Author: Aviva Majerczyk

Small Steps: creativity is overrated

Creativity is overrated.

Have you ever gone so deep into self-reflection that you come out the other end knowing less about yourself than when you started? It happens to me a lot. I fall so far down the rabbit hole of astrology, Myers-Briggs types, enneagrams, and Buzzfeed quizzes, that by the end I know I’m a taurus, ENTJ, 3 wing 2, Schmidt from New Girl, but have no concept of what these labels actually mean for my life.

These ways of categorizing people can be alluring because they all play on the base desire to truly know oneself. Overall, as much as I participate, I’ve become a bit wary of this desire to mine the depths of our psyches in order to gain some knowledge of our elusive “true selves.”

I think most of these characteristics aren’t innate to the core of a person whatsoever. Honesty, loyalty, warmness, sensitivity, neuroticism are subject to change for a myriad of personal reasons, this is especially true for the characteristic of creativity.

Whether or not I’m an inherently creative person is a question that has bothered me for most of my young adult life. Culturally, there is a romanticization of the sort of creativity that causes artists to isolate themselves in tiny studios and stay up all night making their masterpiece because they were compelled by some intense inspiration. But how many of us truly relate to that experience of creativity?

This focus on monumental and sporadic artistic output as the definer of who is and is not creative really limits how all of us view our own creations. This view causes us to make up excuses for why we cannot produce artistic content. You either don’t have inspiration, don’t have the right materials, have too busy of a schedule or so on. Then, you never create the art you wanted to make, and convince yourself that you aren’t a “real” artist because you don’t practice a craft consistently. The cycle continues.

I noticed this defeatist cycle most prominently in the beginning of the COVID-19 lockdown. I had time to make all the creative output I desired once I was staying at home indefinitely. However, I couldn’t bring myself to bust out the random craft supplies lying around my apartment for fear of not being able to achieve something I was proud of.

But since divine inspiration never struck, I convinced myself that I was indeed one of the world’s poor left-brain “uncreatives” and that was that. However, after beating myself up time and time again, I no longer believe in this sort of dichotomy.

Creativity looks different on everyone. As children, we’re all fairly confident in our artistic abilities, and then something happens throughout the years to knock that out of most of us. And through our adolescence, as we’re no longer practicing drawing, music, dancing etc., the skills stagnate. Then, when we try to pick the habit back up, nothing has progressed. That’s not a failure of us individually, but of a system that convinces us that as we grow up, creativity becomes a skill we either have or don’t, rather than a component of every choice we make. Viewing creativity as something inherent to the human condition, rather than a personality quirk can be helpful to escape from the confines of what you expect from yourself.

 

Feature graphic by Taylor Reddam

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Opinions

The turning tides of the CSU

Disclaimer: The Concordian is a fee-levy organization

For the past few years, the CSU has felt out of step with Concordia students, do we now have reason for hope?

To say I’ve been embarrassed by the Concordia Student Union (CSU) in my past few years as a student would be an understatement. In recent memory, the CSU has jumped from controversy to controversy, spanning from allegations of anti-semitism, an attempted impeachment, to mockery of non-binary gender identities.

While it may seem like Concordia just has bad luck with student politics, or that there’s something in the water that’s making everyone collectively go insane, all these issues have precedents set by North American politics en large.

The most hotly contested CSU issue in the past year or so has undoubtedly been the implementation of online fee-levy opt-outs. Fee-levy groups are student organizations that are funded by students based on a per-credit fee. These include People’s Potato, Cinema Politica, CJLO 1690AM and Queer Concordia.

Since the referendum question asking if fee-levy opt-outs should be brought online passed with 61.1 per cent of the vote last November, the process of actually building the system has been marked by a lack of transparency and bad faith reinterpretations of the purposely vague question.

Despite the fact that only 16.6 percent of Concordia undergraduates actually voted in the referendum, the question passed, and thus must be enacted. With that being said, it is still important to critique why this question was ever even up for vote in the first place.

Former General Coordinator of the CSU, Christopher Kalafatidis, who put forth the question, remarked at the time to The Concordian that, “Fee-levy groups never work towards building better relationships with students. Having this option to opt-out would put them in a situation where if they are going to be using student money, they are going to have to earn it.”

The quote says it all. It was political —  the move was always political, not financial. We need to move past their assertions that the online opt-out question was posed to protect the interests of students who desperately need to save about $60 a semester, and reckon with the fact that this move was intended to put pressure on fee-levy groups. For what exactly? It’s hard to say. But there is no reasonable way Kalafatidis and his colleagues at the CSU could believe that all the disparate fee-levy groups have the same approach to student relations, as stated in his comment. Furthermore, this ongoing false dichotomy between fee-levy groups and tuition-paying students is misleading, as it paints said groups as if they were a third-party, not just fellow students in an organization.

What do Kalafatidis and his supporters get from this move? Well, they get a reinforcement of their conservative ideals. Online fee-levy opt-outs can be understood through the lens of taxation. Much like federal taxes, students pay a few cents or dollars to fee-levy groups, some of which they will never interact with in their time at Concordia, and some of which will be imperative to their student experience.

From a progressive perspective, when all students pay into the fee-levy system, our campus organizations are well-funded and able to provide resources for all students. However, a conservative might argue that we should not be paying into services that we don’t plan on using, no matter how small the cost overall.

The conservative position of simplifying the opt-out process wouldn’t exist if not for the general shift to the right in Western politics and push to defund social security programs. Since the era of Reagan and Thatcher, conservative politicians have been further and further critical of welfare programs, which the majority of them feel that they don’t directly benefit from. Whether we like it or not, student politics reflect politics at large, and this connection between fee-levy groups and taxation is too blatant to ignore. It’s just unfortunate to see these individualistic and neoliberal ideas enacted on our campuses through the lens of impartiality and the assertion of ‘having the students’ backs.’

The moment it was most obvious that many on the CSU were out of touch with political realities was at the Aug. 26 special council meeting. At this meeting, former councilor Mathew Levitsky-Kaminski presented a motion to have the CSU denounce certain extremist groups. The motion named “groups” such as the KKK, “Unite the Right,” Antifa and Resistance Internationaliste.

To anyone actually aware of extremism’s rise in North America, this list would make absolutely no sense. For one, Unite the Right is not a group, it was a two-day rally event in 2017. Additionally, despite what Trump wants Americans to believe, Antifa is also not a definable group either, but instead a political movement and ideology literally connoting “anti-fascism.” If Levitsky-Kaminski truly cared to protect Concordia students from extremist violence, he would have cited groups that actually have a decent presence here in Canada, such as the Proud Boys, rather than the KKK or mere ideologies like Antifa.

Then why put forward this motion, if it was so disconnected from reality? What motivation was there other than to obfuscate the desire for comprehensive anti-racism measures from the CSU, like General Coordinator Isaiah Joyner has been suggesting should be put forth?

Much like in general North American politics, racism and inequality cannot be solved through band-aid fixes. Additionally, making this sort of “both sides” argument on extremism only serves to echo Trumpist rhetoric further endangering people of colour who are affected by the much more common right-wing extremism.

I see this meeting as a turning point for the CSU. Between the accusations of political bias, and the pointed racial comments, the divisions on council had passed the point of civility.

However, after this meeting, multiple councillors resigned, including Levitsky-Kaminski.

With those resignations and the election of the “We Got You” slate of executives, the tides are finally turning on the CSU. An online opt-out system is finally being implemented with sufficient input by the fee-levy groups and with a survivor-centred sexual misconduct policy finally in the books, there’s reason to look forward to the future of the CSU.

Categories
Music Quickspins

QUICKSPINS: Fleet Foxes – Shore

On Fleet Foxes’ Shore, Robin Pecknold shakes off some of the idealisms of his younger self in order to look to the future

Fleet Foxes have been a major force in the indie-folk scene since its height in the late 2000s. Though their style may not be as trendy in 2020, Robin Pecknold continues with Fleet Foxes’ trademark lush autumnal style, while going back to a more gentle, simplistic sonic feel than the band’s last album Crack-Up. 

Throughout Shore, Pecknold wears his inspiration on his sleeve. The second track of the album, “Sunblind,” cites many of his inspirations who have passed away before their time, from Elliott Smith to Curtis Mayfield. As the chorus sings “I’m gonna swim for a week in warm American water with dear friends,” listeners are reminded of the recent tragic passing of David Berman of Silver Jews, whose lyrical stylings on the classic album American Water have surely inspired the introspective story-telling approach of Fleet Foxes.

Additionally, the track “Jara” invokes the martyred Chilean activist folk singer Victor Jara, whose music served as the soundtrack to the Pinochet resistance. In “Jara” Pecknold discusses his disgust at the privilege he saw from his fellow New Yorkers as they fled the city during the pandemic, as the singer-songwriter explained to Rolling Stone. With these songs, Pecknold sees the darkness in the stories of musicians gone too soon, but instead of dwelling on the sadness, he thanks them for their work. And by pairing the lyrics with upbeat and plucky tunes, the songs look toward the future with hope.

Shore doesn’t only look back on history in a big-picture sense, but also takes a reflexive look at Pecknold’s own past thinking. On “Young Man’s Game,” Pecknold critiques the naive immaturity of his younger self. With lyrics like “I’ve been solving for the meaning of life/No one tried before and likely I’m right” and “I could worry through each night/Find something unique to say,” he satirizes young people’s assumptions that their ideas are novel and important, despite what may be lots of information to the contrary.

This theme plays off of their cult-classic 2011 record Helplessness Blues, where Fleet Foxes looked to turn away from the chaos of the ordinary world to an idyllic rural life. With these records in conversation, it’s apparent that Fleet Foxes has grown up from a notion of escapism and fantasy of a pastoral life to an acceptance of the here and now. Pecknold isn’t happy with the current pandemic moment, but he tells the listener to ride through it rather than to escape into delusions of what your life could be that only exists in your mind. 

 

Trial Track: Can I Believe You

Rating: 8/10

A very COVID Rosh Hashanah

Jewish holidays are fundamentally communal activities, but with COVID, they’ve become a time to reflect on what traditions are most important to us

As the summer started to wane and the pandemic didn’t seem to be letting up anytime soon, I started to wonder how Jewish people around the world would celebrate the High Holidays.

The High Holidays are the most important weeks of the Jewish calendar. Starting with Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, and ending with Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, it’s a time to welcome a new year by reflecting on the past year’s transgressions and asking for forgiveness from those in your life and then, ultimately, from God.

Growing up, Rosh Hashanah meant taking the day off of school, getting dressed up, and attending synagogue with my parents. The services were long and mostly felt pretty boring at the time, minus the sprinkling of cantorial songs that would make the synagogue swell with harmonizing voices. After three long hours, the congregation would be dismissed and all the families would wish each other a “שָׁנָה טוֹבָה” (shana tova, i.e. happy new year) as they slowly made their way out of the sanctuary.

To me, the High Holidays were a fundamentally communal experience. Growing up in a small southern synagogue, it was the time for the Jewish community to connect through Torah study, Tashlich and Yom Kippur break-fast potlucks that served to, well, break our fasts. But, for obvious reasons, these traditions are more difficult this year. Even if I wasn’t separated from my childhood synagogue by over 1,000 kilometres, Rosh Hashanah would still be a fairly isolated activity — but I knew I wanted to celebrate the new year in some way.

The idea of not being able to celebrate the holidays due to COVID left me feeling helpless. Sure, there would be Zoom services, but watching Torah readings on the holiest days of the year through a laptop screen just felt a tad dystopian. Plus, if there’s one thing I know, it’s that old Jewish people and technology don’t go together well.

So the question became: how can I celebrate Rosh Hashanah in a way that is COVID-safe and fulfills my needs for spirituality and community? I thought about this for a while until one night when I had dinner with my roommate, who was discussing making her mother’s empanadas recipe for Chilean Independence Day. I loved her idea of taking a traditional food in her family and sharing it with us, her Montreal family. That’s when I decided to repay the favour, and make a Rosh Hashanah meal for our friends.

Sharing food is a big deal in Jewish culture. Between the many laws governing food preparation (Kashrut), the commandment to feed the hungry and the several holidays and festivals that rotate around a meal, Jews are very concerned with what and how we eat. Rosh Hashanah is no exception to this rule. While it isn’t as food centric as Passover and Tu BiShvat, there are still specific foods that you’re commanded to eat, such as apples and honey to ring in a “sweet” new year.

All around, I wanted to use Rosh Hashanah as a way to connect not just to my spiritual Judaism, but to my cultural Judaism as well. So, I decided to go all out with the greatest hits of Ashkenazi cuisine. Propelled by what I can only attribute to some sort of generational feminine spirit, in the span of one day I prepared matzo ball soup, potato kugel, tzimmes, a challah and honey cake. Your bubbe could never.

A few wine-toting friends arrived around 7 p.m. Surprisingly, all my dishes turned out even better than planned (which never happens to me). I recited the prayers over the candles and challah, then we sat around my small apartment table and ate, drank and talked for hours. Even though only one of my friends came from a Jewish background, that didn’t matter. To me, ringing in the new year is more about connecting with your Judaism, whatever that may look like, and surrounding yourself with those who can help you be your best self for the upcoming year.

Sharing my culture with those I care about outside of my family like I did this year wasn’t something I would have even thought to do before COVID. Yet, as annoying as so   cial distancing has been, I’m grateful that it forced me to look inward for my Judaism and take my religious practice into my own hands.

Hopefully, next year social distancing won’t factor so heavily into all of our actions, but at this point, there’s no way to know. What I do know now is that it’s okay if my traditions change. Change doesn’t necessarily have to mean a downgrade, just a rethinking of what is most important to me.

 

Photo by Aviva Majerczyk

Small Steps: The joy of a good, long walk

For most of the summer I was alone on a day-to-day basis. My two roommates had fled for the greener pastures of British Columbia by mid-May. So I was stuck in my apartment, occasionally seeing friends around the city, but without the default company of those in my house that I had come to rely on. Without people to share dinnertime and evening drinks with, I began to go a bit stir-crazy. In a simple attempt to vary up my routine, I started taking post-dinner walks.

I’ve always appreciated walking, and even before COVID I was well aware of a good walk’s therapeutic effects. In high school, when experiencing a rocky adjustment to antidepressants, my mom and I would take a walk every afternoon as a way to force myself out of my bed-cave; fresh air and exercise always helped to give me some perspective.

So, it only made sense that I would adopt this routine again in the summer of COVID, when most of us were (or still are) on the brink of mental breakdown. Typically, after dinner I’d grab my CJLO tote bag, put on my headphones, and walk out of my door, with no direction in mind.

I live in the upper Plateau, on the edge of Mile End, so I made a point to walk through all the idyllic alleys of the neighbourhood, covered in quirky graffiti and murals with large trees draping over the road. Taking my evening strolls made me feel more connected to the city. Typically, I’m a fast, aggressive walker, so being able to really take my time and absorb the environment around me without any specific destination gave me a new appreciation for my pretty little borough.

Walking is also the only thing that has been able to rip me away from my various screens. Throughout quarantine, it seemed like the only thing consuming my time was Netflix and falling down rabbit holes of YouTube video essays. So, breaking up the monotony with some physical exercise became a necessity. That’s not to say I didn’t find a way to continue to absorb media through my walks. Podcasts became a necessary staple for my long strolls. A 50 minute WTF with Marc Maron or You’re Wrong About became the soundtrack to most of my Montreal adventures this summer. I had always used my home to school metro transit as my time to wind down from the day and catch up on my favourite podcasts, so I’m glad that habit hasn’t had to go away completely.

I think I’ll continue to go on my walks until the weather forces me to stop. Even now that we are permitted to be a bit more social than earlier in COVID, it’s still important to take time with yourself and your thoughts. For me, it’s a nice long walk, but everyone’s different.

 

Graphic by Taylor Reddam

Small Steps: learning to value time alone

Though it may seem counterintuitive, forced isolation can help you realize how good spending time alone can be

Throughout my life, there have been many things I learned so late that I kick myself for never doing earlier. There are even more things I have yet to learn. In this new column, I plan on exploring the importance of these changes and asking myself why it took so long to get to the modicum of maturity I currently have.

In my teen years, I was painfully extroverted. Not in the sense that I was loud or especially outgoing — but in the true sense of the word extrovert: I gained all my energy from being around my friends. If I didn’t have some sort of social engagement at least once per weekend I would start to go a little bit insane. I didn’t understand how to use my spare time, and the thought of being stuck in my bedroom on a Friday night made me feel like a social failure. Not that whatever a 17-year-old could do in suburban Virginia would be all that thrilling anyway, but at that time, anything was better than trying to entertain myself for a night.

So why, for so many years, did the idea of spending extended time alone scare me so much? Years of untreated anxiety disorders? Well yes, but we can put a pin in that one. But I think in a more “big picture” sort of way, I valued my time in relation to others, not on my own terms. When you’re so worried about what other people are doing, it’s easy to forget to listen to your body’s alerts that you’re overstimulated or that you need some time alone.

Breaking the cycle of fear-of-missing-out or “FOMO” dictating my behavior came slowly with age and then rapidly with COVID-19, the great social-life equalizer. During COVID, especially in the beginning of lockdown, most of us had no choice but to stay home and entertain ourselves. At first, lockdown hit me with the realization that everything I did for fun involved going outside and socializing — going to bars, shows, or restaurants. But soon, it made me realize how much I had been craving time just alone with my thoughts.

Sometimes it takes a major outside force to make you realize you’ve been ignoring shifts and changes in your personality all along. Spending a lot of time alone made me realize that I had just been running away from spending time with myself, and that’s a skill that I’ll need to continue building up. Over the past months, I’ve been able to gain an appreciation for solitude as a time to reconnect with my emotions, assess my goals, and process my week. It’s an ongoing process, but I’ll pin it as a COVID highlight of sorts.

 

Graphic by Taylor Reddam

Categories
Opinions

Playing games in Hunters: who is served by on-screen violence?

Depicting violence on screen is a tricky line to walk, but its impact is incredibly important

Whether we want to admit it or not, everyone is looking to be represented on screen to some degree. When we see people who look, behave, and think like us on screen, it validates our own experiences of the world.

As a cis, white Jew, I feel fairly well-represented by mainstream media. I grew up on all the Ashkenazi classics like Fiddler on the Roof and Seinfeld, and as an adult, I have my “problematic faves” in Marvelous Mrs. Maisel and Schmidt from New Girl. Yet, despite seeing a good amount of myself on screen, when I heard about the new Amazon Original, Hunters, I was immediately intrigued. 

Hunters chronicles a fictional ragtag gang of Nazi-hunters in 1970s New York City who are brought together in response to Operation Paperclip, the astonishingly real U.S. program which scrubbed the records of Nazi scientists in order to bring them to work on the space race. Many of the Nazi-hunters in the show are Holocaust survivors. And as the descendant of survivors, I have become so sick of survivors’ depictions only ever being helpless, feeble victims. Also, it had been over a decade since the release of Inglorious Basterds, and with the rise of the alt-right around the world, it felt like the perfect time for another piece of mainstream kickass anti-fascist media. Yet, sadly, I quickly realized Hunters would not be that.  

From the get-go, I was struck by an onslaught of intense depictions of Holocaust violence in Hunters. It seemed like every third scene was a flashback to the camps, and every one involving more stylized killing than the last. Very few of these scenes even served the narrative as a whole. Additionally, I was jarred by the now heavily criticized scene in which the show depicts a completely fabricated “human chess game” run by Nazi guards at a concentration camp. This scene was so gratuitous and removed from reality that the Auschwitz Museum tweeted that it was “dangerous foolishness and caricature.”

So, if this sensationally violent chess game never actually happened, why depict it in a show based on the true events surrounding Operation Paperclip?

In my opinion, the unnecessary use of violence in Hunters exists to convince viewers of why the gang is in the right for hunting Nazis. The perception is that non-Jewish audiences need to be reminded of the atrocities of the Holocaust in order to understand the anger felt by the Jewish and otherwise racialized characters in the show. That is a major problem that lies within this show and many other historical dramas. These narratives are expecting their viewers to be apathetic. The baseline feeling is indifference, and viewers must be moved to anti-racism, rather than anti-racism being the default.

While some effective anti-racist media can exist to “convert” people and bring them over from a bigoted point of view to understanding, that should not be the majority of the content that is being made. When mainstream film and TV narratives expect their audiences to be antisemetic, for example, it perpetuates the idea that people are by default antisemetic and must learn to be accepting, rather than the reality that antisemitism, racism, homophobia and so on are learned ideologies. Thus, antisemitism, racism, and homophobia are thought of as “making sense.” Audiences should not need to be convinced why Nazis are the “bad guys.” And by using so much gratuitous violence to make that point, it opens up the possibility of bad faith, “both sides” arguments.

How to properly depict historical violence on screen is a difficult line to walk. On one hand, you don’t want to sanitize history and belittle the real horror experienced by many. Yet, you also don’t want to use violence in a way that dips into the waters of fetishism and exploitation.

This has been an ongoing conversation most notably when it comes to depicting slavery in the United States on film. The response to the 2013 film 12 Years a Slave exemplifies this issue. As Katarina Hedrén writes for Africa is a Country, some critics believed the film to be a “horror show” and devoid of the history of slave revolt and others believed it white washed history through having a “happy ending.” The debate over the use of historical violence in film is not an easy one to maneuver, but it is an important conversation to have regardless.

Ultimately, when writers insert unnecessary violence into their projects, it makes it more difficult for viewers to connect to their characters. No one wants to see themselves as the victim time and time again. Once I finished Hunters, though I had absolutely no business watching past the first episode (but hey, COVID boredom), I recognized that even though Hunters was about Jews, it wasn’t for us. I know the terrible history of violence my people have been put under since, well, the written word. I don’t need to see dozens of depictions of it on screen to understand. I just wish there were more narratives that show a more empowered image.

Graphic by Rose-Marie Dion

Looking to anarchism for a police free world

How we can embrace community-driven approaches to safety

Since the eruption of international protests in response to the murder of Black man George Floyd at the hands of the police, the discussion of either defunding or abolishing police forces has taken centre stage. Yet, many still have concerns as to what a world with a radically diminished police presence would actually look like.

While there is no simple answer to the question of what abolishing or defunding the police would consist of, there are a lot of helpful tools we can take from anarchist mentalities that show how to build community-driven approaches to safety. It all starts with an acknowledgement that government institutions do not work for the benefit of marginalized people. With that, communities should keep an eye out for each other as much as possible and not rely on those institutions, because our reliance gives them power.

One main tenet of anarchism is the concept of mutual aid. Simply put, mutual aid is the practice of voluntarily exchanging goods and services for overall community benefit. The thrust of mutual aid efforts center on the idea that when communities can pull together to provide for themselves, they are less dependent on often oppressive institutions and become more tightly knit.

Mutual aid has become somewhat of a buzzword since the COVID-19 outbreak— and for good reason. In countless cities around the world, neighbours have come together in order to share extra food and supplies, give social support, offer delivery services, and more. One Facebook group for Montreal mutual aid now has over 17,000 members, where posters continue to help others who are sick or out of work. However, in the past week, many of the posts have pivoted to sharing resources for how to help Black people and protesters in the Montreal community.

It would be difficult to deny that mutual aid is necessary for people thrust into precarity due to a global pandemic; however, for Black communities, mutual aid has been a lifeline for decades. For example, in the 1960s, The Black Panther Party offered a free breakfast program to children in their community. These kids were overlooked by the government as they were redlined and ghettoed into impoverished neighbourhoods, often going hungry during the school day. The Panthers saw the hunger and inequality that was forced upon their community by an actively white supremacist government, and took power into their own hands. The breakfast program was a major success, but a few years after it was enacted, the FBI cracked down due to the government’s phoney labelling of the Panthers as a hate group. Ironically, the U.S. federal government ended up implementing their own school breakfast program just a few years later.

The turn away from reliance on government can be applied to more than just food programs and facemasks—we can look to these anarchist concepts for guidance on what a world would look like without institutionalized police.

Another useful concept within mutual aid is community self-defense— the notion that civilians should be in charge of their own safety rather than relying on cops. For many communities, most notably Black and Indigenous people, the police are a blatantly violent and aggressive force, who do more intimidating than protecting. Community self-defense may answer the following question: ‘when the cops are the ones committing the crimes, who are you supposed to call?’

It is not that the policing system is broken—  it was never designed to work for the benefit of marginalized people. Across Canada, the demographic makeup of police departments are overwhelmingly more homogenous than the cities they’re sworn to protect. This disparity can lead to not only cultural misunderstandings but also higher rates of violence due to implicit racial bias. With this in mind, it only makes sense that those who protect a community should be from the community itself.

Community self-defense can come in many different forms. This could look like neighbourhood walking-patrols, trained social workers countering catcalling, watchdog groups monitoring white supremacists, sexual assault survivor networks, etc. The goal is to reroute funding that previously went towards police into groups that will support communities at the civilian level. Any group with power is susceptible to corruption, and there’s always the chance that people will join for nefarious reasons. However, those within a community have a vested interest in the betterment and safety of their group, as well as an added level of empathy towards those they’re protecting. This is because they won’t just see the offenders as criminals, but also as friends and neighbours.

The shift to a less police-focused state would not be simple, and it would likely require a lot more action on the civilian level. Yet, with a shift towards community-building in marginalized areas, it is not an impossible task. The status quo is structurally failing our Black neighbours and that should be enough to have everyone question the system as it is.

Graphic by @sundaeghost

Categories
Music Quickspins

QUICKSPINS: U.S. Girls – Heavy Light

U.S. Girls’ Heavy Light is a testament to their writing strengths, despite being a mixed bag

On Heavy Light, Toronto band U.S. Girls continues to make provocative pop music, while taking an experimental trip through the genre’s past, touching on funk, psychedelia, motown and more.

Heavy Light starts out with a bang. The first two tracks “4 American Dollars” and “Overtime” are the strongest on the album. Both songs are incredibly groovy pop tunes highlighting major social issues, with the former discussing the false trappings of capitalist ideology and the latter speaking about alcoholism and being overworked and underpaid. This is U.S. Girls at their best, combining danceable beats with hard-hitting social commentary. Yet, sadly, this high isn’t quite preserved throughout the rest of the album.

The album contains three interludes, about a minute apiece, where voices share advice to their teenage selves, the most hurtful thing that’s ever been said to them and finally, the colour of their childhood bedroom. While these interludes certainly put the listener into U.S. Girls’ desired emotional state, they disrupt the flow of the album in a way that is too jarring to come back from.

The track “State House (It’s a Man’s World)” kicks off with a pitched-down reworking of the beat from “Be My Baby” by The Ronettes. Yet, unlike The Ronettes’ classic love song, U.S. Girls’ lyrics eerily discuss the role of women in society. In lyrics that sound as if they were lifted from The Handmaid’s Tale, front-woman Meg Remy sings, “But it’s a man’s world, we just breed here. We don’t have no say, we only bend.” While this song has a solid concept, it remains just that—a concept. Clocking in under two minutes, “State House” isn’t given the time to evolve into something more satisfying.

On Heavy Light, Remy’s energetic dance-pop tracks are worlds more exciting than her balladry. “And Yet It Moves / Y Se Mueve” is a highlight in the middle of the tracklist, with its Latin-inspired beat and psychedelic distortions. Contrasted to the slow-burners “IOU” and “Woodstock ‘99,” which are not nearly as gratifying.

The penultimate track, “The Quiver to the Bomb,” chronicles the birth of humanity to the climate crisis from the perspective of a “mother earth” type of character. The lyrics are downright scary and justifiably angry. In the second half of the song, the instrumental switches up to some vaguely prog-rock synth passages à la Pink Floyd, as Remy’s vocalizations become more and more desperate-sounding. This song should have been the closer, as “Red Ford Radio” doesn’t have nearly as much in the way of lyrical or instrumental intrigue.

Overall, while Heavy Light contains a few low-points, it is still a strong testament to U.S. Girls’ songwriting and conceptual abilities. In a time of mass uncertainty, corrupt leaders and failing systems of control, albums like Heavy Light seem more necessary than ever.

Rating: 7/10

Trial Track: “4 American Dollars”

Categories
Opinions

I’m just a female dirtbag, baby

Ever since first watching the 2000 film High Fidelity in high school, I found myself relating to the record store-owning protagonist Rob, played by John Cusack. Rob was a moody, unlucky in love music snob, too in touch with his emotions and stuck in the past— embarrassingly relatable. 

So, when I heard that High Fidelity was getting a TV remake, starring the iconic Zoë Kravitz as a gender-swapped Rob (now short for Robyn), I was instantly excited. My issues with the film had always been my cognitive dissonance between relating to Cusack’s Rob, but struggling with his toxic “but I’m a nice guy” demeanour—something I found inherently masculine and obnoxious.

Yet, High Fidelity (both the film and the new Hulu show) is shown through Rob’s eyes, as the character often breaks the fourth wall to talk to the camera directly. So when Rob is played by the dreamy Cusack, with his puppy dog eyes, you can’t help but be pulled into his guise, no matter how much of a dirtbag he is.

Watching the Hulu adaptation made me wonder why I felt the need to relate to Rob. I realized that while there has been no shortage of “cool girls” on screen, their range was always limited. The cool girl is never the main character. She’s often a foil placed in opposition to the stereotypical uptight, prissy, feminine character due to her chillness (think the iconic Gone Girl monologue).

In Hulu’s “High Fidelity,” Rob is undoubtedly cool—Kravitz just seems to bring that to everything she does. Yet, no matter how hip she appears on the outside, Rob is still a complex character with as much agency as any male protagonist. Like Cusack before her, Kravitz takes on the role of an utter dirtbag.

The female dirtbag may be a useful subversion of the cool girl archetype. BBC’s “Fleabag” made a huge splash in 2016 arguably due to its realistically messy, horny and self-involved main character, depicted by Phoebe Waller-Bridge. She’s well-dressed and creative, but deeply flawed in her relationships and unabashedly gross. Similar to “High Fidelity,” Waller-Bridge often faces the camera to engage the audience in her outer monologue. Sure she’s cool, but she’s in control of her own story.

There’s a misconception that for a female character to be “strong,” they have to be exceptionally smart, confident and capable. But, how many among us can truly relate to Captain Marvel or Buffy Summers? Not even mentioning these characters’ overwhelming whiteness and thinness. This outdated focus on strength should be replaced by an imperative for truth and realism.

One trend within this new wave of female dirtbag representation is that most of these narratives are helmed by women. The aforementioned 2020 “High Fidelity,” “Fleabag”—and we can’t forget the pinnacle of female grossness—”Broad City” were all created by women.

When women are allowed to shape their own stories, they’re bound to represent a more truthful depiction of the female experience—warts and all. 

 

Graphic by @sundaeghost

Categories
Music

Dancing to the downfall of capitalism

U.S. Girls put on high energy and politically conscious show at Le Ministère

On Feb. 16, excited music fans packed into Le Ministère on Boulevard Saint Laurent to see Canadian experimental pop artist U.S. Girls, aka Meg Remy.

Local artist Lune très belle opened the show. Through her set, her French vocals were echoed as she bounced between two mics in front of her, one over her keyboard and the other over her synthesizer.

Lune très belle’s songs were sparse and pretty. This was matched by her quiet and seemingly timid stage demeanour. She didn’t have much candour with the audience, and the set felt more like an improvised recital than your typical concert affair.

After a short intermission, Remy’s band took to the stage. Band members entered one at a time. First, high synths filled the room, next the drummer kicked in, playing a few bars before the background vocalists took the stage and began to sing. Finally, Remy entered the stage and jumped into her brand new single “4 American Dollars,” a song about the failure of the American dream.  

After a few songs, Remy stopped to chat with the crowd. She mentioned that the last time she played in Montreal, it was at a porn theatre (Cinema L’Amour). She went on to ask how the cops in Montreal were, a question that was not surprising considering Remy’s heavily leftist, political lyrics. The audience gave a decidedly negative response to her question. Remy responded, in a sarcastic manner, that even cops were babies once, and we should try to foster conversation. This tongue-in-cheek comment ended with her saying, “I think they’re crying out for help with their occupation—same with me.”

After a few low-key songs, Remy picked the energy back up with the swanky and danceable “Pearly Gates,” a song whose lyrics reference the #metoo era. This song got the audience moving and really showed off Remy’s infectious stage presence.

Near the end of the show, Remy stood at the centre mic in silence for a few moments and then asked the audience to pretend their head was being pulled up by a string in order to stand up straight. She then asked us to breathe deeply. Everyone in Le Ministère stood for the next few long moments in silent breathing meditation, before the band jumped into the next song. 

For the finale, all the musicians left the stage except Remy and one vocalist to perform the 2010 song “Red Ford Radio.” The two started centre-stage, singing directly to each other. They started to repeat the lyrics, “I’d do anything to get out.”  As they continued to sing those lyrics, they both dropped their mics, and the audience started chanting along with them. They proceeded to join the crowd as everyone sang in unison. After circling through the crowd, Remy and the vocalist sang one final “I’d do anything to get out,” as they exited through the stage door.

While U.S. Girls’ show was short, clocking in at only around an hour, it was high in the energy and charisma that matches her recorded material. Overall, U.S. Girls played a tight set that was artfully arranged. Years-long fan or newcomer, this show would make anyone fall in love with Meg Remy. 

Photos by Britanny Clarke.

Categories
Music Quickspins

QUICKSPINS: Frances Quinlan – Likewise

Frances Quinlan’s powerful voice and songwriting shines on Likewise

Frances Quinlan has been making critically acclaimed indie rock with the band Hop Along for almost a decade. Now, on her first solo project Likewise, Quinlan creates a meandering and powerful testament to her writing and vocal chops.

While less bombastic than most of the Hop Along discography, Likewise gains power from its instrumental simplicity. On this record, Quinlan’s anti-folk inspired winding lyrics are nicely complimented by a mostly acoustic backing.

Due to the acoustic style of this album, Quinlan’s beloved howling singing style shines brighter than ever. In “Went to LA,” a song about searching for your identity in an unfamiliar place, Quinlan’s mystifying and narrative lyrics climax in her howling “Heaven is a second chance” over and over, her voice cracking with desperation. It’s both shockingly powerful and emotionally intimate.

Yet, while there are some stand-out tracks such as “Now That I’m Back” and “Your Reply,” which are incredibly catchy and complex, overall, this album is frontloaded and contains a few lackluster tracks. “Lean” and “Carry the Zero” don’t pull the emotional or artistic weight of the rest of the album, and never feel like they come to a rewarding conclusion.

That being said, Likewise is an incredibly gratifying listen for folk rock fans, and it shows that now as a solo artist, Quinlan does not disappoint.

Rating: 7.5/10

Trial Track: “Now That I’m Back”

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