Author Archives: pls239

The Politics of Cheating.

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The opening ceremonies in Pyeongchang were absolutely spectacular. The celebration of Korean history and culture combined with a breathtaking display of lights, music, and choreography was enough to entertain for 3 hours – no small feat. Supposedly the spectacle had been in planning for 2 whole years, and it certainly showed. All of it felt perfectly punctuated by the coming together of the DPRK and ROK teams to form a unified Korea team, complete with integrated women’s hockey team and all. The Olympics have always been about international politics – Jesse Owens running in Berlin in 1336, the US boycotting the competition in 1980, and the USSR doing the same in ’84. The ideally friendly international rivalry and camaraderie shown by the participants in these ceremonies is by a wide margin my favorite part, and is the reason I follow the Olympic games every other year. With this in mind, the controversy surrounding Russia’s barring from the games takes on a new color.

The International Olympics Committee, after reviewing drug tests from Russian athletes from the Sochi and London games, determined that a wide conspiracy of doping, led by the Russian government, was in effect. The response was to fully bar Russia from the games, and allow athletes from Russia to compete as “Olympic athletes from Russia.” These athletes wear grey, the Olympic flag, and if they win gold, the Olympic anthem will play. Any mention of Russia as a sovereign state has been cut out. Russia is not a small power, and there’s a lot to be said for how performance at the Olympics can be a show of power. Barring Russia from participating is a political statement whether the IOC thinks it is or not. And, when Thomas Bach gave his speech, calling for the athletes to not cheat, and participate in the spirit of the sport, the statement was made even further. Russia has been given the moral equivalent of a mild UN sanction for cheating in a sporting event, which is something I have mixed feelings about. On the one hand it is only a sport – should Russia receive what amounts to political punishment for cheating in a sport? But then, the punishment fits the crime. And, furthermore, the link of the Russian government to the conspiracy also seems to justify political action. Either way, the statements and actions from the IOC are as much a condemnation of cheating as they are a mild attack on the Kremlin. I look forward to seeing what comes of the moves towards a unified Korea movement, as well as any other, unexpected international dealings that come out of this years games.

Those Bums Won Their Court Case

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The Blues Brothers is one of my all time favorite movies. That’s why I voted to have it shown as the last film for this semester. However, I hadn’t seen it in a few years. I was curious how it would hold up – I knew the movie had a lot of content revolving around black culture, but I was wondering how scenes like the scene in the Church with James Brown would hold up against a more modern lens. I was beyond surprised with how much I noticed on this viewing about the themes of the movie.

The ostensible goal of the Blues Brothers is to celebrate Jazz and Blues music. The star studded cast, and director John Landis’ sensibility of “Another musical number? Why not!” all work towards this end. With that most prominent goal in mind, it’s worth reflecting on the total framework of the story, particularly the relationship the film has with music other than Blues.

There are multiple instances in the film where other genres of music come up. At Bob’s Country Bar, they have both kinds of music, Country and Western. And, finally, the Nazis are accompanied by Wagner’s Flight of the Valkyries. All three of these genres have one thing in common at some level – they are all associated with white culture by the time of 1980, certainly more so than Jazz or Blues. While the Blues Brothers are white themselves, it is evident that the film is placing them opposite of white culture.

The film does this in another way as well with the nature of the Brothers’ antagonists. There are three: The police, the Nazi party, and the Good Ol’ Boys (traditional country folk). Note that all three of these can be interpreted as elements of the opposition faced by African Americans. What’s particularly of note, however, is how all three of these persist in the present day. The question of racially charged police brutality is as prominent as ever, after incidents like the death of Eric Garner, Freddie Gray, and Philando Castile. The Nazi party, while likely a farce in the context of the movie, has also made its return as of late, with White Power movements spreading across the nation. And the Good Ol’ Boys, if we interpret them to be a representation of a traditional white culture, particularly from the American South and Midwest, have also made their return with the election of President Trump.

The movie makes a farce of all three of these antagonists, and there’s two ways to interpret it. In making light of these three groups in the way the film does, it could be seen to undermine their power, by taking away any serious interpretation of the message these groups present. An increasingly militarized and violent police is made far less frightening and serious when that power can’t even apprehend two musicians. The Nazi party and the Good Ol’ Boys are also made into farces as their message is constantly undermined by their ridiculous and obsessive behavior. However, one could also argue that this comic presentation fails to take these issues, which were as serious then as they are now, seriously. By presenting them comically, the film allows the audience to dismiss these issues as mere silliness. Between these two interpretations, however, I think the film is going for the former. There is too much carefully chosen, like the dismissal of more white styles of music, the celebration of absolutely incredible Jazz and Blues musicians, and the three antagonists being three forces easily seen as opposition to African Americans, for me to think the film is trying to make these seem less important than they actually are. And I’m going to grant the film this.

Marketing the Revolution

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One of the things that struck me most about Citizen Kane was its deep criticism of how marketing has influenced our ability to engage in sincere political protest. Kane bought the newspapers in order to speak for the voice of the working man, as he put it. However, in doing so, and having his angle for each take, he took the idea of genuinely promoting the lives of working class America and effectively commercialized it. He turned it into a product that could be bought and sold through his newspaper, and arguably in doing so actually took a lot of the bite out of any real progress for working class Americans. We see this all the time in our modern neoliberal society, wherein Companies control the language of protest through commercialization. An excellent example of this was during many of the protests following Trump’s election, particularly those in early 2017. Images of the late Carrie Fisher dressed as Princess Leia, and of the “Starbird” symbol used by the Rebel Alliance of the same franchise were used to protest Trump’s statements, particularly those against women, and used as a rallying cry for a similar sort of Rebellion against his policies. While I myself am a huge fan of Star Wars, there is something I find quietly disconcerting about the fact that the symbols of a workers revolution are being given by a massive employer, and something that I think is paralleled with Kane’s newspaper claiming to speak for the workers while also benefiting massively from their employment.

Master of Suspense

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I went into North by Northwest expecting to be thrilled. That’s what I understand a Hitchcock film to be, both from hearsay and personal experience with some of his other works. And while North by Northwest did entertain me for the duration of its run, I find that I am less enthralled with it as I mull it over. The immediate concerns are of course its dated depiction of women and their role within the plot of the film. The one major female, Eve Kendall, is introduced to us only as a potential romantic interest for the film’s protagonist, Roger Thornhill. And as she evolves over the course of the film, her actions and choices are entirely dictated by her relationship with Thornhill. Though I would argue the film makes a more subtle but nearly as egregious sin of storytelling in just being excessively dictated. By this, I mean that each event in the film follows the previous almost entirely because the plot demands that it be so, not because the characters would logically follow this course of action. This is particularly evident in the first half of the film, where Thornhill’s path precipitates from two events entirely outside of his control – being misidentified as George Kaplan, and then being framed for the murder of Lester Townshend. Because he is not making choices that dictate the path the story follows, while the story can be genuinely surprising and thrilling during its run, the film fails to remain memorable. The plot when viewed as a whole fails to congeal in any meaningful way, because Roger Thornhill is more akin to a leaf on the wind than an active protagonist in his story until the very end, when he chooses to rescue Eve. And for the two reasons I’ve described, I think that while Hitchcock certainly can keep his title has the master of suspense, in this film he may have sacrificed his characters and story solely for the end of maintaining that suspense.

Freedom to Choose

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“Dead Poets Society” is not a film without problems. Depicted in it is an unpunished or questioned instance of sexual misconduct, and the film focuses fairly starkly on a straight white male perspective. These things aside, however, “Dead Poets Society” is one of my favorite films. What I love about the movie is the picture it paints about freedom, and how art, particularly romantic art, can serve as a key to this freedom.

The setting of the film is typically claustrophobic – tight dorms, tight classrooms, hallways houses, and even a small cave create a feeling of constriction. However, in the cave, the boys push outwards. On multiple occasions they come flooding out of the cave into the wide expanse of the outdoors – Here, things are bright, and notably movement is freer. Perhaps this reflects Plato’s allegory of the cave. Most certainly I am reading into this too much, but nevertheless we see Professor Keating’s desire to move his students outdoors is demonstrated in the filmography to give a sense of freedom to the students as the grow. And, notably, Neil opens the window before his suicide, furthering what I see as the films connection between the outdoors and this freedom.

And it is this freedom to choose that the film holds as its loftiest ideal. Neil wishes above all else to have the freedom to choose to become an actor. Charlie Dalton is constantly fighting for the freedom to choose to live his life how he sees fit, and Knox Overstreet is fighting for the freedom to choose his ideal romantic relationship. For all of them, though, their desire for this freedom, and their realization of it, comes from art. It is art that inspires Neil to pursue acting, art that inspires Dalton’s rebellious acts, and art that inspires Knox to pursue a relationship with Chris. Importantly, in each case it is art, fundamentally linked with the freedom of the wide exterior shots that gives each character the freedom to make choices.

The Great History

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It is difficult to describe how cool I find rocks. Yes, rocks. Those (seemingly) innocuous, hard, typically grey and brown things that make up a good portion of the ground. But, for all of their benign commonness, rocks are possibly both Earth’s greatest storyteller and vivid historian.

The Cascadilla Gorge Hike was effectively broken into two themes: The modern history of the gorge, or, how the gorge has changed ecologically and structurally over the last century or so, made up about half of our tour. However I was mostly there for the second half – the Geological history of the Gorge. Last year I went into Fall Creek Gorge to collect fossils, sparking a deep fascination with the geological history of the area. Here’s a quick rundown:

During the Devonian, approximately 415 to 350 million years ago, much of the midwest United States was not only under ocean, but also on the equator. In fossil ranges stretching from here to Ohio, we find brachiopods (bivalves), corals, trilobites, and other strange but perhaps oddly familiar organisms. Of note here is that we were under a sea, and with mountains in what is now upstate New York, this was a sea constantly being filled with sediment. It is that sediment which concerns us – As it deposited, it was compacted alongside marine life into limestone, shale, sandstone, and other slate like rocks. Fast forward to a few million years ago, as this rock is being exposed, carved, and fractured by the glaciers of the last ice age. As the glaciers retreated, they left behind pools of water. However, this water naturally wanted to fall back towards the ocean and other lower bodies of water. Taking the path of least resistance, they trickled into the aforementioned fractures in the old Devonian rock. This rock is soft, and was eroded quickly by the waterflow, eventually creating the massive gorge structures this area of New York is known for.

What astonishes me the most, is what we know all of this from the rock – its softness, its layered deposition, and the fossils they contain (also made of rock) work in conjunction to not only paint the picture I gave above, but to craft IMMENSE detail about the history of the gorges over time spans we cannot even begin to comprehend. The Tour Guide gave us great detail and a lot to think about, such as why the Gorge makes a 90 degree turn, and almost immediately corrects course thereafter, or about how the subtle differences in the rock between Cascadilla Gorge, Fall Creek, and the other areas lead to the differences in the end appearance of the Gorge. In conclusion, of our civilizations and achievements, in enough time, all that will be left of them too will be the rock, and what the rock preserves for future civilizations, our descendants or otherwise, to discover.

The Rise of Apples

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I like to consider myself to be a person who fully understood why Snow White was so tempted by that apple. Of course, it could have been a mealy mess, as far too many apples seem to be, but the sheer delight of biting into a crisp apple far outweighs the risk that what you thought was a honeycrisp was actually a red delicious. A good apple is a true treat.

It’s for this reason I was very excited to attend Apple Fest – to participate in a community even around a food I haven’t been able to immerse myself in for a few years. But while the apples were fantastic, what was all the more interesting was the conversation we had with Professor Blalock beforehand. I was already aware of some of the details surrounding the business of club Apples, and even Cornell’s participation in that endeavor, but certainly there were more details to get into. Concerning the honeycrisp itself, I remember as a kid being VERY excited when my mom would come home from the grocery with four of those apples, often very large ones as well. It became somewhat of a household name, and it’s interesting to compare the timelines of my introduction to the apple to the rise of the honeycrisp.

It’s amazing to see what a change the honeycrisp was to the apple industry – the new process of breeding trees, trademarking names and branding apples, while sure to increase the quality of apples in the produce section, isn’t something I see as entirely positive. While market forces are going to put some cap on the price of these apples, it doesn’t sit quite right with me that these groups are keeping these apples in tightly controlled groups in order to keep supply and demand in somewhat of a balance so they can maximize the selling price as high as possible. While I’m excited to try a Ruby Frost particularly, and willing to pay the price that will surely be associated, I’m anxious that something so wonderful as a good apple could be kept an elite treat only few will opt in to enjoy.

We Listen to the King

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“The King’s Speech” caught my interest because it’s a time and place in history that I’ve been exploring a fair bit lately. With Netflix’s “The Crown” and Christopher Nolan’s “Dunkirk”. Particularly with “The King’s Speech” and “The Crown”, It’s been very interesting to observe and think about Britain’s institution of the Monarchy, something that as an American I can say I find an interesting and foreign concept.

There was a line of the movie that struck me last night, when David asks his brother “don’t I have rights?” Similarly, later in the movie, the newly crowned King George VI makes a very interesting point to Lionel. “I’m a… a King, where’s my power?” he asks,  “Can I… can I form a government? Can I… can I l-levy a tax, declare a… a war? No!” What these two lines suggest to me is a very interesting perspective on the function of the Monarchy in a more modern Britain. They are expected not to directly interfere in the government – after all, in a modern society, for a birthright position to hold real political power might be archaic. But Archie continues to Lionel about this nature of his position “And yet I am the seat of all authority. Why? Because… the nation believes that when I s… I speak, I speak for them – but I can’t speak.”

While the movie makes a powerful and poignant picture of the King overcoming this adversity, and this is certainly not to be dismissed, I find it very interesting to think of how the role of the Monarch in Britain as evolved over time, and how it continues to justify its existence. Where before they were a true figurehead of power, now they are a voice through which the Commonwealth can, at least in theory, take solace and project a national identity onto. In my opinion, this makes the challenge overcome by King George in the film all the more impressive. The one thing he truly struggled to do was, at that point, the one thing he was asked to do.

What the Trees See

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Going too the Botanical Gardens was far from a new thing for me. I go just about every week, usually on a Sunday morning, as part of a walk to clear my mind and get some much needed exercise. I didn’t really know what to expect from going with a group, but I hoped I would learn something new, or at least gain a new perspective on the garden.

Indeed, my wishes came true. The tour guide had a lot of information to present, about Barbara McClintock, about each specific garden, and more. It’s cool be able to say, instead of “my favorite garden is the one with all the gardens” to rather say “my favorite garden is the Winter Garden”.

What really struck me however was, in the end, the trees. We were presented with many trees, ranging from Dogwoods to the aforementioned conifers, and nearly all of them had some story dating back to their planting in the early 20th century. In fact, to preserve these old trees, lightning rods have been affixed to a good many in order to prevent strikes. And preserving them is worth it – one of them is said to have been planted by students of the old schoolhouse located centrally in the garden, and others still have similarly old stories attached to them. In the end, it gave an interesting framing to my own life, how short is has been, and how short it will be. Not that I necessarily find that terribly depressing, but rather, I am amazed to think about all things the trees could tell us if they could see.

The Fear of Knowing

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Black Mirror very often makes scathing and pointed critiques of technology and how it is integrated into modern society. “The Entire History of You”, the episode we watched, is certainly no different. It proposes a near future where we are able to save our memories in a mental implant, and access them at will either in our minds or on a screen. The story revolves around a specific group of friends, where a man named Liam grows increasingly suspicious of his wife’s relationship with a man named Jonas. As the episode progresses, he uses this technology to force the information out of Jonas and his wife, ultimately concluding that the child he had with his wife was not in fact his.

What struck me about this episode wasn’t so much how the technology factored into the plot, as black mirror tends to intend, but how Liam, for all his correct suspicions, still ultimately destroys his life. His behavior is reprehensible throughout the episode; He insults his wife on a mere suspicion of wrongdoing, assaults Jonas and forces him to (quite literally) forget Liam’s wife, and then forces his wife to recall her affair with Jonas on screen so Liam can inspect it for use of a condom, helping to decide whether or not their child is truly Liam’s. Yet, despite all of the show’s critique (and rightfully so!) of Liam’s behavior, it ultimately shows that all of his suspicions were correct. This leads me to wonder if a deeper point is being made here. Perhaps the episode suggests that we shouldn’t want to know what others think of us. We are all complex people, and have complex thoughts. A fact of this complexity is that we often have very mixed feelings and relationships with those around us, particularly those close to us. Even those we love, we all too often fail to think of kindly. And we do love them, of course, but we do not always think or do what we ought to should we love them. And this is not a fault, this is human. But in order for ourselves to be happy, we need to control our negative opinions of those around us, keep them close, and not let them destroy our relationships, romantic or otherwise. “The Entire History of You” presents a world in which this is no longer possible, and our full complexity is laid to bare for the entire world to see. Can we be faulted for not always thinking or behaving kindly to the ones we love? I would say not. Perhaps, instead, we should just be moderately afraid of knowing, since we will inevitably be disappointed.