Tag Archive for: wide shot

COLUMN: 13 Reasons Why relies on female suffering for storytelling


In a previous column, I gave credit to Netflix’s 13 Reasons Why for doing what high school television shows rarely do: explore the consequences of the characters’ cruelty and apathy toward each other and themselves. Instead of portraying action, 13 Reasons Why focuses on reaction — the characters’ responses toward Hannah’s suicide and the incoming […]

COLUMN: Girls is not the same show it used to be


I will admit: I used to be a fan of Girls. In its early days, the series was honest, messy and relentless, unlike any show about women I had seen or have yet to see. Despite the show’s many flaws, I continue to point to it as the first series I’ve watched that reflects young womanhood […]

COLUMN: 13 Reasons Why lacks emotional captivation


I first encountered Thirteen Reasons Why in middle school, reading Jay Asher’s novel alone in my bed as the entire house sat quiet around me. At 13 and 14 years old, I always found myself reading when the night is the most frightening: the rest of my family asleep, left alone with nothing but my thoughts. […]

COLUMN: Disney’s Mulan without the music misses the point


It was more than just the fangirl in me that was shocked when I heard news that there would, indeed, be no songs in the upcoming live-action remake of Disney’s Mulan. After reading the director’s statement of the vision for the film as “a big, girly martial arts epic,” I couldn’t help it. The first […]

COLUMN: Get Out highlights racial fetishes


The word “uncanny” is thrown around a lot in both an artistic and everyday context, but it wasn’t until a Thematic Option course last semester that I was introduced to the term’s Freudian definition. According to Freud, uncanniness occurs when an unfamiliar, repressed truth comes to light in a familiar environment. When this happens, you […]

COLUMN: Allegiance reminds audiences of Japanese internment


I am not of Japanese descent, nor do I have any personal ties to anyone incarcerated in the Japanese American internment camps during World War II. However, it would be a lie to count myself as disassociated with this horror when the concepts of alienation and racism are not foreign to me; when politics guided by […]

COLUMN: Speeches are not enough, Hollywood


It is oddly coincidental that President Donald Trump’s ban against immigrants from seven majority-Muslim countries took place on the same weekend as the Screen Actors Guild Awards, bringing on the full wrath of Hollywood on Sunday night. Those present at the ceremony condemned the ban in their own ways. One of my favorite protests was […]