Cinema Danger Duo Podcast Episode 17

Raymond and Miranda as the Cinema Danger Duo

Cinema Danger Duo is a bi-weekly podcast with two friends, Ray and Miranda, who have had too much time on their hands and have watched far too many movies. Together they review three different films for each episode covering a wide gamut of genres. Their spoiler-heavy discussion is less of a critique and more of a jumping off point for discussion. *Warning may contain explicit language, content.  CINEMA DANGER DUO IS NOW OFFERED ON iTunes!  Please use this link to listen and subscribe through iTunes:  https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/cinema-danger-duo/id1048788079?mt=2

Episode 17.  In this episode, Ray and Miranda are joined by their forever guest Tim Kupsick to discuss the films Rogue One:  A Star Wars Story and Captain Fantastic.

Reasons Why People Are Going To The Women’s March

This past weekend women around the country gathered to march against Trump, a disgusting excuse of a man who somehow made his way to the presidency. Women marched for their own deteriorating rights and for the rights of all people to prove that struggle is linked. Men marched alongside them. People who identify as neither gender marched. A lot of people marched for a lot of valid reasons. And a lot of people attended (or in some cases just threatened to attend) the march for other, less noble, motives. Some attended the march to say that the march wasn’t worth having. Some threatened the protesters. Some formed halfhearted and poorly argued counter protests that hardly resembled protests at all. Basically, various individuals all showed up for various reasons. So, I’ve accumulated a list of ten reasons (good, bad, disgusting) that someone may have attended the women’s march:

1. Women’s rights are human rights and human rights are women’s rights.

2. To subdue women with the threat of death via firearm (in a world where the number one cause of death for women is firearms) to prove that violence against women isn’t actually a problem.

3. I need somewhere to wear my corporate-produced feminist apparel.

4. Boredom.

5. To participate in the radical feminist ritualistic pagan slaughter of all innocents.

6. To fight for reproductive justice and affordable, accessible health care for all women.

7. To Make America Great Again by protesting people’s right to protest.

8. To bury the streets in male tears and menstrual blood.

9. It was my New Year’s resolution to eat healthier and march more in solidarity with women, people of color, immigrants, the LGBTQ community, and all other oppressed and soon to be more oppressed groups.

10. It’s time to expand beyond the Facebook comments section and start trolling in person.

11. I like pulling out my lawn chair, wearing my American flag shirt, and shouting petty insults at protesters with legitimate demands under the guise of being a true American patriot.

12. “To fight for those whose rights are uncertain.”*

13. Because the only way to cope is through doing.

*I want to give a shoutout to Sarah Rudkin, Jane Ifland, and all of the others who worked to organize (and/or who marched in) the women’s march here in Casper. As Sarah said, they marched to fight for those whose rights are uncertain. And they put a lot of work into it.

 

The Tabloidization of Fashion Magazines

– Is Fashion Journalism old-fashioned? –

It’s the day before the inauguration ceremony of President Trump, and I’m pondering upon the implications on fashion manufacturing of his declared intention to introduce a tariff of 5% or more on imports. Will his decision kickstart American manufacturing jobs, and, more importantly, will those jobs stimulate spending and thus offset the increased cost of living? I’m not sure what is more ridiculous here: the fact that this information on national foreign trade policy was shared through a tweet, or that Trump’s tweets on foreign policy get less consideration in the endlessly murky puddle of information that is online media than Selena Gomez “quietly unfollowing” Bella Hadid on Instagram.

“Quietly unfollowed”…. That is, of course, either a euphemism for some creepy paparazzi checking celebrities’ social media accounts every 5 minutes to see if there are any changes, or what sounds to me to be more like a stupid stunt from some PR agent trying to get their client in the limelight by scraping the bottom of the interesting barrel. Maybe even lower than that:

I swear to God I’m not making this up: the actual subtitle is “Hmm…”

This wouldn’t come as a shock to me if I were a fan or follower of The Sun, or the Daily Mail, or whatever excuse for expensive toilet paper they’re called in the “the civilized world”, but it is greatly disappointing to me that it comes from Elle’s “Life and Culture”/ “Culture” Section. Ha, culture section! And this is the piece of… journalism that accompanies the before (“1:30 PM”) and after (“3:27 PM”) screenshots of their Instagram followers list: “Last night, Selena Gomez confirmed to the paparazzi via a series of make-out pics that she’s hanging out with The Weeknd these days. Bella Hadid, The Weeknd’s ex-girlfriend, appears to have seen this news. She just unfollowed Gomez on Instagram.” A-ma-zing!

Does fashion journalism even exist?

I’ve been slowly unfollowing and unsubscribing most of the fashion magazines, their pages, blogs and social media accounts for a while now. I had decided to give fashion journalism another chance after about 5 years of completely shunning it, and, in a masochistic experiment, subscribed to as many mainstream media sources dedicated to the fashion world as I could find before I got terribly bored and had to sit in a corner of my room and stare at the wall for some actually interesting intellectual input.

I went for the ones that had more popularity or weight in the fashion world, based on the extent of their follower numbers for personal blogs and pages. I also opted for what I could pick up being actual fashion publications, as opposed to lifestyle magazines that touch on fashion. Some of them didn’t make it past the first week because of too many disguised or obvious adverts, some of them I’ve kept because I’m still trying to figure out what people like about them, most have slowly been sifted through and haven’t made the cut:

Replace the magazine title with “Elle” or “Look”, and you’ve got yourself a fashion news emporium!

Only two types of sources have survived: those who manage to create unique visual content or have an eye for collecting such imagery that inspires and offers a glimpse into some kind of a fantasy world, and those who offer actual information on the fashion industry, like Business of Fashion. The others unfortunately reiterate the same garbage that tabloids do, under the false pretense of fashion news:

• A preference for a character, based on their celebrity status and not on achievements. Likewise, the featured designers and their belles, the companies and their products, are all too few and far apart, and probably cover 0.01% of what the world actually has to offer in terms of fashion.
• The dissemination of gossip and unverified “news” on the above-mentioned characters that is not in the least of public interest. In fact, it’s from a different galaxy where idiot slave-creatures make ends meet through the illicit commerce of waste residues from a governing people of scatophiliacs.
• A fatalistic and inflammatory approach to writing, meant to raise attention and blood pressures through unfounded accusations, threats or fear. In fact, any title-writing technique that appeals to the 7 deadly sins is now standard.
• An accent on relationships and rifts between celebrities that is unequivocally proof of price-bundling for PR agencies, and the occasional “rise from the dead” Lazarus stunts performed by celebs who’ve fallen out of the public’s eye and good graces:

If anybody’s going to lead the Zombie Apocalypse, it’s Madonna

Oh, wait! I think I just described MAINSTREAM MEDIA…

The only thing these people have in common is the fact that they all wear clothes. And some of them don’t even have that going for them. But because I don’t like to make a point in writing without say 3 sources of information – ‘cause that’s what they used to teach journalism students in college a long time ago, about 2-3 years before mainstream media took a hit of crack cocaine and decided to start doing all of its research in strip bars -, I’ve decided to take 3 of most prestigious magazines in the US, and therefore the world, and give them a good ol’ biased evaluation inspired from “Star”:

Jackie knows how I feel. Jackie’s a real friend

The Meh, The Bad, The OMG!

My original intention was to analyze or quantify in some way the degree of “tabloidization” for these 3 magazines and divide them into 3 categories called “The Good”, “The Bad” & “The OMG!”, inspired by the tabloid line above, but I then came to my senses and renamed the first one to “The Meh”, since “good” is far from reality.

I then did a keyword search for celebrity names that are most likely to appear in tabloid-like “articles” on their official websites, and HOLY CRAP! I think Elle must have lost a lot of data:

Using the Comic Sans font is my way of fighting back

This sad overlook at the most prestigious fashion magazines to date shows that one literally needs to crawl under a rock in order to avoid the Nobel Prize winners for Peace, Literature and Elevator-Selfies that are the Kardashian, Jenner & Hadid sisters along with their posse. The fact that these magazines have “Culture” sections is a mockery of the word’s definition: “the arts and other manifestations of human intellectual achievement regarded collectively.” I’d like to think that whatever these magazines portray as culture is not a reflection of collective achievement, be it at its average.

That being said, here is my biased evaluation + a collection of favorite “cultural” and “fashion-related” “articles” from these “fashion magazines”:

I’ll just leave Dr. Evil here so that I don’t have to put quotation marks on the entire thing

1. The Meh: Vogue

Self-description: “The latest fashion news, beauty coverage, celebrity style, fashion week updates, culture reviews, and videos on Vogue.com.”

Categories: Fashion, Beauty, Culture, Beauty, Runway

Brownie points: The Runway section, for obvious reasons, Anna Wintour’s tight grip on magazine classiness, and the fact that it’s been around since 1892.

The Meh: In spite of the fact that Vogue ranks highest on the celebrity deal, they’ve managed to keep most of the writing on the subject of clothing. More of a fashion paparazzi approach than anything, but I can’t complain too much because they actually comment on the attire, rather than celeb relationships or whatnot. Except for rare occasions like this baby:

“The Weeknd” obviously doesn’t use autocorrect

2. The Bad: Harper’s Bazaar

Self-description: “Sophisticated, elegant and provocative, Harper’s Bazaar is the fashion resource for women who are the first to buy the best, from casual to couture.”

Categories: Fashion, Beauty, Celebrity, Red Carpet Dresses, ShopBAZAAR

Brownie points: The ShopBAZAAR section features a collage of designer clothes that have actually got pizazz and feed that fantasy part of fashion. This is usually my favourite part in a magazine because it shows interesting cuts and material combinations that celebrities don’t usually have the courage to wear – or get eaten alive by the Best/Worst Dressed comments section -, without having to deal with the snobby sales personnel. The brain hemorrhage that comes with seeing the price is still an intrinsic part of browsing stylists’ recommendation pages, but what can we do. Also, the BAZAAR Bridal is awesome for the bride to be, mainly due to the fact that it’s accessible outside of the seasonal or spring edition – and if you’ve ever had a wedding at an awkward time of the year and tried finding any fashion magazine support out there, you know how awesome it is for this to be available all year round.

The BAD: It might just be a more recent acquisition in terms of a social media manager who loves the sleaziest of celebrities, but maybe it’s just them trying to get in touch with the modern consumer the same way that Elle is trying to. Either way, Harper’s Bazaar has recently (from what I could pick up on) started to showcase more Kardashian dramas and less meaty content. I used to love you, Harper’s! What are you doing to yourself? And what is this:

 

Wanna bet that this “Visual Investigation” started as a catty email chain that got passed around the office?

 

3. The OMG: Elle

Self-description: “ELLE is the ultimate fashion resource for the fashion insider. Discover the latest hairstyles from the runway to the street. With a behind-the-scenes, how-to take on the fashion industry, ELLE experts are the people to trust for fashion news and inspiration.”

Categories: Subscribe, News, Fashion, Beauty, Life+Culture, Horoscopes (HA!)

Brownie points: I’m at a loss here, they should pay me for the abuse I’ve taken in navigating their “Life+Culture” section. I didn’t know Beiber had acne. Now I’m haunted by it!

The OMG: I don’t know where to start. Whether it’s titles like “Kendall Jenner Reveals The One Simple Flirting Technique That Could Win Her Heart”, or the fact that the HD videos they post almost crashed my computer (you can skimp on the resolution guys, I’m not watching these in Times Square!), or maybe even the fact that they have a full-time Instagram stalker… Woah! Hold on a bit. I’m not even kidding about this. The amount of detail they have on celebs’ Instagram accounts is seriously going beyond and above the line of creepy. And as if the “Quietly Unfollowed” piece of news is not enough of a hair-raiser, then it must surely be video they threw together to celebrate model Chrissy Teigen, whoever the fuck that may be:

“In honor of Chrissy Teigen’s birthday on November 30th, check out 6 reasons why we absolutely love her.” Honor. What is she, the queen mother? C’mon! Here is the transcript with a few necessary comments:

“6 reasons (“why”) we love Chrissy Teigen:

1. She tells the paparazzi to f*ck off (they show a video of her cursing at photographers on the red carpet, and then smiling, ‘cause she’s a lady or something)
2. She hangs with a cool crew (featuring an image of her posing Kim Kardashian, Kanye and Beyonce – what are you doing Queen B?!)
3. She calls it like she sees it (transcript of tweet saying “I need a bikini wax but I feel like I should wait for my epidural because THAT IS GENIUS” – Capital letters entirely hers)
4. She’s always hungry AF (another video of her bawling with a mouthful of cream; also, goddamn, Elle, cut down on the elegance here)
5. She never takes herself too seriously (collage of pictures where she’s supposedly making funny faces)
6. She likes to mess with bae (featuring another tweet: “I like to send John nudes and say ‘Sorry wrong person’”. Deep!)

Never change, Chrissy”

My list would go on, but there isn’t enough time on this planet to explain what’s wrong with Elle’s approach to fashion journalism.

Old-fashioned Fashion Journalism

I wouldn’t be able to positively state that fashion journalism used to be better, especially since its beginnings are rooted in product advertising more than anything else. One could also argue that it is such a visual art, that it is pointless to even try and describe it in writing. And the fact that celebrities can afford designer clothing makes them a natural medium for the expression of fashion trends and attitudes. Who else but Rihanna could done a gown that even resembles Guo Pei’s canary yellow creation, as she did at the 2015 Met Gala?

This is what I always wear at Walmart

It’s not the Gigis and Selenas, the Kims and Kanyes that I cry for. I cry for the street fashion and creativity that could be shown instead. For the amazing designers out there, other than the usual 3-4 who barely get the stage anymore, that are so original and revolutionary, but get overlooked. For the fashions of other cultures that have so much more to offer than Milan, New York, Paris and London put together, but aren’t featured even as a curiosity. For the revolutionary technologies, raw materials and applications that are forever changing the way humans interact with clothing, but aren’t of interest because they’re not called “Burberry”.

I cry for the industry news that is swept under the carpet, because the dark truth is that it is horribly polluting and terribly unfair towards its workers – and who would like to face the truth that consumption needs to drastically decrease, when they could just buy the latest hot pink heels instead? For the incredibly talented craftsman, who can’t afford an ad in the papers, not to mention a PR agent, and the bloggers who share a different view on what fashion could and should be.

I cry for fashion journalism’s potential as a respected form of writing, that is being mocked through Instagram stalking and cheap gossip. I cry, and I write, in the hope that at least one heart can be turned.

DIYana, Queen of Carbon Footprint, Mistress of Crap Design

By, AMMA

In the great internet battle of kitten pictures v. porn, DIY follows close and waits for an opportunity to strike back and claim dominion. It’s like the ugly cousin who’s been bullied in school for wearing braces, but your mom still made you take her all over the place even though you didn’t really like her… and you were mean to her because she was ruining your own image… and she’s been bottling up resentment ever since, plotting and waiting for that moment when she will rise up from the ashes and triumph in the internet’s Miss Popularity contest, overcoming fluffy kittens and golden showers alike, just like Fern in “Jawbreaker”.

But this realm of repurposed jeans, plastic spoons, popsicle sticks, PET bottles, pipe cleaners and wooden pallets is not just art’s little retarded brother, but a can-do promised land of talent and possibility, where we think of ourselves as emergent Miros and Picassos, Matisses and Gaudis, bursting at the seams with artistic potential, oblivious to the craft supply massacre left behind by our Frankensteinian creations and blind to the notion that we actually shouldn’t-do-it-ourselves.

It all starts innocently enough…

Every woman this side of the Ocean and North of Mexico dreams of herself as some sort of a Superwoman, successfully multitasking work, cleaning and finances, cooking and domestic transportation, child-rearing and family networking, husband satisfaction management and interior design. It takes a lot of creativity and effort to juggle all of these roles, no doubt about it, but they somehow still lack the type of validation that satisfies one’s self-expression.

Unease bubbles up as the wandering mind finds itself again and again in the craft supply department. Later, at the supermarket, the gaze moves over the 2-for-1 tuna can coupons down the conveyor belt, across the tabloids, calendars and cooking magazine, and fixates the adult mandala coloring book that strikes a chord deep within the 12-year old inside. By this point it is only a matter of time. All it takes is one DIY video to sneak into our generic heroine’s facebook feed for her to drive off to the craft store, wheels screeching, and build herself a papier-mâché cocoon from which she will reborn as:

DIYana, Queen of Carbon Footprint, Mistress of Crap Design

 

And that, ladies, is how you eventually poke an eye out

What Diyana isn’t taking into consideration is…

DIY is expensive             

It all seemed pretty simple at first: Diyana saw an article entitled “30 ways to use spoons to make ugly decorations that you’ll throw away in a week’s time”, or something along those lines, and she decided to go for the mirror frame made of spoons. “I’ve got some spoons in the pantry that I could use!” Sounds easy enough, doesn’t it, and must surely cost less than one from the store!

“The grandkids will fight to the death over this family heirloom”, she thought.

But add anywhere between $4-14 for a box of spoons, $6-12 for the spray paint, $2 for a sheet of cardboard or $5 for a sheet of plywood, $8-40 for the round mirror, depending on your luck, $2 for picture hangers, $3 for fishing line to hang it with or $2 for a wall anchor with screws, and, if you don’t already have a glue gun, count $6+ for that and another $3 for glue sticks. Add $5 in gas and $29 in time (say you spend 4 hours on the road for supplies, cleaning the garage to make room for spray-painting, the execution itself, etc… you know it adds up, and for, say, $7.25 an hour minimum wage, your time is not cheap!). An honest calculation makes this thrifty endeavor into a $60+ investment, one that is most likely less good-looking and durable than one made with better material than goddamn plastic spoons.

But since you’ve bought a box of 100 and there’s still a few left, of course you’ll think to yourself: why not use them for a garden inspired plastic spoon flowers’ flag garland?

Your house is definitely in line for Better Homes and Gardens’ next feature with this kind of crap on your walls!

Again, you make a calculation and figure out you don’t have enough spoons left from your past endeavor, so you add another $4 for a box of spoons, $20 for enough colored card stock to make a few of these guys, $3 for assorted pom-poms, $3-5 for pom-pom ribbon… you’re starting to get the picture.

The gist is that DIY ends up costing just as much, if not more, than a factory-produced low-quality product, but is also most likely even lower quality than said product because of our amateurism, and therefore our tendency for easy-to-use, non-durable materials.

At the same time, each project requires new and different resources for it to come to life: different colored fabrics, ribbons, the glue runs out, etc., which makes it an everhungry machinery. No wonder people end up with craft rooms that have more supplies than the craft store itself!

Yeah, I got all of these that one time I made Timmy a birthday card…

According to statistics on DIY consumers, only 39% of them are partaking in this kind of practice specifically to save money, most of them “being driven to do DIY projects because they feel like they can handle the task and just because the enjoy the work.” How nice is that?

Except for the fact that…

DIY is producing a lot of garbage

This entire do-it-yourself/craft movement was in a way meant to be synonymous with recycling. You’re salvaging items that don’t have a future in your household in their current state/shape/purpose, and give them new life and use. What could be nobler than that?

Except that you’re most likely using a lot of other new materials in order to leverage the old – it’s not like you could use dried-up glue, or moldy fabrics and threads for something that you expect to survive at least until you’ve finished working on it. And for all of those supplies resources have already been spent in sourcing raw materials, chemicals, machinery, design, molds, production, storage, transportation, selling, and any other type of activity that’s part of the economic mechanism required to take something as banal as a teaspoon of oil and turn it into a plastic teaspoon that will hold a teaspoon of oil.

“Quilting” one square mile of toxic cloud at a time

TribLive.com says that “at least one project a year is crafted in about 56% of American households, according to the Craft & Hobby Association, and the industry held steady at nearly $30 billion in annual revenue through the recession, when many other retail sectors declined.”, and that “Etsy.com, an online marketplace for handmade items that said it sold $62.8 million of goods in March.” Can you even grasp how much freakin’ $0.10 cents worth of ribbon needs to be sold and used in order to get to double-digits in billions of dollars? I can’t.

So, in fact, what seemed like a super eco-friendly hobby on your part is gulping up natural resources by the ton and contributing to the same type and probably amount of pollution like any of the store-bought stupid mirror frames that you didn’t want to get because “it’s made in China”. But, at the same time, it’s not a lot better, because you end up spending those resources on garbage like this:

Wanna bet this isn’t an old stinky piece of pipe that you “saved” last time your crapper exploded?

Or this…

Who even likes Bud Light that much?!

Or this…

Is this supposed to be cute? What are you, three?

Or this…

Do people actually have 40 PET bottles lying around or just need an excuse to drink more Diet Coke?

Or this…

Timmy is totally losing his teeth if he shows up with this gem at the school cafeteria

Or this…

If I had that much room in my kitchen, I’d probably afford a table that doesn’t melt when I spill my OJ!

Or this…

Aren’t plastic flowers ugly enough already?

Or even this…

Is there honestly a manual out there on how to make garbage look like garbage?

Indeed there is. Why do I even bother?

To be fair, the fault isn’t entirely yours, because…

DIY creation are usually made by professionals

The Internet is full of DIY fail collections that tickle our self-esteem and unleash the inner Kraken of Schadenfreude – or what in layman terms is called being an asshole. It gives us hope that we shall prevail over our own craft challenges because – we think to ourselves – there’s no way we could fail that bad:

This cake needs an exorcist, not a freakin’ Pinterest page!

However, most of these projects are bound to fail from the very beginning, and not just because they used the wrong tools and supplies all the time – seriously people, how do you expect the end result to look anything like the original example when 9 out of 10 supplies don’t even resemble the ones in the instructions?!

But maybe even that isn’t entirely your fault, since understanding the properties of different types of glue, for example, comes with experience, not to mention matters of aesthetics, proportion, color-coordination and complementarity, which usually require some sort of artistic education.

That’s where a lot of the DIY tutorial creators have a significant advantage over the amateur crafter: they’re interior decorators, graphic designers who have found a niche within the DIY industry, or self-trained artists who have put enough energy and creativity into this hobby and turned it into a lucrative business. The gist is they actually have a knack for it!

It takes hundreds of hours, if not more, of practice to have the kind of control over line drawing that most of these videos show, to handle scissors confidently and turn the simplest of movements into a dance. It probably takes a few good tries at the same project, with different materials to figure out which works best, and most certainly some fails of their own before the right combination is found. It also takes an eye for design that most of us, unfortunately, do not have and most likely don’t have the time to develop, since we’re not planning on building career, but a stupid plastic spoon mirror, or some Bud Light candles, or even a melted crayon painting:

Could it really be that people are this incapable? Of course they are.

Letting go of Peter Pan

The sad truth is that technology and mass-production have robbed us of the simple pleasure of day-to-day tasks where creativity used to be involved in every domestic activity, from sewing a table cloth or a traditional blouse, to sculpting an ax handle out of a tree trunk. What used to be a daily occurrence is now a luxury, and as our artistic contributions to the surrounding world have diminished, so have our skills lost practice, and along with it the joy they used to bring. Have we completely run out of opportunities to express ourselves and satisfy the creative need?

The world is still our oyster, and as art evolves into more of a popular movement than ever, with free software and online courses designed to help us learn and understand more, to grow and find new ways of expressions, DIY stays behind as an unfortunate and polluting hobby. It is a modern-day embodiment of the “Peter Pan Syndrome”, where we, as grown-ups stuck at or repeatedly regressing towards an adolescent emotional level, refuse to put the toys away and try to steal another moment of pure fun and joy. Continuous development is a mantra hummed by HRs like Buddhist monks hum their prayers, and creative thinking is encouraged in any form and shape, as it only should.

But are arts and crafts, a benchmark in the normal development in children, something that we still need to reduce our creative energies to, or are they just a sign of greediness and resource irresponsibility, cementing this idea that we are still just adolescents? And if we claim it isn’t so, are we willing to give the plastic spoon mirror above 5 tries until the spoons are perfectly aligned, to try 4 different types of spray paint to see which brand works better for the kind of plastic used in that spoon, to file each section of decapitated spoon into a flawless edge, until our hideous creation starts looking like a finished product?

And furthermore, are we OK with the added costs, time consumption and subsequent garbage that come with our own experiments?

My prerogative is simple: let go of Peter Pan and allow the grown-up to take over; recycle and upcycle instead of hoarding supplies; put resources (material, time and energy) into things that really matter, and, for crying out loud, if you can’t even paint your nails after you’ve wrapped your leg in Cling wrap and masking tape, just give up on DIY completely:

The best way to do a pedicure is to start from the armpits