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The Little-known Lives of Famous PeopleBy Quail Bell Ponderer QuailBellMagazine.com Wandering around Barnes & Noble today, I passed by a book of Abraham Lincoln's writings. The book sat with a bunch of other gold-leaf titles called “American Classics.” I picked up the book and flipped it over, but there was no blurb. Since it was shrink-wrapped, I couldn't discern much else about the book. Though I kept walking, seeing the book made me wonder once again what we really know about famous historical figures. For instance, I had no idea Abe had written enough to publish such a tome. When I think of American presidents who moonlighted as literati, I think of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. Even in the case of those two men, I don't know that much and certainly even less about whom they actually were. Presidents, like all well-known historical figures, become legends. The myth is larger than the man.
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Fishy Narrators in this Samurai TalePerspective is a funny thing. The way a person views the world can be shaped by numerous factors in their* life, from something grand like their childhood to something simple like their emotional state in a given moment. At the same time, perspective is something that can be heavily colored by hindsight. A person may wish they were the victim in an event or imagine a person as being worse than they actually were. Perspective can color scenes in a certain way, and in some cases, completely obscure the truth.
Because of this, perspective is something that carries over to fictional media and creates interesting tales. There's the trope of the unreliable narrator, where the person telling the tale is unable to divulge the complete truth of the story for numerous reasons. This can be because they don't want to acknowledge parts of the story, because they misunderstand part of it, or because their character prevents them from having an objective view on the subject. It's something that comes up in popular pieces of fiction like The Catcher in the Rye and Wuthering Heights. In Akira Kurosawa's Rashomon, the story is told almost entirely by unreliable narrators at work. Based on two stories by writer Ryunosuke Akutagawa, Rashomon is a story that is all about perspective and how the person telling the story can easily be a liar or mislead. The film takes place after a troubling incident. In 11th century Japan, a samurai (Masayuki Mori) has been murdered and his wife (Machiko Kyo) was raped. The story is being told to a commoner (Kichijiro Ueda) by a priest who saw the couple that day (Minoru Chiaki) and a woodcutter (Takashi Shimura) who discovered the dead samurai. The film has the priest and the woodcutter recount the trial. At the trial, a bandit named Tajomaru (Toshiro Mifune) confesses to the crime, while the wife gives a different version of the events. A medium (Fumiko Honma) is brought in to communicate with the dead samurai and get his perspective on the matter. After these stories are told, the woodcutter reveals the truth about what he saw, revealing that there was more to the tale than initially believed. The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
Your Weird, Semi-incestuous Big DayBy Quail Bell Provocateur QuailBellMagazine.com Hello, budding young woman! Have you started your period? Are you thinking about boys? Forget puberty and focus on purity. You're about to get a big, sketchy ball in honor of your stolen sexuality. But don't worry—you get to wear a fluffy white dress that will make you feel like a princess. You know, those women in medieval times who were stuck up in towers and forbidden from doing anything until Prince Charming rescued them. Then they were allowed to get married. You're not allowed to do anything until you get married, either. So stop thinking for yourself. That's part of the pledge you're signing. Wait, wait. You can't help but think? Then think about this: how to make your purity ball extra creepy. Because it's really not weird enough, you know? Not with you and your dad exchanging vows like a married couple. Not with you saying your dad is your boyfriend. Not with you getting a heart-shaped necklace and your dad getting the key. No, your purity ball could and should be much stranger. Here's how: Photo by David Magnusson. • Dance with a cadaver and Daddy. It will be your Christian threesome. And while you're at it, pledge your purity to the cadaver, too. He'll protect you from the zombies of the Underworld vying for your virginity. • Serve eyeballs instead of cheese puffs. They represent all of the people watching you to make sure you don't break your promise to your dad (and the cadaver.) • Invite every boy you've ever had a crush on. Put all these boys in a corral. Don't feed them and don't let them out when the party's over. Let them perish there. Daddy will be so proud! • Unleash a legion of toads onto the dance floor and kiss every single one of them. These are the only toads you'll be kissing 'til you meet your frog prince. • Before the end of the night, gaze into a mirror. Now that you've signed the pledge, every mirror will become a magical looking glass that reveals the face of your future husband. Don't cry if the mirror shatters. • Keep your gown so your daughter can wear it when it's time for her pseudo-wedding, er, purity ball. Store it in a massive jar of formaldehyde. #PurityBalls #Feminism #Virginity #ChristianFundamentalists #WomensChoice The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
Le WeekendOnce upon a time, I slept. If that doesn't sound like a fairy tale, I don't know what does. Too many of my friends and acquaintances don't get much shut-eye. We don't just work; we hustle. Chasing a dream is a full-time job. Add a real full-time job on top of that full-time dream-chasing and it's no wonder the creative millennial feels ragged. I promise this isn't another obnoxious millennial trend piece, though. This is just a bunch of words I've strung together on a Saturday afternoon. This is me rambling at the keyboard. This is me promising to relax because it is the weekend and I need a fresh start come Monday. One of my friends recently left grad school to become a writer. As she trained to become a nurse, she listened to patients' stories everyday, but felt like she had no outlet for everything she heard and witnessed. When I told a mutual acquaintance about my friend's choice, she called the move “brave.” Plenty of people, regardless of age or socio-economic status, live according to what they think others want for them.
I recently left a full-time writing job to give myself time to write what I really want to write and spend a little more time making films. But before I can start making anything of worth, I need to recuperate. I've spent the past couple of days moving like a snail in an old cartoon: slower than slow. Apart from meeting a few clients, I read The Help, which, for the unfamiliar, is about a young, white woman in Mississippi who's working on a book of firsthand accounts of what it's like to be a black maid in the Jim Crow South. She and the maids she interviews are terrified because of the risk they face. All names must be changed and the author must simply be credited as 'anonymous.' With family drama and a looming deadline, Miss Skeeter abandons any chance at a normal social life in Jackson and delves into her project. One of the many aspects of The Help that touched me was the repeating theme of sacrifice. The maids sacrificed their happiness and comfort working for families that often disrespected or even endangered them. The maids once again sacrificed their safety in helping this white woman write her book. They sacrificed that safety for the sake of telling their stories. Though her sacrifice is a mere fraction of the size, my friend has sacrificed, too. My friend sacrificed the certainty of a good-paying job for her art. More than one person disapproves of her choice, yet this is the choice she has made and, I would argue, must make. Now I run the risk of writing things a little less slick and a little less pleasant than I did before. But I say, rile 'em up. Before the riling comes pizza and wedding magazines. Thank goodness it's Saturday. #TheHelp #JimCrow #Segregation #Racism #SelfSacrifice The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
Romanticism & Eroticism at RVA First FridayBy Quail Bell Social Butterfly QuailBellMagazine.com Tomorrow is the last Richmond First Friday of the VCU academic year. And then River City clears out, yielding to a slower pace of Belle Isle rock-hoppin' and PBR sippin'. We'll never stop trumpeting Richmond, Virginia—the birthplace of Quail Bell Magazine—but with both our editor and art director packing up and moving to Washington, D.C. just about now, this feels like the end to Quail Bell's Richmond chapter. Our 'farewell RVA' show pick? Original Beauty: Portraits and Fallen Pastorals. From the press release: Corporate & Museum Frame is excited to present Original Beauty: Portraits and Fallen Pastorals by Richmond-based artists, Joseph Johnson and Spencer L. Turner, which use traditional tropes related to beauty to explore race, media culture and the erotic. Johnson's photos, taken ten years ago, feature several nude African American women in classic poses of beauty. His lens, both direct and sympathetic, ties his models into a centuries-long dialogue about the nature of aesthetics and the cultural filters that can obscure and pervert our sensibilities. Turner's work explores the distortions created by the nature of our hyper visual media culture and the struggle to create meaning in a time of such cultural upheaval. Couched in the language of Romanticism and referencing a famous literary relationship of influence between John Milton and William Blake, Turner's photo montages challenge viewers to critique the way in which they consume information and suggest a reassessment of values in the post-internet age. #OriginalBeauty #LossOfEve #Photography #ArtEvent #SpencerTurner #RVA #Art
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