michigan Theater; I’m a devoted fan of horror and thriller movies, and the trailer had peaked my interest a few months prior. I figured why not treat myself and go see a movie alone and get into the Halloween spirit. Based off of the trailer, I went into the movie expecting something terrifying and entirely unique; leaving the theater, I definitely felt like I had watched something unique, but I certainly wasn’t terrified. In fact, it’s hard for me to say whether or not The Lighthouse truly falls into the genre of horror; more likely it’s a psychological thriller. Hardly any scenes made me jump or frightened me, and in general there were more scenes where the entire audience was laughing, purely at the absurdity of certain situations. Needless to say, my feelings about the film were mixed, but after mulling it over for a while, I’ve started to understand that it had a much more profound impact than I first thought. Something was nagging at the back of my brain, something that made the film hard to forget, and the more I thought about it, the more I started to see why it’s so much greater than I first realized: because it creates this complete feeling of immersion that has you on the edge of your seat, holding your breath, and it achieves that incredible effect with so little flair.
The Lighthouse is entirely black and white and is presented in a square aspect ratio, much like classic movies or shows like The Twilight Zone (a personal favorite of mine). This gives it an aesthetic that stands out from other horror movies today, and was largely what peaked my interest when I saw the trailer. It feels so gritty and stylized, like an old documentary that was never released, which pairs perfectly with the story of two grizzly men keeping watch over a lighthouse on a rock in the middle of the ocean, completely stranded and abandoned. That grit creeps into the characters, especially the older lighthouse keeper Tom, played by Willem Dafoe, who completely embodies the idea of a sea-worn sailor. This pairing of visual style and complementary characters makes the story feel so authentic: even though it seems so far removed from reality, it felt like I was sitting at the table with them, eating dinner and being dragged into their arguments. I didn’t realize the effect while I was watching it, which I think is further proof of just how convincing it truly was.
In the end, it was the power of the movie to draw me in that made it horrifying: it felt like I was a part of this eerie, stormy world, and every small element of horror was amplified by the immersion. The music and sound design throughout was incredible, being constantly oppressive and bearing down on the audience like a great storm. The few moments of shock and surprise hit much harder than in a typical thriller; they completely threw me off balance, either in disgust or confusion, and then kept me off guard, never knowing what to expect next. I can appreciate those qualities more now, having discovered how subtle they were in the moment, but how long lasting the effects were because I was so enthralled at the time. I think that makes The Lighthouse special in a way that most movies aren’t: it presents the audience with something subtle, uncanny, and disturbing, and immerses them completely until only afterwards they realize the crazy roller coaster they just went on. Not only does this style set the film apart, it makes me want to go back and watch it again.
Some Thoughts on Tarot Cards
One of my favorite parts about art is how it can be shared through so many mediums; art is in everything, and being able to see that makes life a lot more interesting. A great example of art being conveyed through a unique medium are Tarot cards: a deck of 78 unique cards, often used for fortune telling and games. It was relatively recently that I gained an interest in the obscure world of tarot cards, having been inspired by an old HBO show that my parents used to watch called Carnivale (a great show and I highly recommend it, but the end leaves a lot to be desired). The show uses tarot readings to further the plot and create dramatic tension, but more interesting is how the show uses subtle tarot symbolism that makes the story feel like a great epic is unfolding and the characters are all pawns of fate. This technique is similar to that employed in classical epics, such as The Iliad and The Aeneid: the use of portents and prophecies that connect the story together using a common thread, often calling back on themselves and revealing the role of divine fate in an extraordinary way.
I absolutely love the feeling when a prophecy is fulfilled, or when I can draw the subtle connections between events and and characters and be able to see how the prophecy influences the events of the story. This is one of my favorite things about tarot card art as well: the use of symbolism and subtle meaning conveyed through the illustrations is fascinating and endless. Each card has lore and tradition behind it, with multiple interpretations that all come together to form a single story. Personally, I don’t believe in actual fortune telling, but I appreciate how the cards are designed to create the effect of prophecy. Each card has identifying symbology that can be found in any version or reinterpretation, and have been tradition ever since they were first created, making each card immediately recognizable and therefore more iconic. This quality of the tarot can be found throughout popular culture as well, from literal uses such as Led Zeppelin and The Hermit figure, and more subtly in the archetypes of The Fool, The Magician, and The Lovers often found in storytelling today.
The other thing I love about tarot cards is the physical aspect of the art itself; there are so many versions and styles of illustrations, and I think the cards are such a great medium of artistic expression. An artist can follow the strict format of the cards and symbology while still illustrating them in their own way, giving them the perfect amount of creative freedom. There’s a lot to be said for the proportions of tarot cards themselves and the powerful effect of the format, which makes them the perfect template for creating something unique. It’s a great endeavor to undertake, illustrating all 78 cards, but it’s a great way to develop and refine your style and to put your creativity on display.
Marge Makes Comics #13: The Last (Rocky Horror) Picture Show
Rocky Horror, baby! Tonight is the last time I’ll be watching “Rocky Horror” live at the Michigan Theater as an undergrad at Michigan and I wanted to talk about how I grew to love it these last couple of years. I realized it’s really a Halloween tradition I’m gonna miss once I graduate.
Fall Decorations
Happy Halloween! It is a little late to decorate your dorm room/apartment/house for Halloween, but don’t start putting out your Christmas decorations yet. You can still decorate for the fall season. Here are some fall decoration ideas that will help you celebrate the season.
My house is always decorated with hay bales and corn stalks on our front porch. This is generally decorated with our Halloween decorations of spider webs and ghosts in the front yard, but after Halloween we take down the Halloween decorations but keep up the corn stalks and hay bales.
An easy decoration for the fall season is to put fake orange, yellow, and red leaves around your house. You can put them around the coffee table, in bowls, and on ledges. This will give your apartment color and make it brighter so that your apartment is not so dark as the sun sets earlier in the fall.
Another way to make your apartment or house brighter is to buy and light fall scented candles. This will not only light up your home but it will also make your home smell like fall. This is not a good idea for a dorm room because you are not allowed to have candles in the dorms. Having a couple different scented candles will mix things up with your house always smelling wonderful.
An alternative to candles if you do not have a lighter or are not allowed to have them, like in dorm rooms, is a scent that you plug into the wall that will dispense a specific scent throughout the day. This is also more discrete and does not take up much room in your home.
Other ways to decorate for fall that are not Halloween related are to have pumpkins on the inside or the outside of your house. Pumpkins are not just for Halloween, jack-o-lanterns are for Halloween. If you have pumpkins that are not carved then you can use them for decorations until Thanksgiving. You can potentially have painted pumpkins to decorate for fall, but the paint has to be a neutral pattern and cannot be too loud. A silver or white painted pumpkin with polka dots or chevron pattern is good for decorations, but a teenage mutant ninja turtle pumpkin is not a fall decoration.
The last way that you can decorate for fall is to have fall hand towels, kitchen towels, and bathroom towels throughout your home. These decorations are great because they are also useful. Towels are bold enough for people to notice and so you do not have to have many other decorations because towels are in almost every room in a house. The towels are also useful and have a purpose so they serve two purposes.
Fall Tropes
Every season has fun activities that people associate with it and they look forward to doing these activities when the season gets closer. The activities tend to vary based on where you live because the weather tends to dictate what activities are doable. It in the Midwest activities for summer are going to the beach and playing in a pool, for winter it’s sledding and building snowmen and having a fire indoors, for spring it’s being able to not wear winter coats and walking outside again, and for fall it’s pumpkin carving and sweater weather. Fall has a range of activities that people look forward to based on their interests in particular.
A lot of fall activities rely around Halloween, because Halloween is the main event that happens during the season. Some Halloween fall related activities include haunted houses, trick or treating, and Halloween parades. These activities are directly related to Halloween, but a lot of other fall activities are associated with Halloween even though they are not directly related to it. Some of these activities include pumpkin picking, apple orchards, and corn mazes. While carving pumpkins is a specific Halloween activity, going pumpkin picking is not. These activities get lumped into the same category because they happen around the same time because November might be too cold to do them.
Other fall activities are not related to Halloween, but are related to being back to school. The main thing that this includes is football season. Fall is the season for high school, college, and professional football. While professional football continues into the winter, high school and college generally do not. This means that for a lot of people across America, the leaves changing colors means football seasons and Saturdays being taken over by tailgates and football games. This is especially true at the University of Michigan. Game day is the most popular day of the week for the entirety of football season (a.k.a. fall).
Fall also means seasonal retail items, mostly pumpkin flavored things. Only in the fall can one find pumpkin bread and pie at the grocery store, and a pumpkin latte at Starbucks. This is when people go overboard of consuming their favorite fall themed things, not only food. Fall scented candles and decorations with leaves and acorns on them also increase because they reflect the weather.
This happens with each season, fall is just particularly noticeable because people associate so many things with this one season unlike the others.
