I was lucky enough to read Kate Rogers’ The Meaning of Leaving while on a train leaving Toronto, which I think is the most aptly ironic location to experience this bittersweet poetry collection. A Canadian poet who lived in Hong Kong and China for more than two decades, Rogers recently moved back to eastern Ontario in 2019. This is where The Meaning of Leaving takes off, leading the reader on a journey that is constantly on the move from one city to another. Each poem blurs the line between departure and arrival, navigating the intersections of female loneliness, domestic violence, and the search for identity. Published in February 2024 by the Montreal- based publishing house Ace of Swords Publishing, this beautiful collection enters the literary fray right in time for Women’s History Month.

The book opens with the poem “Unreal City,” a sort of anti-ode to Toronto that brings to light all the violence simmering underneath the surface of the city. By mentioning specific locations by name, Rogers makes the setting of this “unreal” poem feel all the more “real” – allowing the words to occupy a tangible space in real life. Even as someone not from Toronto, I was able to relate to the scenes exactly as she laid them out, largely in part due to her straightforwardly familiar tone. “Unreal City” sets the scene for the rest of the poems in this collection, which are divided into five untitled sections that continue moving chronologically through different periods in the poet’s life.

Rogers uses the first section to invite the reader into her childhood home, revealing the abuse she faces at the hands of her father, and establishing a link between this early violence and the violence she goes on to experience in her romantic relationships with men. She wastes no words, shying away from subtlety in favour of boldly laying out the events as they happened.

While I appreciate the lack of restraint and the trust she places in her reader, at times the shrewdness of Rogers’ poetry leaves little room for interpretation. In “Derrick’s Fist,” Rogers’ emphasis on elaborate descriptions of bruises leave a striking first impression on the reader, but her bluntness simultaneously results in an opaqueness that I felt lacked a more personal connection with the speaker. “Albino Sword Swallower at a Carnival, 1970” is an example of another graphic poem I felt was executed better. Here, Rogers is able to show her love for meta-textual references through her masterful association of the violence from her early sexual encounters to the violence experienced by a circus sword-swallower.

Section Two moves forward into Rogers’ time spent in China and Hong Kong, bringing these settings to life with the same attention to detail as she expressed for Toronto. In “On My Way to Cantonese Class” and “Lamma Island Tofu-fa,” Rogers crafts a loving relationship between herself and the city, pointing out the colourful characters that inhabit its every corner. Something as simple as tofu-fa from a roadside hut is likened to salvation. These images of home reach a turning point in the titular poem “The Meaning of Leaving,” in which she recreates her life story so far by moving from the lakes of Ontario to the Hong Kong coastline. The poem takes its title from a translation of “Requiem” by Bei Dao; each line of Dao’s work sandwiches Rogers’ stanzas, giving the words an entirely new meaning. She succinctly communicates the feeling of being lost in one land, before finding peace in another.

Rogers moves further into the realm of politics with Section Three, drawing the reader’s attention to pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong. Like in her earlier poems, she conflates real-life conflict and trauma with fantastical images: the authoritarian government becomes a Gate of Hell, the young protesters become the nation’s saviours. Rogers emphasizes how the personal and the political interact with each other in times of crisis, and to me, her poetry seems to suggest that love and resistance are inextricable from one another. In “The Jizo Shrine,” we see the importance of holding on to close female friendships. This love letter to the long- lasting bond between two women stands in as an ode to letting go of grief, whether it be private or collective.

Though The Meaning of Leaving complicates the ideas of home and homeland in a nuanced, self-aware manner, I found myself growing wary of certain poems that seemed cast in an orientalist light. The implications of the line “Yet I long to uncover more layers / of Hong Kong’s midden heap” in “Cantonese Class” make me uncomfortable, especially as I recall the long colonial history of white travelers wishing to “uncover” the secrets of the East. “Sei Gweipo” in Section Four is a candid retelling of Rogers’ experience as a white woman in Hong Kong, highlighting her struggle in reintegrating with Canadian society by comparing herself to a “white ghost.” It’s almost overly self-aware in its execution, leaning towards feelings of white guilt, which makes it all the more difficult to read from a non-white perspective.

The book is ultimately redeemed through its meditations on womanhood and anger, which I found embodied primarily in “The Nose-Ring Girl.” Rogers plays with the idea of female vulnerability as she wonders about this stranger’s backstory, before connecting it back to her own college days. The titular nose-ring girl personifies strength and tenacity, as she continues to stand by her principles even when she does not need to. As we enter the fifth and final section, the reader is introduced to even more figures of feminine resilience. Rogers brings back her love for meta-textual references as she imagines an encounter with a victim of the Spanish Flu, and re-imagines the tale of the Don Jail ghost. In both cases, she reclaims a story told largely by male voices to instead shed light on a female perspective.

Rogers chooses to end this poetry collection by returning to the bird motif sprinkled throughout the book, taking on its themes of flight and motion. “Ode to the Ode to the Yellow Bird” is yet another retelling of a tale from the male poetic tradition. Rogers counteracts the pessimism of Pablo Neruda’s “Ode to the Yellow Bird” by making this poem an affirmation of joy. Her yellow bird is the very ethos of the kind of womanhood she writes about in The Meaning of Leaving: she is the Don Jail ghost, the girl in the pink tutu and Nikes, the lady with a bruised face at the fruit market. She is a symbol of resilience and ambition. And despite everything she has been through, the book grants her one ecstatic cry of hope in its very last sentence: “You live!”

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The internet’s sapphic community has cast Love Lies Bleeding in a largely positive light, entranced by the film’s adrenaline-inducing body horror and eroticism. As a proponent of all things lesbian, I wanted to love the film as much as the internet was telling me to. I wanted to fall head first into the Kristen Stewart fandom and to deep dive into Glass’s euphoric use of 1980s pop culture. But I just couldn’t: not for the full film at least.

Love Lies Bleeding’s cinematic landscape and cast performances create a compelling direction for the story. As an A24 film, the arthouse aesthetic is undoubtedly alluring. The film takes place in the liminal setting of a New Mexican desert town filled with criminals, psychopaths, and gym buffs. Lou (Kristen Stewart) works as a gym manager and falls for Jackie (Katy M. O’Brian), a bodybuilder passing through town on her way to pursue her dreams in Las Vegas. The characters themselves are equally compelling, with mysterious, largely covert backstories and hot-headed temperaments, ramming through any obstacle or challenge in their way.

The first third of Love Lies Bleeding has high potential. However, I found the latter two thirds to be too reliant on genre conventions that only distract from any concrete plot or meaning. After Jackie temporarily moves in with Lou, the film strays from their relationship to Lou’s family lore – a complex web of crime and deceit held together by her ringleader father. As a result of this narrative shift, the women’s budding character development is flattened, and any explanation for their actions or inner motivations is lost. It seems that all we will ever find out about Jackie is that she’s an avid bodybuilder. Furthermore, Lou and Jackie’s relationship gets sidelined and commandeered by men until the film’s confusing final moments, when Jackie turns into a giant to pin down Lou’s father once and for all.

Despite receiving praise for subverting the “male gaze,” the film seems to do just the opposite, falling into the same fetishistic trap that plagues so many other WLW films. The six single men who sat in front of me at the Cineplex Forum’s Friday night screening only reinforced my initial impression: this film may have been written about queer women, but it was not a film made for them.

Love Lies Bleeding displays women’s bodies without establishing necessary empathy between the characters and the viewer. A quick search on the voyeuristic qualities of the film led me to find numerous news articles about men who had been arrested in the last week for lewd behaviour while viewing Love Lies Bleeding in theatres. Remarkably, these articles haven’t really been acknowledged on TikTok or other social media platforms. The behaviour of these male viewers, and how quickly it has been ignored, says a lot about the politics of lesbian representation and moviegoing.

While this doesn’t seem like any fault of the film inherently, I was surprised by how quick people were to praise its representation and to remark upon how amazing Lou and Jackie’s relationship was when the couple spent the majority of the film either trying to kill each other or having sex. It felt almost performative, like the sex scenes were only put in to appease the viewer and substitute an actual foundation for the characters’ relationship.

The release of this film was an unfortunate reminder that lesbian films have not been able to escape objectification and fetishization by men unless they explicitly critique patriarchal and heteronormative expectations (I would argue the recent queer film Bottoms was more effective at achieving this). But of course, not every lesbian film should be expected to offer some sort of critique in order to be taken seriously. While it’s important that both characters survive and presumably stay together, to emphasize such an ending feels like commending the bare minimum of a film that leaves other elements of queer representation unexplored. All this to say, Love Lies Bleeding is an entertaining experience from an intriguing filmmaker with an obvious body-horror speciality. I am curious to see more of these elements in whatever Rose Glass decides to create next.

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“P.I.M.P” by 50 Cent is having an unprecedented resurgence in pop culture. An immensely talented and adorable dog won an award at Cannes, has his own Wikipedia page, and attended the Oscars. A dreamy, French, silver fox lawyer has taken the internet by storm. These unforeseen events can be attributed to Justine Triet’s Anatomy of a Fall, which has arguably been the film that has kept the most momentum post awards season (albeit largely thanks to North America always being late to the hype of international films). It also did not walk away empty handed, winning the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay, and deservedly so – the film offers a completely fresh take on the legal drama that only a female director could conceive.

Anatomy of a Fall is the story of Sandra (Sandra Hüller), an author living in a secluded town in the French Alps, whose husband Samuel (Samuel Theis) mysteriously falls to his death from the attic and is found by their visually-impaired son Daniel (Milo Machado-Graner). Sandra is suspected for her husband’s murder, for which she undergoes a tense and emotional trial. What makes the film so different from the standard courtroom drama, however, is that Sandra’s legal interrogation reflects the kind of suspicion and blame that women (especially bisexual women, like Sandra), are met with every single day. Through flashbacks and domestic scenes outside the courtroom where we see Sandra in her most intimate moments, the film explores how trust is something bisexual women are hardly ever afforded under any circumstances.

Perhaps the most subversive and surprising element of Anatomy of a Fall comes right at the end; Sandra is acquitted, but we never find out exactly how Samuel died. This perplexing conclusion, though, is not the first time the film withholds information or disguises the fact that the audience, who is usually granted more omniscience than characters, knows just about as much as they do. In a pivotal scene, an argument between the couple the day before Samuel’s death – recorded by her husband without her knowledge or consent – is used against Sandra in court. As it begins playing in the court, and we see it transcribed on the screen, the scene transitions into a flashback of the row itself, presumably from Sandra’s point of view. Just before the climax of the fight, Triet throws the viewer back into the courtroom, where sounds of glass breaking and other aural indications of violence fill the silence. Although Sandra provides the court with an explanation of violence, we never actually see it.

The only character one could argue knows more than us is Sandra herself; we never actually see her actions the day of Samuel’s death on screen – we only have her verbal testimony. Despite being a defendant under scrutiny from just about everyone else in the film, she has the most agency over what both the characters and the audience know. The fact that a woman has agency over what the truth of the scenario is, and that it never comes out, shows Triet’s brilliant message that objective truth and patriarchy go hand in hand. “It’s not reality, it’s our voices. That’s true, but it’s not who we are,” argues Sandra. Women are constantly having their voices used against them by men in the search for objective right or wrong, true or false, innocence or guilt. Having a woman control the entire scope of the narrative obstructs the audience and the other characters from seeing the truth “objectively,” and the patriarchal satisfaction of finding a woman guilty, as is typical of the legal system, is thrown out the window.

It isn’t a coincidence then that the prosecutor is a man while the defendant, the primary witness (her son), her son’s court monitor Marge, and the judge are all either women or, in the case of Daniel, a disabled boy. As someone who does not embody the perfect patriarchal ideal of masculinity, Daniel is aligned with the women in the courtroom against the infuriating prosecutor. The women have control over the information and the outcome, yet it is a man who delivers the final argument for what he believes to be the truth. The prosecutor attempts to incite, provoke and goad Sandra through chastising and frankly sexist interrogation tactics. But Sandra remains resolute, having likely experienced similar accusations from her husband Samuel, and from countless other men for as long as she can remember.

An eye-roll-worthy but salient moment of the trial comes when the prosecutor spotlights Sandra’s infidelity with women and her identity as bisexual, implying that her sexual orientation makes her inherently promiscuous and untrustworthy. Sandra is unbelievably calm and collected in the face of this preposterous claim, but her sexuality as a point of contention for men is a very important aspect of the film. These kinds of accusations are all too familiar to bisexual women, both demeaning them and propping up the straight white man as the epitome of the healthy partner. This part of the trial shows the depressing truth that even the emotional fragility and instability of men will be taken more seriously than a calm and composed woman. If anything, Sandra’s coolness during the trial is completely in line with her character, because as a bisexual woman, she’s been on trial her entire life.

So how did a film with such strong queer themes, a woman who is morally ambiguous, no shocking reveal, and very few adult male characters become an awards season darling? For lack of a better term, Justine Triet has played high-brow cinema’s game, but by her rules. The Academy is no stranger to the courtroom drama, but usually deals with them in a very conventional way. Acclaimed courtroom dramas are usually male-dominated, where the hero is either a defendant who has been wrongly convicted, or a conflicted lawyer trying to do the right thing. None of these tropes appear in Anatomy of a Fall. The film instead allows our biases towards or against Sandra to be purely emotional because we don’t know the truth – an approach seemingly contradictory to the genre itself. Its discursive elements shine through their subtlety, and all the details of the case become a means through which Sandra’s husband’s life, not just his death, are easily blamed on her for being a bisexual woman.

There were so many films by women this year pertinent to feminist issues that were neglected by major awards ceremonies; Priscilla was absent from the Oscars, and of course all hope was shattered for Barbie. And although queer representation was fantastic in the indie/comedy genres, there wasn’t a ton that had the level of prestige (or pretentiousness) demanded by the Academy. But thanks to its unprecedented approach to the courtroom drama and perfect amount of subtle criticism, Anatomy of a Fall triumphed, and gave us a bisexual, feminine masterpiece in a legal drama’s clothing.

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The room was dark, yet the four projection sheets standing in a square-like formation in the center of the room formed a bright light, impossible to overlook. Changing images and video clips flashed on the screen and commanded my gaze – an athlete in a basketball jersey dancing in a gymnasium, men laughing around a small table, a person in a navy blue suit and red tie speaking directly to the camera. A pulsing, quick beat accompanied the images, propelling them forward and adding an exciting energy to the footage.

Vietnamese-Canadian artist Tam Khoa Vu first drew inspiration for his immersive installation by talking to a group of Vietnamese diaspora who were living in Vietnam at the time. In an interview with the Daily, Vu said that “we were talking a little bit about this dual identity of belonging and also not belonging in Vietnam, and belonging maybe to whatever Western parts of the world we had originated from.” He explained that the term “condition” appealed to him because of its connotation of a “sickness.” He said, “It’s almost a little bit tongue in cheek, you know? There’s a little bit of this melancholia or sadness that can occur when reflecting on identity […] but it’s not entirely just trauma and pain […] it can be joy, also.”

Vu explained that at the surface level,  “hybrid condition” is “a cool sounding phrase that comes from different aesthetic backgrounds,” and that when you peel back the layers, “you can find deeper meaning to it.” This idea reflects the nature of Vu’s installation. At first glance, the viewer is attracted to the video installation and its fast moving images “like a moth to the light,” Vu said. “But once you sit with the work and experience the work, you realize all of the layers and what it does [on a deeper level].”

At first, Vu began creating Hybrid Condition to represent the Vietnamese diaspora within the world of fine and contemporary arts. Vu told the Daily that his name is “so front and center” to “show other Vietnamese people [and] other Asian people the possibilities within the contemporary arts world.” In developing his installation, Vu also imagined his 12-year-old self viewing his work. He said, “when I was 12 years old, I didn’t have role models to look up to. I had Jackie Chan and Bruce Lee […] and they’re not even Vietnamese.” Vu explained that there is nothing wrong with appreciating such figures, but that it “felt very limiting.” He added, “I like Kung Fu, sure, but I also like fashion, I also like shoes, you know?” Because Vu did not know other Asian or Vietnamese designers when he was a child, he wishes to be such a role model for youth today.

Vu is open to criticism. In fact, he encourages it from young people of colour as an avenue to create “space for the diaspora” in the arts world. He told the Daily, “If some 12-year-old looks at my project and is like, ‘wow, that is so whack, I can do that better,’ for me, that’s also incredible. It’s like, ‘go on, go do something that you want.’”

Vu’s installation does not only speak to diasporic populations or people of colour. Vu said, “I realized that I don’t need to tell a Vietnamese-Canadian, or a Vietnamese-American, or an Asian-American, or a Black-American, what it means to be othered […] because we know what feeling othered feels like.” Vu gives “110 per cent” of himself into his installation, and he wants “white people to feel 10 per cent of what it feels like to be othered.” If white people can feel even five per cent, Vu told the Daily, “I would feel like this installation has succeeded.”

To draw in a wide breadth of audiences, Vu works to create an inclusive gallery space. “I want to create a space that my mom can go to and understand, but also that is equally fresh, that your Mile-Ender can also appreciate.” One way in which Vu approaches this is through using modern digital platforms that can appeal to numerous demographics. His installation includes video extracts projected on four different screens, playing in a loop and at differing times, so that each visitor will have a unique experience.

When asked where he sourced the video footage, Vu told the Daily that much of his footage comes from memes online. He said that he “conducted a lot of that research the way a lot of people conduct their research – first thing in the morning, when you wake up and crack open Instagram.” He started saving numerous memes, and soon, individuals began sending Vu memes as well. Vu also shot a large part of the footage himself; one screen of footage is entirely shot by Vu in Vietnam.

Vu also uses social media as an “artistic vision” and as a “marketing tool” for his work. In addition to his visual artwork and his current installation, Vu is the founder of an import business, TKV Fine Arts & Financial Arts. The business subtly challenges perceptions of Vietnamese culture by giving new meaning to apparel and objects commonly found in Vietnam, such as grocery bags, sandals, and blue-collar workwear. Vu told the Daily that he uses his e-commerce business “as a vehicle for storytelling” to explain to his audiences why these common garments are important. Through his social media usage, Vu can market both his art installation and his business. He said, “When I have marketing and hype for the business, it channels into the artwork, and the artworks also feed into my art practice.”

In an interview with The Creative Independent, Vu said, “I don’t want to go to bed on Sunday just being afraid of Monday. Life can pass you by in that way.” Vu told the Daily that this mentality still informs his work today. Vu stated that he is “unabashedly” himself, and that his sincerity and upfrontness inform his work. He said that “a lot of Asian-Canadian people are typically seen as ‘timid,’ and ‘meek,’ and ‘model-minorities,’ and then when you have someone like me ‘qui peut changer de langue facilement,’” – Vu speaks English, French and Vietnamese fluently – “does that make people scared, or worried, or does it challenge their notions of what an Asian person is?” Vu predicts that his installation will encourage visitors to confront the question “am I racist?” and hopes that his work will overturn prejudices.

Vu strongly encourages McGill students to visit Hybrid Condition. Entry to the exhibition is free and runs until March 30 from Tuesday to Saturday between 12:00 and 6:00 PM. For more information on the exhibition, visit m-a-i.qc.ca/en/event/hybrid-condition. To learn more about Vu and his upcoming artistic pursuits, check out his Instagram page @tamvu.biz.

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Yet today, their work has taken up residence in the same halls at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (MMFA). Georgia O’Keeffe and Henry Moore: Giants of Modern Art, organized by the San Diego Museum of Art, reveals an obvious dialogue between the two modernists’ oeuvre.

Having both relocated from the busy centers of New York and London to New Mexico and rural Hertfordshire early in their careers, O’Keeffe and Moore became inextricably linked to their respective environments. The MMFA’s exhibition emphasizes the artists’ shared wonder of the natural world, dividing itself into four rooms: bones, stones, shells, and flowers.

The viewer is immediately drawn to O’Keeffe’s famous large-scale paintings of flowers, which are often regarded as erotic. It is easy to see why: her close-up views often border on abstraction, emphasizing shape, form, and color. Series I White & Blue Flower Shapes (1919), an oil on board painting displayed in the first gallery, acutely suggests female genitalia. So much so that during my visit, it left a group of high schoolers spellbound. One of them cleverly pointed out that the painting focuses on the flower’s reproductive organs, so that it is, in a way, sexual. “It does challenge perception and ignite the imagination,” answered their tour guide, who proceeded to lecture the class on how cropping and enlarging a detail — a convention O’Keeffe borrowed from photography — can summon the viewer into an intimate exploration of nature’s intricacies.

The class snapped a few pictures before moving on to Stringed Figures (1938), one of Moore’s lead sculptures. According to the artwork’s didactic, Moore produced about 20 lead works at his countryside cottage, where he experimented with casting lead in his own pots and pans in the late 1930s. Much like O’Keeffe’s flowers, the sculpture possesses an uncanny sensual quality: its smooth curves and surfaces almost invite touch.

Moore was foremost a carver. He made several large elmwood carvings throughout his career, such as Reclining Figure (1959-64), which reflects his growing interest in landscape. The form of the figure follows the grain of the wood while its hollows and overhanging limbs evoke cliffs and caves.

The pair is at their most symbiotic in the bones portion of the exhibition. Here, one can admire O’Keeffe’s paintings by peering through the holes of Moore’s sculptures. Such is the case with Reclining Figure Bone (1975). Carved in travertine marble, the structure resembles an elongated bone — or is it a figure? — that is pierced in two places. It sits on a large table in the middle of the room, putting it in conversation with O’Keeffe’s paintings of pelvic bones, which hang on the wall directly behind it.

Similarly, in Pedernal from the Ranch #1 (1956), O’Keeffe uses a pelvic bone as a window to frame the landscape. Flirting with surrealism, she manipulates scale and perspective by juxtaposing the small object with Pedernal Peak, her favorite mountain in New Mexico. Through her adept use of colour, she conveys the timeless beauty of the Southwestern desert. The use of burnt orange helps capture the desert’s warmth and aridity, while the sky’s shades of blue and lavender clash with the mountain to accentuate its edges.

About halfway through the exhibition, visitors are invited to step into recreations of the artists’ studios, another testament to their shared philosophy. If one wasn’t convinced of their connection, here lies the evidence: feathers, leaves, shells, animal skulls, stones, and pebbles lie here and there on each of their workstations, drawing attention to their shared thematic material.

Both O’Keefe and Moore found magic and beauty in the uncanny. Their captivation with the living world and the various methods they employed to highlight different natural features are so striking that the viewer feels as if they are encountering everyday subjects — flowers, stones, and leaves — for the first time. Moreover, by giving their subjects anthropomorphic qualities, they prompt us to recognize nature’s vitality — to pause and consider our interconnectedness.

Whether or not they ever got to shake hands, O’Keeffe and Moore certainly knew of one another: both were honoured with retrospective exhibitions at the MoMA in 1946, held only a few months apart. It is worth pointing out that both of them also died in the same year — 1986, another bizarre manifestation of their parallel trajectories. The MMFA’s latest exhibition invites Montreal’s museumgoers to reflect on the incredible similarities between Georgia O’Keeffe and Henry Moore’s lives and work, helping cement their status as giants of modern art.

Georgia O’Keeffe and Henry Moore: Giants of Modern Art will be on display at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts until June 2. For more information, visit the MMFA’s website at www.mbam.qc.ca.

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Recently, I saw a TikTok from Christian Divyne (@xiandivyne) discussing his experience with the death of the “Black nerd” trope on television. When he was younger, his bullies constantly called him Urkel because he wore big wire-trimmed glasses and liked video games more than sports. A bonafide derogatory name, Urkel refers to Jaleel White’s character on the sitcom Family Matters Steve Urkel, a nerdy kid always dressed in his trademark suspenders, who always seemed to be making himself look like a fool. Divyne said that he hated this nickname growing up, and has been forced to confront it once again after receiving recent comments on his posts calling him “whitewashed” and the “whitest Black man.” He explains how people perceive his alternative, nerdy Blackness as whiteness, and that this perception stems from the fact that outside of Steve Urkel in the 90s, there is a lack of representation of the “Black nerd” trope in the media.

While this kind of representation hasn’t died out completely, it has decreased to the point where most Black people portrayed in TV shows and movies are rarely characterized beyond stereotypes. This change in perception has caused a multitude of problems that are not only limited to the Black community. When people outside of the Black community only see Black people in roles like the sassy best friend, angry Black woman, or the “on the come up” genre, their ideas of how Black people are in real life will reflect those harmful stereotypes.

Coinciding with the death of the sitcom, the multiplicity of ways Black people are portrayed in TV and film has decreased rapidly. During the 90s, there were so many sitcoms like The Bernie Mac Show, Girlfriends, Family Matters, Fresh Prince of Bel Air, and Martin, where Black people were shown in so many different ways. Within these shows, Black characters could be suburban, rich, poor, spoiled, nerdy, sporty, or any combination of nuances you would find in the real world. Unfortunately, as these sitcoms disappeared, so did the nuanced representation of their Black characters.

Fortunately, some Black creatives within Hollywood have since taken matters into their own hands, establishing production studios with the intention of reimagining the Black sitcom and telling stories that feature fully-realized Black characters.

Some famous producers like Kenya Barris have tried to reimagine the Black sitcom genre with shows like Blackish, which despite its headline-dominating controversies, didn’t have the same lasting cultural impact as the Black sitcoms of the 90s. While it was on air, Blackish tackled many divisive issues like colourism and police brutality in America. In part, these episodes served as education for its wider audience, as Kenya Barris sought to bring the Black sitcom into the homes of Black people and beyond. This intention was slightly different from the approach of Black sitcoms in the 90s, which were almost exclusively aimed towards a Black audience.

Nowadays, the future of Black representation in television is constantly being reimagined. Producers like Shonda Rhimes, Issa Rae, and Marsai Martin, are changing the game. Shonda Rhimes, specifically, has tackled the issue of diversity in TV in a distinct fashion. In all of her shows, Rhimes includes people of all different races, because she wants her shows to reflect how she sees the world in real life. To her, having a diverse cast isn’t a chore, it’s a given. In an interview with Oprah Winfrey, Rhimes elaborated a little more on her process of picking actors for her hit show Grey’s Anatomy: “We read every color actor for every single part. My goal was simply to cast the best actors. I was lucky because the network said, “Go for it.” If they had hesitated, I don’t know if I would have wanted to do the show.” Some of her most popular shows like How To Get Away With Murder and Scandal feature Black women in positions of power surrounded by a supporting cast of actors of all races. In an unprecedented deal earning her millions, Rhimes recently decided to move all the series produced by her company, Shondaland, to Netflix.

Black representation in television and media has been a long, hard battle for many Black creatives in Hollywood. This battle isn’t just about getting a Black actor in a role – which it has been made out to be for a long time. It’s important that in addition to getting roles, Black actors are playing characters that are reflective of real, dynamic people, rather than just being the butt of others’ jokes. When I was 10 years old, the Disney Channel came out with their hit show, K.C. Undercover. Zendaya played the starring role, portraying a character from a family of spies who fought evil in the world. Her character had a nerdy younger brother named Ernie, played by Kamil McFadden, who wore wire rimmed glasses and was a bonafide snitch. Her father was played by Kadeem Hardison, who had a major role in the Black sitcom, A Different World. In a further homage to the classic Black sitcoms of the 90s, Tammy Townsend, who featured in Family Matters, was cast as Zendaya’s mother. My family and I used to look forward to every Friday night when K.C. Undercover aired. In a way, that show was our sitcom.

Urkel might’ve died in the 90s, but his legacy survives in the reprisal of the “Black nerd” trope found in Ernie. I find myself wondering, who’s going to be next?

***

I’ve compiled a list below of some of my favourite shows and movies that showcase Black people in all different walks of life and in ways that shatter stereotypes. Happy Black History Month!

If you’re in the mood for some tunes and heartbreak: High Fidelity on Hulu.

If you want to relive the magic of teen novels: Percy Jackson and the Olympians on Disney Plus .

For all sci-fi lovers: The Foundation on Apple TV.

Something about life: Insecure on Netflix.

If you want something light and relatable: The Sex Lives of College Girls on HBO Max.

If you want a creepy, head-spinning mystery: They Cloned Tyrone on Netflix.

Something for the girls and gays: Bottoms on Prime Video.

If you’re feeling hungry: Bones and All on Prime Video

For those who want to see Michael B. Jordan: Raising Dion on Netflix.

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The play introduces three generations of gravediggers to its audience: the oldest of the trio, Solomon, is played to perfection by Christian Paul as the wisecracking, quirky uncle. His fellow digger Abdul is the most cynical of the three, yet Chance Jones expresses subtle nuances in his performance that elevate his character beyond his apparent pessimism. Abdul and Solomon take on the responsibility of introducing teenaged newbie Bai, played by Jahlani Gilbert-Knorren, to the intricacies of gravedigging. The developing dynamic among the trio gracefully balances humour with moments of heartfelt connection to create a deep bond beyond just family or friendship. What follows is a story of reconciling dreams with reality and of learning how to maintain hope in a world where everything seems determined to dash it down – a world where everything is destined for the grave. 

As director Pulga Muchochoma explains in the program, “Diggers is about self-questioning our position in society in times of struggle.” The pandemic that serves as the backdrop for the play is left intentionally vague, so as to reflect a sense of timelessness. The gravediggers’ work is never ending, and continues “through seasonal flooding, ebola outbreak, and […] political upheaval.” Even though the play’s setting is situated in the specific context of Sierra Leone’s history, the narrative strikes a universal chord with the audience, especially in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. As the events unfold, the viewer is made to contend with their own role in relation to essential workers, regardless of which country they are in. Diggers makes us think twice about the things we take for granted in contemporary society, and perhaps even leads us to question how we can do better. 

Warona Setshwaelo  – who plays Sheila, a member of the town council – precisely portrays the complexity of grappling with personal loss while owing a responsibility to one’s community. The chemistry between Sheila and Abdul lends itself to explosive arguments between the two, highlighting both sides of a fraught situation: Abdul claims that Sheila does not do enough to sway the town council into adequately supporting  the gravediggers, while Sheila maintains  that she is only able to do so much as one woman dealing with tragedy both inside and outside of work. Neither are satisfied with the other’s answers, nor have the will to argue any further: they are caught in a deadlock. Diggers never shies away from having tough conversations, even when they may be hard to digest. 

The play’s use of music and choreography draws the audience in even further.  Diggers incorporates  song and dance into dream sequences, adding a surrealist quality that helps to foreground the characters’ genuine nature. This musicality familiarizes the audience with the gravediggers in a more intimate way than plain dialogue, allowing us to fully step into their world. It also provides a much-needed release in tension from the play’s more serious moments, giving us a chance to share laughter and song with those onstage. These surrealist breaks from the linear narrative trip up the viewer, making them question what they are seeing and how to respond to it. This approach reinforces Diggers’ overall aim in leading its audience to introspection. 

In its final notes, Diggers moves towards an ending which promises tears and heartache amidst an ever-resilient hope for change. Solomon, Abdul, and Bai’s story ends with a promise from the town council that seems to point towards a brighter future. As I watched the curtain close, and the house lights slowly begin to illuminate  the theatre, I had a feeling that there might just be some brightness for the rest of us, too.

For more information on Diggers, visit their event page on the Segal Centre for Performing Arts’ website. To support future Black Theatre Workshop productions, you can volunteer, donate, or attend events at www.blacktheatreworkshop.ca.

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I first read Things Fall Apart three summers ago, and Achebe’s simple, cutting prose still pulses, like I’ve just turned the last page and closed the book on the table. Okonkwo’s tale is a story of resilience and of weakness, of fury and tragedy. His inner strength fades into fallen hubris as his world flips by the hands of the White colonizer, leaving him tumbling into the abyss. Achebe’s work makes us question the worth of individual willpower in this apathetic world where “what is good among one people is an abomination with others.”

— Andrei Li, Sci + Tech Editor

Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

A classic of the Harlem Renaissance, Their Eyes Were Watching God is American writer Zora Neale Hurston’s best known work. It follows protagonist Janie Crawford through central and southern Florida as she transforms from a “vibrant, but voiceless, teenage girl into a woman with her finger on the trigger of her own destiny.”  In this novel, Hurston interrogates traditional gender roles and explores the liberatory capacity of Black women – liberation from domestic violence, from racial history, and from their own self-doubt. Hurston’s writing is compact and concise, but her words are as vivid as they are lyrical, and Janie’s voice rings loud and clear.

— Catey Fifield, Managing Editor

The Skin We’re In: A Year of Black Resistance and Power by Desmond Cole

In this book, journalist and activist Desmond Cole travels across Canada to document the stories of Black Canadian communities. He explores how anti-Black racism is embedded in Canadian institutions such as the police, the education system, and the immigration system while also highlighting how Black communities are resisting these injust systems. He also draws on his own lived experiences as a Black Lives Matter activist and journalist, reflecting on how those two roles can complement rather than contradict each other.

— Emma Bainbridge, News Editor

Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates

Composed as an open letter to his only son, Between the World and Me is an intimate exploration of the author’s own experience with Black identity, excellence, familial love, and violent injustice. Following his journey from a young boy in Maryland to a student at Howard University before he started his career as a professional writer and journalist, the book revolves around his coming to terms with the inherent corporeality of his humanity. Through his beautiful prose, Coates tenders the complexities, both joyous and tragic, of the experiences and relationships that came together to shape the world in his mind.

— Elaine Yang, Features Editor

Beloved by Toni Morrison

A haunting tale by acclaimed novelist Toni Morrison, the Pulitzer Prize-winning Beloved explores the complex relationships within the life of female protagonist Sethe in a reconciliation with her past. Told through a disjointed timeline, Morrison utilizes the magical realism genre to tell the story of a woman haunted by the actions of her past life while struggling to survive on the plantation. Sethe sheds bits and pieces of her former self to readers by recounting her lived experiences, creating an air of anticipation for what’s next to come. Morrison’s every word sags beneath an emotional weight, forcing readers to encounter how the history of slavery is not merely a fragment in the past, but is intimately intertwined with our present reality.

— Sena Ho, News Editor

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On the outskirts of the city, at the other end of the spectrum of life, a pack of children have set up camp in the forest of Parc Rouge. Some orphaned, some abandoned, and most of them forgotten, the children scrounge for food and supplies, seek shelter in tattered tents, and keep a careful watch for grown-ups. These may come in the form of drunks who wander into their camp, but the children also look out for blooming chests, deepening voices, and other signs of puberty in their own ranks – no adult is worthy of their trust. The paths of old and young converge in this city “so empty it is full, so broken it blossoms.” It is only at their intersection that the residents of Fort Détroit may begin to imagine a future more full of hope than despair, more full of dreams than nightmares.

***

The Future is Catherine Leroux’s fourth novel. First published as L’avenir in 2020, it was translated into English by Susan Ouriou in 2023. Born in Rosemère, Quebec, and now based in Montreal, Leroux has received numerous awards and accolades, including the Prix France-Québec for her novel Le mur mitoyen (2013) and the Prix Adrienne-Choquette for her short story collection Madame Victoria (2015). The Future was selected for the 2024 edition of Canada Reads, CBC’s annual “battle of the books” competition. It will be championed by fellow Montreal writer and this year’s Mordecai Richler Writer-in-Residence, Heather O’Neill.

I don’t believe O’Neill will have any difficulty defending The Future during this year’s Canada Reads debates, which will take place between March 4 and 7. Leroux’s words, expertly translated by Ouriou, seem to leap off the pages of this book to construct before readers’ very eyes the characters, settings, and mysterious goings-on she describes. I found it impossible to read this book without a pen in hand – there were too many beautiful passages to underline, too many sentences that read more like poetry than prose.

Leroux’s characters are unique in themselves – the children, especially, are endowed with such spirit and individuality as are rarely to be found outside of childhood – but it is when they come together that the magic of this book is most palpable. The bonds of trust forged by Gloria and Eunice, by Fiji and Bleach, in the city of old, and in the forest of youth testify to the possibility of finding, in Rihanna’s words, “love in a hopeless place.”

Earlier this month, following a book talk featuring Leroux and O’Neill, I had a chance to interview Leroux about The Future, her relationship with Montreal, and her approach to writing speculative fiction. I was especially curious about the book’s second chapter, written entirely from the perspectives of the Parc Rouge children. Leroux told me she was forced to throw away a first draft of this chapter because it was “too boring”: she had written this version as a mother, she said, instead of as a child. Once she learned to put aside her instinctual concerns for her characters’ safety and comfort and to make way for the infinitely more important demands of play, stuffed toys, inter-group rivalry, and bathroom humour, she was able to find the voices of Parc Rouge.

We also discussed Leroux’s close-to-home inspiration for Fort Détroit. This version of the city of Detroit was never surrendered to the Americans in the War of 1812, instead becoming a French-Canadian stronghold. At the time The Future takes place, however, Fort Détroit is no longer a stronghold but a wasteland. Leroux was attracted to Detroit because of its similarities to Montreal: both cities experienced a surge in investment and production, either in the 19th century or the 20th, but now find themselves in economic decline. Economic decline, she said, has certainly taken its toll on the cities, but it has also provided ample fodder for artists and innovators with an interest in rebuilding. “People have had to be creative in order to survive,” Leroux explained.

Certainly, Fort Détroit is a dystopia as desolate as the rest of them. It is all the more terrifying, I think, on account of the fact that no evil dictator has taken control of the city or imposed a rule of terror and totalitarianism on its residents. Instead, it is the cruel forces of “pollution, poverty, and the legacy of racism” that threaten the survival of Fort Détroit – or what’s left of it, rather. Leroux’s future is as factual as it is fictional, and the strength, creativity, and humour with which her characters weather each storm that comes their way are truly inspiring.

The post Writing The Future appeared first on The McGill Daily.

Let’s start with some of the positives, which are unfortunately also laced with negatives. Although Killers of the Flower Moon does not live up to how Indigenous people should be represented in film, it did give us an outstanding performance by Lily Gladstone. Not relying on the fact that her work will be automatically  praised like her co-stars Leonardo Dicaprio and Robert DeNiro, Gladstone gave a layered performance that earned her a Best Actress nomination, making her the first Native American woman to do so. A win for her would be historic, and would hopefully create a space for more Native women in mainstream cinema – a space where they can tell their own stories, rather than having white male directors like Martin Scorsese dictate the narrative. 

Best Supporting Actress is probably the best major category overall, in terms of both inclusivity and merit. Da’Vine Joy Randolph is the heavy favourite to win the award for her part in The Holdovers, and deservedly so. She was a highlight in this funny and heartwarming film, rounding out a successful year for her overall, with her return to Hulu’s Only Murders in the Building, and being arguably the only good thing about Abel Tesfaye (a.k.a. The Weeknd) and Sam Levinson’s exploitative dumpster fire show that was The Idol. The rest of the category includes gems like America Ferrera for Barbie and Danielle Brooks for The Color Purple, making the nominees mostly women of colour, all of whom have been nominated for their work in musicals or comedies, genres which are often overlooked by the Oscars.  

The Best Director category, on the other hand, was met by most with face palms. An opportunity to include more than one female director, as well as directors of colour, was practically spoonfed to the Academy, yet they still didn’t bite. The most talked about snub has been Greta Gerwig for Barbie, a film that also saw its lead Margot Robbie omitted from the Best Actress category. Many have dismissed the sexism of this slight with the logic that Gerwig was omitted because the Oscars generally do not take blockbuster comedies very seriously. While this is true, a film that did as well as Barbie would have a far greater chance of being considered were it directed by a man, and were it not aimed at female audiences. Just look at Poor Things, which was considered a comedy by the Golden Globes and also saw its director nominated at the Oscars.  

Alas, this is not where the double standard ends. Many have pointed out that Gerwig will profit even if she wins in other categories, like Best Picture, hoping that the film “pulls an Argo” by taking  this award as compensation. But if that’s the case, why were Christopher Nolan, Martin Scorsese, and Yorgos Lanthimos nominated for Best Picture when their films monopolized the other categories as well? While Gerwig is perhaps the most salient example, the directing category overall committed several egregious oversights in a year where diverse filmmakers proliferated. 

Past Lives is probably the film that got the most royally screwed over this year, in Best Director and several other categories. Lord knows how long it’s been since a directorial debut was as revered as this one from Celine Song, who easily could have joined Justine Triet in the Best Director category. In addition to creating an incredible artistic achievement, Song was also able to tell a semi-autobiographical story about moving from Korea to Canada and pursuing the arts, representing the shared experience of many Asian-American immigrants while maintaining a deeply intimate tone. The authentically beautiful star-crossed lovers story also saw an outstanding performance by Greta Lee, whose absence from Best Actress is nothing short of a travesty. 

With these snubs, it feels as though the Academy is almost riding the wave of its Asian representation from last year with Everything Everywhere All at Once and its record-breaking cleanup. The 2022 film took home almost all the major categories, including Best Editing, Best Director, Best Supporting Actor and Actress, Best Actress, and Best Picture. The fact that Everything Everywhere was transgressive in both its themes and storytelling, managing to paint a deeply complex picture of intergenerational trauma among Asian immigrant families (like Past Lives), actually gave us a lot of hope for the Academy’s ability to recognize such stories. Unfortunately, with the absence of Song’s masterpiece from most major categories, it now feels like a one-off. 

Certain incredibly deserving female-directed films were nowhere to be found at all. While not as Oscar bait-y as some anticipated, Emerald Fennell’s Saltburn featured some deeply original screenwriting on behalf of the director, and gave us an outlandishly disturbing performance from Barry Keoghan that easily could have been nominated. Yet the Oscar robberies this year extend to films that would typically be very well-received, such as the dramatic biopic. Sofia Coppola’s Priscilla featured an intimately told story that underlined the issues of Elvis Presley’s treatment of Priscilla Presley, without erasing Priscilla’s subjectivity or turning her into a polemical figure. Priscilla also features breathtaking costuming and set design, and two tour-de-force performances by Cailee Spaeny and Jacob Elordi. Yet this was still not enough to appease the overwhelmingly white, male selection committee. For a deep dive into the film, you can read my review of it for the Daily published in November. 

I could go on and on about my plights with the Oscar nominations this year. Where was Charles Melton in Best Supporting Actor for May December? Why was Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Monster not nominated for Best International Feature? Why wasn’t The Boy and the Heron nominated in more categories outside of Best Animated Feature? The Academy has become an expert at crushing the hopes of film lovers who wish to see themselves and their stories celebrated at the most esteemed levels of cinema. Outrage, however, can facilitate change. Even if they still have a long way to go, the diversity of the selection committee has greatly expanded since 2014 when the average age of the members was 63, while 76 percent were men and 94 percent were white. While most of the known 2024 releases so far are set to be sequels and remakes, the diverse storytelling that began in 2022 and blossomed in 2023 will hopefully continue its momentum, and eventually break through the Academy’s pretentious, normative barriers. 

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As a history student who has only briefly learned about the horrific legacy of the Vietnam War – confined within the realm of academia – I’ve always remained curious about the lived experiences of survivors. So, at the start of this year, I decided to pick up a book that explores the embodied realities of the Vietnam War in various contexts through historical fiction. McGill alumnus Caroline Vu’s latest novel, Catinat Boulevard (2023), offers a compelling insight into the complex experiences of survivors through the lenses of cultural and racial identity. The McGill Daily had the pleasure of reconnecting with Vu almost a decade after our previous interview on her novel Palawan Story (2014), to discuss her newly released work. 

Caroline Vu was born in Vietnam in 1959, only four years after the start of the war. Due to the increasing danger, Vu was forced to flee to New England, and eventually settled in Montreal. After living in various parts of the world – Latin America, Switzerland, and Ottawa – the author now resides in Montreal where she works as a family physician when she isn’t writing. Vu published two award-winning novels, Palawan Story and That Summer in Provincetown (2015), before releasing Catinat Boulevard in October 2023 to much critical acclaim  – it was even a finalist for the 2023 Hugh McLennan Prize for Fiction. The novel dives into the turbulent lives of best friends Mai and Mai Ly in the city of Saigon during the Vietnam War. Mai flirts with American GIs in bars along Catinat Boulevard, eventually becoming pregnant by Michael, an African-American soldier. The turbulence of the war leaves their son Nat tragically abandoned in a Saigon orphanage. Meanwhile, Mai Ly rises in the ranks of the communist resistance and becomes a prominent figure who writes propaganda and rallies others to join the socialist struggle. The novel travels across decades and continents, eventually ending in present-day New York.  

Catinat Boulevard’s narration left a stark mark on me as a reader. Vu presents her story in the third-person through the eyes of Mai and Michael’s child, Nat. Whilst I initially felt slightly confused by this literary choice, I was able to fully digest its intent the more I read: the narration style became a powerful tool for accentuating Nat’s abandonment and isolation. One event in the novel especially stood out to me because of this choice. Upon hearing that she is pregnant, Mai’s father hits her and kicks her down the stairs. Vu writes this scene through the eyes of Nat: “It was my first exposure to physical violence. Surprisingly I didn’t feel any pain. I only felt a loss of grip as my world tumbled downstairs. I wished my mother had held out her hands to protect me. Instead, she used her own fists to repeatedly hit herself. Then she howled.” 

This is just one powerful instance of many granted by Vu’s unique style of writing that left me curious about her reasons behind narrating in this way. In an interview with the Daily, she replied: “Nat is a kid abandoned by his parents. In the orphanage, he is bullied because of his dark skin. The voice of a kid is more touching. It moves us more because we can identify with it. We understand that voice because we’ve all been kids ourselves.” 

In a time when historically-marginalized readers are increasingly conscious and critical of how literature can evoke wounds caused by physical, emotional, and intergenerational abuse and oppression, writers have to be careful not to produce “trauma porn.” Frankly, although Catinat Boulevard does contain depictions of trauma, it does so in a sentimental way that is necessary to portray the devastating disorder that came with the war. The exploration of trauma in this narrative depicts the calamitous circumstances and consequences of the war and the global 1960s more generally, in a sobering way that should not be dismissed. It is the  characters’ beautiful complexity and their very different experiences of trauma that elucidate this reality. From racism to abandonment to sexual abuse, Catinat Boulevard covers it all. But Vu makes it clear that the trauma she expresses can also be processed in complex ways, and can even be intricately embedded with humour. Having experienced much of this trauma herself in her own life, it was important for Vu to explore these wounds creatively in her writing, whilst being cognizant of their effects on marginalized communities.  

Vu told the Daily: “Yes there is a lot of trauma in the novel. From war to racism to abandonment etc… To lighten up the story, I added humour. I made each chapter short. There are no drawn-out sobbing scenes. No trauma porn! You know, I’ve experienced the same trauma Nat did: the war, the abandonment, the racism… Adding humour and laughing at certain situations in the book is perhaps a defence mechanism for me.”  

The process of writing is central to this narrative. Not in a self-explanatory way, but in a way that is visible and thematic to the reader. Letters appear recurrently throughout the book, which function to connect together the different characters who find themselves spread across Vietnam and the United States. Vu’s frequent adoption of the epistolary form serves to help us as readers get to know each of the characters in a deeper way. But for Vu, writing emerges as a theme not only to foster more complex characterization, but also to reflect her own love of the craft. 

Vu explained: “Catinat Boulevard is an ode to the written word. There are letters written by Michael to Mai. Letters written by Nat to Mother Superior. There are imaginary stories that Nat writes about his mother Mai. There are stories Mai presents to her writing group. There are entries Mai keeps in her diary. There are real-life stories Amanda writes for her newspapers. There is the email Mai Ly sent to Nat. There is the manuscript Nat tries to get published. There are the letters of rejection. 

For Nat and Mai, writing is therapeutic. It gives meaning to their loveless lives. Although they’d never met in person, they’d conversed through their writing. This is the power of the written word. It can transcend time and space. It can bring people together. Even dead ones!”

Mai and Nat’s love of writing is intimately interwoven in the ending of the novel. Whilst Mai discovers her love for writing as a Vietnamese immigrant in search of community in California, Nat uses writing to escape the horrors of living as an abandoned Black child in an orphanage in Saigon. Their writing transcends time and space to reveal parallels despite their isolated lives. Mai writes “problems started long before the kid walked this earth,” reflecting Nat’s words which read “trouble started years before my birth.” Catinat Boulevard ultimately reminds us that though physically far apart, Nat and Mai remain close, their lives forever interconnected despite all their troubles and despairs. 

The post Catinat Boulevard: A Compelling Narrative of Hope and Despair appeared first on The McGill Daily.

I first learned about CKUT in the summer leading up to my first year at McGill during one of my many fraught social media searches for clubs. I came across their Instagram account, @ckutmusic, and was undoubtedly intrigued – but also slightly intimidated. Madeline recalls feeling similarly when she first got exposed to the radio programs in her hometown of Calgary. “Radio is intimidating from the outside, but once you get in there you find that they’re all a bunch of sweeties,” Madeline said. She would later go on to participate in radio while in university,  finding it to be a place for her to experiment live on air while offering a reprieve from the strenuous and often restricting nature of journalism school. At CKUT, Madeline works mostly behind the scenes, where she can make the most of the program’s experimental side. During our interview, she emphasized how much the station values giving everyone who wants an outlet to share their truth, especially those belonging to marginalized communities. 

When I asked about CKUT’s history of engaging in anti-oppressive movements, Madeline remarked how proud she was to be working for a station that was always “ahead of the curve.” She told me about shows like Dykes on Mikes, which has been platforming the voices of  lesbians since 1987, and Gay Day: a 24-hour show dedicated to queer issues and news. Gay Day has a history of openly addressing “taboo” topics, like the HIV/AIDs crisis, long before other news and media outlets acknowledged them. 

Madeline also informed me that many members of the Afro-Caribbean community have poured their hearts into CKUT and its programming, with decades-running shows like West Indian Rhythms and Bhum Bhum Tyme. “It feels really special to be a part of that,” Madeline replied when I asked what CKUT’s rich inclusionary history meant to her. “We’ve been a place where you can come and share your story and connect to your community before the age of social media.”  

CKUT began as the McGill Radio Club in the 1930s. What CKUT is today was built by McGill students in “the basement of what is now the SSMU building,” Madeline recalled. This long history of McGill student involvement is part of what makes CKUT so special – generations and generations have built and fought for CKUT. Their biggest fight to date was in 1987 for their spot on the FM dial, which they won over Concordia’s radio station. Although CKUT has slightly splintered off from McGill and become its own entity, they’ve never lost sight of their roots. If you want to learn more about CKUT’s past, head over to ckut.ca and check out their digital archives. 

Like all of us, CKUT struggled during the pandemic. They were quickly able to adapt by giving programmers equipment to record radio shows from home, but the loss of in-person presence around the station was the biggest change. However, Madeline told the Daily that things are  finally starting to feel normal again: “it’s been a slow trickle […] every day that I come into the station it feels more and more alive.” 

For McGill students, as well as members of the greater Montreal community, CKUT has long served as a “third place.” Ray Oldenburg, an urban sociologist and the originator of the term, describes a third place as somewhere time can be spent besides home, school, or work. Recently, there has been a great deal of discourse on TikTok about the role of third places in today’s society and what we can gain from them. This conversation isn’t entirely new. A few years back, The Atlantic and CBC published articles on third places. Both articles stressed the importance of having a place to go that wasn’t work or school: a place where you can relax, be creative, and meet people. This is why CKUT means so much to many McGill students. 

With the comfy couches and inviting atmosphere, many other volunteers can be found hanging around the station. As a third place, CKUT not only offers an outlet for people who want to be creative on the air, but also a place to get involved with countless other interests. “To McGill students who aren’t super passionate about music or creative things, there’s a place for you here too!” Madeline promised. 

Emily Halpen-Buie started out volunteering at CKUT to find her footing at McGill and meet new people. Since then, she’s started working on Radio is Dead, a show that allows her to “learn and create tasty sounds.” Some students, like Mia Duddy-Hayashibara, spend time at CKUT even when they aren’t working on a show. Mia devotes a lot of her time at CKUT to the music library or learning how to use the soundboards. She said of the music library, “There are so many gems! It’s a treasure box!”  

Yet Madeline also warned that “sometimes we take for granted that places like this exist until they’re gone.” The latest SSMU referendum saw CKUT lose their appeal to raise their fee. “We haven’t raised the student fee in 12 years. The costs have risen, but the student fees haven’t risen at all.” Madeline reminded me that it isn’t just CKUT: “all of journalism is facing this issue.” Madeline stressed that you can help non-profit organizations like CKUT in many different ways: “listening, volunteering, or donating.” For CKUT, it’s not about making money; it’s about supporting the community. 

At some point in the interview, I mentioned that I felt like CKUT was McGill’s best-kept secret. Nodding, Madeline replied, “Yes, but we don’t want to be. We want every student to know about us […] CKUT is a good tool to get into Montreal culture outside of the McGill bubble.” CKUT’s ambiance of rickety, worn-out floors, posters on every inch of the walls, old Christmas lights still hanging, and shelves upon shelves of music equipment, screams home. Its winding hallways and gently sunlit rooms sit quietly, almost waiting for you to speak, especially if you don’t know what you want to say. Even if you aren’t tuning in to the radio, CKUT can still provide a listening ear and place of acceptance for students, and everyone in the Montreal community. 

CKUT’s annual funding drive will take place starting March 16. You can keep an eye out for upcoming details on their Instagram, @ckutmusic. If you’d like to get involved at CKUT, you can send an email to volunteering@ckut.ca, or head to their website ckut.ca for more information. 

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You may be asking yourself, what is so objectionable about Sarah J. Maas releasing a new book? The issue lies not with the book itself, but with  how her publishing company, Bloomsbury Publishing, is handling its  release. Instead of publishing one edition of the book, Bloomsbury will be releasing five different editions on January 30. Each edition will be unique to a specific retailer – Barnes & Noble, Books-a-Million, Target, Walmart, and select indie bookstores will each receive a different edition of the book each featuring unique bonus chapters. Basically, every edition has a unique chapter related to a handful of characters in the book. If you want to experience the book in its entirety, you will have to buy it five times. 

If readers want to experience the whole gamut of the Crescent City universe, why are they being forced to jump through hoops to do so? These bonus chapters  easily could have been compiled  into a novella that would have retailed at a much lower cost than a main entry in the series. Instead, Bloomsbury has decided to set the retail price of House of Flame and Shadow at a whopping 42$ CAD. If you want to read all of the bonus chapters, you will have to fork over 200$. 

The frustrating reality of  this stunt by Bloomsbury is that they are clearly aiming to capitalize   on the loyalty of Sarah J Maas’ literary fanbase. The publishing house is aware that her loyal readers are passionate and   willing to go above and beyond to support their favourite author. Publishers used to release signed editions of books in limited quantities to appeal to loyal readers. But it seems that they have now found a new way to exploit consumers. 

The success of  Bloomsbury’s stunt ultimately lies in the hands of book buyers. If their response to these exclusive editions is muted, it could leave some stores with dead stock, and discourage other companies from following this model. However,  if it turns out to be wildly successful, this marketing ploy might set a dangerous precedent for the publishing industry.  It could even attract scalpers who will buy the book en masse and sell it at inflated prices – a process covered in the Daily article “It’s Not You, It’s Capitalism.” Regardless, it is guaranteed to anger fans, some of whom might opt out of buying the book altogether. 

It remains to be seen whether or not these additional chapters will have any bearing on the release of the fourth book in the series. Nevertheless, the release of all of these special editions is worrisome. Has this practice set an industry standard where  selling multiple exclusive editions of one book is the norm? Will people be required to buy the same book multiple times to be able to enjoy the full story? If you want to incentivize people to buy print books to compensate for the general decline in book sales in recent years, this is the wrong way of going about it. 

Bloomsbury’s actions might lead you to believe  that they are experiencing financial troubles,  but this is far from the truth.  The first half of the 2023 fiscal year was actually the most successful in the company’s history. In fact,  Bloomsbury’s  revenue increased by 17% in 2023, with  a 79% increase in sales of Sarah J Maas’ books being cited as one of the driving forces behind the company’s success. This marketing stunt has nothing to do with helping Bloomsbury stay afloat; it is just another example of unbridled capitalism. 

No matter how much profit a company makes they always seem to find a way to cut corners to increase earnings. In the headlong pursuit of perpetually increasing profits, companies are willing to cast aside their standards and morals – just as Bloomsbury has done here. The average Maas reader just wants to read the full book without all these shenanigans. In a day and age where  people consistently bemoan that  young people  don’t read as much as past generations, why is a  major publishing house setting up obstacles to prevent readers from fully enjoying such a popular series?  Instead of price gouging their readers, Bloomsbury should be prioritizing efforts to widen access to books for the average person.  A well-read population should never depend on how many editions of a book they can afford to buy.

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Gonzo journalism can be defined as a style of journalism in which the reporter inserts themselves directly into the story they are reporting on, in order to relate events as they experienced them. It contrasts mainstream journalism whereby the reporter strives to remain as neutral and detached as possible.

Even if journalism can rarely achieve true objectivity in the strictest sense, this does not stop news outlets from professing to report the “Truth” with a capital “T.” Against this backdrop, gonzo journalism is unique in that it recognizes and leans into – rather than tries to escape – its inherent subjectivity. It is transparent in its intentions: to relay the particular experience of the reporter in a specific time and place, explicitly filtered through that person’s perception. In doing so, gonzo journalism steers clear of some of the pitfalls encountered by traditional, “objective” journalism.

The manner in which gonzo journalism came to exist says a lot about the key tenets of the style. Thompson began developing what would become his defining MO in 1965, while working on an article covering the inside world of the motorcycle gang the Hell’s Angels. In order to write the piece, Thompson infiltrated and lived with the biker gang for nearly a year. Reflecting on this time, he said: “I was no longer sure whether I was doing research on the Hell’s Angels or being slowly absorbed by them.” This would set an important precedent for the style: the writer of gonzo journalism is typically an integral part of the action being reported on. While the origin of the term “gonzo” is contested, an editor for the Boston Globe was supposedly the first to use the phrase in relation to Thompson, claiming that it was “South Boston Irish slang describing the last man standing after an all-night drinking marathon.”

Thompson’s most famous piece of gonzo journalism is his generation-defining novel Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Upon publication in 1971, the book immediately became a journalistic sensation and catapulted Thompson to notoriety. Fast-paced, shocking, and at times viscerally disgusting (but always maddeningly well-written), Fear and Loathing is unlike anything I’ve read before. Thompson provides a hedonistic snapshot of 70s America smack in the middle of the “drug era”. In Thompson’s words, it became “a savage journey into the heart of the American Dream.”

From the first page, Thompson’s frantic prose grabs you by the neck and doesn’t let go for a second. One might characterize the experience of reading Fear and Loathing as the literary equivalent of an acid trip – a fitting metaphor given how central drug use is to the narrative. Thompson quickly abandons any pretense of covering the story he’s actually been sent to report on, and instead documents the protagonist and his attorney’s drug-fueled hijinks, which frequently put them dangerously at odds with the law. In the second half of the book, the pair is sent to cover the national drug law enforcement convention where things go even further off the rails.

Fear and Loathing’s use of gonzo journalism is both hilarious and deeply critical. With a self-effacing, irreverent tone, the protagonist offers a biting satire of the deeply flawed society he finds himself in. We get the feeling that the morally reprehensible protagonist is himself part of this satire; he is, in his drug-addled, chaotic, messy way, the ultimate product of this society. It is hard to imagine a more scathing and honest critique of 1970s drug culture in America, than one provided by a mescaline-riddled, broke journalist who has somehow infiltrated a drug enforcement conference.

You might be asking yourself: what use do we have for gonzo journalism in 2024? In resolutely resisting the pervasive journalistic urge to take oneself seriously, gonzo journalism is able to provide insightful, personal coverage on extremely serious topics. Although reporting in general still holds up objectivity as the gold standard, there is a growing tension over how to define objectivity that is becoming hard to ignore. In our media-saturated modern world, it is hard if not impossible to find reporting not coloured by political ideology, the need for views, or the propagation of a certain agenda. In addition, as we increasingly recognize the impact of experience and situatedness, among other contextual influences, a key reality becomes clear: there may be no such thing as objective journalism. In the words of Thompson: “Absolute truth is a very rare and dangerous commodity in the context of professional journalism.”

So what does gonzo journalism look like today? While specific publications devoted entirely to gonzo journalism have now emerged, such as Gonzo Today, I would argue that elements of the style have increasingly leaked into mainstream reporting. A lot of online-only journalism or quasi-journalism, such as the content found on sites like Medium, is moving away from a traditional journalistic expectation of objectivity – more and more we see stories of regular people, telling it like they saw it. Over 50 years after Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas took the journalism world by storm, gonzo journalism is alive and well.

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Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person – directed by Ariane Louis-Seize 

Imagine Taika Waititi’s 2014 fantasy comedy What We Do in the Shadows meets a coming-of-age story about depression and the pressure to conform to familial expectations among young women. This is Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person, which probably wins the award for best title of the year. Shot and set in Montreal, the film follows young vampire Sasha (Sara Montpetit), whose empathy and inability to watch others suffer makes her incapable of feeding on human flesh. When she meets the suicidal teen Paul (Félix-Antoine Bénard), who she promises to kill and eat, their pact inspires hilarious escapades and is complicated by the bond that is forged between the two. 

Although Anatomy of a Fall is the French language title that has gained the most awards season hype, Quebecoise director Ariane Louis-Seize’s strikingly original film should not be overlooked. Humanist Vampire is so deeply compassionate and endearing, and is such a welcome depiction of how depression, especially amongst women, while onerous and debilitating, can allow for a greater capacity for empathy. This silver lining is at the incredibly big heart of the film, which  is accompanied by a playful score and bitingly funny dialogue (no pun intended). Unwaveringly charming in spite of all the blood, Humanist Vampire shows 2023’s triumph in female direction at the local level. 

Past Lives – directed by Celine Song 

The fact that this  film is  Celine Song’s directorial debut both terrifies and excites me. Its emotional warfare in the form of unrealized lifetime love destroyed me, but wow, did it hurt so good. Past Lives tells the story of childhood sweethearts Nora (Greta Lee) and Hae-Sung (Teo Yoo), who lose touch when Nora’s family immigrates to Toronto from South Korea. They connect sporadically over the next 24 years, but by the time Hae-Sung is finally able to visit her, she is already married to someone else. 

This romantic drama is somewhat of a modern rendition of the star-crossed lovers tale, but its fusion of this format with themes of the diasporic vs. indigenous Korean experience – semi-autobiographical of Song’s own upbringing – are what make it stand on its own. It is not just Hae-Sung and Nora’s distance, timing, and career paths that divide them, but also how they experience their culture. In one scene, Nora tells Hae-Sung that since emigrating, she only ever speaks Korean to her mother. Later in the film, Nora explains to  her husband that Hae-Sung’s distinct “Koreanness” makes her feel both alienated from and connected to her culture at the same time. The film’s stylistic understatedness and temporally expansive narrative only amplify its emotional blows to create one of the greatest debut films not just for a Korean-Canadian female director, but for any director in general. 

Barbie – directed by Greta Gerwig 

It would be ridiculous to recap 2023’s women in film without including the bedazzled, pink, cinematic leviathan that was Barbie. Greta Gerwig’s latest film is a stark contrast from her previous two dramas, but her masterful storytelling brings this doll extravaganza to life in a way that is both layered and enthralling. Millions flooded theatres dressed head-to-toe in pink to watch Barbie (Margot Robbie) and a hapless Ken (Ryan Gosling) embark on an adventure from Barbie Land to the real world to find out why Barbie has been experiencing “malfunctions” like flat feet and cellulite.  

Barbie in and of itself was undeniably delightful, but what made it truly extraordinary was that it reached so far beyond the narrative world it created. Rarely do we see certifiable “blockbusters” of this kind: so self-aware, so funny, so socially engaged, so pink, so feminine. The fantastical world it built reached out of the screen and into the hearts of audiences – an engagement that could not have come at a better time. It not only brought people into theatres amid the SAG-AFTRA strike, but revived going to the theatre as an all-around event. Barbie set all kinds of records at the box office, becoming Warner Brothers’ highest grossing film ever, the highest grossing film ever by a female director, and the biggest film of 2023 worldwide, proving that female directors don’t have to sacrifice their femininity and creative integrity to dominate the cinematic market. 

Saltburn – directed by Emerald Fennell 

Whether you’ve been pining for a new Emerald Fennell flick since Promising Young Woman, or you heard “Murder on the Dancefloor” on TikTok and wanted to see what all the hype was about, Saltburn was most likely on your radar towards the end of 2023. When Oliver (Barry Keoghan) meets the affluent Felix (Jacob Elordi) at Oxford in 2007, they become close friends, prompting Felix to invite Oliver to Saltburn, his rich family’s extravagant, baroque estate. Upon Oliver’s arrival, things become incredibly sexual, tense, uncertain, and downright disturbing. 

Like Gerwig, Fennell’s sophomore feature is narratively quite distant from her first, but maintains her signature psychological tone and banger soundtrack. She uses these mechanisms to create a depiction of how class is not just about division, and that for some, there is truly never enough wealth. Fennell uses Oliver’s creepy behaviour to represent how relentless economic and social climbing can be, as he parasitically infiltrates Felix’s loaded family. This economic invasion is largely depicted through mind games and sex, which make the film as juicy as it is poignant. While the internet-ification of the film risks reducing it to a mere TikTok sound, its online presence has exposed many to a level of subversive media they may not have encountered previously. For a more in-depth look at Saltburn’s symbolism, check out the Daily’s review by Evelyn Logan. Along with Barbie, Saltburn showed that female filmmakers not only dominated cinematic culture in 2023, but also the world of the internet. 

Bottoms  – directed by Emma Seligman 

The unhinged teen sex comedy is back and gayer than ever, all thanks to Emma Seligman. Finally liberating us from the years of painfully out of touch, forcefully Gen Z-ified Netflix teen flicks, Seligman, along with star and co-writer Rachel Sennott, revive the most enjoyable aspects of the R-rated teen sex romp with a refreshing, queer perspective. “Ugly, untalented gay nerds” Josie (Ayo Edeberi) and PJ (Sennott), in the hopes of  getting closer to pretty girls Isobel (Havana Rose Liu) and Brittany (Kaia Gerber), start a “self-defence” fight club at their school to stand up to tyrannical football players. 

Because the film’s queerness and femininity aren’t used as rhetorical devices and are allowed to just exist as the chaotic plot unfolds, its identity politics paradoxically become much more digestible. Josie and PJ’s identities and status as outcasts goes beyond them being gay, making it a part of their identity, but not their entire identity. This allows Bottoms to go all out in its violence, obscenity, and hilarity – something female-directed films aren’t often allowed to do. With the most side-splitting lines you’ve ever heard being doled out by the minute, Seligman’s flick proves that women, specifically queer women, are here to spearhead a new, inclusive era of the teen comedy without losing an ounce of the absurdity that makes the genre so adored. If you’d like a closer look at how Bottoms revamps the vulgar, teen comedy genre, you can read my film review for the Daily published last September.   

Five films are not nearly enough to encapsulate just how prolific female directors were last year, but these picks are certainly some of the best overall, across all films. Even if major award ceremonies have given us little hope in terms of their ability to actually acknowledge these critical and commercial standouts, the flow of female-directed film and television gained a momentum this year that shows no signs of decelerating. More female-directed content is already being anticipated for 2024; Canadian director Molly McGlynn’s coming of age film Fitting In is set to be released in February, while Lulu Wang (The Farewell) has a new series called Expats coming soon that’s already gained lots of buzz and critical attention. Keep an eye out for female-directed film and television; buy tickets, talk about it, engage with it – you will most definitely encounter a perspective you haven’t seen yet.

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