Ernest Hemingway once wrote that a clean, well-lit café was better than any bar. To me, that sounds like a challenge. Sure, cafés are cozy and cute; they serve tiny food on tiny plates and you can have a conversation with someone without screaming over a bass-heavy beat. But bars are more electrifying; you can drink anything your heart desires and dancing is more or less warranted the drunker you get.
Well, ladies and gentlemen, I think I have found Montreal’s happy medium.
Barraca Rhumerie & Tapas is a mix of cozy café and lively pub. The wood accents, wrought-iron chandeliers and low lighting make for the inviting café atmosphere, but the bar’s impressive selection of rums make for the perfect bar experience.
It is home to over 55 kinds of rum from places all over the world including Brazil, Jamaica, Venezuela and of course, Cuba. They serve everything from Captain Morgan to 21-year-old Flor de Caña. It is available by the glass, as a shooter, or in one of their amazing tropical-flavoured cocktails. Along with plenty of rum, they also serve local and imported beer and have an extensive Spanish wine list. The prices of the drinks are reasonable when compared with other bars in the area, if maybe a bit on the steep side. Prices depend on the rum; how old it is and how much the bar paid to have it on hand, but a glass generally costs around $6.
The food is definitely the next high point of this unique rum bar. Chef Guillermo Lopez created a long list of tapas, which are tiny Spanish-inspired appetizers, as well as one-serving casseroles and plates of mixed meat and vegetables. Their most interesting and flavourful appetizer, grilled almonds with both sugar and spice, is a Latin take on the traditional peanuts found at most pubs. Their tapas are $3 each, which seems like a reasonable price, but keep in mind that you will only be getting one appetizer-sized bite of food. They are, however, kind of worth it. The tiny bites packed a huge punch, and never ceased to amaze me. If you are looking for something more sustaining, their casseroles are the way to go. Everything from breakfast-style egg and mushroom, to bar-style french fry and spicy ketchup casseroles make the bar even more unique than it already is. To make it even more enticing, if a lady orders one of these specialty casseroles on game night, it comes with a free cocktail. If that doesn’t have you running over there, I don’t know what will.
Barraca has a live DJ every night, playing everything from Latin-inspired to Top 40. It makes for a diverse experience and I even felt the need to Shazam a couple of the songs for later reference. It wasn’t too loud or annoying, which is welcomed in a time when conversation is stifled by the booming music played in most bars.
The patrons pick up the pace after 10 p.m. and start flooding into the bar, but it’s barely noticeable. Everyone in the bar is mellow and nonchalant, including the waitresses and bartenders. There is a bit of a wait service-wise, but you will always be served with a smile. And a glass of rum, of course.
Month: February 2012
Categories
ASFA elections are back on
After confirming last week that the general elections had been postponed indefinitely, Arts and Science Federation of Associations President Alex Gordon told The Concordian on Monday that the polling dates have now been set for March 5, 6 and 7.
The campaign period begins for a second time Feb. 29 and runs until Sunday, March 4.
Gordon said that the original dates following the postponement were in conflict with the Concordia Student Union’s nomination period for its general election and thus new dates had to be chosen.
The ASFA president admitted that the current dates are still in violation of the ASFA bylaws that state that the elections must not overlap with the CSU campaign period.
Despite ASFA’s commitment to adhering to its bylaws, Gordon said “the breaking of the bylaws is what has to happen right now.”
Due to “extenuating circumstances, we had no option but to push back the dates,” said Gordon. “This is the soonest we could properly get the elections running.”
Although there may be some confusion by the time students head to the polls in the midst of the CSU campaign period, Gordon is hopeful that there will be no negative impact on voters. He has been in communication with members of the CSU executives who have been “very sympathetic to the situation.”
The election was postponed due to procedural complications and a lack of communication since chief electoral officer Chris Webster resigned unexpectedly just before polling began on Feb. 15.
Gordon had emphasized since elections were first postponed that they were “definitely not cancelled,” but that “all voting that’s taken place so far has been voided.”
He went on to say that the complications, one of which was a technical issue with the computers at polling stations that didn’t allow students with minors in arts and science to vote, made it impossible for “procedure to be followed to the fullest.”
“We can’t legitimately count [the ballots],” he said.
Andrew Roberts, the president of the Geography Undergraduate Student Society, an ASFA member association, feels that the technical difficulties “truly shouldn’t have gotten by.”
“Whether an oversight on the part of IT or on the election officers, the validity of voting hinged on this issue and is a primary reason for the delay,” said Roberts. “It can’t be overlooked in the future.”
Roberts called the postponement “sad but necessary,” and he is not the only member association representative that feels that way.
“It’s unfortunate that things happened that way but I am glad ASFA did not turn a blind eye and pursue the election regardless,” said COMS guild co-president Renée Tousignant. “We would rather have a fair election than a shady one that would see all ASFA associations question the elected executives next year. Overall, we are glad it’s been dealt with that way.”
Former ASFA CEO Nick Cuillerier said Webster’s resignation was partly to blame for the delay.
“We need responsible people who want to take on big projects,” Cuillerier said. “It starts with getting people who are interested in student politics to get more involved on the administrative side.”
Cuillerier went on to say that he hopes future CEOs understand the responsibility that comes with the position. “Sometimes being CEO can be a thankless job and we need to make sure they get the credit they deserve,” he said.
The three deputy electoral officers will continue to oversee the process, advised by VP internal Schubert Laforest. ASFA DEO Luke Gerald added that the DEOs were looking into hiring someone with more electoral experience and a better understanding of the process involved in order to help them run the general election.
One of the reasons Webster was said to resign as CEO was because he disagreed with a decision rendered by ASFA’s judicial committee. The decision was regarding executive candidate Eric Moses Gashirabake’s desire to switch positions during the original campaign period in early February.
In its statement released on Feb. 16, the JC found that Gashirabake would be held responsible for “breaching the spirit of fair play during the course of the electoral process” for switching from VP internal to VP academic and Loyola affairs, a move that had originally been green-lighted by Webster.
Gashirabake wrote in an email to The Concordian that he plans to appeal the decision.
The JC ruling, issued before the postponement of the general election, stated that 65 votes would be docked from the total number of votes Gashirabake received and that one-fifth of his total campaign expenses would be revoked.
Chris Webster could not be reached for comment despite repeated attempts to contact him.
Categories
One does not simply make a meme
These images portray talking cats, highly animated faces of cartoon people or videos of babies doing cute things. They’re viral Internet entertainment called memes, and they’re taking over social media outlets faster than you can imagine.
The original definition of a meme came from Richard Dawkins in 1976. He declared a meme to be “an idea, behaviour or style that spreads from person to person within a culture.” It’s a concept used to describe the theoretical unit which transfers cultural aspects between generations. Dawkins’ book, The Selfish Gene, explained how memes are the cousins of genetics; they grow, evolve and replicate in the same way.
Internet memes may not be what Dawkins had in mind when writing his definition of a meme, although they do share similar characteristics. Internet memes have been popular since 2001. They are anything from a photo-shopped image, a comical video, or an outrageous article that becomes popular online. The speed of communication on the Internet allows memes to be viewed globally, bringing people together to laugh at the same item within hours.
There is more to a meme than a viral video. Over time, memes have developed a language, rules, and trends. An iconic example of meme language is Lolcats. You simply take a picture of your cat and put text around it that is intentionally spelled incorrectly, as if the cat is speaking; Kitten becomes “kitteh” and more becomes “moar.”
Memes aren’t restricted to cat pictures. They include other character images, like Good Guy Greg (a seemingly good guy) or the Success Kid (a cute baby doing a triumphant elbow jab). Each character or image has unspoken guidelines and themes surrounding them and are used to get certain points across.
Colin Lankshear, a McGill professor, and Michele Knobel, an education department professor at Montclair State University, both specialize in new literacies and digital technologies. They collaborated on a paper in 2005 titled “Memes and affinities: Cultural replication and literacy education.” Their work suggests a successful meme requires three components: “Some element of humour, ranging from the quirky and offbeat to the bizarrely funny, a rich kind of intertextuality, such as wry cross-references to different popular culture events, icons or phenomena, and/or anomalous juxtapositions, usually of images.”
A recent trend on Facebook is university meme pages. Often started by students, with student contributions, the pages have been emerging online across North America and Great Britain. The memes tend to mock a specific aspect of the particular university. For instance, the most popular meme on the Concordia Facebook page says “-20 degrees outside, 100 degrees in Guy-Concordia metro.”
The title of “The first person in North America to start a website dedicated to university memes” most likely goes to Daniel Braden, an arts student at McGill University. Braden started McGill memes on Tumblr in November 2011 as a way to kill time. In an article on digitaltrends.com, Braden said “I’m also fairly confident that my site was the primary catalyst in spreading the university meme craze in Canada and the United States.”
Braden accepts occasional public submissions, but the majority of the memes are his own. When it comes to finding inspiration for his memes, Braden said he has an endless supply at McGill.
“I think of memes by making general observations about specific instances and trends in campus culture at McGill. McGill is full of many student groups and is home to many protests, therefore the memes generally write themselves,” he said.
What about Concordia memes? They can be found on a Facebook page called Concordia University Memes. Students can submit their own, and there’s an assortment of topics, from the dinginess of the Faubourg to the stereotypes looming over certain programs. Memes are intended to be harmless and humourous, but they also increase awareness about issues on campus.
“I think the main idea of a meme is you take a daily problem, well-known and easily identifiable by people who live the same ‘basic life’ as you―in our case, Concordia students―and make an image to share things that you see, that make you laugh, or make you angry,” said Hans Jules Bobànovits, an art history student at Concordia.
The Concordia meme page has over 3,000 “likes,” and even more viewers. It has become a community for students to vent and mock the trivial aspects of Concordia. The memes shed light on issues students can relate to.
“I find the visual meme is a good way to create an emotional response to a situation many people share without having to explain it,” said Concordia student Karim ZeTrad. “Words get in the way, but a picture and a line or two make the reference somewhat of an ‘inside joke’ to Concordia students. You put the meme on Facebook, and people ‘like’ it to discretely show they understand where you’re coming from.”
I immediately ditched my previous plans and tagged along for the culinary ride. Although I was annoyed that I had to wait because of their “no reservation” rule, I admit my grumpiness rooted from a grumbling stomach. Once I settled my stomach with a few homemade Old Bay spice potato chips, I was able to concentrate and observe my surroundings.
While Icehouse may not be the fanciest restaurant, it’s charming, quaint, unpretentious and just plain cool. The room doesn’t fit more than 25 seats, unless you add on the extra ones on the terrace. The wooden panels and open concept makes me feel like I’m vacationing on a boardwalk. There’s also an open kitchenette, a small detail I’ve always appreciated―I love watching chefs at work.
Though the service is not always reliable, you’re more than welcome to give your order at the kitchen counter, which is right beside the display of homemade chips and a steel tub of oysters. The menu is handwritten on a chalkboard above the counter (did you honestly expect anything else?) There are no utensils, so don’t feel bad using your hands; that’s what they want. As for the clean and polite diners among us, do not fret, there are rolls of brown paper towels at your disposal. The food is served on small red plastic trays and white and red checkered wax paper―very country chic.
Before I go on to the food, I just want to express my excitement when I saw Micheladas on the menu. It’s a Mexican beer concoction with lime, Worcestershire, Maggi and Icehouse’s homemade Tabasco sauce. If it’s not your cup of beer, don’t worry, Icehouse has a delicious spiked lemonade (I would propose the bourbon over the vodka).
To ensure you try more than one plate, I suggest visiting with a friend with a common palate. With a menu so detailed and enticing, it’s hard to pick and choose which dish you want to taste.
One of my personal favourites is the popcorn shrimp. They’re crunchy, savoury and not too oily. They’re coated with a sweet and spicy sauce made with honey, more homemade Tabasco and red wine―a little bundle of delight.
The frito pie is quite interesting. I had read the chef wasn’t satisfied with the selection of fritos here, so he decided to make his own. If this is what a frito should taste like, I don’t know what I was eating before. The chips were covered with a layer of cheese, chili and a side of mustard. The combination is brilliant and it makes me wonder why I’ve never thought of it before now.
Moving on to the main dishes, for you lobster lovers, the lobster burrito is a must. Though it’s one of the most expensive dishes on the menu, it’s totally worth it. In the midst of all the chili, black beans, cheese, homemade potato chips and corn niblets is a big meaty lobster claw. It’s one of the most popular items on the menu and for good reason. The combination between the sweet, salty, spicy, soft and crunchy is transcendent. I now have a hard time ordering lobster rolls knowing full well there’s a lobster burrito out there.
As for the meat lovers, I would suggest the brisket sandwich. It’s a hamburger bun topped with tender steak, grilled onions, poblano chilies and a cheese sauce. If you’re feeling safe, then go with the fried chicken tacos dressed with Monterey Jack cheese, jalapenos and coleslaw―simple and tasty.
Though it may be hard to choose which dish is the best, there is only one I dream about―the fried oyster po’boy. It is one of my absolute favourite things to eat. The oysters are perfectly crisp and topped with fresh coleslaw in a milk bread bun. Their homemade chipotle mayo is really what holds the whole po’boy together. It may sound simple, but the flavours are like nothing you’ve ever had before.
To sum it all up―it’s about time Montreal has Icehouse.
A+
Icehouse is located at 51 Roy St. E.
Approximately 15,000 Concordia students have been invited to participate in the 2012 National Survey of Student Engagement.
The NSSE is a questionnaire given to first- and final-year students that looks at how students evaluate their university experience and the change from first to last year.
The survey was conducted at 750 universities across the continent in 2011 and includes 71 questions and five different benchmarks.
Bradley Tucker, the director of institutional planning and analysis at Concordia, said there is a lot of merit in the results of the NSSE.
“We get a very clear picture of what our students are telling us. We can count on the fact that what we’re seeing is true,” he said.
The questions focus on a variety of topics ranging from how much a student discusses grades with instructors, to how many community events a student attends, and how well he or she interacts with other students and faculty members.
“It’s not just numbers, we get comments as well,” he explained. “Our students have something to say and we’re listening.”
Concordia Provost David Graham stated that last year, the response rate of students was 25 per cent.
“That’s pretty extraordinary for a survey,” he said. “We want to increase the number of students participating. We want to increase the accuracy.”
Graham went on to say that students who complete the NSSE before March 1 could win a Chapters-Indigo gift card and all students who complete it by March 31 will be entered to win an Apple iPad 2.
The survey was done in 2006, 2008 and 2011 and will now be conducted on an annual basis.
VANCOUVER (CUP) — No other generation in human history has had so much sex around them. From the increasingly graphic sexual content in movies and TV to the endless depths of pornography online, sex is all around us from an early age.
But despite the wealth of sexual voyeurism, it’s possible our sex lives are worse than ever.
Most parents spend more time avoiding our questions about sex than answering them. Academic institutions are increasingly terrified of being politically incorrect. Meanwhile, porn dominates over 12 per cent of all websites. It’s quick, it’s free and within seconds, we can have the answers to all of our questions. With over 86 million visitors per day, porn has become sex education for young people.
Cindy Gallop, creator of the website “Make Love, Not Porn,” gave a TED talk on this subject that quickly went viral — in part because of her raunchy subject matter. She explicitly described how her sexual experiences with younger men have exposed to her the shocking ramifications that the hardcore porn industry has had on our culture.
In the video, Gallop talked of having to regularly decline an attempted “facial” with, “Actually, no thank you very much, I would much rather you did not come on my face.”
But she is especially concerned about the young girl “whose boyfriend wants to come on her face, she does not want him to come on her face, but hardcore porn has taught her that all men love coming on women’s faces, all women love having their faces come on, and therefore she must let him come on her face, and she must pretend to like it.”
In an interview with The Ubyssey, Gallop explains that porn has made the job of sex education even harder. “There’s an entire generation growing up that believes that what you see in hardcore pornography is the way that you have sex.”
Prior to porn, those parents brave enough to take on the task of educating their children about sex simply had to talk about the logistics. Nowadays, the conversation has to address what the Internet is showing teenagers. As Gallop puts it: “Darling, we know you’re online, we know you’re looking at an awful lot of porn, so we just need to let you know that not all women like being bound, gagged, choked, spit on or gang-banged.”
Lori Brotto, a UBC professor from the department of obstetrics and gynecology, suggests that porn itself isn’t necessarily the problem. “It can expose people to new and different forms of stimuli to enhance their sexual arousal response and it can also be useful for couples wishing to add variety and intensity to their sexual experiences.”
Where the danger lies is in misunderstanding what your partner wants in their sex life. “If one partner is opposed to pornography and one in favour, then it can create jealousy, resentment and deception,” says Brotto.
“Today’s porn is more than a masturbation aid,” wrote Gary Wilson and Marina Robinson for the online magazine The Good Men Project. “It replaces imagination with multiple tabs, constant searching, fast-forwarding to the perfect scene, a voyeuristic perspective.”
The problem we’re now facing is that of a generation of performers. With over 80 per cent of North American children aged 15–17 having watched hardcore pornography on multiple occasions, and the average age of first exposure being 11, many girls know how to give the perfect blowjob before they’ve even seen a penis in the flesh. They also know what positions to get into, what noises to make and what they are “supposed” to like and dislike.
But when it comes down to actually having sex for real, will we take the cues that porn has given us? Gallop’s experience answers the question resoundingly: yes!
“We all feel enormously vulnerable when we get naked,” Gallop says. “Sexual egos are very fragile, and people find it bizarrely difficult to talk about sex with the people they are actually having sex with because you’re terrified of hurting the other person’s feelings, putting them off you, derailing the entire encounter. But at the same time, you want to please your partner, and you’ll seize your cues on how to do that from anywhere you can, and if the only cues you have are from porn, then those are the ones you will take.”
Today it’s not uncommon for two people to be in a sexual relationship, neither of them particularly enjoying what’s going on, but both believing that this is the way they should be having sex. Due to our over-exposure to porn, even open-minded, sexually aware people are struggling to figure out what genuinely turns them on. The lines are becoming blurred between what we want, and what we think we should want.
This sense of inauthentic pleasure is, more than anything else, very depressing. “Sex is the area of human experience that embraces that vastest possible range of proclivities,” says Gallop. Everybody has different sexual desires, fantasies, wants and needs, which is what makes sex such a beautiful way to express yourself.
In the end, Gallop’s message is actually pretty simple: talk about it. The way forward is sexual honesty.
— With files from Veronika Khvorostukhina
Since last week, changes have been implemented to Concordia’s student records and transcripts.
According to interim registrar Terry Too, the changes aim to make transcripts more transparent and informative by bringing modifications to GPA information, transfer credits and graduation requirements.
“Students should really see these changes with positive eyes,” said Too. “We used to have a graduation GPA that was kind of confusing. We got rid of it to make it only a cumulative GPA, while showing a term GPA that would help those students who only had one bad term.
“We’re now also showing class sizes and class averages and it helps students who were doing good compared to their classmates,” added Too. “Class sizes now also show rankings, and if you are the top student in a 300 student class, it makes a great difference than if you are a top student in a 15 student class.”
However, what seemed to worry some students, according to Concordia Student Union VP academic Hasan Cheikhzen, is that in order to graduate, students will now have to reach a cumulative GPA of 2.0 that takes into consideration all years spent at Concordia rather than only needing a last annual GPA of 2.0. This modification seemed to concern a number of students, especially those studying at JMSB or in engineering, who tend to have a difficult first year.
The changes brought up will also affect students who transfer programs within Concordia. Their GPA will now include the grades of their previous program.
Finally, one of the major changes, said Too, concerns graduate students. Instead of having a quiet brief about their degree on their transcripts, those working towards a master’s or PhD will now be provided with a lot more information. It will notably show the basis of admission, the number of credits required, the time limit to finish their degree, the thesis title, the thesis ranking and “a lot of positive changes that will help students when they apply to institutions outside the university.”
Cheikhzen added that although the students were not heavily involved in the process, the changes seem to be convincing enough for the CSU and the students to question the matter.
“Overall, we had good feedback from students and student representatives,” said Cheikhzen.
“We did receive mixed feelings about the changes over graduation GPA and transferring credit, but nothing major,” he added.
What exactly is going on with the Arts and Science Federation of Associations’ elections? The general elections that were supposed to be held from Feb. 15 to 17, then pushed to Feb. 29, and now pushed again (for the final time?) to March 5, have only succeeded in further confusing arts and science students about their own electoral process.
Given the fact that ASFA also had a total electoral meltdown during its byelection last fall, it has become clear that concrete changes need to be brought to the way the federation runs its elections.
Upon Chris Webster’s resignation as chief electoral officer just hours before polling began on Feb. 15, the ASFA executive should have immediately taken action to fill his position, thereby allowing the elections to resume as soon as possible.
Instead, the executive scrambled to run the show themselves. When they failed to do that, they announced, on the same day that polling was set to end, that the elections would be postponed until Feb. 29 due to “procedural complications.” Not only that, but ASFA declared that all electoral ballots would be voided — so much for the countless arts and science students who actually took the time to exercise a right they’re so often criticized for not doing. Want to bet they’ll be interested in voting again in the March 5 election?
And how exactly was the executive planning on getting the word out in the first place that the elections had been postponed? They never modified their website, nor their Facebook account, and the only time ASFA took to Twitter during the electoral catastrophe was to tweet about ASFA’s New York trip. While members of the student press were reporting on the breakdown throughout spring break, particularly The Concordian, which offered comprehensive coverage of the election controversy online, ASFA remained surprisingly silent on its own platforms.
It’s safe to say that ASFA is not winning any brownie points at the moment, and is certainly not inspiring any confidence among its 14,000 members.
ASFA has already taken a lot of heat for standing idly by, along with its judicial committee, while former CEO Marvin Cidamon committed several electoral violations during last October’s byelection, violations that eventually lead to his resignation just before council sacked him. One of the more notable blunders Cidamon committed was failing to alert the media about the byelection’s victors, telling The Concordian at the time that “had you not asked me, I would have never given you the results.”
When ASFA President Alex Gordon declared that they would learn from their mistakes in October, his statement seemed almost believable. Council eventually hired a new CEO, Christopher Webster, in December, who Gordon described at the time as being very qualified for the job, and who was seen as the person to set things straight when it came to elections.
However, Webster also showed failings in terms of his job capabilities early on, allowing a candidate to switch positions after the announcement of the candidacies — a decision eventually overturned by the judicial committee — and failing to answer questions about the electoral process from the student press. His resignation was hardly surprising.
ASFA is now left with a huge question: What can it do to actually run smooth, transparent elections? It has already failed to do that twice, and it seems unlikely that it will be able to do this in the near future. Already, Gordon has gone on record saying that although holding the elections on March 5 goes against ASFA’s own bylaws, because they will be held at the same time as the Concordia Student Union campaign period, it’s become “necessary” to break the bylaws. One can only imagine the backlash such a decision will ignite.
It’s understandable that ASFA wants to elect its new executive as soon as possible so that they can start to get to work on projects for next year. But rapidity should not be prioritized over fairness and the rules. ASFA needs to get a new CEO and needs to hold their elections in a period when they are actually allowed to so.
Ultimately, the federation needs to learn its own rules. Had it done so in the past, and helped its CEOs to understand the regulations as well, ASFA would not be in this mess in the first place.
However, the rules are a bit unclear when it comes to the girl code, unless you want to rely on the wise words of Gretchen Wieners from Mean Girls. It’s hard to tell whether the girl code is as solid as the bro code.
Geoffrey Greif, author of “Buddy System: Understanding Male Friendships” and a professor at the University of Maryland School of Social Work, interviewed 386 men and 122 women about same-sex friendships. He says that women are more inclined to be there for a friend by listening and being supportive while men are more inclined to give concrete advice.
“Men compete with their friends more openly and have set rules for competing. Women tend to compete more in less clear realms―who is more nurturing, more beautiful, a better cook, etc. So yes, rules are more defined for men than women who have to navigate trickier terrain than men,” said Greif.
Psychology student Margarita M. and economics student Chris Papadopoulos gave their perspectives on situations that involve friends and relationships. In general, the female side wasn’t so different from the male side after all, but the details differ slightly.
Situation One: Your friend and her significant other broke up. Can you make a move on your friend’s ex?
Female perspective: “It depends on how close you were to that friend. An acquaintance? Sure, go for it. If they’re a good friend that you are close to and you trust each other, then it’s definitely a no-no. It’s so hurtful.”
Male perspective: “There are all kinds of rules saying when it’s okay to hook up with a friend’s ex, whether it’s six months or depending on if he got dumped or he broke it up. Personally, I think the best is to stay morally correct no mater what and not go for a friend’s ex, especially if it’s just for hooking up or sex, as it is only physical. If emotions are involved, then it becomes more complicated.”
Situation Two: You like a certain someone. Turns out, your friend likes the same person. How do you deal with that?
Female perspective: “Honestly, that’s really a tough one. I guess it’s something you’d figure out when you’re in the situation. But hey, chicks before dicks so I’d definitely try to work it out in a way where our friendship would not be ended.”
Male perspective: “That’s a hard one. It will cause problems no matter what but I think the best is to sit down and talk and just come to a decision whether either one of us pursues her or both of us just stay clear. The girl shouldn’t be playing both guys either.”
Situation Three: You really don’t like your friend’s significant other. Do you go ahead and inform your friend of your feelings?
Female perspective: “I would support my friend no matter what, but keep an eye out in case he did anything really wrong. If my problem with him is that I don’t like his haircut, I’d keep that kind of thing to myself. If I thought he was mistreating her, I’d probably be more vocal about that.”
Male perspective: “Yes absolutely. As a friend, it’s almost my duty to give him my opinion when it comes to that. I would tell him maturely and express my opinion with strong points and reasons behind it.”
Situation Four: You’re going out to a bar with a friend and they ask you to be their wing-man or wing-woman. What does that entail?
Female perspective: “It refers to looking after your friend, making sure they are making good decisions, scoping out for the hot guys, making her look good in front of them by emphasizing how great she is, but making sure she doesn’t do anything she’ll regret.”
Male perspective: “I think being a wing-man is all about making your friend look good. Most of the time the common interpretation is to help him get a girl in bed but I think it extends to creating a positive image of him in public, not just to girls but to friends, whether male or female, to family and to society in general.”
Situation Five: You’re at a club and your friend decides to go home with someone they just met, but you don’t approve of them. Would you interfere?
Female perspective: “It depends on her state. If she’s drunk, I’ll tell her she can call the guy in the morning and see him another time. If she’s perfectly sober, I’ll tell her my opinion. I’ll make sure she knows what I think and then, in the end, it’s her choice.”
Male perspective: “If I think it’s honestly someone they will regret, then I’ll try my best to convince them not to go home with them. If it’s just someone I don’t like in general, then it’s really not my place to interfere. At the end of the day, it’s my friend’s decision to do what he wants, sober or not.”
Bottom line? While male friendships and female friendships have their differences, caring about a friend and not hurting them will always prevail any “code.” These rules aren’t written in stone. Every friendship is different, and every situation merits its own solution. But it is nice to have some guidelines to help you make the right decision in a difficult situation. In the end, a good friend will do everything they can to be there, regardless of what the rules say.
The festival has five film categories, AmerAsia Shorts, Asian Treasures, Quebecois Special, Spotlight on Animation and We Distribute, a selection of films from Canadian cinema companies that distribute Asian films. There are 35 films playing at four different venues around Montreal. Asian Treasures will feature Hirokazu Kore-eda’s I Wish and Kim Ki-duk’s Arirang.
I Wish tells the story of two brothers living separately as a result of their parents’ divorce. Koichi, the eldest, is living with his mother, while Ryunosuke lives with his father. When Koichi hears a rumour that when two trains cross each other on the newest line of Japan’s bullet train system a wish will come true, he hatches a plan to be on one of the trains to wish for the reunion of his family. The pace is very slow but the slower rhythm gives a realistic feel to the story. The focus is not on some climatic moment, but on the children’s journey and that allows for the full appreciation of the movie. The acting is plausible, so it is not surprising to find out that the two brothers in the movie are brothers in real life. Ryunosuke’s contagious laugh to Koichi’s sober and serious look make them both compatible characters. Although I Wish is a drama, it is punctuated by laugh-out-loud comic moments and is a heart-warming movie with a positive message.
I Wish tells the story of two brothers living separately as a result of their parents’ divorce. Koichi, the eldest, is living with his mother, while Ryunosuke lives with his father. When Koichi hears a rumour that when two trains cross each other on the newest line of Japan’s bullet train system a wish will come true, he hatches a plan to be on one of the trains to wish for the reunion of his family. The pace is very slow but the slower rhythm gives a realistic feel to the story. The focus is not on some climatic moment, but on the children’s journey and that allows for the full appreciation of the movie. The acting is plausible, so it is not surprising to find out that the two brothers in the movie are brothers in real life. Ryunosuke’s contagious laugh to Koichi’s sober and serious look make them both compatible characters. Although I Wish is a drama, it is punctuated by laugh-out-loud comic moments and is a heart-warming movie with a positive message.
Arirang won the A Certain Glance award at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival and is Ki-duk’s sixteenth movie. A cross between a documentary and a video journal, in the style of a drama, it documents the filmmaker’s life in exile after a traumatic incident on his set almost cost an actress her life. The movie is shot with a digital camera and Ki-duk is the sole character. Ki-duk pours his heart out to the camera in such a vulnerable manner it is almost uncomfortable to observe. He sings the folk song after which the the movie is titled, and screams and cries without any censorship. “I need to film something to be happy, so I’m filming myself,” he said. In one poignant scene, one of his selves is interrogating the other and is giving him the hard truth. Then later on, we watch him watch this scene. Despite the minimalistic equipment, the film still manages to demonstrate great cinematography.
On top of showing a variety of films, AmerAsia will be hosting the Smartphone Film Festival. The competition solicits amateurs and professionals alike to submit a short film, shot entirely with a smartphone, on a theme to be announced March 1. Competitors will have 72 hours after the theme is announced to film, edit and upload their videos to the Ciné-Asie platform. Fifteen submissions will be chosen for a screening March 9 and of those screened, prizes will be awarded to the top three.
The AmerAsia Film Festival takes place March 1 to 4 and March 9 to 11. For more information, check out www.amerasiafestival.com.
For the second consecutive year, the Concordia wrestling team will be returning home from the CIS national championship with some serious hardware.
The men won the team championship in Thunder Bay, Ont. over the weekend, narrowly edging out University of Regina, 56 points to 54, bringing home five medals in total.
It was a nail biting finish to the tournament. With Regina wrestler Gaelan Malloy wrestling in the 62 kg gold medal match, Malloy injured his ankle early and his coach eventually threw in the towel, not wishing to risk his wrestler’s health.
If Malloy had gone on to win his match, Regina and Concordia would have each had 56 points, with Regina holding the tie-breaker of most gold medals (3-2).
“I don’t think (Malloy) was going to win anyways, he was going against a better wrestler,” said Concordia’s assistant coach David Zilberman. “That’s part of competition. Things happen.”
Concordia came into the year with high expectations, but was aware of how quickly things can go awry.
“We came in with an open mind,” said Zilberman. “We have to expect the worst because anything can happen, but just being prepared is the most important thing.”
Several Concordia wrestlers, both men and women, brought home medals.
The women finished ninth out of 13 in the team standings, but still had athletes reach the podium.
Nikita Chicoine had the best finish among the Stinger women, winning a silver medal in the 63 kg weight category. Linda Morais won bronze in the 59 kg weight class and her teammate Veronica Keefe also came away with the bronze medal in the 72 kg category.
Things were golden on the men’s side. David Tremblay and James Mancini both found themselves standing on the top of the podium in the 61 kg and 65 kg categories, respectively.
Scott Schiller won silver for the Stingers and left his coaches very impressed with his effort.
“He was wrestling two weight classes up,” said Zilberman. “He was much smaller than his opponents and still managed to beat the number one seeded wrestler in the first round.”
First-year wrestler Nariman Irankhah won a bronze medal in the 82 kg class and Greg Rossy also came in third in his weight class.
The Concordia men were close to winning even more than an astonishing five medals, with two wrestlers, Noel Tremblay and Mitchell Krauter, finishing just off the podium in fourth place of their respective categories.
Head coach Victor Zilberman was also named coach of the year.
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Actors of color and the Oscars
Hattie McDaniel won her Oscar for “Best Supporting Actress” on February 29, 1940 for playing the black slave “Mammy” in the Civil War epic Gone with the Wind. At the age of 39, McDaniel was the first African-American to be honoured by Academy voters in its 12 short years of existence. But of course, these were the ‘40s, and so when McDaniel won, she didn’t turn directly to her colleagues and hug them in a state of euphoria. McDaniel couldn’t clasp Clark Gable and Vivian Leigh in her arms, because she and her date were sitting apart from the rest of the group, segregated according to the rules of the day. “I sincerely hope I shall always be a credit to my race and to the motion picture industry,” she told the crowd. McDaniel had broken one colour barrier, but she and other blacks were still very much in a segregated industry.Fast forward some decades, and segregation is over. People of African heritage have picked up coveted accolades at the Oscars, as in 2002, when Denzel Washington and Halle Berry were memorably anointed best actor and actress. We now have a black Disney princess – a superficial signifier of equality for little girls everywhere – and a black president. We appear to have made progress. But it’s been a year since the Hollywood Reporter dubbed the 2011 awards the “whitest Oscars” in a decade – lamenting the fact that no actors of colour were nominated. Jezebel blog noticed that actors of colour never seem to make it on the main panel of Vanity Fair’s prestigious three-fold “Hollywoood” issue cover. Now, two black women stand poised to potentially pick up a statuette for their acting work, nominated for Oscars, as McDaniel was, for their work playing domestics.
In The Help Viola Davis and Octavia Spencer portray Aibileen and Minny, two downtrodden black servants living in a Civil Rights-era Mississippi thick with racism. They cook, clean and raise white families, and damnit, they cook good fried chicken. But they are at the mercy of the whims of their neurotic, pretentious white bosses/owners. The two women share their oral histories to a young, white writer in the hope of changing their status quo through a book, The Help. But while Davis and Spencer, and their movie, which is also nominated for Best Picture, have been lauded and feted, many detractors have called out The Help for depicting black people relying on an educated, wealthy young woman, Skeeter (played by Emma Stone), as their “white saviour.” The Association of Black Women Historians issued a statement to “fans” of the movie that found fault with its “disappointing resurrection of Mammy” – ostensibly, McDaniel’s Oscar-winning character as stereotype. “Portrayed as asexual, loyal, and contented caretakers of whites, the caricature of Mammy allowed mainstream America to ignore the systemic racism that bound black women to back-breaking, low paying jobs where employers routinely exploited them,” reads the statement. The Help’s popularity is “troubling” because it “reveals a contemporary nostalgia for the days when a black woman could only hope to clean the White House rather than reside in it.” The film was also criticized for the dialogue, calling the way the black characters expressed themselves as “child-like, over-exaggerated ‘black’ dialect.” Aibileen’s oft-repeated words to the white child she cares for and loves jump to mind: “you is smaht, you is kind, you is impohtant.” Akiba Solomon, writing at Color Lines, an online magazine devoted to news about racial injustice, laid out her thoughts under “Why I’m Just Saying No to ‘The Help’ and Its Historical Whitewash.” While she felt “obligated” to see the movie for a number of reasons, including the need to support black actors, Solomon won’t “watch these sisters lend gravitas to (The Help writer Kathryn) Stockett’s white heroine mythology.” Solomon uses the sharp words of several critics to emphasize her point,including novelist Martha Southgate, who writes: “The structure of narratives like The Help underscores the failure of pop culture to acknowledge a central truth: Within the civil rights movement, white people were the help.” The Help makes us believe that a white person is “somehow crucial or even necessary” to talking about civil rights.
The white saviour is an oft-repeated trope in modern film: movies like The Blind Side, Hairspray, Dangerous Minds, and Freedom Writers all depict a plucky, admirable white person who, through their own grace and bravery, step in to raise the poor black folk out of their misery. “White man saves the day”, quips Quincy Armorer, artistic director at Montreal’s Black Theatre Workshop. What starts out as a “good” opportunity for visible minorities performers can be upstaged by a white saviour. “So it ends up not really being about the people of colour or them but it’s about the good, white people that help them,” explains Armorer. “And that, sometimes, is a little bit annoying.” Interestingly enough, McDaniel and Gone with the Wind herself were criticized in their day. The National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People called out the movie for its depiction of abuse of blacks by whites. And McDaniel, a successful actress and comedian in her own right with a long career (though the majority of her work went uncredited) was accused of not doing enough to raise the profile of black performers. (McDaniel herself barred from attending the film’s premiere in Atlanta because of Jim Crow laws.) So, clearly, some things never change. But black women have recently won Oscars for roles that didn’t involve looking after spoiled white peeps – Mo’nique played an evil, ascerbic mother in Precious, and Berry was a conflicted wife in Monster’s Ball.
One movie this January told an empowering tale of black history sans white saviour, but it almost didn’t see the light of day. Star Wars genius George Lucas, an extremely wealthy and successful movie-making white man, publicly lamented how difficult it was to secure financing and distribution for Red Tails.It’s a swashbuckling flick for black teenagers, as he puts it, on the Tuskegee airmen, African-American pilots in World War II. It’s a story both true and inspiring, but he couldn’t stir up any interest from financiers, so he paid for the prints and distribution. Lucas told the New York Times he felt that the film didn’t fit in with the industry’s marketing plans. He summed up trying to pitch the movie as such: “Well, it’s kind of like ‘The Color Purple,’ only they’re in airplanes. It’s sort of like a Tyler Perry movie, only without jokes.”
Lucas’s awkward comparison raises another concern: Perry’s movies, like his Madea series, are rollicking comedies featuring black actors, targeted for black audiences. While they are successful, some fear that they take away from more series thespian pursuits. “There seems to be a market for that,” says Bonnie Farmer, a Montrealer, teacher, children’s book author and playwright. “But for serious dramas, there does seem to be an absence of good material out there for [black] actors.” The Help, obviously, doesn’t really count. Farmer would like to see more black characters facing ordinary problems, and not just living out romcoms. And diversity in books, movies and television is important for young people of colour: “If everything you see is one image, then how can you relate to it?” Farmer describes growing up black as living “in two worlds.” There is your reality, and then there is a whitewashed depiction you see onscreen. In reaction, many of the characters in Farmer’s books and plays are black. What’s ironic is that though Lucas hired a black director for Red Wings, he’s almost a bit of a white saviour himself – a rich Caucasian steering a black project. Actress Michelle Sweeney thinks that onus for this search for richer roles and stories for people of colour needs to come from “ourselves.” Sweeney is an actress and singer you might remember best as the strict vice-principal Mrs. Morton in the late ‘90s teen television series Student Bodies. But she also has her share of credits on IMDB as waitress, server or nurse. “Wehave a black president, I think it’s about time that we can do a little bit more for ourselves,” she says. “We have to step up.”
In an ideal world, Hollywood should take its cues from Black Theatre Workshop, where the goal is to put showcase empowering stories and roles for people of colour. And they aim for a wide audience: “We don’t do theatre for black people, we do theatre for everyone,” said Armorer. Maybe it’s just been a couple of off-years in terms of diversity on film and television. But seeing Spencer and Davis getting noticed for playing servants, decades after McDaniel won for playing a caricature, you kind of wonder what it will take to see more empowering roles for actors of visible minorities, and not just stereotypes and token roles.