Surviving The Modern News Cycle

Earlier this week I saw a story about a cheerleader for the New Orleans Saints getting fired for posting a picture of her in a one-piece on her personal Instagram. This of course violated the team’s policy, which includes such ludicrous notions as: Cheerleaders cannot follow coaches or Saints players on any kind of social media, post pictures of them “semi-nude” or in lingerie, post pictures of themselves in Saints gear, etc. Now if your immediate response to this is “wow it sounds like the NFL literally just wants to control cheerleaders and use their body as official NFL property without any regard to their autonomy as women,” then you are right on the money. Luckily this cheerleader is fighting back and attempting to sue the NFL for its sexist rules and regulations, but it doesn’t change the frequency with which stories like this pop up, showing pieces of systematic corruption across the board and making a lot of people question why they do anything. So in this write-up I wanted to try something a bit different. I wanted to share some of my experiences dealing with the oppressively negative news and maybe start a dialogue of how you personally cope with being surrounded by bad press.

Major Media outlets thrive on tragedy and controversy, and while in a perfect world this wouldn’t be the worst thing, when you take into account how much bad happens on any given day, it becomes a never ending cycle of depressing stories. News articles popping up on our phones about satellites that may fall on us, right-wing conservatives using twitter to bash the young victims of a school shooting, another natural disaster in a foreign country that will be forgotten about in a day, and this can all be in the span of an hour. As we have become more desensitized to the bad, the coverage of the bad has just ramped up more and more, creating the illusion that the world is always one bad day from collapsing on itself. It can all seem inescapable and hopeless, so how can we continue to have faith in the world when all we see of it is the ugly? The answer is both easy and complex at the same time; just as media companies form their own bubbles that consist of all the darker happenings of the world, we have to create the kind of environment around ourselves that we want to see in the world.

Back when I was in school and cared about learning things, we struck a chord in one of my Hinduism classes that really resonated with me. Simply put we talked about the idea that the world as we know it isn’t actually the world, but rather just our perception of the world. So when our daily lives are filled with news of shootings and economic crises, that in turn becomes anxiety that we feel for just being alive in this time. Admittedly this isn’t the hardest concept to wrap your head around, but it feels as though there are a shocking amount of people who underestimate the effect that the media they consume influences them. This goes past referencing your favorite moment in Scandal or sharing your the latest shitpost and extends to the kinds of friends you follow on Facebook and what ads you let come up on your feed vs the ones you choose to hide. Most of you reading this, and most people that those reading this are friends with, are fully immersed in the digital age. Information is relayed in real time from anywhere in the world and we have the capacity to be as informed or misinformed as we choose. Herein lies a problem I want to help us address: exercise your right of choice in this digital age. Understand that you have the capacity to shape your digital landscape, and by extension your world, into something that can help ease the anxiety of the modern news cycle.

Now, I’m not Banksy. I have no intention of preaching that we are tied to technology in an unhealthy way, because honestly that has always been the case. Human history is defined by its technology, from bow and arrows to cars that can drive itself, so 2018 is not that different in the grand scheme of things. What is different, or what should be different, is our ability to curate how we incorporate the good and bad of that tech into our lives. For example, my own personal Facebook timeline consists of articles about social justice and reform, anime memes, and random polls from a polling group that I joined just because distractions are fun. It all seems like a mess but it is a mess that I purposefully made so that I could feel like I am being productive whenever I scroll Facebook. I always want to be aware of injustices in the world because I am a Black man and can’t fool myself into thinking I am wholly accepted in America, but on a less dramatic note I also need to see funny things related to anime because that always puts me in a good mood. It’s a small detail and a delicate balance, one that a lot of people can find without meaning to, but it is vital to keep yourself sane.

What I am advocating for isn’t a kind of internet reform or for you to carefully analyze everything you consume online, but rather to purge the extremes of the world from your view in cases where it isn’t helpful for you to be exposed to. There are only so many videos of unarmed POC getting shot that I can watch before it begins to actually make me feel physically ill, and many of us just endure that illness because it is all we know. This is another lie fed to us by big news outlets to create a need for tragedy, despair, and drama in everything we take in. They can make you think things like peace and positivity are boring and not worth pursuing simply through their practice of feeding consumers the opposite. So don’t let big companies have complete control over the stories you read and the way you experience events in the world. Realize that you have the most control of what you consume online at any given moment and utilize that to its fullest. Block the Facebook pages you followed 6 years ago that now just spit out garbage memes or racist propaganda, Limit the amount of carnage you have to witness on a daily basis so you don’t get nightmares, and if following a page dedicated to pugs makes you happy, then follow the hell out of that page.

In conclusion, now more than ever we are being forced to examine our world in more dramatic, serious, and potentially harmful ways, but that is not all the world is. You can and should control what you consume so that you aren’t at the mercy of whatever company is trying to make you see that the world is on fire. The reality is, the world has always been on fire, things have always been terrible somewhere and always will be terrible somewhere. Our jobs, as a generation that hopefully aspires to change the status quo, is to leave open a pathway to positivity in our lives, in any way we can. Surround yourself with the information you want to see and mold your Social Media lexicon to reflect the kind of person that you want to be. It is easy to see the end of the world, but it is infinitely harder to stop and smell the roses.

Truth, by Kamasi Washington

(Please watch the video before reading this)

One of the best ways to learn about my culture has always been music. From learning about love as a kid via Stevie Wonder and Nina Simone to understanding oppression by way of some of Hip-Hop’s best MCs, music is vital to Black culture. For the past couple years, I have done small write-ups on albums and shared songs of the day for Black History Month, but this month I wanted to add another layer of analysis into the mix. Recently, I have gotten into a bit of a routine when it comes to media that I consume. When I hang out with friends and watch videos with them, we always have to cycle through 4-5 comedic videos we all love before moving on to new things. You could say that these videos have become formative experiences, and represent a bond between us, but among the funny there is one serious music video that I have made sure to share with as many of my friends in person as possible: “Truth,” by Kamasi Washington.

Now I have already spoken at length about Kamasi and his work, but for those who may not know, he is a Jazz saxophonist and composer, with two fantastic albums under his belt and concrete understanding of how to make music that feels alive. With this music video, due in no small part to the writing and direction of AG Rojas, Kamasi’s music takes on a new dimension and captures the very essence of why I strive to make art. Now, before I get into my breakdown of why this video is so effective, I’d like to talk about the state of Jazz in America for a second. Jazz is a Black musical form once heralded as devil music and fostered in the night clubs of bustling urban environments. It is a culmination and celebration of conflict combined with the freedom for artists to express themselves. The story of Jazz is much more violent and heartbreaking than the black tie vibes of Jazz taught in modern music schools would ever show. This isn’t to say I have a disdain for Jazz being taught formally in majorly White institutions, I am actually glad that the music is still being kept alive and I have grown a lot personally due to my white friends who play Jazz, but the genre’s mainstream shift away from its Black roots plays a huge role in the context of “Truth.” The visuals, composition, and overall narrative of “Truth” all tie back to Jazz’s acquired multiculturalism.

“Truth,” in a nutshell, is about the connectivity of everything in existence. This may seem a bit...far out, but it approaches such a vast and immersive thesis through its lush visuals. The video opens up with a shot of the cosmos, which is about as grand as you can get, before showing us a young Black boy. The video would like you to believe he is one of the main characters of the story that is starting to unfold, but I believe every person who shows up on screen has a similar level of importance, with some getting more screen time to show different parts of their lives. We are shown the boy’s mother, in what looks like a comfortably furnished apartment, before shifting to a young Latina woman in what looks like a coming-of-age celebration surrounded by religious symbols and loved ones. From here the video shows us different portraits of people's lives in America, each shot carefully filled with a specific purpose. Close-ups on bibles, the mother and her son talking to each other playfully, and young men posed in front of a screen in what looks like a makeshift photo studio, draped in a traditional looking garb. The visuals are dense and packed with too many details to catch on the first watch, my favorite of which being a bird’s-eye shot of two young men wrestling in a field, surrounded by pink and red flower petals that make up the perfect circle of their ring. Everything is gorgeous and given the same amount of respect and treatment, connecting entirely different communities and cultures seamlessly through how scenes are shot.

The music gives these scenes another bit of life entirely. As I talked about in my 2017 album wrap-up, Kamasi’s Harmony of Difference is a musical project where every song is made up of the same melodies and musical ideas, which all culminate in the final track “Truth,” adding a sense of familiarity by the time you hit the last song. When that song is the score to a blending of cultural differences, it achieves a very similar effect. The music serves as a the glue for every visual idea you see during the course of the video. Each lick, melody, chord change and musical swell fits perfectly within the language the video is introducing you to. This is obviously due to smart editing, but the illusion that every part of this video was created at the same time for the same purpose is astounding. You start associating different instruments with certain characters and filling the blanks in your head of what this puzzle could be about. The music is an audio representation of the concept of being connected. At a point it stops feeling like music and starts to tug on you like it is an actual force. A big part of Kamasi’s music is a sense of spirituality. Never coming off as especially religious himself, he instead composes songs that are larger than the sum of their parts. The musical cogs of the song go together perfectly, but they also create something more powerful than just a number of musicians in sync. You hear struggle and resolutions that are reflected in the aforementioned visual focus of the music video.

The narrative of the video is abstract, but not absent. The story focuses on connecting the dots, a bunch of points across the real world with seemingly little connection, and reassuring the viewer that they’re all part of the same cosmos. One shot in particular takes up one third of the video and may be the strongest case for this connection. It is a seemingly static shot of two Black men in what looks like the backstage area of a theater, both reading a newspaper and minding their own business. Meanwhile the camera is slowly zooming in on the man on the right side of the screen, moving at a snail's pace. Musically, at this point in the song, Kamasi starts taking a solo. As the solo builds and becomes more fierce, the rate the camera is zooming does not change. So while we are given the audio treatment of a lifetime visually the shot is mundane as could be. The brilliant revelation that this gave me upon watching it was that the music we hear is actually coming from the man on the right as he reads his newspaper, showing that even when we as POC aren’t in the act of being creative that we have ties so some of the richest art and culture imaginable. It's an uplifting message that resonated with me directly as someone who spends most of my time each day working a retail job. This is the reaffirmation of the roots of Jazz, showing the view that our bond with our music and culture isn’t going to diminish just because non-POC start playing Jazz standards. No one gets to choose what part of culture applies to them and what doesn’t; we inherit everything from love to war, and seeing that all reflected in such a static shot was breathtaking. So many moments of shots fading perfectly into other shots as the music cues a specific emotion are the foundation of this video, and the more you watch it the more you understand how everything is connected.

“Truth” stands as a monument to the beauty of multiculturalism. It respects boundaries and allows the viewer to see how various different different cultures in our society live, love and fit into the grand scheme of existence. All the while it feels genuine and warm, lacking the air of pretentiousness one would expect from such a bold artistic statement. There are so many moments in this video that take me to a special place, and so many moments I don’t understand because they illustrate a life I didn’t grow up in, and that is the whole point. Kamasi believes that we are all connected, and it is the differences between us that give birth to great art and culture. So as you reflect on this Black History Month, in addition to raving about Black Panther with your friends, also remember that culture isn’t something that you do, it is just you. Regardless of what kind of life you lead you are connected to a rich tapestry of those who came before you and those who will come after you, and that truth is absolute and beautiful.

A Proper Approach to Horror

Spoiler Warning for Doki-Doki Literature Club

My personal relationship with horror media is a bit atypical. As a kid I hated anything scary. In fact, I remember not being able to walk to a certain part of the movie theater because a huge poster for “Seed of Chucky” was on display. Somewhere down the line, however, that all changed. I am still not sure myself as to when this happened, but one day I could just do horror. I found a group of friends willing to watch anything scary and make fun of it to lighten the mood, dove heavy into Wikipedia to research classic horror movies and games that would become huge formative experiences for me, and treated the horror genre as just that: a genre of entertainment.

Horror possess a special quality that most other genres I love do not, which is to say most things under the tag “horror” that I have experienced are, for lack of a better word, bad. Bad moves, bad games and bad stories make up the bulk of available scary media, and one needs to dig to find gems. I believe this comes mainly from of creators not knowing the difference between scaring someone and making someone feel scared. Namely, scaring someone is just jumping out from behind a door when they weren't expecting it and making their heart skip, while calling someone and telling them you saw something sneak into their house at night is a way to make that person feel scared. It is for that reason I want to bring your attention to one of my favorite video games of 2017, and the catalyst for this write-up: Doki Doki Literature Club.

DDLC is a visual novel game that you can download for free. It is also a special game for a lot of reasons, one of which being that it is the scariest thing I have subjected myself to in years. The basic premise of the game involves playing as a male avatar in an anime setting who joins a literature club full of four distinct girls who you try to romance via writing poetry. There's Sayori (red bow), Yuri (long purple hair), Natskuki (pink hair), and Monika (long brown hair). These girls all have personalities made up of tried and true anime tropes. Sayori is your happy-go-lucky childhood friend, Yuri is a quiet and sensible bookworm, Natsuki shows her affection through aggression while being a fan of cutesy things, and Monika is the naturally talented and cheerful president of the club. On the surface it is a cute game about trying to win the heart of the girl that you like most, not uncommon to visual novels, and that in itself is the first piece of what makes the game such a beautifully dark puzzle.

Right when you start up the game you get a content warning that the game is not made for kids, which would be one thing if the game had adult content, but it lists “disturbing content” specifically as the reason young players should avoid the game. After that you name your character and join the club, meeting the girls and familiarizing yourself with the only unique gameplay mechanic DDLC has to offer, writing poems. Every day in the club you get to read each member’s poems, ranging from deeply metaphorical pieces done by Yuri to the simple but effective work written by Natsuki, syles that you can imitate when it comes to creating your own pieces. You write poems by picking words off of a list with 10 words on it, each word corresponding to either Sayori, Yuri or Natsuki, which you can see as tiny avatars in the corner of the page. After you have picked 20 words, you get to spend the next day at school with whomever liked your poem the most, subtly changing your relationship with the girls after each poem. Some of the words used for the poem are a bit alarming though, words like “suicide” and “depression” popping up admist happier words like “candy” and “fireworks”, with dark words resonating well with a girl you may not expect. This combined with the disclaimer are your only indication that the game is about something other than cute girls.

Over the course of your days at school you start to notice that Sayori is acting weird, keeping quiet instead of being her usual extraverted self. When you as the player confront her at her house about this, in a scene which in any other visual novel would be the point where she confesses her love for you, she instead tells you she is severely depressed. Her feelings for you play into it though, creating a jealousy that Sayori doesn't want and thus causing her to try and pull away from you as a result. We as players learn that all of the shortcomings usually just attributed to her anime character type are actually due to her depression. After trying to comfort her and assuring her that you will be supportive through her darkest times, you promise to hang out with her at an upcoming school festival (that the literature club is running an event for) and say goodbye to her, only for her to see you hanging out with one of the other girls from the club in your house later that day, troubling her further. The next day as you head to school you notice Sayori is absent, and a poem that she wrote for the literature club consists of her writing the words “get out of my head” written over and over on it. When you decide to go see if your friend is okay, you find her dead in her room, having hanged herself, and you receive a screen that just says “END.” It is here where the game went from making me anxious to creating a full-blown sense of dread in my stomach, as the game then restarts from the beginning without Sayori in it, deleting her character file from your computer’s DDLC game folder, and erasing her existence within that world.

It is here in this second run of the game or Act 2 (which could very well take you 2-3 hours to get to depending on how fast you read and how engrossed you are in the story) that the disturbing horror rears its head. The game glitches constantly, the character portraits distort briefly before they appear on screen, disturbing poems and images show up in the folder of your game on your computer, and every single comfort you built up in Act 1 is taken away from you. This is the genius that is DDLC's understanding of horror; the scary parts of the game aren't something happening to your avatar, they are happening to you as someone playing the game. The innumerable scary details that change throughout Act 2 are never commented on by the avatar, but each and every single change is noticed by you, and it feels like the game starts to play you as opposed to the opposite. This creates an eerie disconnect between role-playing a character and feeling targeted as a player. Yuri, Natsuki and Monika all exhibit obsessive and terrifying behavior (based on who you try to romance in Act 2) that you do not have the have the ability to comment on as your avatar. You become trapped in a nightmare in which your only way to meaningfully interact with these characters is taken away from you, leaving you feeling isolated playing something that ultimately stops feeling like a video game.

What makes this feeling of dread all the more tangible, however, was the act that preceded it. Act 1 is vital to the overall story, complete with character arcs, twists and narrative hooks that get you invested in the characters. Without that comfort that we were able to latch onto, taking it away wouldn't mean anything. At the same time, however, Act 2 doesn't just come out of nowhere. There are hints at the game’s darker nature from moment one and there is a natural progression and flow into the scariness of the latter half. Once you find out why the game feels like it is playing you, everything is re-contextualized, giving the story a sense of cohesion despite how unsettling it makes you feel. This is something that a lot of Horror media botches. When creating a setup meant to be the comfort hook that is established before the “scares” come in, most average horror movies and games will create a setting meant to be the “norm.” Once that norm is shattered, it feels like a jarring shift of perspective rather than one well thought out narrative. The tension that leads to a scare should be just as well executed as the scare itself. While Act 1 may not be scary in its own right, it establishes all of the more twisted characteristics of the girls that become more fleshed out and menacing in the games second half, and uses the players knowledge that this may have scary content to lure them into a state of feeling scared just in time for the game to break.

DDLC takes a holistic approach to Horror writing. Every piece of it exists to eventually make you uneasy, whether you know it or not, and that is the hallmark of a good story. If the game was actually just cutesy in its first half, with no hints at all to the darker nature of what is to come, then it would be a bad game and a bad story. Sure there would be shock value if all of a sudden Sayori just hung herself, but I personally would just feel lied to instead of scared. The clever subversion of not only horror tropes but also anime and visual novel tropes is what creates such a solid foundation for unease. You hate seeing horrible things happen to characters you care about, and at certain points in Act 2 when certain characters show signs that they too are aware of how horrible their world has become, it hits home way more than a videogame about hitting on women should. Shock value has become synonymous with Horror recently, leading to more and more cases of just throwing scares in as opposed to working them into a story. While series known for producing shock value and jump scares are immensely prominent in pop-culture, they hardly ever prove memorable in comparison to stories that lend themselves to creating feelings of terror and discomfort. Even in DDLC itself, the most memorable parts of the game are moments where the game is doing something small, something only I notice, something that makes me question why I have subjected myself to such a game. I engaged with DDLC, I gave it my attention and it rewarded my with a good story and pure terror, and this is the way any good piece of horror media should be.

I have thought about this game every day in the month after I played it, and have recommended it to literally everyone I know who would play it. It is rare for something I watch/play to scare me in such a poignant way. This game takes about 4 hours to beat, but I have spent 10 hours playing it through multiple times, and easily spent another 20 hours watching others playing it, talking about it with friends, and diving into every secret hidden within it. I believe that horror has the capacity to be more engrossing than a lot of people would assume. While being scared out of your mind may not be fun in the moment, looking back and questioning how and why something you played gave you that feeling is compelling and leaves you looking for the next piece of media that will affect you. This game absorbed me into its world and part of me still feels like I am there, at the literature club, waiting for the next well-placed yet terrifying revelation.