Ronnie Spector will always be the “bad girl of rock & roll.” Coming into fame as a teenager, Spector’s natural musical talent brought her a lifetime of success. Her lead vocals enraptured the world with her group, The Ronettes’ chart-topper “Be My Baby” (1963), which has since appeared in countless blockbusters. Notably, the song was played in the opening scene of Dirty Dancing (1987), a perfect introduction for a rebelliously romantic movie that mirrored Spector’s “bad girl” persona. Spector passed away in early January – upon the news of Spector’s death, the internet was fast to pay regards. Tweets and posts praised the late singer, thanking her for her powerful music and legacy. She left a mark on the music industry from the day she first performed and her indomitable spirit continues to influence countless artists across decades and genres.

From a small apartment in Spanish Harlem to a global superstar (though she would never say that about herself), Spector, born Veronica Yvette Bennett, was an inspiration from the minute her voice hit the microphone. She grew from a young girl in the 60s yelling at a hot-dog vendor for refusing service to her mother and aunt, written about in her memoir Be My Baby: How I Survived Mascara, Miniskirts and Madness, to a woman unafraid to recount harrowing moments of her young adulthood. 

From the beginning of Spector’s career, her mother was one of her biggest fans. From New York to California all the way to Europe, Beatrice Bennett would travel the globe to watch her daughter perform. Bennett proved to be her best advocate when she was starting out, forcing producers to write into her contracts that she could accompany her daughter on tours to make sure she was safe and was also having a little fun.In her memoir, Spector expresses how she “[was] tired of the music business” and how her mother had to tell a … white lie… to get out of her band’s not-so-successful contract with Colpix Records and change producers Not long after this, The Ronettes signed with one of the most prominent record producers of the 60s, with whom their fame rose exponentially. Even after her  rise to fame, Spector never forgot her family and In 1963 when Spector noticed her father in the audience of a show for the first time, she says, “I was so excited to see my daddy that I nearly dropped the mike.”

Spector was working in an industry run and dominated by men. Of the most popular artists of the 60’s, the Ronettes are one of the only 15 artists who are women to make the cut. “Years ago, we were like creations of genius men. We were little Stepford singers, interchangeable, one from column A, two from column B. We were seen as employees, not artists. I can’t speak for all the girls but I always saw myself as an artist. That’s why I think I’m still alive – to say we girls have to stick up for ourselves,” Spector says to The Telegraph Reporter Hermione Hoby in a 2014 interview. Nonetheless, The Rolling Stones opened for The Ronettes for the latter’s Great Britain debut. Spector entered the tour with a hesitation that proved completely unfounded. Unsurprisingly, the group received a standing ovation following every performance and went on to tour with the Beatles.  Following The Ronettes’  separation, Spector went on to work with Eddie Money, George Harrison, Bruce Springsteen, Billy Joel, and more. “You were great,” John Lennon said to Ronnie Spector the first time he met her, “just fuckin’ great.”

Spector was a domestic abuse survivor, reflecting on her abusive relationship with ex-producer and ex-husband Phil Spector in her memoir. She writes, “I can only say that when I left in the early ’70s, I knew that if I didn’t leave at that time, I was going to die there.”

Spector was known for prominent hairstyles and fun, flashy outfits inspired by street life in Spanish Harlem. In an interview with Vogue she stated, “I’d see these girls with their eyeliner and teased hair, and the black girls – the way they walked and held their cigarettes. It was like, ‘Wow, that’s what I want to look like!’ So the three of us went on stage like that. Because of this, she was dubbed bad-girl “Ronnie Ronette.” In this case, “bad-girl” had the ultimate positive connotation. She was idolized  for her bold eye makeup and iconic beehive hairstyle – which she was rarely seen without. The cat-eye eyeliner trend popular through the 60s and 70s is primarily credited towards Spector.

Ms. Ronnie Spector was unafraid. Unafraid to sing on stage in front of thousands of screaming fans. She loved the rush that came with performing live for innumerable screaming fans. And continued to for six whole decades. Spector continued to pursue her musical career even at the age of 76, releasing her most recent album, “English Heart,” in 2017, and playing Christmas shows with the other Ronettes in 2019. “Retirement isn’t my thing,” Spector told Wall Street Journal reporters in 2019, “when it’s time to hang up my shoes, I’ll know it.”

The post Tribute to the Bad Girl of Rock & Roll appeared first on The McGill Daily.

The high school world built in the film was unreal to me: no uniforms or dress-codes, teachers lacking authority, school dances and house parties, glamour. The film distinctly highlighted American and non-American disparities, the non-American always lacking in front of the American. Consequently, I felt as if I was lacking; as if I was missing something in my student life. Like Cady, I did eventually come of age. But when this happened, I questioned where my desire to be an ideal American teenage girl came from. As an audience, we see Mean Girls from Cady’s perspective – the outsider who grew up in Kenya and has come to a U.S high school for the first time. Cady must adjust to this new world and become more like the students at the school; specifically, more like the girls at this school. 

Often in the film, Cady compares certain high school scenarios to the so-called “animal world,” enabling a highly reductive image of Africa as the monolithic land of animals. In his famous essay titled “How to Write about Africa,” Binyavanga Wainaina writes that Africa is usually portrayed through cliches in literature, and arguably, in other forms of media as well. With strong overtones of sarcasm and irony, Wainaina writes, “In your text, treat Africa as if it were one country,” and while African characters should be “colourful, exotic, larger than life – but empty inside,” “animals…must be treated as well-rounded, complex characters.” Indeed, there are no mentions of many human characters from Africa (except Cady’s childhood crush who rejected her). All of Cady’s childhood pictures portray her standing in a grassland with animals – an elephant, a snake, giraffes in the background – as if Africa constituted only of grassland and animals. 

What’s more harmful though, is that this reductive image of Africa is frequently compared with the “girl world.” This is especially prominent in one scene where there is a passive-aggressive encounter between Regina and Cady in the cafeteria. Regina attempts to provoke Cady by flaunting Aaron – Cady’s love interest and Regina’s former boyfriend – and get a reaction from her. Cady immediately thinks of how this situation might be resolved in the “animal world,” and the scene cuts to Cady’s imagination, in which she attacks Regina, and everyone in the cafeteria becomes  an animal. However, Cady holds herself back on the grounds that this is the “girl world,” where things can’t be resolved using physical force. She resigns to a passive stance, giving in to Regina’s whims. 

American high school culture is thus the “girl world” where conflicts and arguments are handled in a civil manner, while Africa is deemed an “animal world” where savagery is the first and last resort. The “girl world” is where Cady aspires to be, in order to be accepted by her peers. The “animal world –” or any world other than the ideal American society – is what she desperately tries to escape because she will simply not be accepted. Even though towards the end Cady realizes that there is more to life than popularity and fitting in, the film inherently perpetuates a distinction between American and non-American – one is, while the other is simply not. 
It was perhaps this false sense of security and acceptance provided by American imperialism that invoked in me the desire to be like the mean girls. I look back at Mean Girls with a lot of endearment, because after all, the film did give me the perfect escape. I could relate to these teenagers on screen as I felt out of place in school, a misfit who desired to be part of the popular clique. But I also look at it with caution, reminding myself of what some of its aspects stand for. Not only was it not my reality, but it was probably not most American students’ reality either.

The post Girl World appeared first on The McGill Daily.

The Blair Witch Project was cinematically released in 1999, immediately taking audiences by storm for its chilling experience. It follows the story of three film students who travel to the Black Hills – a forest near Burkittsville, Maryland – to film a documentary about the Blair Witch. The legend goes that a woman by the name of Elly Kedward was accused of being involved in witchcraft, hence banished from the town of Blair. Her curse has never left the town, resulting in countless tragedies among residents and visitors. The students interview local villagers and record terrifying testimonies about the Witch on their camera, along with their own experiences in the woods. The three, however, eventually disappear, their camera’s contents and equipment being found a year later. 

Sound familiar? Although it’s become a cliche in itself as of today, the found-footage technique in horror was groundbreaking at the time. The concept of perceiving the plot through a camera operated by characters within the film not only puts audiences in the middle of that scenario, but also helps them relate better to the characters in question. This creates a sense of uneasiness where you want to escape the situation as much as the characters do, for you become part of the plot. You become the fourth film student, experiencing the legend of the Blair Witch as another character in the movie. Unnamed, unacknowledged, and unaffected, but a character nonetheless. 

Moreover, the fact that the footage is labelled as having been “found” raises additional questions. What ultimately happened to the students? Why was it “found” and not “submitted?” Why was the camera left untouched? Inquiries like these shape the movie, but the answers are never delivered. It’s a slow burn technique which keeps audiences engaged. The viewer is also never introduced to the Blair Witch herself, instead having to imagine their own interpretation of what this mysterious figure might look like. You are forced to deal with a long, dreadful build-up of horror and suspense, which will make you recoil in your seat during even a slow-paced scene.

The hand-held H18s and 16mm camera used in shooting the film have a distinctive quality of their own. This movie, we are constantly reminded, is being shot by amateur film students. Since they have not perfected cinematography, spacing, lighting, or stabilizing the camera, the results form a choppy, shaky medium of delivery. Their attempts to uphold a more professional touch to their documentary is lost as soon as the students realize that they are not simply listening to stories of the Blair Witch anymore, but are themselves experiencing one. As fear takes over, the group’s gradual interpersonal breakdown is characterized by increasingly hesitant shooting. The grainy quality of the recording adds to this effect; it’s obvious age disconnects the viewer for a moment, and makes them realize that the footage is old and only recently found, before the film pulls them back into this ghostly past.  

Praise for The Blair Witch Project, however, does not discount the trope of portraying women as the deranged antagonist in horror, which needs to be addressed in order to continue enjoying the genre. The Blair Witch could be observed as being a villain without motive. No background is given to the reason behind her evil, nor is Elly Kedward’s character developed beyond witchcraft. This could be attributed to shallow characterization, wherein she lacks a complex and multifaceted personality. Moreover, it perpetuates the association of women to witchcraft, wherein they were believed to be “more prone to diabolical possession” and essentially “imperfect” following The Black Death. This led to real world consequences, such as the Salem Witch Trials. Had the townspeople, in their testimonies, provided a more in-depth description of the Blair Witch as a member of the town, the duality between her mortal and supernatural sides would have made her all the more terrifying. Although later installments to the franchise do provide a backstory to Elly Kedward, it does not have the same impact as it would have had her character been further emphasized upon right from the start.

The found-footage and camera techniques can be recreated, and have been recreated, in films to follow. However, what is an exceptionally marked quality of this movie is its marketing campaign, which blurred distinctions between reality and camerawork. Being a low-budget indie film with unconventional delivery, its success was not guaranteed. But when The Blair Witch Project was first introduced to the public in 1999, it sparked fear and confusion among audiences. It, for as long as the campaign lasted, made the genre of horror cross into our lives, the terror stemming from the notion that this could happen with any of us.

The movie was marketed through the official Blair Witch website, at a time when the internet had just started to take off in North America. It featured false news reports, newsreel interviews, and inquiries regarding the whereabouts of the three missing students. This kickstarted the first debates across the internet, on forums and discussion boards, regarding the validity of the story. There were factions on both sides, sparking inquiry into not just the truth of this film, but regarding the limits to which the genre of horror as a whole could be pushed. The legend of the Blair Witch, it seemed, had transformed people’s ideas about what could or could not actually happen when it comes to the supernatural. 

The indie production house behind the film – Haxan Films – kept up the suspense surrounding the film and updated the website frequently. They posted photos supposedly released by the “Frederick County Sheriff’s Office,” created lore around the Blair Witch, and even explained their role in the entire situation – they had been hired by the missing students’ parents to edit the choppy clips into a film. Even the choice of actors was important – they were still unknown faces, so no one could tell if they were acting or if they had actually been in that situation. Soon, the legend of the Witch had escaped into a field of existence where it was not just a plotline in a horror movie anymore, but recognized and accepted mythology.

Today, the hype around a movie like The Blair Witch Project is difficult to recreate. Techniques it pioneered have seeped into horror film conventions to a degree that they do not have nearly the same impact as the original did. It was a one-time phenomenon that could only be experienced in absolution in that moment, in 1999, when you went and sat in the cinema hall, popcorn in hand, looking for answers to questions that had remained unanswered for months. Its impact on the genre of horror is immense, and therefore it remains, to this day, a Halloween staple, and in every sense of the phrase, “based on a true story.”

The post How ‘The Blair Witch Project’ broke cliches appeared first on The McGill Daily.

But although they are usually presented as a power duo, they both have very strong individual presences, like little rebellions from only ever being seen as twins. Tegan presents as more outgoing, usually taking the lead during their famous concert banter. Sara is more reserved, always looking pensive. But their memoir High School reveals far more complex individuals: Tegan’s confidence comes with a deep desire to be heard and Sara’s distant tendency shows a rich but sometimes troubling inner world. So how to reconcile such different albums, eras, and people? Perhaps it is by making themselves relatable to so many – and especially to young queer fans – that they’ve been able to stay relevant for more than two decades now.

The best way to understand Tegan and Sara’s music is through their extensive discography – few pop artists have nine albums, which for fans serves as a sort of archive on the band’s growth. Their music should be looked at like a film in which you get to watch a character grow and navigate different stages of life. If you pay close enough attention to the sounds of each album, you can witness their coming of age, and maybe even yours too. You can hear the loneliness of young adulthood in So Jealous. You can hear deep longing and pain in The Con. You can hear them gain confidence in Heartthrob and the playfulness of self-discovery in Love You to Death. The band’s progression is filled with contradiction, showing how growing up is always messy. Their latest album Hey, I’m Just Like You is the perfect chapter-closer and a snapshot into their careers: all the songs on the record were written while they were still in high school, aided by the tapes that the sisters had gathered from friends and family. The most striking element from their newer and older songs is their willingness to look back to a painful, embarrassing, and formative era with compassion and vulnerability – reflection which they also do in their memoir. In an interview for The New York Times, they share their thoughts on the music from their teenage years: “It wasn’t rudimentary,” they explained, “There was something remarkable about what we were trying to say.” Tegan and Sara’s music flips the narrative that says that  teenagers cannot make meaningful art and encourages their younger fans to take themselves seriously in their passions.  

Although I love the songs that make me feel seen, their most interesting songs are the ones that I relate to the least, probably because they feel like possibilities rather than old stories. “I’m All Messed Up” is one of my favourite songs, especially when Sara sings it acoustically. The song has a very pop arrangement and feels more spaced out than older songs like “Soil, Soil” and “Hop a Plane.” The interjections punched in the background – Sara cries “go” and Tegan cries “stay” – have that undeniable entwined Tegan and Sara feel. It is in moments like those that their music feels the most special: when you see how they complement each other while being almost exact opposites.  

Tegan and Sara stand out not only for their musical achievements but also because they have always been subversive. Their musical influences are very clear in their early albums. They grew up in the nineties and were huge fans of Nirvana, Ani DiFranco, and The Smashing Pumpkins. They were out and had shaved heads, piercings, mullets, and tattoos in a time where women in mainstream music portrayed approaches to femininity curated to be heteronormative. Their queerness was shamed and ridiculed by homophobic and sexist press coverage, with articles calling them “tampon rock” and isolating their music from mainstream listeners. But part of their power has been in reclaiming the spaces they were relegated to. They have become cultural icons of the indie music scene as well as the queer community. Their music has been featured in major queer shows and movies like The L Word and Happiest Season. Even if Tegan and Sara’s look – and in many ways the style of their current music – feels less grungy now, this does not take away from their significance as queer icons. Rather, it is a testament to their evolution as artists and their willingness to explore spaces queer women are rarely allowed to, like pop music. For fans such as myself, Tegan and Sara opened new ways of gender expression, style, and queer desire which feel deeply foundational to my identity. When I was introduced to their music, for the first time in my life, I did not have to change the pronouns of a song for it to fit my own experiences.  I also found the curiosity to explore the style of clothes I wore, and to be more visible in my gender expression. By seeing them sing about their queer love and heartbreak I felt like I could imagine a life that was just as rich and full as the ones I was seeing straight people have. These may not seem like huge instances of self affirmation, but being able to fully relate to something without having to adapt myself to a heteronormative standard felt amazing. Tegan and Sara’s music feels like coming home, and they have built a community that is safe, and queer, and exciting. 

The post One of a Kind appeared first on The McGill Daily.

And arrive those monsters did, through the 39 episodes of the 1966 Ultraman series. They hailed not only from far-off planets, but also, occasionally, from the costume departments of bigger tokusatsu productions which were booming from the ’50s onwards; one episode features a clearly reused Godzilla costume with a frill added around the neck. At other times, the production team would modify costumes from previous episodes, paint them over to give the monsters a fresh name and backstory.

The budgetary and time constraints for the first Ultraman series seem laughable now in the face of what it grew into: a global media franchise including games, movies, manga, and merchandise that hauls in billions annually for Tsuburaya Productions (Marvel even released a five-issue Ultraman comic book series last year). As far as I know, kids in Japan are still into it; every year there’s yet another Avengers-style Ultraman movie.

But the first Ultraman didn’t fly with that sort of sprawling financial safety net. It was a kids’ sci-fi serial, sure, so each episode moved with a predictable logic, but with all its constraints — the episodic form, target audience, time, money, materials — there was a (literally) hands-on dedication that came out of turning the old into the new. Necessity may be the mother of invention, but in the best cases, ingenuity can be born too. Each episode had explosives experts ensuring that the model buildings would detonate in sequence, a team of painters spending a night to finish the backdrop of a sunset, sculptors building little highways and making them look realistically dirty, even if all the effort amounted to a three-second throwaway shot of the highway collapsing. And when Ultraman did fly, it was his figurine on piano wire, the camera tilted at an angle.

Practical effects force you to be practical. That would be a cute little pull quote, sure, but that’s not what I want to preach on behalf of my younger self. It’s more that it builds a certain imagination when a kid watches a show and senses where the hinges are, how the thing was put together, time and time again. You realize that 100 people doing one small thing right can be its own kind of superhuman effort. Serial kids’ television — not “good” or “bad” television, but plainly engrossing, candy-colored mulch — teaches you to imagine in episodes. You learn to build as much as you can in a sandbox (in my case, a sketchbook) because it will all come toppling down in a half hour. You can reuse designs, you can tell one story 39 ways, and in some cases you should, because growing up you finally appreciate the whole arc, the changes in scenery that obliquely add up to more than the plot in front of you. So why not steal from the things around you that hum with potential? The showrunners themselves loved thrifting from the French. The alien Dada was named after, yes, the avant-garde art movement that pushed for randomness and irrationality as praxis. The alien Baltan was named after Sylvie Vartan, a French singer who was famous at the time in Japan. And the rationale behind that alien’s costume? As one of the directors Toshihiro Iijima has it…

Fifty five years since the first Ultraman series, the human-in-a-suit versus kaiju model has of course been played out to death, along with all its tropes — paper-thin protagonists, man-made monsters, a deus ex machina in the final battle — but what seems too smooth and formulaic about the newer Ultraman movies or Pacific Rim was still being worked out on screen in the original series. From the fight choreography which is much like a mix of backyard wrestling and amateur gymnastics, to the sound design that feels uncannily reminiscent of ’70s krautrock band CAN (their debut album was named Monster Movie), the show was scrappy in more ways than one. It was endearingly janky, and yet remains so well put-together.

This isn’t me trying to convince you to sit through 39 episodes of what might look like Japanese Star Trek (with giants). As with most media you grow out of, I get more enjoyment now learning about the work the creators put into it – the “what if” and “why not” behind every little decision.

The best kind of looking back is when you realize something belongs there, like an old sketchbook you flip through just to see how much time you had on your hands as a kid, how well you wasted it. There’s a scene in Episode 34 where the Science Patrol is interrupted by an emergency call as they’re eating curry. At some point during the filming, director Akio Jissoji leapt from his chair in a lightbulb moment to tell Shin to run out onto the roof with his spoon, mistaking it for the beta capsule. What a brilliant and dumb idea.

The post Flashback: Saraba, Ultraman appeared first on The McGill Daily.

Dan Harmon’s sitcom Community (2009-2015) centres on a study group at Greendale, a fictional community college in Colorado. The group includes seven core members: Jeff (Joel McHale), a former lawyer who returns to college when his degree is discovered to be fake; Britta (Gillian Jacobs), a psychology major and former activist; Troy (Donald Glover), a former high school football star; Pierce (Chevy Chase), an elderly millionaire; Annie (Alison Brie), an over-achieving medical administration student; Shirley (Yvette Nicole Brown), a mother of three hoping to start her own business; and Abed (Danny Pudi), a film major who is heavily coded as autistic. 

I immediately connected with Abed. This was a character that got me – I watched him dump his life story on Jeff before he even introduced himself in the pilot episode, and it was like seeing myself on television in the best and most confusing way. 

Though Abed is never explicitly labelled as autistic, the series often hints at this aspect of his identity. In the pilot, for instance, Jeff tells Abed, out of anger: “Yeah, well you have Asperger’s.” (Asperger’s is an outdated term for autism spectrum disorder without language delay). In the season 3 episode “Regional Holiday Music,” Abed says “On the spectrum? None of your business” during his “Christmas Infiltration” rap with Troy. Abed’s autism is generally accepted by Community’s fanbase; Dan Harmon even discovered that he was autistic himself while writing Abed’s character.

Just a note here: autism is a spectrum made up of many traits and characteristics that each autistic person embodies to different extents – here’s a pretty cool comic that explains this. Abed may be the perfect representation of autism for me, but that doesn’t mean he fulfils that role for every autistic person. 

Abed has a special interest in TV and film, and he attempts to understand the world through pop culture references. This resonates with me deeply as a person who understands others through the media I consume; I adopt much of the way I talk from my favourite books, TV shows, and YouTube videos. Abed speaks in movie quotes, uses movie marathons to connect with friends, and imagines himself as various film characters to problem-solve. 

Unlike in many depictions of autistic people, Abed’s friends accept and encourage his interests, instead of making fun of them. In season 1, Britta pays for Abed’s film class when his father refuses to, allowing him to pursue his aspiration of being a filmmaker. In the season 2 episode “Critical Film Studies,” Abed’s friends throw him a Pulp Fiction-themed birthday party. Abed even meets his girlfriend, Rachel, when she picks up on the rom-com-inspired “Two-Timer Date” scenario that Abed is pulling while she is working the coatroom at their school dance. 

Despite Abed’s in-depth knowledge of pop culture, the show doesn’t portray him as a savant – an autistic person who has “extraordinary” abilities in a specific category, a trope that is present in most portrayals of autism in the media, but that represents less than ten per cent of the autistic population. Abed loves making films, but he also struggles with his craft. He can build an impressively large blanket fort and memorize countless movie references, but he doesn’t know how to pay parking tickets, can’t tell his left from right without mouthing the Pledge of Allegiance, and can’t read an analog clock. He is multifaceted and imperfect, considered as neither a charity case, nor a superhuman. 

What sets Abed apart for me is the fact that his loved ones are patient with him when he misinterprets social situations and struggles to connect with others, while simultaneously holding him accountable when he messes up. When Abed fights with his girlfriend because he lies to her about wanting her to move in, she expresses her disappointment in him, but remains understanding of his difficulties with relationships. Abed’s friends give him pointers on sarcasm and teach him how to understand certain social cues, but they don’t excuse his manipulative behaviour as him “not knowing better.” 

While I love this character in so many ways, I am also upset by the show’s reluctance to confirm his diagnosis. In a media landscape with so few autistic characters, especially autistic characters of colour, Abed would have been meaningful representation. By skirting around his diagnosis, the writers seem to communicate that autism is a “bad thing,” rather than simply a neurotype that differs from the dominant one. Television is a space where autism can be spoken about openly, which makes it a tool to decrease the stigma around being autistic.

Nearly six years after the end of Community, I struggle to find an autistic character who is as accurately depicted, well-rounded, and as fun as Abed. As Autism Acceptance Month begins, it’s important to uplift the work of autistic individuals and advocate for meaningful representation in the media. Series like Everything’s Gonna Be Okay (in which autistic actress Kayla Cromer plays an autistic girl named Matilda) and films like A. S.imple D.ate (written by and starring autistic actress Rebecca Faith Quinn) are essential media. 

Seeing Abed Nadir on Community was a genuinely life-changing experience for me. For the first time, I felt truly seen by a character, and we can infer from Abed’s massive Twitter fanbase that many other people relate to him as well. Abed remains one of very few, well-written, autistic characters on television, but he can’t be the sole representation of autistic young adults, particularly when the traits and experiences of those on the spectrum vary so widely. Autistic people deserve meaningful representation that reflects the diversity of our lived experiences.

The post How Watching Abed Nadir Made Me Feel Seen appeared first on The McGill Daily.

Almost Famous is the story of William Miller (Patrick Fugit), an aspiring rock journalist who is assigned by Rolling Stone to write a profile on the emerging rock band Stillwater. William may be the protagonist, but it’s Kate Hudson’s Penny Lane who has become the symbol of the film. Penny doesn’t describe herself as a groupie; rather, she refers to herself as a devoted “band-aide” that goes on tour with the group. Hudson’s effortless looks reflect popular 70s fashion trends, and have since elevated her as a fashion icon in cinema. Vintage sites including Depop and Etsy are overflowing with copies of the jacket, all for people to bid over. While the film itself offers a charming coming-of-age story, it’s ultimately the iconic looks that captivate viewers post-credits.

Penny Lane exudes confidence even in her most vulnerable moments, and the jacket embodies this perfectly. The film’s costume designer Betsy Heimann describes the coat as Penny’s “armour,” since the exaggerated collar and shearling material act as a protective layer against the cruel world that is rock n’ roll music. While Penny is confident, romantic and free-spirited, she is also a petrified young girl in a misogynistic industry. The jacket allows her to fully embody a self-assured persona. When Penny walks into a room, people notice, and the jacket only amplifies that power, which is why the world – or at least, the trendy youth on Depop – is currently fawning over it. We’ve been anxiously hibernating for a year now, so it makes sense that an article of clothing used to create a carefree facade is at the top of our shopping lists.

While the jacket is a show-stopping piece, many of the film’s other costumes have since become icons as well. The wardrobe choices in Almost Famous were carefully curated to authentically embody the era in which the film is set – in true 70s fashion, many of the characters rocked bell-bottom jeans and the iconic Levi 501s, a “vintage” staple that has transcended into mainstream culture after Gen Z banded together to cancel skinny jeans (Thank you, Gen Z!). Almost all of the characters in the film wear this denim, which helps them achieve the “laid-back rockstar” aesthetic that was popular at the time.  

Heimann has also explained how she channeled Bianca Jagger’s thrift store aesthetic to master the groupie’s look. 70s fashion adopted many trends from both the 30s and 40s due to the newfound popularity of vintage clothing, so aspects of these previous decades are apparent in many of the female costumes as well, helping them achieve the bohemian aesthetic of the groupie look. For instance, Polexia (Ana Paquin), another groupie, adopts the “vintage chic” look within her 70s wardrobe while sporting a 1930s chemise throughout the film. This iconic apparel has since become a popular wardrobe staple, sported by icons for decades, and by teenagers in the summer months.  

This piece wouldn’t be complete without acknowledging Penny Lane’s iconic round glasses, featured on the film’s poster. The metallic round shape is synonymous with the film, and has been adopted by brands like Ray-Ban as the perfect summer accessory. So, while we can thank Almost Famous for its legendary soundtrack and its nostalgic references, we must also acknowledge its masterful fashion statements. The film provides iconic looks that have left viewers infatuated for decades. And let’s face it – who doesn’t want to be Penny Lane?

The post Ode to the Penny Lane Coat appeared first on The McGill Daily.

I should start by saying that I hadn’t yet been born when Dawson’s Creek first aired in 1998. The show wasn’t a part of my formative years, and when I watched it for the first time during quarantine, it felt outdated and completely different from my own high school years. Small town life? Teenagers with names like “Dawson” and “Pacey” working in a video rental store? Boats?

And yet, I developed an obsession. I couldn’t help but keep watching Dawson’s Creek, with all of its formulaic teen show charm. Before my very eyes, I saw early aughts television history being made. 

For those of you who haven’t watched basically every teen TV drama to ever air, let’s start at the beginning, AKA the year 1990. While “adult” dramas and soaps like The Young and the Restless and Days of Our Lives were well into their 27th seasons, television executives failed to consider how the teen demographic would respond to soapy drama and romance. At this point, most teen shows were sitcoms or ensemble family series – that is, up until the success of Beverly Hills, 90210, which ran from 1990-2000. The show borrowed many elements and plotlines from “adult” soap operas, but replaced the cast with attractive 20-somethings who played teenagers, a staple of the teen drama genre. 

The success of Beverly Hills, 90210 prompted the founding of The WB Network, which became a home to teen shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Gilmore Girls, One Tree Hill, and, of course, Dawson’s Creek. These iconic series set the blueprint for the teen TV genre, and specifically influenced the next generation of shows, who took the basic structure and made it racier; Gossip Girl, Pretty Little Liars, and 90210 (the 2008 remake) doubled the drugs and the sex, and even added murder, for some reason. But more than any other show, Dawson’s Creek created the modern formula from which all new teen series are born. Its lack of gimmicky storylines, along with its cast of mostly relatable and down-to-earth characters, established the baseline upon which new teen shows build more complex storylines. 

But back to Dawson. The show begins with a central group of four friends: Dawson, played by James Van Der Beek, is the titular teen who somehow becomes so unlikeable that the writers exile him to Los Angeles in the last two seasons, so that we can all get a break. Dawson’s best friend Joey, played by Katie Holmes, is the girl next door (or more accurately, down the creek), and the heart of the show. Pacey, played by Joshua Jackson, is Dawson’s other best friend and a smarmy underachiever – that is, until he falls in love. And Jen, played by Michelle Williams, is the new girl from New York who is punished for her “bad girl past” for all 6 seasons, the last nail in the coffin being her untimely death. They all live in the fictional Capeside, Massachusetts, and due to the town’s coastal geography, boats are often used as plot devices. 

Dawson’s Creek starts off simple; Joey likes Dawson, Dawson likes Jen. Pacey is groomed by his “hot teacher,” which we’re all supposed to pretend is normal. (It was the 90’s – what’s your excuse, PLL?) Quickly, though, we realize that Dawson is idealistic about his own love life, to the point of delusion. He quickly burns through relationships because of his possessiveness, and he’s unable to accept that the women he dates don’t match up to his own perfect versions of them. After a season and a half, Jen is removed from the love triangle – she’s honestly too mature for it – and is left instead to her own sad devices, which include being harassed by her toxic ex-boyfriends and overusing alcohol and drugs. At one point, she even dates her own creepy stalker. (Yes, I’m talking about Henry. He’s the worst.)

Lucky for us loyal Dawson viewers, this means that there’s room for Pacey to join in on the romance. And thus began the first teen television love triangle wherein the girl has all the power. Before this, the love triangle trope was written in to force women to compete with each other for the hot guy’s attention, while he flip-flopped between his options and disregarded their feelings. But on Dawson’s Creek, Joey has the agency. She is given the opportunity to have a legitimate friendship with Jen, without jealousy and competition, and she’s liberated from the cycle of repeating her mistakes over and over again with the same guy. She is given the choice.

By season 3 of the show, Joey has already dated Dawson, and the whole thing failed miserably. Pacey, however, has just ended a generally healthy relationship with a new cast addition, Andie (played by Meredith Monroe), so we – and Joey – have a chance to see the full extent of the emotional maturity and depth underneath his slacker, jokester facade.

As Joey realizes her complex feelings for both Dawson and Pacey, we see the show’s main characters’ true personalities emerge. Dawson becomes withholding and spiteful – he even crashes his boat into Pacey’s (see what I mean about the boats?). But Pacey communicates honestly with Joey, and gives her the time and space to decide what she wants. Teenage girls get to see what the nice guy is actually like, and we finally get to see Joey have a healthy, communicative, and respectful relationship (she and Pacey go away on a trip together, on Pacey’s boat). Oh, and we get to see Dawson cry.

Meanwhile, we also get to watch groundbreaking storylines, courtesy of newcomer Andie and her brother Jack (played by Kerr Smith). Characters that experience mental health issues are usually a sensationalized plot device in television, but in Dawson’s Creek, they are treated with respect, normalizing a generation of viewers to the ideas of seeking out help through therapy and taking medication without shame. We see the sweet, yet high-strung Andie have difficulty balancing her high expectations for herself while taking care of her mother, being her brother’s protector, and figuring out her relationship with Pacey. Andie ultimately starts taking medication with the support of her friends and family. When a death triggers her unresolved trauma, she decides, with the help of her support system, that she should take some time to recover at a treatment facility. And no, it’s not a Riverdale-style spooky asylum run by evil nuns. It’s a legitimate mental health treatment center. In another instance, Jen’s experience attending school-mandated therapy helps her understand that her issues with trust are due, in part, to her father’s neglect. The series suggests that anyone can benefit from therapy, regardless of how they look and act, and that it isn’t shameful, or even uncommon, to seek help.

And Dawson’s Creek even has – that’s right! –  a complex gay character. Andie’s brother Jack initially shows up in Capeside as a quiet, artistic love interest for Joey. Eventually, we get to watch him come out with the support of Joey and his other friends, and we see him pursue romantic relationships with interesting, well-developed love interests. The show even aired TV’s first onscreen romantic male kiss. And although Jack  becomes Jen’s best friend, he is not reduced to the “gay best friend” trope. Jen and Jack become a healthy constant in each other’s lives, providing support for one another in times of romantic and familial trouble. We get to see a gay high schooler who is popular, who’s on the football team, who has a supportive group of friends, and who isn’t constantly bullied and traumatized, as gay characters often are. This isn’t to say that there aren’t homophobic characters and plotlines within the show. They just aren’t  the overarching theme of Jack’s entire story. We get to see a nuanced gay character in the 90s. We get to see queer joy.

Watching Dawson’s Creek today, you can definitely see its age showing. The series can no longer be considered a “progressive” television series; it has a severe diversity problem in its casting, Pacey attempts to pester his gay brother out of the closet for much of the show’s first two seasons, and Dawson slut-shames any girl who has sex with someone other than him. Heck, the show isn’t even well-written most of the time. Still, I am an unapologetic fan of this silly teenage drama. Of all that it accomplished, of all that came after it, and of its strange obsession with boats.

The post Flashback: Into the Creek appeared first on The McGill Daily.