Month: May 2021

This year, VAPA moved its annual showcase online. Normally, the talent show is held in the auditorium, but under this year’s circumstances, they hosted the event on Mar. 4 as a livestream conducted through zoom. 

Seniors Michael Alongi and Daniel Baradat along with junior Collette Lonchar hosted the showcase. They provided witty commentary and plenty of puns as they guided the audience through the performances. 

Alongi, Baradat, and Lonchar gave live commentary but the performances were pre recorded so they could easily be played in succession. 

“We just wrote puns and tried to have fun with it,” said Baradat. “I personally thought it went great. It’s something that, while it’s better in person, translates really well to a virtual medium. It also opened up gateways to new types of performances, like Hailey Bowland’s time lapse drawing, something that wasn’t really possible before.”

The showcase’s first performance was by the Mane Event Dancers. Their performance stuck to a retro theme with 50s music and vintage dresses that kicked the show off on a lighthearted and fun note. Their well choreographed routine was recorded at an outdoor stage located in Land Park. 

Parker Van Ostrand (‘21) performed a classical piano piece, Chopin’s Piano Sonata No. 2 Op. 35. In an interview, Van Ostrand described the piece as “very contrasting…. It starts out very dramatic, agitated and even turbulent. Parts of the piece are very mysterious, while some parts are really beautiful and lyrical, and the piece ends very heroically.” 

Van Ostrand is a world-renowned pianist and has showcased his talent in seven different countries. In past years, he performed at Carnegie Hall in New York and most recently at the 10th National Chopin Piano Competition as the youngest participant. Parker will also compete in the International Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw, Poland later in the year. 

Katelyn Guo (‘24), another musician, played a classical flute piece. Guo’s music was uplifting, intoxicating, and peaceful – the audience was truly delighted. The following performance was by vocalist Ellie Mizushima (‘22), who sang the song “Dance with Me” from the musical, Prom. The pre-recorded set up allowed Mizushima to sing both parts of the duet and sync them together to create a beautiful amalgamation of sound. 

There were a couple impressive baton performances by Arielle and Bessa Miller (‘21) and Clare McCarty (‘21). These flawless performances demonstrated incredible rhythm, nuance and skill as they captivated the audience with their fluidity. 

Hailey Bowlwin (‘21) showed a unique time lapse of her completing a dragon drawing. She added a rendition of “Upon a Dream” from Sleeping Beauty to give the video a majestical feel. She was able to do this unorthodox performance as mentioned by Baradat by pre recording it and adding edits. The virtual setup allowed for different types of performances as they weren’t required to be live and the performers could add edits. A performance like this wouldn’t normally be featured in the in-person annual showcase, so this new format gave performers a unique opportunity and allowed for more artists to be featured. 

Ne’Kayla Irvine (‘21) also had quite a unique performance. Irvine gathered countless quotes about VAPA students’ interpretation of the nature of art, and provided the audience a slideshow depicting stand-out pieces of visual art produced by McClatchy students. 

Katherine Taytroe (‘22) played a romantic solo guitar series that exuded deep, thought-provoking emotion. Parts of the piece were faster while others seemed more intricate and nuanced. Taytroe’s fingers danced across the cords seamlessly and entranced viewers. 

To cap off a brilliantly executed showcase, audience members heard from the band, Dross. This popular McClatchy band never fails to put on an electrifying performance. When they normally perform at the showcase, they use stage lights to give energizing effects, but this year they used their own lights and edited in pictures to enhance their performance. 

While this showcase was held under different circumstances this year, the emcees still brought the same energy to the show and the performers brought extraordinary and unique performances that graced the audience. 

“The showcase is a really special event to VAPA. It has always been a really fun night and great fundraiser. While this year was a bit different, it was still a wonderful experience,” said Alongi.

On Mar. 19, Lana Del Rey released her seventh studio album titled Chemtrails Over the Country Club. The album consists of 11 tracks and features the two singles, “Chemtrails Over the Country Club” and “Let Me Love You Like a Woman.”

The album’s announcement came with harsh criticism as the singer/songwriter took to her comments to make clear that she was not racist. However, in doing so, she came off as cocky and not much less racist as she wrote, “My best friends are rappers, my boyfriends have been rappers… I’m not the one storming the capital, I’m literally changing the world by putting my life and love out there…”

While by far not the best way to introduce an album, Del Rey still managed to debut at #1 on apple music charts and peaked at #3 on the billboard 200. However, beneath the controversy, a meticulous body of work was assembled.

Produced by Jack Antonoff, the album shows a new angle to Del Rey’s evolving character as she navigates love, fame, and controversy. The mellow songs are easy to relax to, making it perfect for the open road. On the other hand, the lyrics make a myriad of references to her previous works and past icons, making the listener put the album on repeat until they can make sense of the complexities. 

Del Rey opens the album with the much-anticipated piece, “White Dress.” Before its release, Del Rey’s sister and many others expressed that the song would be sadder than her song “Pawn Shop Blues,” a melancholy song that perfectly expressed the hardship of letting go. However, this fell flat on release day and left many fans confused on why the two were even comparable. The rock-inspired piano ballad features Del Rey singing with a breathy tone as she describes her years before fame. 

The song is possibly in response to the criticism that she is just a rich white girl with no other substance or merit to her. It was most recently sparked with the release of her poetry book, “Violet Bent Backwards Over the Grass.” Del Rey’s lyricism attempts to dismiss these claims by exemplifying hardships the singer has had getting to where she is, as the chorus sings, “Look how I do this, look how I got this/I was a waitress working the night shift.”

The subsequent and title track finds Del Rey singing about the complacency and ignorance Americans are increasingly falling into. The almost hypnotically parallel and clean-cut melody of the chorus changes its lyrics from two kids contemplating god to that same couple growing old and falling into “normality.” 

The song serves as a social commentary on the way society sees conspiracy theories. Del Rey is not necessarily saying theories like Chemtrails are true, but that they need to be questioned. With the incredulous reputation conspiracy theories have taken over the past years, western culture is losing its once-abundant skepticism that has kept its power systems in check. 

“Dark but Just a Game,” is reminiscent of the singer’s darker era, under the Ultraviolence album. The song shifts stylistically between mysterious yet alluring and indie-rock. It starts with the mysterious style and takes a subtle shift into indie-rock, only to abruptly relapse back into the mysterious style, starting the cycle over. 

Lyrically, the song is focused on a conversation Del Rey had with Jack Antonoff, in which they discussed the tragic endings famous musicians find themselves in. The contrast in style reflects Del Rey’s realization in the two verses and the ramifications found in the chorus. Because of the ill-fate the famous meet, Del Rey expresses that she is content with where she stands with fame and does not want to conform to society’s wants at such an expense.

“Yosemite” is another lovely song, this one focusing on her love for her fiance. It is a sweet pop-country-styled love song. The song carries the story of Del Rey’s love life with the use of the motif, “Candle in the wind.” The motif is taken from the title of an Elton John song, wherein he describes the media’s pressure on Marilyn Monroe. The song portrays the media as the wind that would inevitably blow Marilyn’s flame out, signaling her untimely death.

Lana would first use this motif in her previous album where she naively states, “I ain’t no candle in the wind” to come off as independent. However, in “Yosemite,” she admits that she was once a candle in the wind, and in the discovery of her fiance, she understands how to love just right, without burning herself out too fast.

The rest of the album was riddled with love songs just as meticulous as the ones I previously mentioned. They all linger around pop-country, indie-rock, and bedroom-pop genres while Antonoff’s production aides in the message Del Rey’s trying to get across.

However, the production is at times lackluster. Although it is, for the most part, unique, there are several chord progressions and instrumentations that seem a bit too familiar to Del Rey’s previous collaboration with Antonoff, ”Norman F*****g Rockwell.” However, if the listener is not frequent to Del Rey’s music, it is likely to go unnoticed.

Despite being overcast by the artist’s poorly worded social media posts, Chemtrails Over the Country Club does well at expanding the ever-evolving web of connections and references that is Del Rey’s lyricism while also providing gentle melodies perfect for long retrospective road trips. 

2020 was a difficult year for the film industry, but still we were blessed with a few gems including A24’s newest feature. Minari shares the story of a young Korean-American family who move to 1980s Arkansas to find success in the farming industry. Modeled after director Lee Isaac Chung’s childhood, this movie about pursuing the American Dream is mostly in Korean. The film has already been nominated for nearly 40 awards, winning 19 of them, including the prestigious Sundance Film Festival award. 

With such an amazing track record and a 9/10 on Rotten Tomatoes, it would be easy to assume that Minari is up for one of the entertainment industry’s most prized awards: the Golden Globes Best Picture. Unfortunately, because of antiquated rules stating that the Best Picture award cannot go to a film whose dialogue is over 50% in a foreign language, Minari must compete for the foreign language film award instead. 

Calling Minari a foreign film is absolutely ridiculous. It was written and directed by a Korean-American man, features a Korean-American cast, follows a story about the American dream, was filmed in America, and was produced by an American company, A24. Unfortunately, this is not the first time that this has happened to a movie made by an Asian American, and just last year, Chinese-American Lulu Wang’s movie, The Farewell was snubbed for being filmed in China even though it featured a star-studded Asian-American cast including Awkwafina.

Although Asian-American stories and films have had to face this discrimination, other movies like Inglourious Basterds have not. Directed by Clint Eastwood and set in WW2 Europe, the movie is almost entirely in German or French. However, when it came time for Golden Globe nominations, Inglourious Basterds competed for Best Picture, not the foreign film award. The same thing happened with the movie Babel, which coincidentally, also starred Brad Pitt.

What’s even more ridiculous about the whole issue is that America has never had an official language, meaning that no language could technically be foreign. Still, the idea of “foreign languages” has long been rooted in our country’s history of racism. During the 1800s, the US government forced Indigenous children to attend abusive schools where they were not allowed to speak their languages or wear cultural clothes. On plantations, enslaved Africans were forced to learn and speak English to quell white people’s fear of revolution. Today, we’ve all seen the viral videos of Latinx and Asian-American people being told to speak English by an angry bigot, so none of us should be surprised by the connection between racism and language suppression in the US.

When an entire community is told that their stories are foreign because they don’t speak English, it cuts deep. Asian-Americans were only recently able to immigrate to the US on a large-scale after Martin Luther King Jr. and other civil rights activits helped pass the Civil Rights Act in 1965 which abolished the quota on Asian immigrants. 

Even after immigrating, Asian-Americans have constantly been othered for cultural dress, food, holidays, physical appearances, and languages. Actor Daniel Dae Kim expressed this on twitter, saying the Minari snub was, “the film equivalent of being told to go back to your country when that country is America.” Author Kazu Kabuishi chimed in saying, “As long as you look a certain way, you will always be considered a visitor in your own home.”

Fortunately for the HFPA, this controversy has an easy, and extremely simple solution; allow American-made movies in a language other than English to compete for Best Picture. Like Bong Joon Ho said after winning two Oscars for “Parasite” last year, “once you overcome the 1-inch tall barrier of subtitles, you will be introduced to so many more amazing films.”

Sia’s new movie Music has recently been released, but the negative depiction of the autistic people has caused the movie to recently become rightfully criticised for its insensitivity. Despite this, the movie somehow received two highly coveted Golden Globe nominations, and the autistic community and allies are rightfully upset.

Music is a movie co-directed by Sia about an autistic girl Music who has to be taken care of by her half-sister after her grandmother’s passing. Together they learn how to solve myriads of problems to learn more about each other. 

The movie is currently up for two Golden Globe nominations. One being best picture (musical/comedy) and lead actress (Kate Hudson).

The plot of the movie may seem encouraging, but the autsitic community has shown discomfort with the casting of Maddie Ziegler who is not autistic and the offensive portrayal of autistic people.

While not everyone in the community agrees, many autsitic people want neurodivergent people to play characters who are neurodivergent. While a character is just a character, the community feels the best way to get rid of decades of stigma and finally receive accurate representation, neurodivergent people should be the ones playing neurodivergent characters.

When it was announced Sia casted Ziegler as a neurodivergent person, she faced a lot of backlash. She responded to critics on Twitter, often cursing people out or telling them their criticism is misplaced because she did try to cast an autistic actor for the part. 

In a response to a Tweet on Nov. 20, 2020, Sia says, “Casting someone at (the character’s) level of functioning was cruel.” She added the actor was stressed on set and had to quit because the job was overwhelming. 

Firstly, many felt her attempts to include an autistic actor were minimal. The flashing lights and bright colors that many austic people find to be hard to watch, let alone act in, are found throughout the movie.

Additionally, the support and education services Planning Across the Spectrum says the use of “functioning labels isolate disabled people from their non-disabled peers by implying defectiveness.”

Also, many including @HelenAngel on Twitter replied to Sia saying, “Several autistic actors, including myself… said we could have acted on a short notice. These excuses are just that– excuses.” Sia’s response (instead of apologizing) was, “Maybe you’re just a bad actor.”

Furthermore. Maddie Ziegler uses exaggerated motions often used to mock Autistic people. A page run by austic adults on Twitter titled Autisticats described the acting as, “unsettling, and insincere… and it’s deeply reminiscent of the exaggerated mannerisms non-autistic people often employ when bullying autistic and developmentally disabled people.”

Sia includes a scene in which Ziegler’s character has a breakdown and supporting characters use restraining techniques such as holding her down to the floor to try to stop her. However, the autistic community widely denounces the use of these techniques except as a last resort to help with breakdowns as they could be lethal. 

While Sia claims she had done research on the autism spectrum, a group she often discussed with was Autism Speaks. While she claims she did know at the time, Autism Speaks is widely disliked within the Autism community for many reasons.

Autism Speaks focuses on eugenic-like missions to “end autism” and find a “cure.” Instead of researching for improved therapies and advocating for services, they want to find a way to stop autism. 

The organization also has a history of using fear-mongering tactics and demonizing autistic people. In their movie Autism Everyday, a mother of autistic and neurotypical children says she thinks about driving off a cliff with her autistic child, but decides not to because she has a neurotypical child. 

By educating herself through an ableist organization and insulting the autistic community with her work, Sia’s movie Music should not be celebrated with two Golden Globe nominations. Her insensitivity towards the autistic community does not deserve a reward.