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Ravished by Ravishly.com!Oh, Quail Bell(e)s—you know you're always the first to learn about our latest delights. Right now The Quail Bell Crew is crushing hard on Ravishly.com, our newest sister publication. You've probably already noticed some healthy content cross-pollination with several of their pieces appearing here on the ol' QB and a few of ours appearing over yonder, too. Earlier this summer, I emailed Katie Tandy, Ravishly's whip-smart editor-in-chief about the budding publication. Did I say budding? More like mushrooming. But enough about what I have to say about Ravishly. Why not have Ms. Tandy spin the yarn? Here's what she has to say about the website with a violet fox for its logo: Smart and pretty, Katie Tandy herself. Give Quail Bell Magazine readers a sense of Ravishly's riveting history. What was your role in the website's early days?
Truthfully, Ravishly has evolved quite a bit over the past six months. At the time I was working as a freelance arts and culture journalist, doing some local reporting for the East Bay Express and SF Weekly in addition working as a content marketer for a supercool software start-up, Sparkcentral. When Sparkcentral (then TwitSpark, ha!) first started, I was with these three guys in a small sweaty room and watched the company grow into a 15-person juggernaut with a huge office beside Union Square in San Francisco. I became totally smitten with the start-up world; it truly feels like this neo manifestation of the American dream. Amazing ideas get to be actualized instead of languishing inside a notebook somewhere. Anyway, about seven months ago, I answered a rather nebulous Craigslist ad (as many of our core members did) that was searching for writers and editors to help found a brand new website dedicated to women. After months of wrestling with different models, names and honing our team of writers, we finally launched Ravishly this past February. The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
An Evolution on Film Earlier this year, I sat down to watch Richard Linklater's Before trilogy and found it to be one of the best series of films I had ever seen. Part of why I love the series so much is that it's an achievement in its scope alone. This was a series of films made nine years apart that brought back the same people and managed to make each film better than the last. It made me want to look more into Linklater's work, especially if it promised something experimental. That's when I learned he was going to release a film this year that took 12 years to make.
Boyhood is a fairly simple film in plot. The film follows Mason (Ellar Coltrane) from first grade to college, covering various scenes of his life. His parents (Patricia Arquette and Ethan Hawke) are divorced, and he and his sister (Lorelei Linklater) are constantly shuffled around Texas and forced to adapt to new situations. Over the course of the film, the viewer watches Mason change and become a lot more defined as a person, even if it's hard to accept some of the changes that come his way. The reason Boyhood took 12 years to make was because of Linklater's approach to telling the story. Rather than film the movie over several weeks and age the characters with makeup or multiple actors, he simply filmed new scenes every year from 2002 to 2014. As a result, the actors in the film age over the course of 166 minutes. With the two children, it's very noticeable, but it's also subtly done with the parents. We're watching these people naturally age so that when we see how they change over the course of the movie, we can see how their physical growth relates to their personal growth. Now, having lived through the same 12 year period Mason does, there were plenty of moments where I was like “Oh, I remember that,” or “That was so me back then.” Mason watches Dragonball Z, his sister sings “Oops, I Did it Again,” a girl later sings a song from High School Musical, there's talk about the NSA, and so on. Throughout the viewing, it felt easy to attach my ego to the setting. Being slightly older than Mason would be at the time, I could recount being exposed to such culture and having to go through my developmental stages while the Iraq war and the Obama years occurred. The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
Fifty Shades of What the Hell Oh, Fifty Shades of Grey. Where to even start? I got conned into reading this book by a girlfriend of mine who insisted it was a steamy read that I wouldn’t want to put down. WRONG. This book is not only terribly written (which really took me out of the story mindset), it was also really hard to suspend disbelief that these kinds of situations would actually happen to a person, let alone a clumsy virgin at, like, 25 or something. Not that being a virgin is a bad thing. This fact just added to the overall what-the-hell factor of Fifty Shades. Now, this girlfriend lent me the entire trilogy. And I read the first one in a sort of quickness. I can finish the entire Hunger Games trilogy in a day, so I figure I’m a pretty fast reader. However, it took me several days to read the first book, and when I finally picked up the second one [WHICH IS EVEN WORSE], I had to put it down for a week or four in the middle because it was just so terrible. I couldn’t make myself read the third one. It would've been too shitty of an experience. I Wiki’d the plot, and I didn’t miss much, just saved myself some horrible writing and pregnancy sex. Ignoring the obviously abusive and unbalanced relationship hiding in BDSM clothing, the sex isn’t even that hot. I know Anastasia is a virgin so everything is new and interesting, but sex on your period and Ben-Wa balls is not all that exciting. The sex in the second book doesn’t get much better. Moving on to the movie trailer. First things first: These people aren’t even hot! I was expecting some sexy goodness, and these people are plain faced ho-hums! I feel like I am being robbed from fantasy fodder. A boring brunette and a boring brunette, neither of which I recognize. I know several people dropped out because of how bad the script was [SURPRISE!], so they must have really been scraping the bottom of the barrel. Can we talk about the rating? Seriously—R? A book that is literally porn gets an R? What is the point of even going to see it if there’s only going to be clenching butts, awkward movie L-shaped sheets, and no dicks. This girl will hopefully have some nice boobs and the guy will be all muscle-y, I assume, in order to balance the complete lack of sex in a movie that’s all about sex. I promise ya, you did not read this book for the great love story, and you’re not going to the movie for some lovely romance that will have you swooning in the aisles. The hottest thing about this movie trailer is Beyoncé crooning in the background with her slowed down "Crazy in Love" remix. That was what made my blood tingle when watching the trailer. Super-duper hot and a super-duper a song for boning. Ready for the soundtrack to come out just for that one song. All the above being said, I will go see this movie. Not on Valentine’s Day—God, that would be depressing—but some other time with some girlfriends and maybe sneak in a flask to spike my giant soda to make this boring R movie with its boring faced actors a bit more interesting and make the horrid abusive undertones less repugnant. #Real #FiftyShadesOfGrey #50Shades #StupidBooks #StupidMovies #Sex #Porn #NotReallyLove #Unromantic #BadPlots Visit our shop and subscribe. Sponsor us. Submit and become a contributor. Like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter. The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
Electra Heart, or How I Learned to Love Marina Recently, I was challenged to write some poetry for a 'zine I learned about. The editor asked the writers to select verses from songs by Lana Del Rey and write poems inspired by them. The poems could be reinterpretations of a line or grow into larger poems based on the topics commonly found in Lana Del Rey songs, such as Americana, youth, addiction, and so on. I thought I could do this easily. I got into Lana's music last year, and there were songs I liked of hers that I thought would be good sources for lyrics.
So I had my lyrics, I had my themes, and I had my nerve to start writing. Unfortunately, I found that I wasn't as inspired as I had hoped I would be by her lyrics. I figured writing a poem about them would feel a lot more natural. Lana sings about subjects that interest me, and her style appeals to me, too. However, when I scanned my iPod, it occurred to me why I wasn't enjoying Lana Del Rey as much: because I had found someone better. I started listening to Marina and the Diamonds earlier this year after getting a few recommendations from friends. I was drawn to the British singer, particularly through her album Electra Heart. The music of Marina Diamandis tackles a few of the subjects Lana tackles, from the price of fame to womanhood to sexuality and more. I liked a lot of what I heard from Marina and started to listen to more of her songs. Around the point I tried to write poems for the Lana 'zine, I had also been listening to Marina more often. Because of a weird issue with my iPod, I've had to make playlists of certain artists just to hear all the songs from one person. Marina was one of those people, so I often used the car ride to and from work to listen to all the Marina songs I had. When I looked over my playlists, I realized I had playlists for artists like Nina Simone and Florence and the Machine but Lana wasn't one of them—even though I have more Lana songs on my iPod than other artists. The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
Oscarbation By Zack Budryk QuailBellMagazine.com There’s a scene in the 2008 comedy Tropic Thunder where Robert Downey Jr.’s character, an acclaimed, award-winning “serious” actor, talks to Ben Stiller’s character, a past-his-prime action star, about Stiller’s attempt to break into prestige pictures, a critical and commercial flop called Simple Jack in which Stiller’s character plays a cognitively-disabled farmhand.
“Everybody knows you never go full retard,” Downey Jr. says, comparing Oscar-winning performances like Tom Hanks in Forrest Gump and Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man to Sean Penn’s unrewarded turn in I Am Sam. The scene was met with outcry from disability advocacy groups, but in context it’s making a very important point: to the Hollywood powers-that-be, the disabled are often thought of as people second and opportunities to demonstrate their range first. Over the years, in addition to the performances mentioned, we’ve seen able-bodied Daniel Day-Lewis playing a man with cerebral palsy in My Left Foot, the sighted Ben Affleck playing a blind man in Daredevil and the neurotypical Hugh Dancy playing autistic in both Adam and the NBC series Hannibal. This year alone we’ll also get Eddie Redmayne as Stephen Hawking and Steve Carrell as schizophrenic millionaire John DuPont. And then there’s Hollywood’s other favorite form of disabled erasure, the “metaphor” route: characters like the Incredible Hulk, Elsa from Frozen and Vanellope from Wreck-It Ralph all have conditions that are pretty obviously analogous to real-life disabilities or chronic illnesses, but because they aren’t real conditions, the narrative doesn’t assume any of the risk of discussing those conditions. Similarly, the producers of the TV series Bones and The Big Bang Theory have acknowledged that their main characters display symptoms of Asperger’s syndrome, but said they are unwilling to assume the responsibility of accurately writing an explicitly autistic character. Comparatively, Diane Kruger, who plays an autistic detective on FX’s The Bridge, has consulted extensively with actual autistic people (we can, in fact, speak your human tongue) to improve her performance. The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
Devils Deux If I had to guess what is one of the most common subjects people choose to make movies about, it's murder. It's not as common as love, purpose, change, and other similar topics about life, but murder is one that comes up regularly. There's a fascination in watching people die on film, whether it be teenagers getting killed by monsters, soldiers dying in the heat of battle, or revenge killing. Some films choose to detail the process of killing an individual, showing all the complications that can occur from killing the person and what happens to the killer afterwards. This is something that goes back much further than Fyodor Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment and is the basis of films like Alfred Hitchcock's Strangers on a Train.
Diabolique, or Les Diaboliques as it was originally titled, is a French psychological thriller from 1955, and shows what happens when two women plot a murder. Christina (Véra Clouzot) runs a boarding school with her awful husband Michel (Paul Meurisse). Christina and Nicole (Simone Signoret), Michel's mistress and a teacher at the school, decide to rid themselves of the abusive jerk by plotting a murder. They prey upon Michel's chauvinism and manage to concoct what they believe is a perfect murder, one where the two of them will have an alibi and that will most likely rule his death as an accident. Of course, something goes wrong. Diabolique was definitely a film of its time and resembles many similar films of the era. It's very much Hitchcockian in its use of shadows, crime, and duality to create a story, but is still very much a French film. The main trio do represent a lot of what was going on in the changing attitudes of the time. Christina, being raised in a convent, is the more traditional woman, one who wears her hair in braids and is always thinking about what her actions will do to her soul. Michel is the pompous chauvinist who thinks his word is law and tries to control women. Nicole is a more modern woman, one who chooses to take charge and do things that go against the system. The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
Ashley in Brooklyn Ashley and I reconnected in Brooklyn years after we studied with Jim Scherzi, a photographer up in Syracuse, New York. We blended clothing pieces into the patterns of the street and shared a similar eye for color and punk fashion. #Real #Fashion #Photography #Model #Ashely #Brooklyn #Tattoos #TonyWashington
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Make it happen, shutterbugs and cinéastes! #Real #FilmFestival #FilmCompetition #DocumentaryFilm #ShortFilms #ExperimentalFilms #AnimatedFilms #RVA #Arts Visit our shop and subscribe. Sponsor us. Submit and become a contributor. Like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter. The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
Teenage Love, Universal Fears, and Wonderwall Here’s a show that’s been flying under the radar: My Mad Fat Diary. Starring Sharon Rooney and featuring Ian Hart, this show chronicles the small-town misadventures of a gang of English teenagers in the 1990s. It has everything you’d expect from a show driven by teen hormones: first love, social standing, schoolwork, fear, sex, drinking, and laughing until your sides hurt. But the dark underbelly of this show, the real thing that hooks you and keeps you watching, is the knowledge that the main character has just spent four months in a psychiatric hospital.
Frankly, I can’t quite understand why this show hasn’t become wildly popular in a similar fashion to Orange is the New Black, as these two shows unashamedly take on difficult topics and dig their teeth in the complexities of the people who live within those narratives. Both of them remain relatively upbeat and undeniably charming; both are equally difficult to categorize as a drama or a comedy based on how similar they are to real life, which (as I’m sure you’ve noticed) is never always a drama or always a comedy. And they’re both based on the real lives of real women who wrote real books: Orange is the New Black by Piper Kerman and My Mad, Fat Teenage Diary by Rae Earl. This show opens a dialogue about body image and body confidence alongside discussions about mental illness and eating disorders while still maintaining a youthful, fun, reckless feel. Rae experiences problems with boys, her best friend Chloe, and her mother at the same time she deals with binge eating, her friend’s anorexia, and the excruciating pain of facing all of her fears about herself in therapy. The integration of the two extremes of light-hearted and serious topics remind us of the feeling that all of those things seem equally important and can stop the earth turning. Along with the hard-hitting issues of mental and physical wellness that this show discusses, My Mad Fat Diary goes into the complexities of sexuality and all that entails: questioning, coming out, homophobia, both personal and inter-personal acceptance, and pride. It touches on the topics of abortion, a parent remarrying, sexual independence, unhealthy relationships, and self-esteem. And it delves into the intricate issue of how young girls relate to each other, how gender and gender performance affect how adolescent girls interact with each other. The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
Watching Casablanca for the Third Time Casablanca is one of the greatest movies ever made and anyone interested in cinema should watch it. It's strange to come out and say something so authoritative in a review, but it's a genuine response to be had with Michael Curtiz's 1941 masterpiece. It's a film that remains in the public conscious over seventy years after it was released. So many images, lines, plot points, and people involved in the film have survived the test of time. It's truly an amazing film and one of the most important ones to come out ever.
I guess I should explain why I'm so drawn to this film. I mentioned in my review of "Singin' in the Rain" that the summer film series hosted by Virginian-Pilot film critic Mal Vincent at the Naro Cinemas in Norfolk, Virginia was an annual event I tried to attend every year. This year's series began with Casablanca as the opening film. At the event, Vincent admitted to being surprised by the turn out (the theater sold out of seats), and was even impressed that there would be a lot of young people at the show. To him, such an obvious and classic film seemed like such a strange choice that no one would be interested in seeing. To his credit, it's a fair assumption to make, but why wouldn't people want to see Casablanca in theaters? This is a movie that everyone knows about. It won three Academy Awards, including Best Picture, and has been featured on numerous lists of the best American films and the best films ever made. Wearing a fedora and a trench coat equates having an air of Humphrey Bogart coolness. Saying farewell to a lover while standing near an airplane is considered one of the saddest departures a couple can have. A toast is preceded by the phrase “Here's looking at you, kid.” It's simply one of the most memorable films ever. The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
Disney Finally Steps Up in The Game Of Love If any name carries alongside it the definition of True Love, I doubt anybody would argue the name Disney. They’ve been selling True Love Conquers All since 1937 with Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and people around the world have eaten it up just like the Wicked Queen’s poisoned apple. And unfortunately, that’s sort of what the concept has become: poisoned.
Disney films are incredibly influential when it comes to forming children’s ideas about how the world works. These films are simplistic and formulaic, but they try to instill ideas about morality. They teach the things that we can’t really explain, including concepts like forgiveness, loyalty, determination, and love. But for decades, they have really only told one type of story. Disney has defined true love as something inherently romantic, and children really do pick up on that. All the way up from Snow White and Cinderella until more recent films like The Princess and the Frog and Tangled, the plotlines of these movies have all relied heavily on this long-standing sexist, classist, heteronormative “true love” narrative. Even films like The Princess and the Frog and Mulan are examples in this field despite their excellent messages to young girls. These heroines are smart, resourceful, and brave. They work hard and dominate their narratives by acting rather than being acted against. But despite physical prowess, mental acuity, and personal agency, they fall into the same romantic traps as their less progressive counterparts. However, Disney seems to be taking a turn. In last year’s hit Frozen, the writers turned this trope on its head by redefining true love. After spending the entire film focused on romantic love, Princess Anna saves herself by acting on her feelings of love for her sister, Queen Elsa. Rather than being saved by her initial love interest, the villainous Prince Hans or the underdog romantic boyfriend Kristoff, Anna saves her own life with an act of true love. And, for the first time in anybody’s memory, the true love in this story has nothing to do with romance. Or even men. The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
The Power of a Premise When I started really studying film in college, I was still mostly paying attention to Western directors. If I was going to look closely at a film with a lot to read into, it was more likely to be someone American or British, like Alfred Hitchcock or David Lynch, who had directed it. I did watch some foreign films, but these were from directors known to Western audiences, like Akira Kurosawa. It wasn't until I went to a film club meeting and found my first real exposure to a director who wasn't as well known as Hitchcock or Kurosawa, but quickly became one of my all time favorite directors.
The director was Krzysztof Kieślowski, a director from Poland. Kieślowski began making short films in the 1960s before finally making feature length movies in the late '70s. Kieślowski's films were often stories about people living in Europe during the height of the Soviet Union, or dealing with the years following the collapse. Most stories were set in Poland and had some political subtext involved. More importantly, these were films about the people and the strange things that occurred in their lives. There would often be a religious element to what was happening, or something even stranger at play to cause what happened. The first Kieślowski piece I saw was the first two episodes of The Decalogue, a ten part miniseries he made for television in 1989. Each episode told a story that was heavily inspired by one of the biblical Ten Commandments. No story directly acknowledges the commandment, but each story plays with interpreting the commandment. Although I have yet to see the rest of the series (you can blame Amazon for completely botching that birthday gift), I know that each story is similar in how it presents 1980s Warsaw as this epicenter of faith and the strangeness of the human condition. After that, I got hooked on Kieślowski. I used my first paycheck to order a box set of his Three Colors Trilogy, the last films Kieślowski made before his death in 1996. I might review that series someday after a rewatch, but in that series, Kieślowski created a thematic trilogy, where each film is based on one of the three aspects of the French motto “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity” and a particular color of the French flag. Although none of the films have a story that continues into the next, there are some thematic similarities that do end up tying the entire trilogy together. The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
Uncaged Muses By Deniz Zeynep QuailBellMagazine.com I discovered these two artists during different stages of my life. Jelalludin Rumi in my early twenties and Mademoiselle Chanel in my early teens. The former being my source of much needed wisdom and comfort during a latent adolescence filled with existential questions
(What comes first, love or marriage? What is my calling?) and dark blue cynicism (I have no aura). And Chanel being the epitome of feminine strength that juxtaposed perfectly with my yearning for kohl eyeliner, while continuing to blister my hands and roll my ankles as a tennis player. Flash forward to age 26 and these two artists continue to fill my half-full glass of muse booze. Mademoiselle Chanel was the renegade I admired because of her use of fabric as a symbol of freedom in the early 1920's. Freedom from the corset of stuffy social norms that revolutionized how a woman should feel about herself. Free. Confident. Unapologetically herself. Bonjour, knit jersey, linen, and tweed. À tout à l'heure, boned corsets and gossamer petticoats. Being able to wear loose-fitted materials allowed women the freedom to explore the universe. And to bring that statement down to earth: Chanel's choice of a breezy fabric encouraged women to jump on a horse and go parading through the woods creating her own fairy tale. She could ride her stallion during the day (she has the freedom to choose which kind, too) and paint her lips blood red to dress her needle-sharp wit. As an avid horseback rider, Chanel would wear the clothes of her lovers to keep up with with the male-dominated riders. This simple act of trumping through Nature and wearing the wind instead of lace gloves was the wardrobe change that women needed. The bird officially left the cage. "If you are not born with wings, do nothing to impede their growth." —Mademoiselle Coco Chanel The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
Frozen ≠ MulanAs I sit here on Independence Day, friendless and without a good enough Internet connection to watch Netflix, I can't help but think about how I didn't like Frozen. I think this movie is really overrated, and not even half as good as its predecessor Tangled. And even more than that, it's hailed as being a feminist movie. And yes, you are about to read a grown man's ramblings about a Disney movie. Be preparrrrrrrred! (Get it?)
Now, out of the numerous things that I could write about, such as the inevitable decay of America's democratic system, or the shameful and persistent dumbing down of our culture through our entertainment system, or how 40 million or so people around the world are still enslaved, or about the Bilderberg Group, or about the Duke University adult actress Belle Knox, even I am left scratching my noggin about how important it is for ME to express my opinions on a Disney movie. Although, a recent conversation with a friend, in which she lauded the feminist intentions behind Frozen, has proven to be more than enough motivation for me to make my case. Frozen may be a lot of things. It could be the "best Disney movie since the Lion King." I'll leave that to personal opinion. It could be a deconstruction of the Disney model, even though I would beg to differ. But one thing I shall never concede to is that Frozen is a feminist movie. I take this stance because with full heart I wish to believe that if I have a daughter one day, I will not let her see this movie. First, let's examine the primary motivations for the two central female protagonists, Elsa and Anna. In Screenwriting 101, you learn that it is important to establish good motivations for your main character(s). Although, what is more important is the character's actions, as these are the circumstances that determine the journey they will take, the plot of the story, and the overall reason any bozo will go see your movie. This is like how the real world works, as actions speak louder than…I forget how the rest of that goes. So what does Elsa want? To be understood. To be with her sister. Cool. (See what I did there?) How does Elsa enact the plot? Has a panic attack and isolates herself from the rest of the world so that she can't use her…ice powers. Her famous catchy song, "Let It Go"? In the context of the movie, at the exact moment she sings it, she is singing about giving up her responsibilities not just to her sister and her kingdom, but to herself. Things in her life have become too overwhelming, and she has chosen to let it go and ignore it. It is not a song about self-empowerment. It's a song about being selfish. She proceeds to keep the entire kingdom frozen, which has presumably killed all of the cute furry animals that are not elk. And Elsa doesn't change her mind about it until she almost kills her sister, at the very end of the movie, and the kingdom cheers her about it because she decided not to leave them in a perpetual winter…for once. Simba also escaped his kingly duties…when he was a kid…and his father just died before his eyes…and lions don't have governments or taxation departments to run. So is this necessarily non-feminist? No. It's just bad moral values. Elsa doesn't demonstrate that she has any moral fiber to stand up for herself and be who she wants to be. She just kind of decides to slowly kill everyone in the kingdom instead. Elsa never outwardly admits that what she did was wrong, nor does she change her mind because of it. So whatever, I guess freezing entire kingdoms isn't an ethical issue. The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
Solving Riddles with a Smart Phone If I asked, I’m sure you could pull a few facts about Sherlock Holmes from the depths of your memory. He’s a detective. He has a friend named Dr. Watson. He plays the violin and he lives in London. There’s a whole bunch of stories written about him. You probably had to read at least one for school at some point.
The resurgence of the fictional detective’s popularity in the last five years is down to the multiple new adaptations of the source material. Warner Bros got the ball rolling in 2009 with the film Sherlock Holmes directed by Guy Ritchie and starring Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law. In 2010, the BBC launched a miniseries that ensnared the entire world’s affections called simply Sherlock, bringing the famous consulting detective into the 21stcentury. And then in 2011, the Warner Bros sequel Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows hit theaters. And then in 2012, NBC debuted their own modern Holmes with Elementary. The third film of the Downey Jr. franchise has been announced. At the moment, there’s money at 221b Baker Street. What is it about this fictional detective that captivates audiences so much, for so long? Arthur Conan Doyle published the first Holmes novel, A Study in Scarlet, in 1887, and since then, Sherlock Holmes has become a part of our collective cultural lexicon. There’s a reason we say “No shit, Sherlock,” after all. But the Sherlock Holmes star burns brighter in the 21st century than it has since the 1980s. Why? Perhaps it’s because of the mythology that surrounds the man. Sure, everybody likes an emotionally stunted anti-hero, but that can only entertain the public in one iteration for so long. But if you wrap an enough trappings, everyone will find something to latch on to, something that speaks to them. The Ritchie films are action movies—far less cerebral or intellectual than the original stories – but they deliver a stunning visual of the Victorian aesthetic. Accuracy be damned, this is what comes to mind when someone says, “Victorian England.” Industrial London is dirty and polluted, which gives everybody a good excuse to make more of the “dark, gritty” movies that are in vogue right now. But surely there is something more to this fixation than dark and grit. The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
Cardboard Bad AsseryBy Zack Budryk QuailBellMagazine.com “The fallacy in Hollywood is that if you’re making a ‘feminist’ story, the woman kicks ass and wins. That’s not feminist, that’s macho. A movie about a weak, vulnerable woman can be feminist if it shows a real person that we can empathize with.” -Natalie Portman The proper way to represent female characters in fiction has been a source of debate for a long time, especially because the alternative is to give more women authors, screenwriters and directors a shot. After centuries of female characters mostly being restricted to mothers, helpless princesses or temptresses, a backlash to this kind of narrative passivity began in the 20th century, with characters like Wonder Woman, Princess Leia and Buffy Summers turning long-established tropes on their head by presenting women who kicked ass themselves rather than waiting for a man to rescue them, marry them and discourage them from working outside the home.
The problem, however, is that since those characters popularized the Strong Female Character as an archetype, popular culture has largely gotten the idea that kicking ass is all a good female character requires; that a spinkick is a personality trait. “Part of the patronising promise of the Strong Female Character is that she’s anomalous,” wrote Sophia McDougall in her brilliant essay “I Hate Strong Female Characters.” “’Don’t worry!’ that puff piece or interview is saying when it boasts the hero’s love interest is an SFC. ‘Of course, normal women are weak and boring and can’t do anything worthwhile. But this one is different. She is strong! See, she roundhouses people in the face.’” Beyond that, such a rigid definition of strength severely limits female characters in, ironically, much the same way as the domestic stereotypes it was in response to. I discussed this idea with a friend of mine at work the other day. “It seems like that basically defines strength as stuff we associate with men,” she said. And this is perfectly true; the worst-case scenario for the SFC is basically the Disney Princess as Gillian Flynn’s Cool Girl. That’s why I think some of the best female characters out there today are not the ones who beat up a roomful of mooks without batting an eyelash, but rather, the ones who are capable of kicking ass as effectively as so many real-life women, while retaining all the personality facets, vulnerabilities and flaws that those same real women have (and, it should be noted, more male characters than I can name are allowed to have). The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
Girl Power at Community Publications“You must always remember that your career path is for you to set. It’s not something that happens to you; it’s not something that others draw for you. When you encounter a brick wall, rather than stand there and curse at it, make a right turn and explore some other avenues.” —Pam Luecke, Reynolds Professor of Business Journalism at Washington & Lee University, quoted in The Edge of Change: Women in the Twenty-first Century Press The snug lobbies with floor tiles the color of old scallop shells. The murky tanks brimming with lethargic lobsters. The clattering of dishes and the aroma of mysterious spices. These are snippets of the early memories I have from dining out in D.C. and New York Chinatowns with my family growing up. But there were also the Asian-American newspapers scattered on countertops or crammed into wire racks, an afterthought in places ruled by food. As a little one, I would often pick up these publications and study the photos or trace the Chinese characters with one of the pens my mother always kept in her purse.
As I grew older, I continued to seek out whatever print material I could find beyond library walls. While carrying a book with me wherever I went became a habit, community and metro newspapers, 'zines, and literary journals possessed a different kind of magic: Someone who had not yet catapulted to literary stardom—to borrow my former professor Winnie Chan's phrase—or someone who wanted to engage with the community as a public service, had produced this quarter-pound of paper in my hands. Many of these “someones” were women, a pleasant deviation from the authors dominating my school reading lists. In scouring local mastheads as a young, impressionable writer, I took note of all the women's names. I was looking for hope in female role models. Because, unlike national publications, I saw that smaller, more localized ones populate their mastheads with female talent. These publications may still be imperfect in how they treat female employees, but they should be credited for having a higher percentage of women writers and editors than their national counterparts. They should be credited for inspiring young girls to consider a career in publishing and journalism. My observation that women abound at local publications cannot be purely anecdotal. As a starry-eyed teenager, I got my start as a writer at community publications in the D.C. metro area, Grinnell, Iowa, and Richmond, Virginia. I always reported to female supervisors and was surrounded by female writers and editors. It wasn't until I interned at my first national publication that I found myself overwhelmingly outnumbered. The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
Greater than the PlateIn fictional media, the act of eating and dining with others is one of the most commonly used elements that is used to represent something greater. Usually, eating is used to show a form of comfort a character regularly enjoys, while overeating can represent how wasteful or gluttonous a person is. Scenes of characters eating a meal together also are used in dichotomous ways, such as to show how close the characters are, or to underline tension running among the characters that is highlighted by forcing them all in close quarters.
The Cook, the Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover is a film that is spends about 90% of its running time in a restaurant, moving from the dining room to the kitchen to the bathrooms to the parking lot outside. Directed by Peter Greenaway, the 1989 film uses the massive set that is the Le Hollandais restaurant to center the action of the film. The restaurant is owned by British gangster Albert Spica (Michael Gambon), a nouveau riche psychopath, who dines at Le Hollandais nightly with his beautiful but troubled wife Georgina (Helen Mirren) and his gang members. At Le Hollandais, Georgina continues an affair with a quiet bookkeeper named Michael (Alan Howard) who also dines there nightly. Their affair is aided by head chef Richard Borst (Richard Bohringer), who loathes Albert but has to accept the gangster's repeated revenue. What's fascinating about this film is that Le Hollandais comes to encompass nearly the entire world these characters live in. There's brief moments where they move outside of the restaurant (to Michael's book depository, to a hospital, and to a regular street), but nearly the entire film is capsuled inside the restaurant. Because of this, the restaurant begins to take a life of its own, aided by the film's incredible art direction. The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
A Bordello for VerseThe Poetry Brothel is a poetry lover’s wet dream come true. Patrons indulge in a decadent cabaret experience that allows them to fully engage their love of poetry. The cast consists of “whores” who are actually poets in the guise of burlesque personalities. Following a traditional burlesque practice, the whores perform on a public stage. Meanwhile, audience members have the opportunity to buy private readings in an intimate, one-on-one setting with a poet of their choosing. The Poetry Brothel intoxicates its guests not only with the sensual and sexual delivery of skillful verses, but also with booze, music, and an ever-changing assortment of side attractions. It is a true den of iniquity which debauches all with its rogue sophistication, old French elegance, and masterful artistry characterizing the whole spectacle.
Since being established in 2007, the event series has helped forge a sense of community, appreciation, and exotic revival among the poets and poetry-lovers of New York City. The mere knowledge that The Poetry Brothel exists is refreshing for anyone looking to commune with others over a mutual love of poetry. The brothel liberates poetry from the traditional boundaries of academia, allowing the solitary minds and hearts of readers to freely revel in a literary bacchanal that celebrates the art form's raw expression. In essence, The Poetry Brothel's brilliance brings poetry to life. The Quail Bell Crew asked The Poetry Brothel's 'Madame,' Stephanie Berger, also co-director of the New York City Poetry Festival, a few questions: Describe the magic and mystery of the period bordellos that inspired the concept. There was a lot that went into the inspiration for this concept. Initially an interest in Louis Armstrong and the history of jazz got me reading about New Orleans and its famed turn of the century red-light district, Storyville. It occurred to me then that brothels were places where artists on the fringes of society could find work and experiment with new forms, no matter who they were or how they were viewed by society-at-large. I came upon E. J. Bellocq's photographs through that reading, and I was totally and completely captivated by the imagery of those brothels. I love the looks on those women's faces. I love their fashion, the various poses, both natural and awkward. I love the decor of those houses. Soon, I read a memoir by one of the madams down in Storyville and a diary of one of the prostitutes. They both sounded sassy and tough and in control, and both of their stories seemed to imply that they felt they were feeding their clients' true and deep-seated needs for intimacy, fantasy, love, violence, and freedom. They enjoyed the work they were doing because it felt real despite the artifice, and I was drawn to that. Poetry feels real too, and it is also artificial; that's why I do it, and it fills similar kinds of needs. The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
Oxygen to Flame“People in the arts often assume that applying the arts to social purposes diminishes the art; art should be for arts' sake. Teaching artists at [settlements like the Jane Addams Hull-House], though, rediscovered that the arts are for people's sake. The need to communicate, connect and express ourselves is fundamental and biological.” —Nick Rabinkin in “Teaching Artists and the Future of the Arts” for The Huffington Post “However, there is one role in the arts that defies [George Bernard] Shaw's slogan [that he who can does; he who cannot teaches]. The role is variously named 'visiting' or 'residency artist' and 'artist-educator,' but the emerging consensus term is teaching artist. Teaching artists come from every artistic discipline, and they use a dynamic balance of skills in art and in teaching that make them remarkably effective educators and crucial resources to the arts world.” —Eric Booth in “The Emergence of the Teaching Artist” in Art Times The uncertainty of the artist's life is one of its most tantalizing appeals. While that same uncertainty has the potential to terrify those craving security, that uncertainty also has great potential for adventure. Imagine a treacherous footpath that leads to a vista of open skies, steep mountains, and dramatic valleys. The commuter toll road doesn't offer the same view.(Just mind the cliff.) If I run the danger of romanticizing the artist's life, it is with the best of intentions. For if someone didn't take the risk, we would not have teaching artists.
Teaching artists are distinct from arts teachers in that they are artists who lead occasional seminars and workshops to engage and empower a specific population to make art. Arts teachers, whether visual, performing, or literary, generally work full-time at a school to, at least in theory, teach the next generation of artists. A teaching artist is understood to be an expert artist; an art teacher is understood to be an expert teacher and may or may not be an expert artist. A teaching artist is first and foremost an artist. But an arts teacher's calling is more likely to be teaching. Neither is “better” or “more important” than the other. The jobs are just different. Becoming an arts teacher requires many hours of practice as a teacher. Becoming a teaching artist requires many hours of practice as an artist. In order to work as an arts teacher, you must earn your certification. You do not need to be certified to work as a teaching artist, but you must have established a track record as an accomplished artist. Teaching artists tend to be freelancers; sometimes (read: rarely) they are contracted for several months or even a couple of years as a side but regular gig to their art-making. But, even then, teaching artists devote more of their professional and emotional time and energy toward writing or acting or painting than they do inspiring students in a classroom. One of my more recent teaching artist experiences took place at WriterHouse in Charlottesville, Virginia. This community meeting space holds writing workshops and seminars in addition to author readings and other literary events. Based upon my background in nonfiction writing and documentary film and photo media, I had the privilege of leading a day-long seminar on documenting memories using words and images. The intimate setup allowed me to advise five students, each of whom had brought personal materials, such as a family photo album or a journal, in telling a story only they could tell. This fascinating bunch included a federal lobbyist, a registered nurse, a retired social worker turned calligrapher, a laundromat owner, and a Medicaid analyst. The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
The Meridian ModelA couple of weekends ago, I photographed some models and artists for Eastway Entertainment Group. An Eastway exec chose the location, the picturesque Meridian Hill Park in D.C. It was a beautiful sunny day, with picnickers, sunbathers, afternoon strollers, and even a wedding party on-site. Sunny days, though, pose difficulties for photographers because of the out-of-control highlights and shadows and stark contrasts between them. So we moved away from the broad lawns and prominent fountains to some sculpture areas in the shade along the park's periphery. The model Stephanie's sleek features, slender frame, and sculpted arms worked in harmony with the sculpture. And the casual but strong lines and iconography of her Superwoman tank T-shirt lent a quiet and good-humored strength to the close-up and maybe a touch of wistfulness to the longer-view image. At Flickr, you can see how the close-up looks in color and can also see a more irreverent use of the sculpture in a portrait shot I did of the rap artist Carl Houston. Copyright © 2014 by Alexander C. Kafka, for Eastway Entertainment Group; all rights reserved. Photographed at Meridian Hill Park; Washington, D.C. #Photography #MonumentalBeauty #Monument #BlackAndWhite #AlexanderCKafka #WashingtonDC #MeridianHillPark Visit our shop and subscribe. Sponsor us. Submit and become a contributor. Like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.
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A Tribute to the Voice of Maya AngelouBy Ghia Vitale QuailBellMagazine.com
#Imaginative #Nostalgic #Tribute #MayaAngelou #Poetry #Gallery #Poet #Writing #Creativity #Books #FemaleWriters Visit our shop and subscribe. Sponsor us. Submit and become a contributor. Like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.
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From Army to Literary AccolatesBy Virginia Woods QuailBellMagazine.com Tennessee native Charles Wright has not only won the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize, now he can add U.S. Poet Laureate to his cap. This Souder Family Professor of English at the University of Virginia came to poetry at the age of 23 shortly after joining the Army. Wanna read some Wright? Here is a gallery of his complete bibliography with links to the titles, staring with his most recent books: #Imaginative #CharlesWright #USPoetLaureate #UVAPoetryProfessor #PoetryNews #SouthernPoet #SouthernLiterature Visit our shop and subscribe. Sponsor us. Submit and become a contributor. Like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.
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Sweeping Away StereotypesBy Quail Bell Social Butterfly QuailBellMagazine.com Our new friends at A Clara Trupi de Ovos y Assovio, a Brazilian theatre company that's been around since 2005, wanted to give the Quail Bell(e)s a taste of Portugese-language performing arts. So they sent us some video clips and photos of their latest socially-minded show, Varre Dor de Vadiagem, which has toured theatre festivals across Latin America. This both lyrical and grotesque populist story focuses on a street sweeper full of big dreams just as human as any other person in the city. It's not too late to catch the production yourself—that is, if you can get to El Salvador or Chile later this year. If not, here's a digital taste: Upcoming performances: • Festi-Clown, El Savador • FINDAZ—Festival Internacional de Teatro y Dança, Chile #Imaginative #OtherWorlds #BrazilianTheatre #TheatreFest #LatinAmericanArt #BrazilArts #PerformingArts Visit our shop and subscribe. Sponsor us. Submit and become a contributor. Like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.
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Words + Images = A Manic But Sensible InfatuationWhen scissors hit paper, there are several aural possibilities and each collision reverberates in the artist’s hand differently. The paper, if of a certain thickness and texture, may make a satisfying crunch. If thinner and slightly damp, the paper may tear stealthily in near silence. Cutting damp paper feels like petting a plush animal left out in the rain, while cutting cardboard may strain the palms and wrists. These are just a couple of examples from the whole spectrum ofzips and whispers and flops in the scissor-paper dance. As a child, I learned the many sounds and sensations that scissors and paper make. But it was in high school that I rejoiced in their strange rhythm. It was then that I went through a phase of collage-making obsession. It was also then that I started to understand my habit of combining words and images. I’m not sure what prompted the obsession, though I’d guess it was my middle school art teacher, Monica Stroik, introducing me to the works of collagist Romare Bearden that helped me unpack my interest. Something that drew me to Bearden’s work was his use of multiple layers. (This was before I’d ever explored Photoshop.) To quote the National Gallery of Art’s description of Bearden’s work: “…his practice involved altering the surfaces of these papers and other collage elements in a variety of ways: adding painted areas using both spray paint and the more traditional brushed application of color; using abrasion and sanding to roughen and interrupt the plane; and removing color from both painted areas and collage papers by means of a bleaching agent.” Around this time, I started listening to a lot of jazz. I read a lot of Langston Hughes and Gwendolyn Brooks. I dreamt about the Harlem Renaissance. And I started making collages with words. To me, the words were just another layer in a collage’s composition, just like Bearden’s dabs of paint on paper. I would tear through magazines and newspapers on the hunt for pictures, swaths of solid color or texture, and, increasingly, words. Sometimes I chose a word for its meaning. Sometimes I chose it for its color, size, or typeface. Sometimes I had a vision. Other times I simply liked what I saw. |
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