sitting down in the shower

thoughts on heartbreak

fairly recently i went through my first real heartbreak. it really fucking sucked. as i was reeling i found myself trying to distract my brain from the fact that i was sad. being sad was embarrassing for me and i did not want to confront that. this distraction exploit resulted in a very high screentime, not something i’m inherently proud of but it is true. naturally my algorithms figured out that listening to lordes’s melodrama meant i was sad and my feeds were flooded with break up content. it was filled with normal people quotes, girls in the gym, people picking up hobbies, and songwriters. so many people saying “turn your heartbreak into productivity” and i couldn’t help but wonder why on earth would i want to do that. why does a run of the mill heartbreak mean i need to either write the next blue or lose 30 pounds. i couldn’t wrap my mind around the idea that i needed to do something interesting or productive simply because i was heartbroken.

instead i did what i do best. i stared at my ceiling and thought. i thought about the concept of the tortured writer and wondered if my best writing would be done when i was struggling to get out of bed. i wondered if my writing was only good if i was heartbroken and then i wondered if i would need to be heartbroken for the rest of my life if i wanted to be a good writer. i wondered why we thought the best artists were the sad ones and why artists were at their best when they were sad. and i came to a very uninteresting and unoriginal conclusion. being heartbroken wasn’t special. being sad was generally boring and people needed to find a reason for it. i couldn’t possibly tbe feeling this awful without something good coming from it, right? there had to be some excellent thing to write about or thought to explore in this. i couldn’t possibly just be feeling this bad because something shitty happened. right? i really struggled with the idea that heartbreak wasn’t special. i didn’t suddenly become interesting just because i now had a habit of sitting down in the shower. i remember reading some articles about people romanticizing sadness and mental illness to seem interesting and special. and i came to a similar conclusion, it was a way to cope with how the feelings that one has to deal with it. even if in the long run it does more damage than good. if i’m only a good writer and i’m only interesting when i’m sad then why would i ever not want to be sad. if being sad starts to feel safe and comforting why would i want to be happy. thankfully i have critical thinking skills and realized how pathetic that thinking was before it actually took root in my brain.

slowly my ceiling and shower floor turned into train rides and people watching on the subway. i started to think that what happened wasn’t nuanced or special or particularly awful. it wasn’t good but it was at the end of the day just a breakup. “breakups happen everyday you don’t have to lose it” spoiler alert! mel listens to taylor swift a lot! but she wasn’t wrong. they do happen every day and i didn’t need to be losing it. i still wanted to lose it though. we admire those who can make good art out of heartbreak and sadness because it’s not a romantic endeavour. its average and boring. turning a terrible boring experience into something good and interesting is hard. it’s a way to process but it’s also a way to let it suck less. i decided i was going to let it suck in it’s entirety. i didn’t write, i did my schoolwork, i went to practice, i went to work, i hung out with friends, i ate too much, i didn’t eat enough, i listened to a lot of taylor swift, i chopped all my hair off. eventually my hair got longer and i got less sad.

i remember the day i realized i was less sad. i had just gotten off the train, i had just gotten back to toronto after visiting home, it was snowing. i was listening to bob dylan’s like a rolling stone. i bought tampons and a diet coke on my way back to the house. i was almost self conscious of how much i felt like the girl in those “girl who’s going to be okay” memes. but it was true i was going to be okay and i didn’t need a piece of art or a new 2k pb to prove it (although i did have one of those). i had grown out bangs and an aspartame addiction. two boring things to go along with the mundaneness of heartbreak and getting over it.

i’m not heartbroken anymore, it’s warmer outside than when i was. i can think about what happened without crying and instead appreciate it with a certain nostalgic fondness. i don’t have anything to prove that it happened other than a spare tshirt that ended up among mine and the occasional laugh in public that sounds a little too familiar. as my hair got longer, my screentime went down, my playlists changed and i’m sure i did to. not an any discernible way just a little more comfortable in myself, a little more sure that i don’t need to change myself when things are difficult. i wonder if a time will come when i feel the same as i did in novemember. if i ever feel that way again i hope it’s not easier but i hope i have more confidence in myself that eventually i’ll get up off the shower floor. even if i need to listen to “how did it end” just more one time.

it's not that deep and anti-intellectualism

i'm tired y'all

i seriously need to delete tiktok, not because of how much time i spend on it, or because of how my attention span has diminished, i need to delete tiktok because of the lack of critical thinking on that god forsaken app. some things i read make me question how society will progress. mainly this gross simplification of topics that require a heavy amount of unpacking. this is severely disorganized but it’s exam season so i deserve a little stream of consciousness as a treat. 

 i saw a tiktok of someone saying that calling someone pretentious for having a wide vocabulary and wanting to have complex, nuanced discussions is stupid because those are two very valid things to have and do. i went “yeah” then opened the comment section to see it filled with people saying “this has to be satire” and “this is not a real argument i refuse to believe you people are real”. i was pretty taken aback by this because the tiktok seemed like the most lukewarm take on the planet. like obviously discussions about culture and politics should be nuanced and complex, but apparently saying so is classist and pretentious according to a wide majority of people on the internet. but a lot of the sentiments people online carry is that, when having discussions you should have to gear it in a way that everyone can easily and immediately understand, otherwise it is not accessible. the issue with having these discussions online is you have a limited time frame and can (rightfully) assume that people can do research outside of the 3 minute tiktok they (hopefully) watched all the way through. “big words” do serve a purpose and it is not to confuse people or scare people who aren’t familiar with it away. it’s because these large words have very precise and intricate meanings that get to the heart of what someone is trying to say. people online love the “why say many word when few do trick” mentality but as soon as it becomes easier to use one large word instead of a whole sentence it is “elitist” and “exclusionary” because not everyone is college educated and knows what you mean.  a) you’re already on the internet, open your browser and start googling, b) no?? 

i think the idea that anyone who doesn’t have a college education will have trouble understanding or partaking in the discussions, is more elitist than the original discussion themselves. assuming that because someone uses the term “zeitgeist” people who have never formally studied at the university level will never understand and that they’re being excluded is far more elitist than using a 5 dollar word. and the fact that it is being treated differently is absolutely wild to me. but this sense of gross simplification in the name of not being elitist leads to a much scarier conversation around the lack of critical engagement with media and art we see present in today’s climate. 

i’m not being dramatic (i most definitely am) when i say that if one more person makes the “maybe the curtains are just blue” argument i’m throwing myself off the bell tower. i see too many “it’s literally not that deep'' reactions to people critically engaging with media and art because more often than not, it is that deep. if through analysis you can find a deeper, hidden meaning that has a more large scale application, it was probably intentionally put there. assuming that it’s not seriously underestimates how much effort creatives put into their work. people don’t make art just for it to be mindlessly consumed, works have an objective and actively dismissing that is very dangerous. if we normalize saying “it’s not that deep'' anytime someone engages critically with a piece of work. if we stop questioning things and just rely on taking everything at face value we set ourselves up for a society in which we can just consume rhetoric and ideologies without challenging them. and for the record i don’t think the vast majority of people are unintelligent so i’m not going to go into detail about why critical thinking is important and why we should value it. critical thinking impacts how governments run, how systems of belief function, and how we interact with people on an everyday basis. critical thinking is vital to how our society functions and without it, we could seriously regress as a society. i also wonder if critical thinking just takes too much brain power sometimes, if people just want to turn their brains off and mindlessly consume. if we continue to promote and environment where it’s okay to stop engaging with things because it requires a little bit effort then we still see that we lose people to this “i don’t have time for this” mentality, which is in turn also very dangerous. 

which is why it is vital we have the complex conversations, and engage critically with media and art. even if you see them as pretentious and elitist, they still hold value because at least someone is doing it. this is also how i feel about the notion of “useless degrees'' as a philosophy major i feel i am very qualified to discuss this because all i get when i tell people my major is that it is useless and i’ll live in poverty for the rest of my life and i deserve to because i didn’t choose a stem major (all of this can be reconciled with the fact that i could go to law school). the key is that in current modern day rhetoric surrounding university is that you pursue higher education as a means to get a better job and have a career. if you go to post-secondary to learn instead of for a career you are wasting your money and should be ridiculed for your choices. i could turn this into a “the arts aren’t valued enough'' take but i’ll save that for another time. instead i’m going to argue that anti-intellectualism as we’ve seen discussed earlier does not value education, it values labour, and what we can consume as a product of that labour. education as an act and learning for the sake of learning is no longer valued in our consumerist world because it’s not a tangible thing where the outcomes are laid out in front of us. the benefits of education as a result of self-enrichment and a greater understanding of how things work and how we all kind of hang together are not the results we are used to when we are told it will benefit us in the long run. there is no promise of a lucrative career, or material goods, or respect from our peers. education is seen as something you struggle and push through to the promise of something greater and not the actual experience. because of the lack of respect towards the value of learning just for the sake of learning and nothing more, education in something not “useful” is seen as a waste of money and anyone who values that waste of money, is classist and elitist. 

there are countless examples of classism and elitism in academia. post-secondary school IS inaccessible, but not because of those who value education and think it's important. you can take issue with higher education, and intellectualism, that is fine, but what you cannot do is lobby elitism and classism, and other very real problems to make your point. it’s inaccurate and dangerous for our critical thinking. but hey, maybe it’s not that deep. 

Frat Flu Thoughts

taking shots of cold medicine in my 9am lecture <3

guys i finally caught the infamous frat flu. it was about time if we’re honest. so instead of watching my 3rd horror movie of the day i’ve decided to curate the ins and outs of fall this year. no criticism but my own  is welcome. i’m the one who writes cultural criticism essays on the internet, not you. items in list are subject to change over time.

ins:

- liking what you study

- murder mystery movies/books

- jordan peele movies

- headaches

- doodling on any available surface

- hard candies

- tea

- 1980’s slasher films

- asking to pet people’s dogs

- taking the long way to campus because the trees are prettier that way

- never untying your shoelaces

- local bookstores

- crewnecks

- jeans

- ocean vuong

- going to sleep at 10pm

- club hopping

- seeing movies by yourself

- fake plants

- stealing posters from campus

- legally blonde

outs:

- royal family discourse

- johnny depp

- talking on the phone in public

- yelling in the hallways

- rabid consumerism

- that ginger asshole in children of the corn

- stephen king in general

- stomach aches

- biopics

- saviour complexes

- plato

- whisky

- reddit

- american psycho

- casual drinking

- natural deodorant

- gym bro culture

- tiktok

- leggings

- asking people what they plan to do with a humanities degree

- women saying “be careful” in movies

- the word problematic (it can’t be used to describe a bad tweet from 2012 and a literal crime at the same time no shot)

- nihilism 

i’ve finally settled into university and discovered that i have to do a lot of things by myself. a lot of walking and eating, this entails a lot of thinking. while doing this thinking i’ve decided that you need to be able to do things by yourself and enjoy them before you can appreciate them with other people. for example, i've started watching movies in theatres by myself. at first the thought of doing that felt embarrassing or lonely. once i did it though, i realized i could be doing so much but i was preventing myself from doing it because i was worried. turns out it's very freeing, allowing myself to exist just as i am and be a whole person by myself. i imagine it's like what being freshly single out of a long term relationship is like (not that i would know, i have the commitment level equal to the attention span of a 4 year old). rediscovering independence is something i’ve started to embrace and can only wish for others. i literally despise the phrase “you have to love yourself first before you can love others”  because it’s annoying and not true. however, you can find more fulfilment in relationships and activities with others once you can exist on your own.  this feeling is a strong wave of nostalgia/comfort and the realization of growing up. it feels like listening to ribs by lorde for the first time (which i have been doing a lot the past month). i mean, i can't tell you what to do, but i can tell you WHY you should do it. just trust me bro.

gender neutrality at award shows is weird

i did base all of this off the vma's

my biggest guilty pleasure is award shows. i eat them up every single time. i do a grammy’s bracket and try and watch all the movies nominated for best film at the oscars. are award shows pointless and dumb and don’t really have any weight in what is considered good art or not?  yes. is that going to stop me from watching them? absolutely not. i love to watch rich people hang out with other rich people. it's fascinating. this means i inevitably watched the vma’s. personally my least favourite award show (why the fuck is johnny depp there i thought i blocked and muted him on everything) but when taylor swift shows up so do i. the vma’s are run through mtv (if one more person over the age of thirty treats me like i don’t know what mtv was im going to lose it) who famously announced in 2017 that they were doing away with gendered categories. there will no longer be a “female/male video of the year” just “video of the year”. i first heard about this in vogue because where else would i get my pressing news. i literally idolize carrie bradshaw. i don’t know what you were expecting. now girlboss twitter is all over that and grade seven baby feminist with no nuance me would have to agree (i watched emma watson’s UN speech everyday for a year). surface level this is great, we are expecting the same level of greatness from men, women, and all people respectively, everyone is on the same playing field. right? wrong.

there are two main glaring issues i have with gender neutral award categories specifically within the music industry. first i want to tackle this idea of “expecting the same level of greatness”. in what world are male musicians expected to perform like female ones are. i look at so many famous, lauded male musicians and their concerts and they just kind of stand there? maybe with some cool lighting, maybe a guitar for a couple songs depending on the genre. contrast that with female musicians who have to have a set theme, multiple costume changes, elaborate set design, backup dancers, choreography themselves, and on top of that great live vocals. male musicians can get away with mediocrity (sometimes below) and still be highly successful. i offer justin bieber’s grammy performance of “peaches” as proof (by god it was that bad). men can almost always get away with a bad vocal performance too, how many jokes have been made about male indie rock bands where the singer can’t sing, or every single time a male musician can bounce back from a bad performance. female musicians spend years rebuilding their careers after one bad vocal performance (which probably wasn’t even that bad) and even then people still bring it up literal YEARS later. i will note that this tends to happen more to young women just starting out in the industry *cough*oliviarodrigo*cough*. i wonder why that could be? does the music industry hate women? more specifically young women? no, they would never treat women of equal or greater talent and success worse than their male counterparts. that's preposterous. i know i’m just taking the piss but i’m setting up for a very valid point i promise. if male musicians are kind of boring in comparison to their female peers then that would be reflected in nominations right? when female artists are consistently outperforming then you would think they would lead nominations. you would think.

because i am neurotic and refuse to let a point die, i did some math (if you know me you know this is a very big deal) there are around 14 major categories at the vma’s. 3 of which had more female nominee’s than male, another three where it was split 50/50, and 8 categories where there were more male nominees than female. now this is an issue but i’m going to assume you’re not stupid (don’t make me regret this) and i’m not going to spell out for you why men dominating 8/14 of the major categories is a bad thing. wait? what’s that sound? is that the kid in history class who wore a suit everyday and knew way too much about world war two?? oh my god it is, it's the devil’s advocate. “but mel winning is what’s important, do nomination’s even matter if you don’t win? what about those stats?” thanks so much for that question hayden, i really appreciate it. out of the major 14 categories women went 7/14. though to be fair there were zero women nominated in the rock category. 2 of those wins came from the 8 male led categories while those split 50/50 and those led by women got 3 and 2 wins, respectively. now i can’t completely fault the vma’s here (as much as i would love to, i'm still pissed off about depp) i have to recognize that some categories at the vma’s are fan voted and some are not. this makes it difficult to analyze whether or not women would win if provided the chance in a more traditional (jury/academy/guild) voting system. but it does help me with my biggest concern with gender neutral award show categories,

will women be nominated in the first place? unfortunately probably not. not in the entertainment industry which enables people like r.kelly, harvey winstein, johnny depp, and chris brown, and has shown time and time again it does not care about women. we cannot trust that when provided the opportunity, they won't snub women. “they” being the panels/jurys/academies etc. they already (very obviously) snub people of colour, what's to stop them from just not nominating women. and let's BeReal women of colour are going to be snubbed the most, billie eilish won't be that affected. the entertainment industry does not care about women and gender neutral award shows are just another way to screw women over. now i can hear hayden yelling at me again “literally no one but you cares about award shows there is no real life consequence to this”. first of all, i write cultural critiques on substack, nothing i write about has any merit. why are you listening to me? i’m getting a philosophy degree. second of all, award shows provide credibility in the entertainment world, when someone wins an oscar, everything they do in their career is backed by the fact that they have an oscar. if award shows go gender neutral and women aren’t nominated, and even fewer women win, they not only lose the nomination, they lose the credibility too. and then there are lots of people who take award show nominees and winners very seriously, not to mention the exposure that comes with award shows. women and their art could be left in the dust and it wouldn’t be surprising if it happens. all of this happening under the guise of being “progressive” for girlboss twitter and people with the same critical thinking skills as 12 year old me. i would love to say that there will be a time when we can do away with gendered categories, but gendered categories were introduced as a way to make sure women were even able to compete at all (history of the olympics baby). we aren’t in a spot culturally where we can be sure that women can be nominated based on their art and what they bring to the industry. some might introduce the idea of a quota here, nominations must be split 50/50, that immediately discredits any of the female nominees. “they’re only nominated because they’re a girl”, “they only won for optics”. the idea of forced diversity through quotas could take up an essay of its own so i won’t go into heavy detail, but we see these sentiments echoed around literally anytime a black actor gets to do something outside of playing a character where being black is part of the story. look at how people react to affirmative action, to think that there wouldn’t be a similar reaction in this situation would be very naive. 

overall, i think that gender neutral categories would be great if we didn’t live in such a shitty culture. we’re so oversaturated with media anyways, did you know the emmys happened recently? wild. stream midnights by taylor swift out october twenty first.

aristotle and dante (movie) was good

4 stars

DISCLAIMER: i have not read the book so no comparisons will be made. do not get mad at me for it. 

fairly spoiler free nothing that's important 

i saw this at the premier at tiff without seeing the teaser/trailer or anything. i hadn't even read the synopsis online or on the back of the book. all that being said, this movie is good. and not in an "appealing to the fans of the book, no artistic liberties were taken, this feels stale". i mean it in an "everything was so intentional, so detail oriented, SO cinematic, the score was great, and for a movie shot on digital the colouring is fantastic" way. 

i think what i enjoyed most about the movie was that, as someone who was clueless going into it, i would've never guessed it was a book. alberto makes the movie her own. someone in the crowed during the q&a asked (rather aggressively) why their favourite lines had been cut out (a pet peeve of mine). alberto answered with something along the lines of "at some point the writing had to become my own, sound and feel like me" and that comes through beautifully in the movie. 

the boys gave phenomenal performances but a huge shout out goes to eugenio derbez who plays ari's father. the NUANCE IN THAT MANS PERFORMANCE. outstanding. i do wish we got to spend a little more time with him but i did cherish the time we got. 

unfortunately car manuel miranda was not there. i just wanted an excuse to call him car manuel after i saw that photo, moving on. i would stay out on the lookout for alberto in the future, she so clearly cares about her characters and her actors, take one glance at her social media not to mention the way she praised them during the q&a (well deserved mind you). alberto is so refreshing and i want to be her best friend, i have nothing more to say. 

that's a lie i always have more to say have you met me? i still cannot believe i got tickets to a movie without knowing it's a premier. like i was in the first couple hundred people to this movie ever. what. guess i'm just indie and quirky like that. wanna come over and listen to tame impala on vinyl? i'm KIDDING. watch the fucking movie then tell me how right i am.