Warning: spoilers ahead.

Interviews have been edited for clarity and conciseness. 

On Wednesday, March 26, 2026, the Strand of the Night Theatre’s production of The Seagull, by Anton Chekhov, opened in Moyse Hall. The following evening, I had the opportunity to attend the show and interview the cast; as well as Henry Kemeny-Wodlinger, director and founder of Strand of the Night Theatre. Kemeny-Wodlinger established the theatre company in 2022 to provide young, emerging artists with a platform.

The Seagull takes place at the Sorin estate, where family and friends, many of whom are artists, gather every summer. Over time,  scenes of the quotidian reveal a set of complex relationships and struggles that pose disconcerting questions about what it means to be an artist and a human being. 

“This play, not to be too reductive, is very much about unhappy people,” I began. Kemeny-Wodlinger leaned back and laughed, “But there’s also very much a comedic element to it. So I was wondering how you balance these seemingly contradictory points?”

“The way that Chekhov does unhappy people: they’re very ridiculous. They’re very, very serious about everything they say, and there’s so much passion in everything they say,” replied Kemeny-Wodlinger. He added that on opening night, the audience laughed more than he thought they would at the uncomfortable moments, perhaps purely out of discomfort. Kemeny-Wodlinger elaborated, “[Chekhov] tears down those traditional, uncomfortable or cathartic places. And if it’s an uncomfortable moment, it’s really uncomfortable because there’s a kind of raw violence happening.”

When asked how he got involved in this particular production, Kemeny-Wodlinger recounted his experience with The Seagull, which he had seen for the first time in 2023: “It was the first play that I ever saw where I felt like the characters were saying things that I thought sometimes […] A lot of the characters were artists who were about to go out into the world, about to start making art, and that really connected with me because I feel I’m at the same stage myself. From there, I got really interested in this specific translation of the play [by Simon Stephens].”

As a native Russian speaker who has read the original non-translated text, I was curious about the contemporary nature of the chosen translation. Kemeny-Wodlinger spoke on his choice: “It’s a modern translation set out of time. It’s not really in the original late 19th century, and it’s not extremely modern […] it’s very alive, and it strips away all of the place.” Besides the mention of horses and carriages in Act 2 and Act 4, the play was successful in creating an immersive, timeless setting.

“Some characters dress like they’re from the 80s. Some of them dress like they’re Gen Z. It’s a bit all over the place. And somehow, I feel like it comes together,” said Kemeny-Wodlinger, adding that in working with the costume designer, Sylvia Dai, “there was a certain time period that was the most effective for conveying a character.” This primary focus on the “aesthetic” is evident in Irina’s 50s/60s colorful outfits which are, in my mind, somewhat reminiscent of Emily Gilmore; as well as in Marcia’s 80s leather jacket and emo-inspired look, which ties into the original text’s description of her wearing all black due to her unrequited affection for Konstantin — the protagonist — and detachment from her father Leo (Luca McAndrew). 

What I found especially striking about the costumes was how often they changed.

“There’s 36 costumes in the show, one for each character in each act,” says Kemeny-Wodlinger. In Act 2, the characters all either shed layers of their Act 1 attire or put on lighter summer outfits, corresponding to more emotionally vulnerable scenes where the characters remove some of their mental armor. The one exception is Konstantin (Kit Carleton), a young, struggling playwright who is in love with Nina (Noa De Gasperis), the neighbor who has a difficult home life and dreams of being an actress. Konstantin wears the same outfit for the first three acts of the play: jeans and a trench coat. Perhaps this stagnant wardrobe reflects Konstantin’s inability to adjust his perspectives on life and art until years have passed, when Act 4 is set.

Meanwhile, Nina’s clothes become darker and less carefree as the story and her illicit relationship with Boris (Sam Snyder) — a writer in his forties who is in a relationship with Irina (Celeste Gunnell-Joyce) — progress: she begins with her hair down — clad in delicate white dresses, transitions to a blue and white checkered frock, and finally, in Act 4, dons a black turtleneck, jeans, sneakers, and a trenchcoat, with her hair up in a ponytail. Interestingly, the trenchcoat she wears is Konstantin’s, which, according to the script, he has worn “for the last three years.” Whether this wardrobe choice is meant to imply that Konstantin gave his jacket to her, she took it, or that its meaning is more symbolic of how her mindset has shifted to reflect his more cynical one is not entirely clear. Additionally, the modern sneakers Nina wears hint at a shift away from a stereotypically feminine passivity reflected in her dresses, as she takes charge of her life.

Incidentally, the costumes were certainly not reflective of late 19th-century Russia. The modernization of the text, and the anglicization of character names made the production inherently Chekhovian. Historical context and setting matter quite little in Chekhov’s plays, where the universality of the human experience, and especially human suffering, is foregrounded.

This production excelled at bringing that humanity to each scene and character. Irina, for instance, is a famous middle-aged actress and a blatant egotist. Obsessed with retaining her beautiful, youthful image and celebrity, she constantly sabotages her relationship with her son, Konstantin. While her character is amusing, one would assume by these characteristics that she is villainous; yet, Gunnell-Joyce’s Irina is anything but. There are but a few scenes where Irina explicitly expresses vulnerability or affection, such as when she begs Boris not to leave her for Nina or when she bandages Konstantin’s injured head. Nevertheless, these moments are some of the most powerful. Perhaps even more impactful is how the insecurity and humanity displayed in these scenes are subtly expressed in Irina’s character throughout the play. Even though I was familiar with the characters beforehand, I was still greatly impressed by how difficult it was to hate Gunnell-Joyce’s Irina.

While the play could have opened with a bit more energy, it quickly picked up with Carleton’s powerful opening dialogue. Many characters have striking dialogue, made even more compelling by the actors’ choices. One particularly memorable moment was Boris and Nina’s conversation in Act 2, where, as Kemeny-Wodlinger says, “they each exchange very vulnerable monologues about what they want out of life and their fears.” Boris opens up about his obsessive-compulsive behavior, which taints his work. This neuroticism is brought to life on stage through the physicality of Snyder’s performance. Snyder explained what drew him to this character: “He’s a bit of a tough guy to figure out. He goes through a lot of twists and turns, and there’s some complexity there.”

Shea McDonnell, who plays Hugo, shared a similar sentiment in navigating the intricacies of his character. While McDonnell described Hugo as “a well-established doctor” who displays “arrogance” and “very high self-esteem,” he clarified that Hugo is also “not fully secure inside, [and] could be very anxious about certain things.” This insecurity was most openly displayed in McDonnell’s scenes with Pauline, Marcia’s mother (Naomi Decker). Unhappily married to the estate manager Leo, Pauline has a secret affair with Hugo. McDonnell elaborated on this dynamic: “that really is where those cracks begin to show in his relationship, because he’s a very strait-laced, kind of very clinical person, but his big vice is really sex, and […] every time that she tries to make it more serious, he shuts it down and gets really nervous.” At the end of Act 1, McDonnell also brought this vulnerability to the surface when comforting Marcia (Ellie Mota). 

Even Peter (Griphon Hobby-Ivanovici), the elderly owner of the estate and brother of Irina, whose main role seems to be comic relief, is anything but two-dimensional. As he grapples with old age and regret, I could not help being touched when Hobby-Ivanovici wistfully delivered the line: “I want to live.”

While this is a dialogue-driven play, especially given that Chekhov provided minimal stage directions, some of the most powerful moments are found in its silences. Boris and Nina share multiple searing stares: the first when they initially meet and shake hands for notably longer than necessary; and again in Act 2, standing at opposite ends of the stage after Boris jokingly mocks her. Additionally, Nina gazes out beyond the audience numerous times: in Act 2, for instance, she smiles off into the distance. 

Perhaps most notably, the play is bookended by parallel silent moments. As the play begins, the entire cast walks down the aisles. They freeze in place, spaced out along the rows of seats, and look around at the audience, breaking the fourth wall. Similarly, when Hugo utters the last words of the play, the entire cast, sitting around the dining table on stage, turns their heads to look beyond the audience, falling motionless. This ending’s power is strengthened by the parallel nature of the scene, and its impact is solidified by the meta-quality that rearticulates the play’s themes.

The self-referential aspect of The Seagull is also delved into through the play’s exploration of the human desire to narrativize “disparate events,” as stated in the media release, as well as each of the characters’ unique relationships with art. 

When asked where he stands in relation to the different ideas about art offered in the play, Kemeny-Wodlinger answered that he was not entirely certain, but that he agreed with Konstantin’s sentiment at the end of the play: “I often try to mimic a certain genre or a certain form, but what’s the most powerful to me is something that comes from just deep within that. It just naturally flows out of you as an artist.”

Despite addressing these rather abstract concepts, the production manages to keep the play rooted in a sort of ambiguous reality. The set, designed by Claire Labrecque, plays a big part in this. Vines line the front of the stage, and patches of vegetation sit stage-left up front and stage-right in the back. My personal favorite feature of the set is the plastic pink flamingo that appears amidst the plants at the start of Act 2. The real world seeps in again during Act 4, when rays of sunlight shine through the window of the door Nina enters from stage-left. Though some scenes are set indoors, this natural element remains ever present, perhaps calling on a connection between literal nature and human nature.

Another fascinating element of the set is the shrinking of the stage as the temporary back wall is pushed forward with each act. This choice increasingly adds tension to each subsequent scene while also seeming to signify the claustrophobic oppression many characters experience in the Sorin estate.

The background noise, designed by Kyla Resendes, also plays a big role in the set design. The sounds of unintelligible muttering, chirping birds, running water, and instrumental melodies are interspersed throughout the production; sometimes helping to physically place the characters, sometimes intensifying emotional scenes. 

Another memorable auditory feature of the play was the overlapping conversations heard while characters moved off stage or out of view. In Act 2, the group is heard leaving the Sorin estate, their voices dissipating as they walk further from the stage; and in Act 4, the family is heard once again, eating and laughing in an unseen room stage-right while Konstantin and Nina reunite. The latter scene creates a stark contrast between the happy obliviousness of the off-stage dinner and the emotional turmoil on-stage. Nina’s separation from the bliss beyond the wall is further emphasized when De Gasperis presses her tear-stained face against the door separating her from the meal and Boris, who left her disillusioned but still lovestruck after ending their affair.

From set design and costumes to stage directions and dialogue, the well-thought-out intricacies of the Strand of the Night Theatre’s production of The Seagull combined to create a profound exploration of the human psyche.

The post The Seagull: An Automorphic Play About Art and Humanity appeared first on The McGill Daily.

The above vignette forms the opening scene from Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr. & Carolyn Bessette, FX’s newest show that has quickly become a sensation. Speaking to the public’s enduring infatuation with the couple, it is now the platform’s most watched limited series to date, just a month after its release. The limited series tells the story of America’s reluctant “it couple” of the 1990s. Love Story curates the details of Kennedy Jr. and Bessette’s notoriously guarded relationship. Drawing from friends’ anecdotes and media footage we see Bessette fitting Kennedy Jr. for a suit in the Calvin Klein show room, to a proposal on a boat at Martha’s Vineyard, or a fight in Battery Park where Kennedy Jr. pulled off Bessette’s ring. This collage of moments is depicted in the show, with certain shots taking on the grainy quality and square framing of a ’90s era camera, making the restaging obvious of a moment captured by the press. Other production choices appeal to cultural memory, such as the costuming. The show’s crew went to pains to source archival pieces from Yohji Yamamoto and specific items like a green Valentino coat to evoke the image of Besette’s looks, as seen in paparazzi images.

With the series’ clever blending of fiction and reality, it’s easy to believe the iconic couple’s real relationship is finally being revealed. The chemistry between the two leads (Sarah Pidgeon and Paul Anthony Kelly), close-up shots, warm lighting, and the “behind closed doors” setting develops a captivating intimacy. After watching the first few episodes of the show, I had a feeling of hollowness I couldn’t place. Only to discover, I was mourning the couple’s death, over 25 years later.

The intense public investment which Love Story depends on and re-evokes was significant to Kennedy Jr. and Bessette’s relationship. The public’s adoration and collective grief for his father as well as a life in front of the cameras made John F. Kennedy Jr. America’s son, as well as its most coveted bachelor. Any woman Kennedy Jr. dated was held to high standards by the public. The same went for Bessette, who was put under intense scrutiny by the media. She had claimed the man who belonged to America, and these were the consequences.

Having never been in the public eye, Carolyn Bessette was different from all of the women Kennedy Jr. had previously dated. When the show begins, Kennedy Jr. is still dating actress Daryl Hannah. Hannah is adept at handling the paparazzi, as she poses for a few good pictures to get them to go away. This juxtaposes Bessette, who refuses to give any of herself away to the media. She’s the perfect enigma. Her style is the epitome of minimalism. There are only two clips of her voice that circulate online, each under two seconds long. Her attitude defied the public’s insistence on a stake in her relationship. The tabloids called her an “ice queen.”

As the couple’s relationship got more serious, so too did the American public’s investment. In Love Story, Bessette and Kennedy Jr. are swarmed and harassed by reporters who block the entrance to their apartment upon their return from their honeymoon. A few days later, the couple’s car is climbed on and surrounded by photographers, making them unable to drive away. More and more tabloids speculate about Bessette, commonly circulating rumours about a pregnancy based on her appearance. As a result of the intense media attention on the couple, the scope of Bessette’s world becomes smaller. She quit her job as publicist at Calvin Klein, and began to limit public appearances. Love Story imagines the press as anxiety-inducing for Bessette, with close-up shots of her fidgeting hands and slowed camera flashes across her worried face.

This is referenced in the show’s opening. Bessette is first seen being hounded by the media and nervously conforming her appearance to their expectations. Meanwhile, Kennedy Jr. is introduced on his way out of the offices of his magazine George. In contrast to Bessette, he confidently strides down the halls, undisturbed; followed only by his assistant. This immediately establishes the couple’s differing relationship with the media, showing it as particularly crippling for Bessette.

The aggression of the media in Love Story is particularly striking. In another scene, Bessette is pushed into a car door by a mob of reporters. If this is how Love Story sees the American media of the ’90s, then how does it see itself? This is a fine line for the show to walk. The vicious portrayal of the media invites recognition of Love Story itself as equally aggressive and intrusive. Not to mention, with questionable ethics. Despite providing narrative form and an empathetic lens, the show can be deemed as no less invasive than the ’90s tabloids it scrutinizes.

Love Story dramatizes the inner lives of a couple who were notoriously private, undoubtedly adding to the appeal. Its main character is Carolyn Bessette, a woman who never gave a public interview. However, the show often aligns the viewer with Bessette to develop pathos, focusing on her hesitation and nerves as she meets the Kennedy family and faces the paparazzi for the first time. Viewers are invited to identify with Bessette’s position as an outsider to the life of America’s royalty. “They feel like they know us,” says Jackie Kennedy in the show. Her and Kennedy Jr. sit in her apartment, reflecting on their relationship with the American public. Her statement is immediately uncanny, the show’s staging of this intimate conversation giving it a self-reflexive resonance.

A similar moment speaks to me. In the show’s seventh episode, “Obsession”, Bessette opens up to Kennedy Jr. about her struggles with media attention, admitting that it was much harder to handle than she had thought. Overcome with heaving sobs in Kennedy Jr.’s arms, Bessette relinquishes her strong exterior. It is one of the most heart-breaking and vulnerable moments of the show. As their apartment buzzer sounds, she cries out: “They won’t leave us alone.”

The post Another Doomed Love Story: The American Media & Carolyn Bessette appeared first on The McGill Daily.

The artist was born and raised in Montreal Nord’s vibrant community, which played a role in developing her narrative voice early on, writing intimate and cinematic songs straight from the heart. Armed with unbreakable determination and a pure love for music, Cinzia has amassed a dedicated following, as well as strong streaming numbers throughout the years. She has performed at major festivals including Festivoix, Ottawa Bluesfest, Festival sur le Canal, and St. Roch X. Most recently, she performed at Cafe Campus on March 3.

In late 2025, Cinzia released “When I Think About Us,” followed by “Runner” — both tracks included in the newly released EP, The Wax, which was released on March 20, 2026.

“When I Think About Us” kicks off The Wax with an upbeat tune reminiscing on a love that never could be, in spite of its greatness. On the other hand, “Runner” is a slow introspection of the writer’s unhealthy attachment to emotionally unavailable partners. Both singles pave the way for “Thread,” the latest single Cinzia released before sharing her completed EP. The Daily spoke with Cinzia about The Wax, why “Thread” means so much to her, and what the listener should look out for while listening to her work.

This interview has been edited for clarity and conciseness.

Youmna El Halabi for The McGill Daily (MD): How did the idea of your new EP come to be? Why “The Wax”?

Cinzia: Most of what I do with Cinzia & The Eclipse is based on the magic of the moon and her cycle. The waxing crescent actually begins this Friday so I thought [it would be] a perfect time to take her beauty and [immortalize] it within the music that we’re sharing.

MD: How did you decide that “Thread” would be the lead single?

Cinza: “Thread” is the song that means [more] to me than anything I’ve ever written for myself. There was something extremely cathartic and therapeutic about writing [about] how I really fell to my knees at one point and would’ve done absolutely anything for the person I love. I know people say that, but in that last relationship I really understood what it meant to love someone unconditionally. I saw every scar, every crack, every ounce of heart, hurt, beauty and ugly of this person, even the parts he thought he was hiding, and I have to admit I loved this person. I would’ve quite honestly walked through fire if it came to it. So when we wrote “Thread,” I didn’t even know I was writing about myself and that relationship. I really thought I was just writing a cute little song until I started to piece the lyrics together and be like, “Ohhh, she was me!!”

MD: What was the people’s response to “Thread,” and what are your thoughts on their reactions?

Cinzia: People locked in, which was really incredible. I had people messaging me in tears because of the chorus, which honestly fills me with gratitude because that chorus is truly a beg. You’re begging for someone to stay, that you’ll become whatever they want. I think the music driving those words and the repetitions really captures the anxious state of mind you end up in when you’re so in love and begging someone to stay.

MD: You’ve put out several EPs throughout the years, and I’m guessing with each one there was a unique process that was followed. What was it like for The Wax during production?

Cinzia: To be honest, I was a pain in the ass with this EP. I’ve become really confident in the sound and elements that I want in my music. These songs have evolved into exactly what I want them to be. In the past, I’ve had a little more of a pop sound, but it never spoke to me as an artist, even though everything [producers] Markybeats and Luca did with those songs is absolutely everything. It’s always a great pleasure to work with friends because they understand me without me having to explain [my vision] too deeply, so I’m really grateful for their talent and friendship.

MD: Describe your writing process from inspiration to creating a song.

Cinzia: I don’t know if I have a process. I think it’s just being real, getting in a room, having real conversations and spinning that into cool lyrics and melodies. That’s the beauty of the arts in my opinion. You’re kind of spinning something out of nothing, something you just pulled out of a subconscious place. I think the more in tune you are with yourself and the universe, the easier it is to tap into songwriting and connect with people. We’re in a hub where all thoughts and experiences cross over. That’s why songs can become so relatable! We’re all living some of the same experiences.

MD: What do you hope people get from the album?

Cinzia: Some closure, maybe some spells they can repeat and chant. I hope people have fun with it and get whatever they need at the time they hear it.

MD: What is your favourite part about performing your new songs versus your old ones?

Cinzia: I’m an impulsive person, so doing anything new will always be where a lot of my excitement lies. I also think these songs are the most real and honest I’ve been, so it’s nice to be able to play music that truly resonates with me as a human.

The Wax is available for listening on all platforms. Cinzia & The Eclipse will resume touring on April 26.

The post The Wax Talk appeared first on The McGill Daily.

Anya Kasuri, TVM President and Post-Credits Editor-in-Chief, attended the event dressed in a sparkling gown and touted the magazine’s sole physical copy. The magazine, which she co-founded alongside TVM’s graphics coordinator, Sascha Siddiqui, encourages authors to thoughtfully analyze their favourite films. Kasuri is in her third year, studying International Development with a double minor in Political Science and World Cinemas.

In an interview with The McGill Daily, Kasuri says, “Film is the medium that influences our everyday character and aspirations.” Not only does it influence you, it allows you to understand yourself: “Critiquing film is a social activity, an intellectual engagement, and at its core, is a self-assessment of your values and beliefs…the meaning you derive from it can be really telling of your character too. ”

Her favourite part of the magazine is the graphics: “[Unlike writing, graphics] provide visuals to cinema…to perfectly complement the [article’s] argument. Sascha [Siddiqui], our graphics coordinator, did an incredible job bridging the gap … When I saw the final [magazine] it was her creativity that grounded the writing back to its roots — an appreciation of cinema.”

“Films should always be critically analyzed this way. I feel like that’s a value that I’ve derived from my film classes, particularly with Professor Ara Osterweil,” she replied when asked about the vision behind the magazine. “The process of watching and experiencing a film is not only viewing it, then going home and going to sleep. It’s about watching it with your friends, watching other people, reacting, [and] hearing everyone’s reactions in the crowd. Afterward, [the experience is about] discussing it as you understand it — because when you come out of a movie, you’re not going to know exactly what you have to say; it’s not a fully fleshed-out thought. When you spend time discussing it, you learn more about it.”

The key difference, for Kasuri, between short- and long-form analysis lies in its depth: “[Long-form analysis] offers full fledged evaluations of films’ formal elements: cinematography, mise en scene, visual tone, colour palette, acting, narrative — being able to evaluate that in a longer form analysis lets you see each film individually…and its directors’ vision apart from one another because you get into the depths of each films’ elements’ meaning[s].” To conclude: “It’s a better, more engaging, intellectual, and educational alternative to short-form media.”

However, she notes that many people forget the core of analysis: what the film wants to be. “A lot of people misjudge pieces of media by applying the same expectations to all [of them]. It’s important to judge a film based on what it’s striving to be…they all have different standards of their visual language, their pacing, their acting, their sets,” said Kasuri.

I encountered Elena Degas at a bar table next to the DJ booth, listening intently to the live band. As TVM’s music composer, she wanted to “provide insight from a musical perspective.” Writing to the Daily, she highlighted how the score was integral to the story: “Sinners was by far the film that impacted me most from the last year, and I felt that it was special in the way that the score/music was so integral to the story and the conversations that were happening around the film.”

Degas got her start in film scoring when she watched Euphoria in 2019. The music was what made her love the show; she found that it could tell a poignant story on its own.

Her favourite part of the article she wrote for Post-Credits was her analysis of the use of blues at the centre of Sinners. It gives the viewer insight into the film’s characters and their struggles. Especially the song “Pick Poor Robin Clean,” demonstrates the turn from oppressed to oppressor in Remmick, an Irishman. It opens up a “space for a larger conversation about the history of predominately Black genres of music and how they’ve evolved and continue to live on today.”

From her article: “It is immediately following [the surreal montage] scene when the people in the juke joint are faced with the vampires, who dauntingly perform an upbeat, folk-inspired rendition of ‘Pick Poor Robin Clean’ for the group.” The song is “a blues song that [embodies] someone trying to survive by picking apart and taking everything they can from a dead robin.”

For Degas, “this jolly folk rendition exemplifies the white vampires’ inability to engage empathetically and thoughtfully with the community they are attempting to infiltrate, and recalls a common pattern in genres such as blues and jazz, in which white musicians have historically appropriated and overshadowed Black artists.” Remmick’s positionality is especially striking because of his Irish heritage and experience with colonialism. His desire to completely consume the music is shaped by a selfish desire to preserve it the way he was unable to with his own heritage. However, in doing so, he reproduces colonial violence, with music becoming a tangible symbol of culture.

TVM has allowed Degas to explore her passion for the soundscape of a movie: “Film is now one of the main cornerstones of my life, I have found a huge love for making music for films at TVM, and have found a great community of other film-lovers here; I now plan on attending film school next year for sound design in hopes of a career in film audio/music!”

McGill’s distinct lack of a creative arts programme is no secret. However, student initiatives like Post-Credits Magazine are working to allow student film lovers to think critically about the art they are passionate about.

TVM will be hosting its largest event of the year, FOKUS Film Festival on Thursday, March 26 at Cinema Du Parc. For more information, visit TVM at tvmtelevision.com or @tvm.television on Instagram.

The post TVM Reveals the First Issue of Post-Credits Magazine appeared first on The McGill Daily.

For clarity, “Shakespeare” will be used in reference to playwright William Shakespeare, William to the husband and Agnes will be referred to by her first name.

Inspired by Maggie O’Farrell’s novel of the same name, co- written and directed by Chloe Zhao, the film carries arrives carrying considerable weight. After receiving the Oscar for Best Actress for her role as Agnes Shakespeare, Jessie Buckley is all over the media. Critics have described her performance as “devastating” and called it a “radically feminine take on Shakespeare’s family life” — both of which are true. As Buckley said herself, the role offered her a chance to counter a common narrative about the playwright’s wife — that she had “kept [Shakespeare] back from his genius” — and instead to “give the full landscape of what it is to be a woman.” Despite an impressive performance from Paul Mescal as William Shakespeare, I am of the opinion that Buckley steals the show

Set in 16th-century Warwickshire, the story follows Agnes’ navigation of child loss, the shifting dynamics between parents, and both Agnes and William’s journeys traversing their grief, as William writes the play Hamlet about their deceased son. The film opens with a breathtaking shot: a dense forest canopy, an overhead camera slowly tracking down through the foliage to find Agnes positioned at the base, in a fetal position, alluding to Mother Nature. In this, motherhood immediately takes centre stage.

The costume design sustains this theme throughout the film. She is dressed almost entirely in red, set starkly against the dark greens of the forest and the navy blues of Shakespeare and the children. Colours in the film have symbolic messaging: the bedroom covers shift from orange to blue after Hamnet’s death, signifying the turn from familial joy to grief; and the boy himself wears both orange and blue in the scenes before he dies, subtly distinguishing him from his siblings. When Agnes appears in red again at the final reconciliation, it reads as something quietly triumphant. The cinematography by Łukasz Żal reinforces her centrality at every turn — from prolonged close-ups on her face, to wide shots that place her at the centre of the frame while William Shakespeare recedes behind her.

When William Shakespeare decides to move to London, Zhao makes a poignant directorial decision to keep the camera, and thus the story, with the family that stayed behind, framing Agnes’ encouragement as a genuine, costly sacrifice, rather than a passive acceptance

The two birthing scenes are extraordinary in their contrast. The first has Agnes alone in the forest, gripping the roots of a tree in her red dress, giving life as Mother Nature does: in solitude, and in pain. The second, set at home, is stripped of any musical score, the silence making it almost unbearable. The film’s treatment of motherhood is among its most striking qualities. The solidarity between women across generations receives equal care in its portrayal: Agnes’ stepmother’s support during the birth of the twins, the quiet “you can and you will,” and the flashbacks of Agnes as a child having lost losing her own mother to childbirth. Her cry “I want my mum” is one of the rawest lines in the film.

Shakespeare’s absence at the moment of Hamnet’s death is handled with the same weight: the later line, “you should’ve been there,” lands with quiet devastation. Furthermore, Jacobi Jupe, who plays young Hamnet, deserves serious recognition. The farewell scene between Hamnet and William is shot with remarkable composition: an expansive wide angle shot that almost divides the frame between them, both turning back to look at each other laughing, unwilling to leave after saying goodbye.

Hamnet’s death scene devastated the entire cinema. It is rendered with an almost expressionistic, poetic quality: the boy walking away into death, surrounded by painted trees that echo the forest of the movie’s opening scene, the circle of his life quietly closing. The line “I’ll be brave,” delivered with tears barely held back, by candlelight and with Max Richter’s score beneath it, is the film’s emotional peak.

There are moments that feel overly indulgent. The close-up staging of the “To be or not to be” soliloquy, although brilliantly performed by Mescal, disrupts the narrative momentum and feels like a gesture toward theatre enthusiasts rather than something the film has earned. It felt like an attempt to anchor this loose adaptation back to canonical Shakespeare. The final scene also overstays its welcome, the sustained violins drawing out emotion that has already been fully brought out.

As Peter Bradshaw has noted for The Guardian, “on one level, the narrative is a fallacious misreading,” relying heavily on a name coincidence that could be simply that. But he is equally right that it represents a “thrilling act of creative audacity, reaching back through the centuries to embrace Shakespeare and Agnes as human beings.” That is the film’s genuine achievement. It is a story about grief, parenthood and ultimately the unheard characters behind one of the most recognized plays ever written.

The post Review: Hamnet, The Retelling of a Lost Figure appeared first on The McGill Daily.

Make no mistake, fanfiction has always existed in mainstream spaces. More romance novels tha you might think are actually Rey/Kylo Ren fanfiction disguised by unsubtle name changes and superficial editing. Fifty Shades of Grey started off as a Twilight fanfiction. Even the Game Changers series (you might know it better as the books from which Heated Rivalry was adapted) is rumoured to have been a “stucky hockey au” [Marvel fanfiction of Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes]. The current problem comes from the shift away from bottom-up decision-making to top-down, from authors deciding to monetize their work to publishing corporations asking for it. Most of all, the problem is the visibility that comes with it, which opens up fandoms to potential outside threats, like angry authors or toxic
nternet users.

Capitalism…
The best thing about fanfiction is that it is a gift from the author to the reader. The first unspoken rule when entering online fandom communities is to respect and appreciate the work that is done. Fanfiction authors write for free in their own time, during their very (infamously so) busy lives. Maybe the story is bad, and the grammar non-existent; there might be no punctuation, or capital letters every three words, but it was written by someone who was passionate and experimenting, and it is frowned upon to criticize them for it.

To someone who has only experienced mainstream online spaces, smaller fandoms can be extremely welcoming. There is a reason for that, (weirdos sticking together if you want to be sappy, but, from a more cynical and realistic point of view): compensation — or the lack thereof. The basis for most of the discourse opposing disparaging comments is that fanfiction writing is a hobby shared out of the goodness of one’s heart. No one owes anyone anything, and one only needs to be kind in return. Yet now, a precedent has been set; money has entered the equation. If once is happenstance and twice a coincidence, it only needs to happen again for money to become enemy action, to become a pattern. And who knows how this new business model will impact the community’s ethos of mutual respect.

But, why are publishing companies picking up fanfiction? The answer — it might surprise you — is also money. Fanfiction, even scrubbed of every trace of the original world and characters, still offers the enormous advantage of a built-in audience, thus guaranteeing automatic return on investment. Fans familiar with the work will buy it, and people, morbidly curious, having heard of the story and its origins by word of mouth, will want to get a glimpse.

A risk for the Harry Potter fandom

It is a truth universally acknowledged that if the original author can no longer maintain plausible deniability about fandom activity, bad things happen. Although a lot of authors, such as George R. R. Martin, operate under a kind of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy regarding fanfiction, others like Anne Rice are not so kind. The author of Interview with the Vampire is infamous in fandom circles for threatening to sue fanfiction writers and going so far as to send a cease-and-desist letter to Fanfiction.net, asking them to remove everything related to her work.

The risk of dragging Harry Potter fan-created content into the mainstream is that it might force a confrontation with the author. As of yet, there have been no such incidents, but how long will that peace last? There has rarely been a fandom with so much genuine, blinding hatred for the original author as the Harry Potter fandom. Most of the time, hate geared towards the original creators of works comes from disappointment with the source material: the ending of Game of Thrones, the blatant queer-baiting in Netflix’s Wednesday, or Veronica Mars’ entire fourth season. People hate the directors for the choices they made. Meanwhile, Harry Potter fans hate J.K. Rowling for personal and political reasons, and that hatred runs deep.

J.K. Rowling’s views about the LGBTQ+ community are very problematic, and if there is one thing to know about fandom, it is that it is queer. Writing fanfiction is not just teenage girls shipping male characters. It’s marginalized audiences reappropriating symbols and characters. It’s incorporating queer themes into originally cis heterosexual media, creating trans plotlines, and discussing internalized homophobia, intersectionality, and the intricacies of consent. Rowling has, historically and with great emphasis, denigrated such social issues. It raises concerns about her potential reaction to an army of fans who curse the ground she walks on. Will she continue to close her eyes and allow fandom communities to operate? That seems like a best-case scenario, but far from the only one. Rowling can decide to co-opt the more supportive and ‘acceptable’ branches of the movement, or even retaliate and wreak destruction on a scale only permissible to billionaires like herself.

Outsiders looking in
Original content creators, authors, and directors are not the only threat that heightened visibility brings to fandom. A more insidious, though no less dangerous one is judgmental internet users who feel entitled to fandom spaces, and refuse to adapt to these spaces’ rules and culture despite having chosen to enter them. Fandom spaces are being forcefully gentrified by individuals who refuse to interact with the more alternative parts of the community. Most people know that fandom is weird, but they don’t really understand it. How are you supposed to explain “Dead Dove, Do Not Eat” to someone who’s never heard of it before? People might like the cute couple or the hot, slightly-but-not-too-problematic relationships, but they might not necessarily be prepared for works that go beyond what is usually socially acceptable.

This is not new: it is happening – and has been for a while – to the fandom and LGBTQ+ communities as a whole. Who is the most relevant? The most marketable? Such debates arise as people discuss the inclusion (or exclusion) of more marginalized sub-groups. Hence, internal hierarchies are created and certain groups deemed ‘other’ by the broader community and audience. In queer circles, underground practices like BDSM get slapped with the label of “sexually deviant” and are excluded from some queer spaces they’d historically been a part of.

Fandoms — fanfiction maybe especially — are close to such subcultures and might face the same progressive sanitisation if shoved to the center stage. When something exists as a subculture, it is easy for it to be more diverse because everyone is equally threatened by the public majority. In recent times, fandoms have grown more visible and attractive; yet only certain facets of them are deemed appropriate to the mainstream public. This can have a negative impact on its internal dynamics, based on trust and respect, as newcomers become influenced by public discourse or are simply ignorant of the community’s culture. Hence, safe spaces previously designed for marginalized communities to exist and thrive are gentrified, becoming another pawn from which capitalist entities can profit.

The post The Gentrification of Online Fandom Spaces appeared first on The McGill Daily.

What does “home” mean to you? 

Is it a person? Where you have lived for decades? Where you were born? 

And what if home was something you could not return to, but carry with you always? 

Such is the sentiment of Yasmeen, “Yas” Kanaan’s most recent exhibition, Carrying Home. Through her art, Kanaan recounted a beautiful story of belonging, the passing down of culture, and resistance. She derives stylistic inspiration from renowned Palestinian artists like the late Ismail Shammout and Sliman Mansour.

This interview has been edited for clarity and conciseness. 

The Daily spoke to Kanaan about her exhibition’s theme: “For me, art is a form of culture. And culture is a form of preserving identity, and preserving identity is a form of resistance against oppression. So basically, art is my tool and that’s how I chose the theme for this exhibition.” 

Kanaan is a Palestinian artist with a bachelor’s degree in Visual Arts from the University of Jordan and a master’s degree in Art History from Concordia University. From a very early age, she learned to conceptualize and express her feelings on a canvas. She admired artists like Palestinian political cartoonist, Naji al Ali, best known for his famous caricature Handalah; Kanaan’s patriotism for Palestine drew the attention of her high school teacher. 

“When I was very young, my passion used to come out as anger, and frustration,” she says. “And then I had a teacher, a genuinely good teacher, the type that changes your life, who told me that passion without direction is kind of useless. He taught me how to turn my passion into an educational tool, into something useful for society. And that’s when I unlocked, and started thinking how can art be used as a way to tell a story?” 

After graduating from Concordia University, Kanaan worked as an art historian for six years before applying herself to painting again. 

“Being an art historian and art curator takes me down a different path, and gives me a different perspective on the arts than being an artist,” she says. [But] “ I still have so much to offer as an artist. So I chose to go back to it. And the first painting that I did is the watermelon piece.” 

Long live the Watermelon (2025) is one of the pieces featured in Carrying Home. It shows two watermelons, one cut up in 3 different pieces, ready to be served, and another ripe for the taking, with a beautiful background showcasing embroidery patterns that are anything but random. These patterns are inspired by Kanaan’s mother’s Palestinian embroidery designs, called tatreez, which was the artist’s first love. It was her way of incorporating the importance of passing down heritage and culture, as well as preserving memory – the core themes of her exhibition. 

“My heritage and my art were never separated,” she says. “That’s kind of my automatic identity. 
Every single element in my pieces is part of my everyday life. Even the embroidery pieces, they’re reminiscent of my mother’s jacket that I wear.” Another example Kanaan cites is the frame piece, which she calls “the most important art piece in the exhibit.” “There’s nothing inside it, and it’s over like 60 years old and lived through different exiles from different cities. It was with my family during the Naksa, [also known as the Six Days War of 1967, and] now in Montreal. So, this is part of my identity. It’s carrying home.”  

The theme was also heavily inspired by Palestinian writer Ghassan Kanafani’s novel, Return to Haifa, which dealt with questions centering around the idea and definition of home. 

“What is home?” Kanaan asks. “Is it the table that’s been there for so many years that became part of the furniture of the house? Is it the language? What is the concept of a home? What is [its definition]? The answer in the book is ‘the will.’ It had an impact on me because I’m also a traveller. Wherever I go, I have my baggage, my home is my bag…It’s no longer a physical place. It’s a collection of traditions, values, recipes, clothing and embroidery, altogether in a bag.”

To be featured in the 11th edition of Montreal’s Filministes Festival was very significant to Kanaan. 

The Filministes Festival is an annual film festival organizing discussions on contemporary feminist issues in Montreal through the screening of cinematographic works, which began in 2015. The festival promotes films and directors from here and abroad, while creating spaces for discussion and reflection for audiences of all kinds. Ultimately, its specificity lies in bridging feminism and cinema.

“This feminist festival is really going for it, and is supportive of otherwise controversial topics,” Kanaan says, “especially in the current context and political climate, where there’s so much anti-immigrant hate. There’s currently a lot of people and policies fueling hate against Arabs [and] Muslims. But the people that I worked with at the festival are very supportive, alhamdulillah.”

“I feel like a lot of feminists like to carry the idea of feminism without actually incorporating the values,” Kanaan continues. “It’s become like a commercial motto for a lot of women because it doesn’t make sense for someone to be a feminist and not take into account causes like the genocide in Sudan, or in Palestine, yet defend someone like Taylor Swift. When it comes to justice, they forget all about feminism. For me, it’s very feminist of me to choose the topic of Palestinian identity as a woman. And even if I wasn’t a woman. I think the cause of Palestine should be directly affiliated with feminism.” 

The Festival Filministes opened its doors from March 4 to March 14, with Carrying Home available for viewing from opening night to March 9. 

For any and all future exhibitions by Yas Kanaan, you can follow her Instagram page for updates. 

The post Carrying Home everywhere she goes appeared first on The McGill Daily.

The Golden Village by Karen Cho had its Montreal premiere on February 25th at Cinema du Parc. The 33-minute film, Cho’s most recent work, takes us to Richmond, BC, and the Asian-themed plaza malls and shopping centers that have appeared alongside the massive demographic shift in the area in the last few decades. The event was presented by EYESTEEL and the Jia Foundation, and included a discussion panel with the director Karen Cho, the cinematographer Joshua Frank, and other crew members. 

The Golden Village shows a series of vignettes, diving into the vibrant lives of shop-owners and customers in the distinctly Asian Richmond district. Graded with bright colors, the film expressively portrays the small joys and moments of community in the microcosm of Asian malls. The opening scene where a group of scouts are at a Buddhist temple sets the tone for the film’s theme of space and home-making. Asian communities in The Golden Village are creating intimate communal places in an ever-changing and ever-globalizing landscape, merging their culture and commerce to bring a piece of Asia to North America. 

The lovely people followed by the film give insight into the unique micro-society that breathes life into Richmond malls. The Chinese radio station broadcasters joking about using old single socks as rags drew laughs from the audience, and the egg waffle granny captured hearts. Other characters that stood out were the influencer who started a religion for luosifen, an iconic Chinese noodle dish, the elders who practised aerobic exercises  in the middle of the shopping center, and the TikTok-famous Chef James. By centering the ordinary everyday lives of these individuals, the film uncovers heart-warming stories and completely immerses the audience in the cultural connections and atmosphere portrayed on the screen. 

The Golden Village is especially captivating in the ways it contrasts with Cho’s 2022 documentary, Big Fights in Little Chinatown. Where Big Fights in Little Chinatown is about the struggles and resistance of ethnic minorities against historical erasure and gentrification, The Golden Village instead depicts a new reality for Chinese and Asian immigrants in North American suburbs. During the Q&A panel, Cho explained that she had originally planned to include scenes of modern Asian-themed malls in Big Fights in Little Chinatown. The footage would have argued for the inauthenticity of the “new suburban Chinatown[s]” as a place of commerce and transactionality, as opposed to the historical, long-standing Chinatowns who were fighting to preserve their heritage. The idea was scratched when she found these suburban malls were far from artificial displays of culture; rather, they were places full of life and community, with their own stories to tell. From there, The Golden Village was born. 

Focusing on the “contemporary Chinatown” highlights the experience of newer Asian immigrants living in North American suburbs, refreshingly showcasing  how migrant communities put down roots in their new countries of residence. The increase in the sheer number of members from the Chinese diaspora in Richmond has preceded a cultural shift: being Chinese, or Asian, is no longer a risk, it is cultural capital. As opposed to older generations, who had to fight for their place on an unfamiliar land, adapt to a new culture, and cater to their Western peers and demographics to fit in, newer generations are freed from that burden. 

In fact, while old Chinatowns located in city centers are facing gentrification, the Asian character of businesses in Richmond are actually highly beneficial. As Cho explained during the Q&A panel, revamping the struggling shopping centers to cater to the majority Asian customer base in the area saved them from having to close their doors. The agglomeration of the Asian diaspora in Richmond hence enabled an unapologetic display of their authentic culture as the community became present in large enough numbers to back it up. The immersive footage of the malls in The Golden Village gave the impression of entering a third space separate from the outside: from the uncles singing karaoke in the food court to the footage of traditional Lunar New Year celebrations and lion dances, it felt like a piece of modern everyday life in Asia had been transported to the West. 

The cultural power new migrants possess also allows for innovations that reverse the status quo. For instance, the Richmond night market, which appeared in the film, is one of the largest open air markets in the world, and is a famous tourist attraction. Asian culture in the contemporary Chinatown, or Asian District, can therefore be desirable and empowering, breaking away from the feelings of inferiority or shame older generations might have had to deal with. 
All in all, The Golden Village is a charming and light-hearted watch, telling of hope and community. The vibrant colors of the footage align with the endearing personalities viewers encounter throughout the film, pulling them into the ordinary yet moving everyday stories that take place in the Asian malls in the Richmond suburbs of BC. Although short and simple, the film transmits a heart-warming feeling of belonging amongst diasporic communities, and reminds us to appreciate every joyful moment or interaction no matter how seemingly quotidian.

The post The Golden Village: Home Making in the Microcosm of Asian Malls appeared first on The McGill Daily.

In class over the past few months, we have examined the backlash modern artists received for going against the grain — the “grain” being the expectations set by the Art Academy, the Salon where they would show their work, their audience, and, of course, critics. Modern artists like Manet, who portrayed purely modern scenes without conforming to the “grain,” provoked viewership fury. French critic of the time, Émile Zola, argued in an essay titled “Édouard Manet”, originally published in 1867, that public outrage simply reveals how tightly audiences cling to expectations of what art ought to resemble. The public, up until this point, had maintained neoclassical values in art: to flatter, narrate, and moralize. Manet refused all three of those familiar imperatives by producing art that felt uncomfortable and bluntly new — a choice that is now heavily applauded. True art, a point Zola returns to time and time again, does not come from a desire to conform to norms or follow the “grain” but from individual temperament and personal vision. 

Nearly two centuries later and across the Atlantic, my girlfriends and I visited the Cineplex on Rue Sainte Catherine to watch Emerald Fennell’s 2026 “Galentines” adaptation of “Wuthering Heights”. The reaction to the film was generally varied. Some praised it, while lovers of the novel jumped to Twitter and Reddit to vent their anger over yet another inaccurate adaptation. To give credit to these bibliophiles, Fennell abandons many of the themes that make this story so impactful by portraying a narrative based on her initial impression of the book as a 14-year-old girl. In depicting this youthful interpretation, Fennell centres the film around a glorified toxic romance between Catherine and Heathcliff. Frustrated viewers were appalled at Fennell’s tone-deafness in foregrounding obsessive love while sidestepping and softening the harsher themes of the novel, particularly those pertaining to Heathcliff’s racial marginalization and the systemic class violence in the setting. 

In reading tweets alleging the film’s negligence, just as I did in December when choosing my winter semester electives, I turned to modern art history. Two hundred years apart, both Manet and Fennell have something in common: they’ve both committed to their personal visions and rejected traditional expectations. Manet counters aesthetic norms and produces art that depicts the tensions of modern life in a way that is truthful to himself. Similarly, Fennell abandons the expectation that adaptations be reflective of their source material to create a film rooted in her own experience, a decision Zola might have applauded. Whether or not you enjoy or even “agree with” either of these artist’s work, they both made the choice to commit to their personal truths and abandon external expectations. In practicing artistic autonomy, they choose their own temperament as an anchor in their work. 

If these two artists are correct and individual temperament is the “True North” of art, it leads us to question: are there traditions or expectations that artists must uphold, or is personal vision all that truly matters? Between these contexts, “tradition” is understood very differently. For Manet, “traditions” are expectations set by the Art Academy surrounding what defines academically valid (and objectively good) art. For Fennell, “tradition” underlines the source material from which she draws her film: Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights. Both these artists abandon tradition in their works, making audiences question: where is the line drawn between artistic autonomy and deviations from tradition? 

In deviating from tradition, one can question the difference between innovation and avoidance. 

If artists do have a responsibility to uphold a certain tradition, both Manet and Fennell have failed to do so. Yet we celebrate Manet as a transformative turning point in modern art history. Why? In my opinion, it is because Manet’s work denies the comfort of ignorance and bluntly presents his audiences with uncomfortable social realities, forcing them to analyze their own lives through his work. In contrast, Fennell’s Wuthering Heights does exactly the opposite. While she also deviates from “tradition”, she does so by refusing to inherit the uncomfortable and darker themes of the novel. She allows her audiences to find comfort in the avoidance of difficult themes surrounding the intersection of violence, race, and class. If Manet makes audiences question how closely art should adhere to academic standards, Fennell forces them to question how much personal vision we are willing to accept in interpretations of classic narratives. 

In some cases, we respond well to moving away from tradition when artists depict their personal visions because it feels honest and revealing, confronting you with art rooted in social reality. This is what Manet did in pulling at the seams of academic art to reveal true modern life. On the other side of the coin, moving away from tradition can feel dishonest if viewers don’t feel it is rooted in these social truths — the very social truths that made Emily Brontë’s novel so impactful in the first place. 

Now, as I wrap up this article in my student apartment a few streets from campus, I have to conclude that this argument is somewhat of an open-ended question. I think that is because there is no universal line that separates avoidance from innovation in art. That line is unstable by design, and artists have always toed it by pushing their own personal vision forward while balancing a respect for tradition. Perhaps this tension is what produces great art. That being said, in my art history class, we are still marveling at Manet’s impact on the evolution of modern art two centuries later. But as I left the Cineplex on Sainte Catherine after seeing Fennell’s Wuthering Heights, I got the impression that this particular adaptation might not make it onto the syllabus of a film class in another two hundred years. 

The post “Wuthering Heights” and Modern Art History: A Niche Venn Diagram appeared first on The McGill Daily.

According to the CBC, 130 Palestinian students admitted to Canadian universities cannot enter Canada due to related administrative barriers. Empty Seats includes written testimonies from four out of five Palestinian scholars admitted to McGill but are currently in bureaucratic limbo, unable to enter Canada; as well as testimonies from McGill faculty members and students expressing solidarity with these Palestinian students. It also includes concrete calls to action.

The project was kickstarted by an article written by Calame and Delafoulhouse in October 2025. The piece, which included interviews with McGill’s Palestinian scholars and members of the Palestinian Scholars and Students At Risk (PSSAR) organization, highlighted the bureaucratic barriers that keep admitted Palestinian scholars from attending on-site school in Montreal. The PSSAR identifies Palestinian scholars and connects them to academic opportunities in Canada. Upon the article’s publication, Associate Professor of Anthropology Diana Allan, who is also the acting faculty liaison for PSSAR at McGill, proposed broadening the project scope to better uncover and uplift these students’ circumstances in hopes of changing them. Subsequently, Professor Allan hosted a zine-making workshop in collaboration with media-maker and activist Stefan Christoff as an extra-credit opportunity for her classes, with interested students encouraged to participate in the zine’s creation. Thus, Empty Seats was born.

The zine format, commonly used for social justice, welcomes academic writing while also centering other valuable sources of knowledge like testimonies, interviews, and artworks. It is also remarkably collaborative and approachable, which was imperative for engaging students regardless of their background and experience in organizing and activism. 

“It was a very McGill student-centred project,” says Louise Deroi, one of Empty Seats’ student organizers, in correspondence with The McGill Daily. Voluntary testimonies were collected from McGill students via a Google Form disseminated via social media and word of mouth, with respondents ranging across year groups and faculties. “A common theme expressed in the [student] testimonies was the disillusionment of and anger at attending a university that doesn’t do more for these students who, despite having submitted an excellent application and having been admitted, have the world pitted against them, which prevents them from being here. Putting the testimonies of the Palestinian scholars and other students and activists side by side shows the [Palestinian] students that they’re not alone; that there’s a community backing them up that desperately wants them to make it and is willing to mobilize for that.” 

At the zine launch, the team screened video testimonies by Palestinian scholars Shereen and Majd (last names not given), who were respectively admitted to McGill’s Master’s programs in Neuroscience and Computer Science but remain in Gaza due to multiple barriers preventing them from receiving their visas. Biometrics, a key component of the Canadian visa application, cannot be obtained in Gaza, meaning that individuals seeking them must travel through the Rafah crossing to neighbouring West Bank or Egyptian territories to do so. However, the Rafah crossing has been closed since May 2024, making it extremely difficult for these students to fulfill the necessary steps for their visa application without external intervention.

However, in the last few years, nations like France, the United Kingdom and Ireland have enabled Palestinian students to complete their visa processes through various means, from evacuating them to neighbouring countries like Jordan to creating streamlined bureaucratic pathways. Historically, Canada has also proved itself flexible by making concessions for individuals in extenuating circumstances during the visa application process. For instance, applications for the Canada-Ukraine Authorization for Emergency Travel (CUAET) visa, temporary emergency visas which were issued to families and individuals fleeing Ukraine, waived the requirement of medical examinations and COVID-19 vaccinations. 

At the institutional level, McGill belongs to lobbying bodies like U15 with mandates that encourage international talent and scholarship to drive Canada’s innovation. Moreover, McGill, registered as an active in-house lobbyist in Ottawa, meets regularly with Canadian government officials to discuss a host of notable issues including immigration. “It’s hard to access the content of these meetings, but we want to make sure that McGill is using all of its political power to make sure these students make it [to Canada],” states Deroi.

The zine’s launch hopes to spark a larger national movement to bring Palestinian scholars to Canada by pressuring the IRCC to expedite their VISA processes. “This is a Canadian issue, and is much bigger than McGill,” affirms Deroi. “Eventually, it would be amazing if other universities wanted to replicate the zine format and the project.” 

McGill students can follow the Critical Media Lab to receive updates about the Empty Seats project and other follow-up events currently in the works. In addition to staying informed about Empty Seats, Deroi encourages students to get involved in the other various forms of on-campus activism pertaining to the Palestinian genocide. “Seeing these issues as interconnected and knowing that there are many different approaches to activism in support of Palestinians is very important.”

Copies of Empty Seats can be found at Cinema Politica. Any further inquiries can be directed to mcgillemptyseats@gmail.com.

The post Taking Attendance for Empty Seats appeared first on The McGill Daily.

The line between performance and identity has become increasingly blurred in music. Be it EsDeeKid’s carefully hidden persona or Gorillaz’s quarter-century of lore, artists now construct themselves as deliberately as they write songs. Every physical action and digital trace carries a magnitude of importance. Optics are king, and a misstep could spell the end of an artist’s career.

Singer-songwriter Phil Elverum, talking to the Daily from his home studio in Anacortes, Washington, USA, has noticed this modern obsession with a carefully crafted image. “I think it’s an expression of what’s happening in the culture at large,” he says, gesturing for emphasis. “Everyone on social media is always performing for their followers, so everyone is used to putting on a face and presenting themselves in an idealized way.”

The goal of “perfect” performance is not restricted to social media or mainstream artists. “I think that it’s even finding expression in independent music,” Elverum adds. 

Performing as The Microphones and Mount Eerie, Elverum leans into lo-fi production, recording many songs with analog tape recorders and sparse acoustic arrangements. From hellish sound collages to delicate love stories, his music exudes vulnerability. The result is an intimate sonic landscape listeners can immerse themselves in.

Having released more than 40 records since the 1990s, with standouts like The Glow Pt. 2 shaping the independent scene, Elverum is no stranger to the pressures of presentation. Like many public figures, he holds his actions in high regard — but rather than chasing flawlessness, he actively avoids it. “People forgot that human touch is so important,” says Elverum, who is known for manning his own merchandise booth when on tour. 

Still, his goal of showcasing imperfection is most evident in his music. “My mind was formed in the era where sloppiness and imperfection were important to feature prominently,” Elverum says. His musical identity is shaped by Seattle’s grunge scene, which he describes as “raw and imperfect.” That era of music was not burdened by today’s technology, a development which tends to eliminate the mistakes and human touch that make recording music so special in the first place. 

Hence, the contrast between Elverum’s sound and the majority of today’s new music is evident. 

“I’m weirded out by how clean everything sounds. Also, people’s singing is so pretty.” He laughs, flashing a wide grin. “What’s up with that?”

Our algorithm-driven world is relentless in its crusade to force individuals into fixed boxes. Whether it’s new technology or the latest viral trends, the pressure to conform to social pressures seems unavoidable. In this day and age, a student showing up to class in skinny jeans would likely face judgement from classmates — even though the opposite might have been true ten years ago. Elverum faces a similar dilemma. Instead of skinny jeans in a room of straight-cut or bootleg denim, he arrives at a technically faultless musical landscape armed with uneven vocals and untamed instrumentals.

How has he resisted the expectations of conformity from the music industry, remaining aligned with his north star of imperfection? “I’ve just been careful to maintain my own weird little corner off to the side [and] to not really participate in the music industry as a whole in a way that feels like it’s beyond me,” Elverum explains.

His independence, facilitated through his own label P.W. Elverum & Sun, allows him to release and sell his work on his own terms. 

“I don’t work with other labels, I’m small, so I’m free and liberated to just do whatever I want. Also, I don’t really follow music very well, so I don’t even know what the expectations would be… I know how to do one thing, and that’s just what I do. If I were to try to do something that would be well-received or cool, it would be embarrassing and it would not work.”

The authenticity with which Elverum pursues his craft is poignant. Despite the talent and influence he has accumulated, he has not abandoned his ethos of imperfection for a path that almost certainly would have brought more commercial and financial success. 

At his essence, Elverum is an artist, and while he may continue to ponder the mysteries of human existence through his music, one thing he does not question is the importance of making art. “My ideal is to be engaged with some kind of art practice. Whatever it is, if it’s music or something else, I don’t know,” Elverum says.

“That’s who I am. That’s who I want to be. That’s the life I want to live, until I die.”

The post Phil Elverum on the Power of Imperfection appeared first on The McGill Daily.

Founded in 2019, the journal published in the spring of that year before taking a hiatus from 2021 to 2024 due to pandemic constraints. However, in the spring of 2025, it was revived with the theme “Beyond The Single Story: Africa’s Diaspora and Diverse Realities.” The 2025 edition includes a gallery-esque exhibition complete with readings of poetry, artworks, and authentic Ghanaian food. This year’s edition of the journal will centre around the theme “Afrofuturism: Envisioning The Futures We Create.”

For our Black History Month issue, The McGill Daily spoke with ASSA President Zahra Hassan Doualeh, ASSA VP Academic Henry Maidoh, and ASSA VP External and UHURU Editor-in-Chief Shanna Coulanges. We discussed UHURU’s role in shifting the needle on African narratives, and their greater hopes for the journal as part of a larger vision of Afrofuturism.

This interview has been edited for conciseness and clarity.

Isabelle Lim for The McGill Daily (MD): Tell me about ASSA and the work you do as an academic student organization.

Henry Maidoh (HM): We are an undergraduate association aiming to elevate the African Studies program and department. We foster connectivity between African Studies students and their professors, and raise general student body awareness of the program and its various curricular and extra-curricular opportunities.

Zahra Hassan Doualeh (ZHD): As members, we sit on committees with the African Studies faculty that inform the faculty members and the administration how the program can be improved and what students want to see more of. That is what we do more on the academic level.

MD: McGill is one of the few universities in Canada with a unique African Studies program. How do you think the African Studies option is valuable, and how do you think current programming could be diversified or improved?

ZHD: I think McGill has this specific advantage of being an English institution in a majority French-speaking province. That linguistic aspect puts it in a very advantageous position, considering that a lot of the African population of Montreal is from North Africa; while a lot of African scholarship focuses on sub-Saharan Africa, which is mostly English-speaking. McGill is informed by both languages as it has bilingual scholars and faculty members with experience in different parts of Africa. Uniting these two creates something that’s never been done before, which is where our strength lies.

Afrofuturism is not just about innovation, technology, and startups. It is also about looking inwards. It’s about historical imagination, and Pan-Africanism is a big part of that. We are a collective. There would never be us without each and every single one of us, you know? That’s why I think the work being done at McGill is unlike any other institution.

HM: In general, we want to give students the ability to engage with African literature and elevate their own experiences with African realities not only localized to the continent, but also pertaining to the African diaspora and relevant global communities. While a lot of the content in the African Studies program is very valuable, I don’t feel like it’s as forward-thinking as it could be. While you can’t know the future without knowing the history, I still believe having more courses centred on the now and the future [would be valuable] for youths to apply that knowledge to the present. The future is Africa, after all.

MD: The theme for UHURU’s 2026 edition is “Afrofuturism: Envisioning the Futures We Create.” What was the thought process behind the theme? Compared to last year’s, which focused on individual narratives, how did you choose to widen the scope from the narrative to the collective?

Shanna Coulanges (SC): I’m especially drawn to the second part of the title: Envisioning the Futures We Create. It carries a deeply mobilizing force, one that calls on all of us to imagine and actively build [into being] what has yet to come. Too often, Africa has been framed through narratives of reduction and constraint, as we explored last year. This year, we open a new conversation, one without limits or restraint. Ultimately, we hope this issue stands as a testament to ambition, boldness, and creativity, an invitation to learn, explore, and give form to futures not yet uncovered.

ZHD: When you look at the themes, they’re sort of a continuation of one another. We started by going against reductive narratives. Now, Afrofuturism is about showing [our] potential and everything that is being done. If you perceive it that way, it is like a timeline. So who knows what next year’s [theme] is going to be?

MD: UHURU uniquely welcomes both research and creative submissions. What narratives do you hope to uplift with this approach?

HM: Well, with a name like UHURU, who do we leave out of freedom?

ZHD: Accepting artworks is part of decolonizing scholarship. There are many kinds of expertise, and many ways of sharing that. A lot of our stories cannot simply be told through the rigid framework of a scholarly article.

SC: It’s about transcending the frontiers of communicating a powerful message. UHURU has, in my opinion, a dual mandate: to provide a space for Afro-descendant voices to be heard, but more importantly, to narrate plural & unapologetic experiences of Africa & Africans. Allowing for creative submissions is not motivated by a simple whim to add colour, but by the desire to provide a new layer of depth, understanding, and ways of perceiving the reality of the African continent.

MD: This year, UHURU is collaborating with other Black and African organizations as part of the journal’s outreach. Tell me more about those collaborations as well as how those tie into your aforementioned mission of elevating Pan-African experiences.

HM: We’re building a lot of partnerships at the moment. We have one with Sayaspora, which works on giving more African women and girls opportunities, which really coincides with UHURU’s project. We’ve also been able to get involved with the Black Law Students’ Association (BLSA) and the IDSSA’s Candid conversations podcast [interviewer’s note: episode still pending] to speak on behalf of UHURU. Notably, the McGill marketing team contacted us for an article, which appeared on their newsletter, which is sent out to everyone, and on their news page. That was huge.

There’s more to come, for sure. I love the fact that we’re able to engage with multiple like-minded organisations and groups to show that it’s possible to start an initiative that’s focused on Black and African students.

MD: In this sense, do you think that UHURU has transcended its status as a student journal to encompass something larger?

HM: For sure. The journal was a foundation for bringing more awareness to African Studies. In doing so, though, we’ve also been able to create a movement by mobilizing a bunch of people — even outside of the country, let alone just [at] McGill. But there’s still a long way to go, so I wouldn’t say we’re a fully-furnished movement just yet.

ZHD: I mean, I see it as a collective. From the get go, we didn’t want to limit the scope of this journal to simply the African Studies program, because we would have been limiting the impact that we could have. The goal is to create a community that is greater than just the couple of students who produce this journal. Bringing in Sayaspora is a huge thing because it’s well-known within the Black community in Montreal, but it isn’t just limited to Montreal. Frankly, the idea of the collective is so art-based as well, which also makes it more inclusive.

MD: All this: to what effect?

HM: To show that African Studies isn’t just for Africans, it’s for everyone. And that being knowledgeable about it isn’t and shouldn’t be disproportionately attributed to one group of people.

MD: Finally, what does Afrofuturism look like to you in your own life?

HM: Agency.

SC: Afrofuturism to me looks like agency in all its forms and shape. Reclaiming power in spaces where Africa had been treated as passive rather than [the] holder of its own destiny.

ZHD: Once, a journalist asked Senegalese cinematographer Ousmane Sembène, who made films for Africans about Africans, how he felt about how his films were perceived in France, and he said, “Europe is not my centre.” I grew up in a family that never saw the West as the centre, so coming in [to McGill] and meeting people who thought differently was quite a shock. So for me, Afrofuturism gives some people a peek into what my life has been like. Africa has always been my centre.

UHURU Journal’s fifth edition “Afrofuturism: Envisioning The Futures We Create” is accepting academic submissions until February 23, 2026, and creative submissions until March 1, 2026, for launch in April 2026.

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It was a deliberate reframing of what “America” can mean, delivered on one of the few stages left that still pretends to speak for everyone at once. That’s why the “Benito Bowl,” the fan nickname that spread almost as quickly as the clips themselves, became inescapable this past week. People weren’t only reacting to the performance; they were reacting to what it symbolized, and the people who got to be centred on his own terms: linguistically, culturally, and politically.

Bad Bunny’s rise to stardom make that centering feel especially pointed. He didn’t arrive in North America as a “crossover” project. He arrived as a Puerto Rican artist whose work has always proudly uplifted Puerto Rico and its unique culture. Puerto Rico’s political status makes visibility complicated on contact, as the country is not a sovereign state, but a US territory. Puerto Ricans are US citizens, but residents of the island cannot vote for president and do not elect voting members of Congress.

When halftime stopped being background noise

The Super Bowl halftime show usually aims for one thing above all: broad agreement. Even when viewers complain, the show is built to feel familiar and contain recognizable hits, universal cues, and minimal risk. Bad Bunny’s set didn’t play that game. It made Spanish the default language, Puerto Rico the centre, and “America” the hemisphere rather than the brand name. That shift alone explains a lot of the reaction cycle: celebration from viewers who felt seen, and backlash from viewers who felt the centre move without their permission.

One detail made the performance feel less like a medley and more like a statement. During the set, a couple was married on the field, and multiple outlets later confirmed it was a real, legally binding wedding. In a broadcast built around scripted spectacle, that choice landed as intimate and political at the same time: a reminder that legitimacy, belonging, and who gets to be “official” are arguments happening in public life right now, not just in comment sections.

This is what turns a halftime show into a cultural event, not just the fact that “people had opinions,” but the reasons they had them.

Puerto Rico isn’t an aesthetic, it’s the context

Bad Bunny’s Puerto Rican upbringing isn’t a footnote, it’s the core of his public identity. References in the halftime show weren’t random decorations; they were modes of insisting Puerto Rico’s belonging at the centre of the story, not on the margins.

What looked like set dressing was actually a kind of geography lesson, not the textbook kind, but the kind you feel. The show unfolded like a moving “tour” through Puerto Rican life: from a sugar cane field to a casita, then into the streets of San Juan, with domino players, block-party energy, and even a piragua (shaved ice) vendor stitched into the visuals.

That choice matters right now because it insists on ordinary Puerto Rican life; not Puerto Rico as a vacation backdrop, a headline, or an American afterthought. Sugar cane hints at the island’s extractive histories and the economic story behind “paradise”; the casita reads as continuity and home in an era shaped by debt crises, austerity politics, and displacement pressures; and the street scenes refuse the idea that Latin identity has to arrive on US television in a simplified, export-ready form.

Even the smaller gestures were calibrated. The light-blue Puerto Rican flag signalled a political lineage many viewers recognized immediately, and “seguimos aquí” (“we’re still here”) landed like a compact slogan of survival. When he spiked a football stamped “Together, We Are America,” the Super Bowl’s most patriotic object became an argument about what “America” includes and who gets to claim it. It was capped off by a billboard that read, “The only thing more powerful than hate is love,” alongside an “Easter egg” cameo that quietly nodded to diaspora memory.

That insistence carries weight because Puerto Rico’s relationship to the United States continues to be politically unresolved. As a US territory, Puerto Rico is tied to US power while lacking equal federal political representation. So when Puerto Rico is centred on the most symbolic US stage, a broadcast typically soaked in national mythology, it can’t help but read as political. Representation becomes less
“visibility” and more “reckoning”: a reminder of who is included, how, and at what cost.

In other words, the controversy isn’t that Bad Bunny “made it political.” It’s that Puerto Rico’s position already is, and has always been, and the Super Bowl simply doesn’t usually invite viewers to sit with that.

A halftime show built to be read

You don’t have to treat the halftime show like a puzzle to recognize it was built to be read. It’s a choice about audience: who is assumed to understand without effort, and who is expected to lean in.

Taken together, these choices make the halftime show feel like something greater than entertainment. They render it a cultural message delivered in the language of Bad Bunny’s characteristic effusive Latin trap: spectacle, symbolism, and the kind of visibility that becomes disruptive simply by refusing to shrink.

Resistance, in plain sight

The temptation with any “art as resistance” story is to hunt for one definitive political message and call it a day. However, Bad Bunny’s version of resistance is often quieter, and, in some ways, harder for a mainstream audience to dismiss. It’s not only what he says, it’s what he refuses to dilute. He made that refusal explicit at another high-profile event before the Super Bowl. At the 2026 Grammys, Bad Bunny used his acceptance speech for Best Música Urbana Album (for Debí Tirar Más Fotos) to denounce ICE and call for an end to what one report described as an “ongoing immigration crackdown,” punctuating it with the slogan “ICE out.”

That’s not symbolism, but a clear alignment with migrants and immigrant communities at a moment when immigration enforcement has become a flashpoint in US public life. And it sits alongside a different kind of milestone from the same night: Debí Tirar Más Fotos also won Album of the Year, marking the first time a Spanish-language album took the Grammys’ top prize.

The resistance here isn’t just “a pop star being political.” It’s a global superstar insisting that Spanish, Puerto Rico (and Latin America at large), and immigrant life aren’t side stories, even in the most mainstream room.

Backlash, then the rumour mill

Backlash was predictable. A Spanish-heavy halftime show on the Super Bowl stage, and a Puerto Rican artist refusing to soften his message, was always going to trigger the usual reactions: “keep politics out of it,” “speak English,” “this isn’t for you,” and the more familiar accusation hiding under all of that: you don’t belong here.

But the backlash didn’t stay in the realm of taste. It moved into the realm of narrative-making, constructed through the spreading of misinformation. In early February, social media users claimed Bad Bunny wore a bulletproof vest to the Grammys because of threats tied to xenophobic hostility. The rumour was investigated and no evidence was found for the “bulletproof vest” claim, explaining that his sharply tailored outfit (and altered silhouette) fuelled speculation.

The point isn’t just that “people online lie.” The rumour frames Latino visibility as inherently dangerous and controversial, transforming a historic career moment into a security conspiracy. This converts prejudice into something resembling concern. It also shifts the conversation away from the actual stakes of Bad Bunny’s work, language, belonging and power, toward whether he’s “too political” to be safe.

In that sense, the rumour becomes part of the cultural reaction: a way of policing what kinds of artists are allowed to be visible, and on what terms.

Why this lands in Montreal too

From Montreal, it’s easy to treat US culture battles as exported noise: loud, constant, and somehow always trending. But the themes that surfaced around Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl and Grammys moments are not uniquely American. They travel and translate because they interrogate fundamental questions: who gets treated as “normal,” what language gets to be default, and who has to translate themselves to be heard.

Those questions land differently in Quebec, where language is never just language, but identity, law, power, and a recurring public argument. This is a city shaped by diaspora, where belonging is lived rather than theoretical.

Bad Bunny’s journey, from a Puerto Rican artist building momentum on his own terms to winning the prestigious Album of the Year at the Grammys and headlining a Spanish-forward Super Bowl halftime show, matters because it shows what art can do when it refuses to stay in its lane. It may not be able to rewrite policy or put an end to structural abuses. But it can shift the centre of the frame, force a mainstream audience to notice what it usually treats as peripheral, and remind people that “unity” without inclusion is just branding.

And maybe that’s the most useful way to read the “Benito Bowl”: not as a victory lap, not as a controversy, but as a moment where pop culture briefly stopped pretending that belonging is uncomplicated.

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After a long awaited two-year hiatus, the McGill Savoy Society has made its grand return to the Moyse Hall Theatre, performing Patience; or, Bunthorne’s Bride. With a company of over 60 performers, musicians and technical creatives, the irreverent 1881 comic opera is given new life and reads as strikingly relevant today as ever — underscoring that Patience makes perfect in this romantic absurd comedy, opening February 13 to a wonderfully-timed Valentine’s Day weekend.

The piece recounts the evergreen plot structure of a love triangle between simple milkmaid Patience and the two superficial, artistically minded muses — Bunthorne and Grosvenor — who pine after her. A bitter satire on the Aesthetic Movement that was sweeping Europe at the time. Championed most famously by Oscar Wilde, the movement was a reaction to the moralism of art at the time, expressing the idea that art had inherent value even as superficial beauty, independent of social, political or ethical significance. The piece takes on newfound meaning with the rise of the performative male archetype, asking audiences to reinvestigate the timelessness of man falling victim to his own follies. For Artistic Director Michael Quinsey, “[Patience] is more than just about the Aesthetic Movement, it’s about fad chasing. It’s about pretense which is very human.”

Nathaniel Jablonski, who plays Patience’s childhood love interest Grosvenor, expands on this idea by talking about the way modern masculinity responds flexibly to affirm the status quo of the time: “The ideas of masculinity are constantly in flux — the traditional masculinity of military men are played for laughs as uncultured, contrasted with the nouveau of masculinity which is artistic, dreamy, sensitive and literary.”

He highlights that much of the commentary presented in Patience is represented through genderplay and how the modern man adjusts his performance of masculinity in favour of reaffirming the status quo. He adds that many operas like Patience play with the weight of navigating a hostile world where “very strict social codes are taken to the extreme bitter end,” often to absurd theatrical consequence. “People act completely nonsensically, they’re trying to make sense of the world. They’re trying to survive their lives under these codes and that’s part of the humour. How absurd it is that love must be considered either unselfish or selfish to be considered real,” Jablonski reflects.

Ana Neocleous, music director, speaks to the enduring relevance of Gilbert and Sullivan today. In particular Neocleous focuses on the unique space comic opera occupies in the public imagination which makes it especially equipped to tackle the subject of affect: “People have more preconceived notions on opera than many other performing art forms. These miscomprehensions came from the 19th century and are bound up in the serious work environment realized under a maestro conductor. It’s super high art! […] [Opera] has taken so many different forms from intellectual art to low-brow comedy, Gilbert and Sullivan is an artifact more accessible than most people think. There’s nothing high art about this, and there’s something nice about embracing it for what it is. The operas of Gilbert and Sullivan provide this unique opportunity to revisit that and play around.”

Though Bunthorne and Grosvenor carry much of the comedy in this piece, Patience, played by Helayna Moll, is the play’s emotional and philosophical anchor, serving as the voice of reason. Speaking to Patience’s fixation on moral love, Moll says, “She is obsessed with morality: when her friend Lady Angela ‘says you have to love, it is your duty to love and it must be unselfish,’ she believes her. It reflect the beliefs of the time and the demands placed on women.”

In her recharacterization, Moll sought to re-engage Patience as a character that approaches the institution of love with skepticism: “[Patience is] treated as this dumb blonde, but she really achieves everything she wants withou compromising on her beliefs. I believe she is really smart.” She points in particular to Patience’s Act Two Aria, “Love is a Plaintive Song,” noting that she approached this moment as a turning point, questioning why she is expected to appear happy when as the lyric suggests, it is “everything for him, nothing at all for her.”

Though the male lead Bunthorne acts as a caricature of an amalgamation of Aesthetic Movement figureheads, it is Oscar Wilde that Patience is most often culturally identified with. Depicted alongside Wilde in satirical magazines is the lily which becomes a prominent symbol throughout the opera. As pointed out by Professor Maggie Kilgour in the program’s “Note on Aestheticism,” the lilies reference the Matthew 6:28-29 of the New Testament wherein “Christ praises the flower for its beautiful uselessness: ‘Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not neither do they spin: And yet I say unto you, that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.’” Though the Aesthetic Movement’s rise was attributed heavily to Wilde’s contributions, it was also his trial for indecency that suffocated much of the movement’s cultural inertia.

Quinsey says, “A lot of things are said about being true to yourself in relationships. There’s this idea that you should love a certain way or not because it might be selfish, but in the end, you have to ask yourself if you can be happy.” Likewise, Matthew Erskine, who plays Bunthorne and has been a part of the Savoy Society for eight years, speaks to finding that happiness in loneliness: “This is the exceptional, unprecedented [Gilbert and Sullivan] opera where someone ends up alone. Bunthorne ends up alone, and it’s funny, but I like Quinsey’s direction with his lily. He looks pensively at this symbol of poetry and Aestheticism and he tosses the flower, accepting that he doesn’t need to be aesthetic, [and] that it’s okay to be single.”

In all its romance and absurdity, the production marries biting social commentary on Aesthetic affectation with a modern sensibility that feels sincere and approachable. The McGill Savoy Society embraces Patience’s tongue-in-cheek spirit with confidence, delivering a production that could only be made by a team that is unafraid to love their work as selfishly as necessary. As the show ultimately reminds audiences, we owe it to ourselves — and to others — to fall madly in love with who we truly are.

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Emerald Fennell’s much anticipated “Wuthering Heights” has hit theaters just in time for Valentine’s Day. The film is based on the beloved novel by Emily Brontë, which tells the tale of Catherine Earnshaw, Heathcliff, and their families. Though this film is marketed as a romance, the original text is anything but that. It is a tragedy that unfolds due to classism, racism, and cyclical abuse. Though many filmmakers have attempted to translate these events from words into film, Brontë’s raw and incisive novel has been said to be “unfilmable.” Unfortunately, Fennell’s film proves to be no different in this regard. Starring Margot Robbie as Catherine and Jacob Elordi as Heathcliff, the film does have its strengths, such as the stunning cinematography of the English countryside and the surrealist and dreamlike sets. However, the film not only fails to do Brontë’s novel justice, but also completely disregards the story’s central conflicts and themes.

One of the most controversial aspects of the film is Jacob Elordi’s casting, which caused outrage on social media as audiences were rightfully upset about the whitewashing of Heathcliff’s character. Though Brontë never specifies his race in the book, she does describe Heathcliff as being “dark-skinned,” which causes him to be discriminated against and abused by Catherine’s brother, Hindley — a character noticeably absent from the film. The racism that Heathcliff faces leads to the start of the cycle of abuse within his and Catherine’s families, which is eventually dismantled by Catherine’s children and her nephew. Elordi being cast as Heathcliff not only takes a role away from actors of colour, but also erases one of the central and extremely pertinent conflicts in the story. Heathcliff has been known to be played by white actors — the only exception being Andrea Arnold’s adaptation in 2011 — yet it is still upsetting to see that nearly no progress has been made in the past century ever since filmmakers have been adapting Wuthering Heights for the screen.

In turn, the depth of Heathcliff’s character was diluted in Fennell’s film. Rather than being a victim of racially motivated discrimination who eventually torments those around him, he is boiled down to an archetypical sexy bad boy. Though he acts cruel at certain moments in the film, the sheer villainy of his character has been completely removed, rendering him incredibly underdeveloped. Instead of presenting a flawed and sometimes evil man who, despite his faults, is seen as an object of desire to Catherine, Fennell removes all of the complexity from his character in favour of making him a palatable love interest.

Wuthering Heights revolves around Catherine and Heathcliff’s torrid relationship, as it curses everyone around them, including their own children. Rather than presenting a doomed but passionate bond that lasts even beyond the grave, their relationship in the film is presented as nothing more than a typical enemies-to-lovers situation. Catherine and Heathcliff are friends as children, but are not very fond of each other as adults and are always arguing. However, after Catherine has a sexual awakening of sorts, the two suddenly cannot keep their hands off one another. Their supposed love for one another appears out of nowhere and is given no room for growth, making it seem like an afterthought instead of one of the story’s main threads.

Another disappointing aspect of the film was Fennell’s treatment of Isabella Linton, played by Alison Oliver. In the novel, Isabella marries Heathcliff, who takes her to live with him at Wuthering Heights. Isabella becomes a prisoner in Heathcliff’s house and is abused by him: he verbally threatens her, throws a knife at her, and kills her dog. Eventually, Isabella manages to escape the house, settling down far away from the dreary moors to raise her son alone.

In contrast, Fennell’s version of Isabella can be characterized as a weird girl, whose youthful naïveté leads her to marry Heathcliff even after he insists that he does not love her, will never love her, and will treat her horribly. Hence, it is not only uncomfortable to watch Isabella’s complacency in tolerating Heathcliff’s degradations but also trivializes the abuse she faced from him in the novel. The film presents her as willingly participating in this degradation, whereas the original text makes clear that Heathcliff’s treatment of her was abuse, not something she consented to. The romanticization — or rather the sexualization — of abuse in the film is vile to say the least, as it absolves Heathcliff of any wrongdoing and instead suggests that Isabella enjoys being dehumanized. Rather than accurately portraying the realities of abusive relationships, Fennell turns Isabella into Heathcliff’s lap dog, so that their relationship fits nicely into her oversexualized rendition of a brutally torturous tale.

The most important thing to know about Brontë’s work is that it is not an easily digestible story; it is gruesome, calamitous, and sickening. Her novel has long been considered a masterpiece due to its portrayal of racial Othering and exclusion in colonial England, the lasting effects of intergenerational abuse, and the link between obsession and violence. Conversely, Fennell’s adaptation is messy and watered down, all tied up in a pretty little bow that fails to mask its disingenuity.

Some may argue that the quotation marks around the film’s title suggest that it is merely an interpretation. However, Fennell’s film borrows too much from the source material to be thought of as anything other than an adaptation. As much as I tried to see this film as its own entity separate from the novel, at the end of the day it cannot be totally removed from the context of the original work. As hard as Fennell tried to depict Wuthering Heights in her own way, she missed the mark entirely, making a mockery of Brontë’s magnum opus.

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