#zulu chronicles

[bradrcook]

The Iron Chronicles (Second Edition) is now available! So glad to have these books back on the shelves. The Iron Chronicles In a steam-powered Victorian world where secret societies determine the future like a game of chess, and pirates prowl a cloudy sky, Alexander, Genevieve, her little bronze dragon, and the crew of the Sparrowhawk must save the world from the four Iron Horsemen. Book I: Iron Horsemen Book II: Iron Zulu Book III: Iron Lotus Second editions contain maps, Alexander’s Sketchbook, and new scenes.

bradrcook.com

#The Iron Chronicles #Iron Horsemen #Iron Zulu #Iron Lotus #brad r cook #Steampunk #books #trilogy #fantasy

[howtofightwrite]

How physically active were actually "medieval" noble women? I know is a long period but I usually see people complaning about noble women in fantasy doing stuff such as hunting or riding horses. I have seen a couple of illustrations of fencing manuals with women in them too.

We, as a culture, especially in the US, have a very bad habit of using the British Regency/Victorian era as the gold standard for how women all over the world were treated throughout history. And the truth is, it ain’t that way. It never was, because women in this exact era used to duel each other in other parts of Europe and often did it topless.

Yes, this is real. We have records of it.

Was it all women, all the time? No. Was it often enough to mention? Yes.

There’s a really good article by Kameron Hurley, “Women Have Always Fought” that goes over the history of women warriors and the laziness of specular fiction in detail. This is a particularly great few paragraphs from the article that covers where our popular conception that women don’t fight comes from.

“Women have always fought,” he said. “Shaka Zulu had an all-female force of fighters. Women have been part of every resistance movement. Women dressed as men and went to war, went to sea, and participated actively in combat for as long as there have been people.”

I had no idea what to say to this. I had been nurtured in the U.S. school system on a steady diet of the Great Men theory of history. History was full of Great Men. I had to take separate Women’s History courses just to learn about what women were doing while all the men were killing each other. It turned out many of them were governing countries and figuring out rather effective methods of birth control that had sweeping ramifications on the makeup of particular states, especially Greece and Rome.

Half the world is full of women, but it’s rare to hear a narrative that doesn’t speak of women as the people who have things done to them instead of the people who do things. More often, women are talked about as a man’s daughter. A man’s wife.

Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?

Check out some of these real women below.

Empress Maude, the daughter of the English King, Henry I, was named her father’s heir after her brother died. While her cousin Stephen stole the throne after her father’s death, she raised an army and took the country into a civil war to take it back. They fought it out for the decade it took for her son to reach adulthood, and laid the groundwork for Henry II to become king. There’s a great novel by Sharon Kay Penman, When Christ and His Saints Slept which chronicles the civil war. If you’re interested in medieval history, I recommend reading it. Her daughter-in-law, Eleanor of Aquitaine, also led an interesting life. (It should be said, real history got to the denied female heir fights for her throne before George R.R. Martin.)

There’s great videos from Xiran Jay Zhao discussing the Chinese warrior queen Fu Hao of the Shang Dynasty and Wu Zetian, who became China’s first female emperor. (Yes, you read that right. Emperor.)

There is Khutulun, the Wrestler Princess and the great-great granddaughter of Gengis Khan, who is one source of our “defeat her in battle to marry her” tropes. She issued this challenge, “defeat her in wrestling, she’ll marry.” She scammed would be suitors out of 10,000 horses. Western male authors are so threatened by Khutulun, they’ve kept trying to rewrite her history by making her fall victim to the power of love. (No, seriously.)

There’s also Hojo Masako, the Buddhist nun who deposed her own son when he proved incompetent and ruled Japan as Shogun. Here’s her wiki entry too.

The Amazons of Greek Myth were real in that they were actual Scythian women who went to war. (As Scythian women did, just like their men.) They terrified and terrorized the Greeks so much, they became immortalized in their mythology. Don’t believe me? Here’s an article from National Geographic and this one from Live Science.

There’s stories like this all throughout history from big events to small ones. (You can find more over at Rejected Princesses if you’re interested.) There are female warriors, female generals, noblewomen who took command of their husbands’ forces, widows who took to the sea to get revenge on those who wronged them, women who rode with their husbands to battle, female assassins, female leaders of rebellions, etc. The women of the Japanese samurai class were trained to fight, and fight they did. Women warriors, queens, and politicians are all over mythology too. You’ll often see these women come out of the upper echelons of society because money creates options, but they are there. Many of those stories are lost to history, in some cases purposefully, and there was a long trend among archeologists that assumed because a person was buried with male grave goods, the body had to be male. We’re now finding out that isn’t true. There’s a significant portion of warrior corpses that have turned out to be female. Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla chose to post a notice about it in response to these exact criticisms you’re questioning.

Those people you see complaining online? They’re clinging to a version of history that doesn’t exist. More, we know it doesn’t, because popular culture is hungry to the point of desperate for aggressive, confident, and competent female characters. If they were truly a lie, they wouldn’t ring true for so many people.

The history we’re taught today largely downplays women’s achievements, contributions, and successes while uplifting those of men. It’s a fact. Go look at famous female figures anywhere, you’ll find the same story at play over and over. Historically, fantasy as a genre largely portrays a world that is, in fact, fantasy, but that fantasy has nothing to do with women doing things they’re not “supposed” to. There’s no clubhouse. There’s nothing unrealistic in imagining your female character is a kickass queen who defeats overconfident men in wrestling competitions and robs them of all their horses. It’s not unrealistic to come up with an ending that doesn’t conclude in tragedy, violent deaths, them “learning their place,” or even locked within the bonds of an unhappy marriage. (Shocker!) Some did, but the truth isn’t universal. It’s not even unrealistic to imagine they might have supportive male family members, love interests, and followers who happily (gasp) assist them in these endeavors. Maude, for reference, had bastard half-brothers who helped her instead of trying to take the throne for themselves.

History got here before fantasy authors. There’s nothing unrealistic about reality. Popular conceptions and common knowledge fed to us by the majority male dominated culture isn’t always the truth. Reality is, it’s the stories we see normalized across the media spectrum that are wrong. The ones that insist women are objects, who commodify their pain, and reframe their stories to ensure the focus remains on men. While this is changing, women are still often treated as the NPCs of male driven stories.

The people you hear complaining? They want storytelling traditions to stay that way, for the Great Man values countless narratives have reinforced to remain unchallenged. Funny as it sounds, they’re threatened by the very existence of narratives that countermand that centralized focus on men being superior, that there is a stratified gender hierarchy, and men taking their place as the sole, worshipful focus of a woman’s existence, much less these female characters being important in their own narratives. If these people weren’t threatened by female characters being people, they wouldn’t say anything. They’d just move on in apathy.

Reality is people are complicated. There’s room for all stripes in all colors and contexts. It’s no secret that history has suppressed and erased countless stories that don’t support the ruling narrative of the dominant culture. These same people forget there’s plenty of storytelling traditions that include women taking their place as warriors in cultures outside America. For all the sexism and misogyny, women fighting is not an alien concept, it’s not even foreign to other Western European traditions.

Believe what your own research is showing you, not what a bunch of idiots who can’t tell their ass from their elbow are whining about. They can’t handle someone who isn’t straight, male, and (most often) white being the central focus. Really, they can’t handle these characters as even a side focus. That’s their loss, it doesn’t have to be yours.

-Michi

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#Michi answers #how to fight write #writing advice #writing reference #writing tips #history

[omegalomania]

some kind soul uploaded the full q&a that fall out boy did the other night! here is a highlights reel of things that grabbed me while i was watching for those who don't have time to watch:

they have a rapport with the interviewer and have hung out with him a bunch. patrick says they spent like 30 minutes making fun of couches last they hung out lmao

pete describes working with neal avron as being held like an enchanted forest creature with him standing inches from pete's face and saying "what. are. the songs. about." and pete going "oh my god he's looking into my fucking soul rn"

when asked what their favorite meal is, andy says "mom's spaghetti" and doesn't elaborate, patrick says "sushi" and doesn't elaborate. pete says that he's like the joker and he's a simple man and today he had a full english breakfast and he didn't know what to do with half the stuff that showed up.

pete talks about discussing the name of "the beatles" with elliot ingham (their photographer) and says he finally understood that their name was a pun. he says about this "i'm not the sharpest tool in the shed" and doesn't realize he's referencing a meme. the crowd immediately fills him in that it's a lyric by smash mouth. andy clowns on him for this right after: "he's NOT the sharpest tool in the shed"

the host says that pete seems very intellectual. pete says "i PROMISE you that's not true."

when asked about formative musical influences andy and patrick both cite familiar names (andy namedrops drummers for bands like slayer and metallica, patrick says his dad being a folk singer was a huge influence and the 1989 danny elfman batman score). pete says joy division but says he's a visual person and most of his influences are movies.

there's a moment where patrick and pete banter and pete points at the host and says "he just told me i'm smart, i'm trying to live up to it!!" and patrick says in this very small high pitched voice "please be nice to pete!"

anyway pete says his biggest influences are "all the twilight movies except for the one where they introduce [i have no idea what he says here because the crowd promptly goes apeshit]" and also lego batman.

for newer artists patrick says he really likes the new zulu record and the new incendiary song. he says he also likes MSPAINT, alvvays, and another band i couldn't catch the name of

pete says he likes all of patrick's recommendations and says he also likes games we play. andy doesn't give any artists but says patrick gave a "great list" because he's VERY jet-lagged. he's keeping it together as best as he can tho lmao

when asked about if they would ever do a fashion runway show like they did in 2013, patrick says he was embarrassingly short for the whole thing. "i'm at like, bellybutton level." so he says he doubts they would ever be invited back to do something similar "unless they want a bunch of hobbits"

someone asks about producing and patrick gets really in depth with what producing is like and uses "from under the cork tree" as an example - "nobody puts baby in the corner" was barely adjusted from demo form but "sugar we're goin down" had totally different verses at first until they got better direction from the producer.

when asked about what their favorite video to film was, pete says youngblood chronicles WASN'T a lot of fun to make because it was like 9 months with fake blood in your hair and clothes that haven't been washed oNCE. he also didn't love doing the prosthetics for "love from the other side"

the host asks if they've seen the last of us and pete says yes but points at andy and says "he hasn't seen the last episode though so no spoilers!!!" which i thought was very sweet. he then follows that up with "just watch the fuckin episode so we can talk about it!"

patrick and andy said they shot a music video recently that was a "blast" but it's not out yet. pete calls it "very fun, very funny." the crowd starts cheering and patrick hastily says "YOU HAVEN'T SEEN IT! you're under NO obligation to like it! but if you do then that's good :)"

patrick says one of the best parts of being in a band is that they all have imposter syndrome but in different ways so they can build up each other's ideas even if they don't believe in their own.....

pete's very nervous about the lyrics to this album cause he's not sure they'll be relatable since he has a lot of "insane fears day to day about not existing." he went to a lot of places that were terrifying to him and he was like "should i talk about this to my therapist" but his therapist said "put this in your lyrics"

"heaven, iowa" was the song that took the longest to come together on this record. this is followed by a rly long anecdote from patrick that im putting in another post cause it honestly made me howl.

when asked about who they'd most like to collaborate with, andy without hesitation says "ourselves" and nothing else. pete says he wanted a kid cudi feature on the album but it didn't work out since he was either busy or ghosted them fldjflkdf

when asked what song are they tired of playing that they can't cut from the setlist and they DON'T want to answer. patrick says some songs have really high notes that are demanding physically for him but that's as specific as he gets lol

pete's like "well we've got this punk song we end all our shows with from one of our earlier albums and it gets very chaotic and sometimes it's a bit of a fancy crowd of people who are like 'i like centuries, i like some of their other songs....i write sins...' and before we start the song i'm like. oh god this is gonna be bad."

when asked about the songwriting process, patrick says: "pete sends me lyrics, i mine them for stuff i like, and....i hate starting answers like this i feel like i've been saying this all MONTH. so i have ADHD - " [crowd fucking goes wild]

when asked about which projects they're proudest of outside of fall out boy, patrick turns to andy and says "andy is very quiet about being in like thirty bands" but andy says he's proud of "all of it"

patrick remarks that he's heard some love for soul punk but is also super grateful he gets to do film and tv scoring now too! he says he likes that when he's talking to people and they ask what he does and if they don't know bands or anything he can say he likes scoring for film and tv and their eyes glaze over and there are no follow-up questions LMAO??

pete is proudest of the bands on his record label!

for favorite songs on the new record, patrick says he likes "what a time to be alive" and says the lyrics are "so tremendously pete"

pete likes "baby annihilation"

when asked about the most difficult song to play live, patrick said headfirst slide wasn't really that difficult even though he expected it to be. he says a lot of songs on mania were very challenging to play live, like young and menace. pete says "what a catch, donnie" was very hard for his "little brain" to play

at the end pete shouts out the host for being fantastic since they've hung out like 3 times now and he thinks he's a great dude to hang out with. andy inexplicably follows this up with "you look like a DAMN fine cup of coffee" and doesn't elaborate but patrick thinks that's his way of saying thank you too

#fall out boy #*making poasts #SORRY THIS IS LONG BUT THERE'S A LOT I HAD TO LEAVE OUT #go watch the whole thing if you can they talk about producers and stuff for a good long while its rly interesting!!

[disney-film-tourney]

Descriptions taken from Wikipedia.

The Lion King (1994) - Renaissance

Inspired by Hamlet by William Shakespeare, and the stories of Joseph and Moses from the Bible. Some famous names involved were: Matthew Broderick (adult Simba), James Earl Jones (Mufasa), Jonathan Taylor Thomas (young Simba), Rowan Atkinson (Zazu), Elton John (composer), and Hans Zimmer (score.) Whoopi Goldberg, Cheech Marin, and Jim Cummings are the three main spotted hyenas, with Cummings also singing part of “Be Prepared.” Several crew members visited Hell’s Gate National Park in Kenya to study the environment for the film. Highest grossing traditionally animated film of all time. The first Disney film to be dubbed in Zulu.

The Black Cauldron (1985) - Dark Ages

Produced by Walt Disney Productions in association with Silver Screen Partners II. Loosely based on the first two books of the Welsh mythology series, The Chronicles of Prydain by Lloyd Alexander. It’s set in the Early Middle Ages, where the Horned King hopes to get a magic cauldron to help him conquer the world. The climax was severely edited due to being too disturbing for kids. It was the first Disney animated film to be rated PG, as well as feature CGI. Some artwork was submitted by Tim Burton, but not used, since they wanted to use a style similar to Sleeping Beauty.

#disney film tourney #polls #round 1 #dark ages to renaissance #the lion king #the black cauldron

[schooloftuneage]

Lesson 3: This is not a test...

CLASS IS IN SESSION

Rick Rubin is one of the most influential producers in the music biz. He turned Linkin Park from what could have been a two-album flash in the pan into one of the deepest acts in alternative music (no kidding, A Thousand Suns remains one of this berk's top 20 albums of all time). He introduced the world to more iconic acts than I can count. And before all that… he was in a shitty punk group that was more known for fake fights and fake arrests than anything else. (His dad was a policeman and would pretend to arrest Rick when he got into planned altercations with planted hecklers - an attempt at getting traction that failed.)

But at the same time, Rick was keeping his thumb on the pulse of the New York music scene, and when he found out about a few rapidly growing groups that were turning out incredibly danceable music with an antiestablishment ethos, his first thought on listening to them was that it was Black Punk Rock.

The music in question was, of course, hip hop.

Let's delve in.

Hip hop was influenced by numerous sources - talking blues, disco, R&B - and tracking all those down would be great, but we're going to truncate slightly today, because A) I'm saving a lot of that for a later lesson, and B) because the most pertinent one is actually disco, believe it or not. See, like punk rock, there was a single spark that ignited the movement, and while it was slower to burn, it had the perfect kindling. The place was in the slums of the south Bronx, in a rec room at 1520 Sedgewick Avenue. The person was DJ Kool Herc, who spun records for dance parties there.

The above documentary gives us a good glimpse at how Herc did his thing. Today we just know it as basic mixing, but back in the day, this kind of thing was revolutionary. Add in an emcee - Coke la Rock - who would handle the microphone while Herc was mixing, and you had the first emcee-deejay combo.

Over time, more groups came together. Grandmaster Flash picked up Herc's skills, and then hammered them down, bringing them to new heights of awesomeness. He couldn't even try to get on the mic while he was mixing, too focused on the beats he was crafting, so he got an enterprising B-boy they called Cowboy to do the honors. Over time he amassed a group of five emcees to work with him - Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five. The Treacherous Three, the Funky Four (Plus One More) - you can see a sort of theme in these early groups. Rap battles were a thing, inheriting a little bit of gang battle ethos from their founders - early rap adopters the Zulu Nation were ex-gang members who were trying to veer into a more constructive direction, and they did so well.

But for most, the genre was locked away. Sure, rapping was easy enough to do, but to be a real hip hop artist you needed a deejay, and that equipment was expensive. As I said, the spark was there, but it needed kindling.

And just as punk had its watershed moment in 1977 in London, so hip hop did in 1977 in New York. On July 13th, NYC had a city-wide blackout that lasted just over a full 24 hours. A mob mentality decended over the city, with widespread looting… and in the aftermath of these riots, a lot of expensive sound equipment made its way into the hands of enterprising would-be deejays, either through their own actions or through pawnshops who didn't ask questions about where the equipment came from in the weeks after the blackout.

Now, there is much - MUCH - to say about this scene… but as I'm delving in, I'm realizing that someone else has already done this lesson, and arguably done it better than I could ever dream of doing it. Cartoonist Ed Piskor has done a series, Hip Hop Family Tree, that chronicles the early rise of the scene beautifully. And in the spirit of the early rap bootlegs that we're going to be discussing… you didn't get it from me, but hereyago:

That's twelve issues of greatness right there.

Now, with THAT link dropped, let's talk seminal moments for the origins of hip hop.

The first track on wax that was nothing but a deejay showing off their mixing prowess? "The Adventures of Grandmaster Flash on the Wheels of Steel". This one was even more notable because Sugar Hill Records didn't like paying royalties to artists that they sampled, and tended to use original compositions rather than having Flash or other deejays mix in the background (which, yes, was kind of insulting to the art of the deejay…). Also, please note, there are NO editing tricks here. This was just Flash at his best, and he laid the whole track down in only four or five takes.

The first rap "superstar", arguably, was Kurtis Blow. At the very least, the man was both responsible for the first gold record in the hip hop genre and the man who brought it to Soul Train, with "The Breaks".

And now, we're going to zig-zag-zig back to an earlier point.

The early hip hop scene was full of bootlegs. Some were recordings of live events - Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five had a full live track that had never been released recorded, and it's still more popular, as the studio version lacks the passion of the live recording. (Bozo Meko's version of 'Flash it to the Beat', fyi.) Unscrupulous producers would record artists in the studio under the guise of 'letting them play around' and release their work under different names - and again, that happened to the Furious Five, with "We Rap More Mellow" being released as the work of The Younger Generation. And then there were bootleg compilations released for the deejays - packages of "essential" disco songs pressed as unofficial collections, distributed behind the counter of record stores.

Our TRACK OF THE WEEK is the first of those. A recording of a live event - something that we now recognize as the first rap battle, Busy Bee Starsky vs. Kool Moe Dee. A battle that Starsky phoned in because he assumed he'd have no real competition, and Moe came loaded for bear for. This one's a slaughter, kiddos.

And we're gonna have a lot to say about hip hop in the future... but for now, that gets you to the starting line.

Class dismissed.

#school of tuneage #youtube #kool moe dee #grandmaster flash #grandmaster flash and the furious five #Kurtis Blow #DJ kool herc #hip hop #lesson 3 #busy bee starsky #Youtube

[dear-indies]

Good morning! Can you please give me some fc ideas for a woc aged 25-40 with suitable roles for a medieval fantasy background? The only ones I can think about are Erin Kellyman and Claudia Kim and I'd like to have a broader choice. Thank you!

Jessica Lucas (Pompeii) Black Canadian / European.

Cynthia Addai-Robinson (The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, Spartacus) Ghanaian / English.

Jennifer Cheon (Van Helsing, The Wheel of Time) Korean / Mexican.

Zoë Robins (The Wheel of Time) Nigerian.

Anna Shaffer (The Witcher) Mixed South African and Jewish.

Mimi Ndiweni (The Witcher) Zulu Zimbabwean.

Emilia Burns (The Shannara Chronicles) African Australian.

Kim Ok Bin (Arthdal Chronicles) Korean.

Luciane Buchanan (The New Legends of Monkey) Tongan and Scottish.

Kim Hee Sun (Ice Fantasy) Korean.

Antonia Thomas (The Musketeers) Afro Jamaican / English, possibly Welsh.

Dianne Doan (Vikings) Vietnamese, as well as one eighth Chinese.

Jessica Parker Kennedy (Black Sails) Black Canadian / Ashkenazi Jewish.

Okamoto Tao (Westworld) Japanese.

I'm not great a period / fantasy fcs but I hope these help!

#fc help #rph #rpc #period fc

[bi-luminescentdragon]

Some good book series I forgot (or almost forgot) about but really enjoyed and would like to share(possibly read again in the near future):

The Morganville Vampire series by Rachel Caine

Cirque Du Freak series by Darren Shan

Pendragon series by D.J. MacHale

Shadow Falls by C.C. Hunter (not my favorite but it appealed to my inner teen lol)

Life After series by Julie Hall

Dirty Blood series by Heather Hildenbrand

The Testing Trilogy by Joelle Charbonneau

The Tide series by Anthony J. Melchiorri

The Extinction Cycle by Nicholas Sansbury Smith

The Extinction Cycle: Dark Age series by Nicholas Sansbury Smith and Anthony J Melciorri

The Deadland Saga by Rachel Aukes

The Zulu Chronicles by Steven Konkoly

The Scattered and the Dead series by Tim McBain and L.T. Vargus

Slow Burn series by Bobby Adair

Vampires are in red and zombie or zombie like creatures are in purple :)

#morganville vampires #rachel caine #cirque du freak #darren shan #pendragon #dj machale #shadow falls #c c hunter #life after #julie hall #dirty blood #heather hildenbrand #the testing #joelle charbonneau #the tide #anthony j melchiorri #extinction cycle #nicholas sansbury smith #deadland saga #rachel aukes #zulu chronicles #steven konkoly #the scattered and the dead #tim mcbain and LT vargus #slow burn #bobby adair #vampires #werewolves #zombies #books

[ausetkmt]

The New York Times: What Does Cultural Appropriation Really Mean?

Sept. 30, 2022

IN 1939, SOLOMON Linda, a Zulu musician who grew up herding cattle in drought-prone Msinga in South Africa, improvised a few notes at what was then Johannesburg’s (and sub-Saharan Africa’s and possibly the continent’s) lone recording studio. As the South African journalist Rian Malan chronicled in a 2000 feature for Rolling Stone, Linda and his group, the Evening Birds, were on the third take of a song that had more sounds than words, with the five backup voices split in harmony but one in rhythm, steady and inexorable, and Linda’s high, clean falsetto soaring above, until he uttered into being the musical phrase that would soon make its way to every corner of the world, albeit with lyrics he never wrote: “In the jungle, the quiet jungle, the lion sleeps tonight.”

Pressed onto a 78 r.p.m. disc and titled “Mbube” (“Lion”), the song sold around 100,000 copies and made Linda a local star. But by the 1950s, after the all-white National Party government had codified segregation into the system of apartheid in 1948, he was working a janitorial job at the record company’s warehouse and had signed over the copyright of the song for 10 shillings, roughly the equivalent of $41.80 today. (Whether he understood the terms of the contract is unclear, as he could not read or write.) In the United States, the song was rejiggered for white singers who couldn’t quite manage the beat but saw their perky doo-wop arrangements climb the charts nevertheless. Eventually, Disney took notice; Linda’s lilting lullaby is arguably the heart of “The Lion King.” Record executives interviewed by Malan estimated that, as of 2000, Linda could’ve earned $15 million in revenues and royalties. Instead, when he died of kidney failure at age 53 in 1962, he was buried a pauper in an unmarked grave. (His descendants reached an out-of-court settlement with Disney in 2006.)

A fairly straightforward story of exploitation, no? It’s almost reassuring in its clarity: Someone created something beautiful and someone else took it, passed it off as their own and got rich because of it. The race and class differentials — a poor Black man living under an oppressive regime versus slick white record producers in the booming postwar West — simply underscore the imbalance of power. And yet in the ’90s, when a few of these producers were squabbling among themselves over rights to the song, one of them tried to make a case that the original tune was not the product of Linda’s individual imagination but a traditional Zulu melody: a cultural artifact, like the Scottish Highlands air behind “Morning Has Broken” (immortalized by the British singer Cat Stevens in a 1972 single) and the Appalachian coal miners’ ballad “The House of the Rising Sun” (a hit for the British band the Animals in 1964), that belonged to no one and thus everyone. “After all, what was a folk song?” Malan writes. “Who owned it? It was just out there, like a wild horse or a tract of virgin land on an unconquered continent.”

In the case of “Mbube,” there was proof that Linda wrote the notes. (English lyrics were added in 1961 by the American songwriters George David Weiss, Hugo Peretti and Luigi Creatore.) But what if it had, in fact, been a traditional Zulu song? Should that have made it fair game, even though it came not from the Western traditions that these producers shared but from a culture of which they and much of their audience likely knew very little — from a people who were suppressed and dispossessed under colonialism? Copyright law (within human history, a fairly recent development) tells us that individuals have ownership over what they create and are harmed when others copy from them without permission, attribution or compensation. But can a more amorphous collective, a culture, likewise be harmed?

“CULTURAL APPROPRIATION” IS one of the most misunderstood and abused phrases of our tortured age. Such a slippery verb, “appropriate,” from the Latin ad propriare, “to make one’s own.” It doesn’t carry the forthrightly criminal aura of “steal.” Embedded in it is the notion of adapting something so it is particular to oneself, so that it no longer belongs to or is true to the character of the original source — is no longer other but self. The British sociologist Dick Hebdige uses the word in his 1979 study “Subculture: The Meaning of Style” to describe how fringe groups transform the most mundane objects into emblems of resistance, like punks with safety pins — household items stripped of their practical function when stabbed through the cheek, ornament and weapon at once. These objects are deliberately mishandled, misappropriated, so they become, Hebdige writes, “a form of stigmata, tokens of a self-imposed exile.”

Transformation is more profound than theft, which can make appropriation a useful tool for outsiders. Still, what most people think of today as cultural appropriation is the opposite: a member of the dominant culture — an insider — taking from a culture that has historically been and is still treated as subordinate and profiting from it at that culture’s expense. The profiting is key. This is not about a white person wearing a cheongsam to prom or a sombrero to a frat party or boasting about the “strange,” “exotic,” “foreign” foods they’ve tried, any of which has the potential to come across as derisive or misrepresentative or to annoy someone from the originating culture — although refusal to interact with or appreciate other cultures would be a greater cause for offense — but which are generally irrelevant to larger issues of capital and power. (The law, too, draws a distinction between commercial and personal use: For years, the song “Happy Birthday” was under copyright — until a 2015 legal decision invalidated the claim — which meant that people had to pay thousands of dollars in licensing fees to include it in a play, movie or TV show or to publicly perform it in front of a large audience; but anyone could sing it to family and friends for free.)

Some argue that cultural appropriation is good — that it’s just another name for borrowing or taking inspiration from other cultures, which has happened throughout history and without which civilization would wither and die. But cultural appropriation is not the freewheeling cross-pollination that for millenniums has made the world a more interesting place (and which, it’s worth remembering, was often a byproduct of conquest and violence). It is not a lateral exchange between groups of equal status in which both sides emerge better off. Notably, champions of cultural appropriation tend to point triumphantly to hip-hop sampling as an exemplar — never mentioning the white bands and performers who in the ’50s and ’60s made it big by co-opting rhythm and blues, while Black musicians still lived under segregation and, not unlike Solomon Linda, received dramatically less recognition and income than their white counterparts and sometimes had to give up credit and revenue just to get their music heard.

The American cultural theorist Minh-Ha T. Pham has proposed a stronger term, “racial plagiarism,” zeroing in on how “racialized groups’ resources of knowledge, labor and cultural heritage are exploited for the benefit of dominant groups and in ways that maintain dominant socioeconomic relationships.” This is twofold: Not only does the group already in power reap a reward with no corresponding improvement in status for the group copied from; in doing so, they sustain, however inadvertently, inequity. As an example, Pham examines the American designer Marc Jacobs’s spring 2017 fashion show, mounted in the fall of 2016, in which primarily white models were sent down the runway in dreadlocks, a hairstyle historically documented among peoples in Africa, the Americas and Asia, as well as in ancient Greece but, for nearly 70 years, considered almost exclusively a marker of Black culture — a symbol of nonconformity and, as a practice in Rastafarianism, evoking a lion’s mane and spirit — often to the detriment of Black people who have chosen to embrace that style, including a number who have lost jobs because of it. Jacobs’s blithely whimsical, multicolored felted-wool locs, Pham argues, “do nothing to increase the acceptance or reduce the surveillance of Black women and men who wear their hair in dreadlocks.” Removed from the context of Black culture, they become explicitly non-Black and, in conjunction with clothes that cost hundreds of dollars, implicitly “elevated.”

Pham wants to move away from the emphasis on feelings in discussions of cultural appropriation, both the anger of the copied and the perhaps good-faith intentions of the copier — Jacobs initially responded to his critics, in a since-deleted comment on Instagram, that “appreciation of all and inspiration from anywhere is a beautiful thing” — to pinpoint more tangible harms. Racial plagiarism, she writes, “is never just about being inspired by but rather improving on an unrefined, unsophisticated, incomplete and, most crucially, unfashionable racialized form,” reinforcing a system of value in which the originating culture continues to be seen as “unrefined.” Thus the frustration last year when a white-run company in Oregon started promoting congee with marketing language that framed it as a modernized version designed, in a statement on its Instagram, “to delight the Western palate,” which apparently meant adding blueberries in lieu of dried shrimp or jellylike, sulfurous century egg preserved in slaked lime.

For hundreds of years, the West learned of other cultures through the reports of its own emissaries, and the market for “exotic” goods still presupposes that there is comfort, for many, in having a white person translate another culture — to make it less threatening, or to play up its supposed strangeness for a thrill. Members of minority groups are more likely to struggle for opportunities to connect with broad audiences, from securing the loans and investment necessary to open restaurants in prime areas to winning the approval and financial backing of cultural gatekeepers like museums and publishing houses. So when people express concern over, say, novelists creating characters from another culture who merely fulfill uncomfortable stereotypes (which may be just bad writing), it’s in part a response to scarcity. The problem is not so much the act of appropriation in and of itself, for what is a writer’s job but to imagine the lives of others, even if they fail in the attempt; “to behold the universe through the eyes of another, of a hundred others, to behold the hundred universes that each of them beholds,” in the words of the French writer Marcel Proust? The problem is the system that limits who gets to do the imagining. A New York Times survey of English-language books published by major houses between 1950 and 2018 showed that 95 percent were written by white authors, and even in the last year of the study, the number was 89 percent — startlingly high, considering that as of 2020 the American population was only 57.8 percent white, per the census taken that year. So few slots are available for nonwhite writers that those who break through are sometimes themselves charged with a kind of self-appropriation: self-Orientalizing or minstrelsy, exaggerating elements of their culture for a white gaze; living up to the image that white writers have created for them, the easier to be packaged and sold.

There is fear, too, that the appropriated form of a culture may supplant the original and become the only version people outside that culture know. In 2017, Nigerian artists called attention to the British art star Damien Hirst’s installation “Treasures From the Wreck of the Unbelievable” in Venice, which was so colossal that it filled two museums and reportedly cost millions to produce, including more than $60 million of Hirst’s own money. (He is one of the richest artists in the world.) Among its many pieces, it features a near replica of a brass Ife head (rendered by Hirst in gold) from a set of Yoruba sculptures that date back to the 14th or 15th century. While text accompanying the piece did acknowledge the Nigerian antecedent, it also offered, without critique, an early 20th-century German anthropologist’s outlandish and insulting theory that the technical virtuosity of the original heads was so great, they had to be the work of ancient Greeks who swam to Nigeria after the sinking of the island of Atlantis — and not testament to the skills of the Nigerians themselves. The curator noted that Hirst was inspired by one such head in the British Museum’s collection, although no mention was made of how the relic ended up there: It was bought by an Englishman in 1938, shortly after it was unearthed in the then-British colony, for the meager sum of 3 pounds 10 shillings.

“For the thousands of viewers seeing this for the first time, they won’t think Ife, they won’t think Nigeria,” the Nigerian artist Victor Ehikhamenor wrote on Instagram. Being displayed in a museum confers value; Nigeria was not invited to present a national pavilion at the Venice Biennale until 2017 and, even then, the Nigerian artists there were overshadowed in the press by Hirst. Because Hirst’s version of the Ife head will be seen by more people, “the narrative will shift,” Ehikhamenor wrote, “and the young Ife or Nigerian contemporary artist will someday be told by a long nose critic, ‘Your work reminds me of Damien Hirst’s ‘Golden Head.’”

NONE OF THIS means that artists shouldn’t take inspiration from other cultures. (What a boring world that would be.) Cultural appropriation doesn’t come down to some quasi-legalistic standard of “is this allowed?”; the unleashing of critics on social media who prefer outrage to nuance — and the panicked retreat by the accused to the nonapology of “I’m sorry if you were offended” — is mostly sound and fury, and a measure of how powerless certain groups feel to bring about actual change. What is gained when a virtual crowd hounds a British Indian former cooking show contestant who makes Chinese and Japanese food, as in 2020, or succeeds in shutting down a pop-up breakfast burrito cart in Portland, Ore., whose recipe was cobbled together from stolen glances at street vendors in Mexico, as in 2017 — although the vendors on whose behalf the crowd bayed for blood may never have known or cared, or even recognized their recipes in the imitation? And what happens when members of nondominant groups borrow from each other: Does it become a competition to see who has less cultural capital and is thus “permitted” to do such a thing, as in 2017 when the Black basketball player Kenyon Martin called out the Chinese American basketball player Jeremy Lin for wearing his hair in dreadlocks, to which Lin responded by pointing out Martin’s Chinese tattoos?

It’s easier to attack individuals than institutions — unless you can disrupt the market: Earlier this year, enough Chinese citizens complained about the similarity between a Christian Dior design and the pleated mamian qun (“horse-face skirt”), which dates back to the Song dynasty (960-1279), that the fashion house removed the garment from its website — because China, with its population of about 1.4 billion consumers, has serious bargaining power. (In 2017, Dior produced an embroidered sheepskin waistcoat that was almost identical to a Romanian folk costume; protests by Romanians, whose country is among the poorest in Europe, went ignored but, happily, artisans specializing in the original costume saw a boost in sales after news of the appropriation circulated online.)

Culture is not static, and within a country or a community there are countless variations on and innovations in tradition (which might be even more vigorously internally policed than the experimentation of outsiders). In 2016, Bon Appétit published a recipe for halo-halo, a Filipino iced dessert, and was widely decried for adorning it with gummy bears and popcorn. Some called it a “desecration.” Certainly these are nontraditional ingredients, but the tradition in this case is only a hundred years old: The Philippines started receiving shipments of ice in the mid-19th century and, as chronicled by the Filipino historian Ambeth R. Ocampo, halo-halo evolved in the 1920s and ’30s from a Japanese dessert of red beans in syrup over ice (itself part of a much longer tradition in Japan, going back to at least the 10th century). The very name “halo-halo” means “mix-mix,” and the treat is characterized by exuberant abundance. It’s entirely plausible that someone somewhere might try adding popcorn instead of corn or cornflakes, both known variations, and gummy bears to approximate, if poorly, the chewy texture of jellies. As the Philippine-born chef Yana Gilbuena has written, halo-halo is “endlessly customizable.” The issue, then, was a lack of history and context; the magazine took liberties without first explaining what it was taking liberties with. (It didn’t help that apparently no Filipino was consulted.) Above all, it turned halo-halo into just another commodity — a trendy food that didn’t need to be understood to be enjoyed and then discarded for the next big thing. As the Malaysian American artist Shing Yin Khor writes in their 2014 comic “Just Eat It,” “Eat, but recognize that we’ve been eating, too, and what is our sustenance isn’t your adventure story.”

The harm in appropriation comes when a culture is shrunk in possibility, reduced to a set of disembodied gestures — style without substance, which can verge on blasphemy, as when a non-Indigenous person speaks of having a spirit animal. (Indigenous peoples object to New Age rituals, the American anthropologist Michael F. Brown has written, not because they “are bogus but precisely because they are, in some sense, real. … For them, the New Age is a kind of doppelgänger, an evil imitation close enough to the real thing to upset the delicate balance of spiritual power maintained by Indian ritual specialists.”) In an ever more connected world, there is the risk that culture becomes, as the Korean-born German philosopher Byung-Chul Han writes in “Hyperculture” (2022), “cul-tour”: a sightseeing circuit. Han posits an alternate way of encountering the Other, based “on the friendliness of the AND,” and a new morality in which timidity or recoil is replaced by genuine curiosity, and difference “is not determined by an ‘either/or’ but by an ‘as well as,’ not by contradiction or antagonism but mutual appropriation” — meaning that both appropriator and appropriated are changed, unlike in “colonial exploitation, which destroys the Other in favor of itself and of the Same.”

But how do we get past the hierarchy of colonial exploitation to this utopian “and” in which no one is diminished, with everyone’s heart just getting fatter and fuller? “An idea of cultural plurality that took its bearings from the protection of species and could only succeed by introducing artificial enclosures … would be sterile,” Han writes, and then concedes, “Having lively cultural exchange means that things spread but also that certain forms of life disappear.” Once, Americans touted the idea of the melting pot, with immigrants shedding their pasts and assimilating, which some of us learned too late can be a kind of erasure. Then a number of white Americans began to fear the very thing Han hopes for, their own transformation in the encounter with the Other, themselves melting, and so they beat a retreat. In this they share a bond with other still dominant groups around the world who see in the rise of minorities a diminishment in their own status and so have become determined to reaffirm their identity by “excluding the threatening Other(s),” as the Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek has written. And yet this fundamentalism, he suggests, has an eerie solidarity with its seeming opposite, pluralism, the “ever-growing flowering of groups and subgroups in their hybrid and fluid, shifting identities, each insisting on the right to assert its specific way of life and/or culture” — to draw a line; to protect itself.

There is an appeal to the boundaryless world, where we might walk at will, eat and dress, make art, write music and spin stories following whatever whim takes hold, free of the burden of identity. Of course, boundarylessness is a privilege for those who don’t have to contend with real boundaries. “Come out and play,” they say. “We like what you do.” But what might the rest of us lose?

#What Does Cultural Appropriation Really Mean? #cultural appropriation #racism #privilege #identity #pluralism #personal identity #white supremacy #white lies

[kosmos2999]

Saturday’s Late Night Sci-Fi Cinema

Assignment Outer Space (1960 film)

Italian (left) and American release posters

Main cast:

Rik Van Nutter as Ray Peterson (IZ 41) Gabriella "Gaby" Farinon as Lucy (Y 13) David Montesor as George the Commander Archie Savage Al (X 15) Alain Dijon as Archie (Y 16) Franco Fantasia as Sullivan

Production staff:

Directed by: Antonio Margheriti (as Anthony Daisies - Italian version) (as Anthony Dawson - American version) Screenplay by: Antonio Margheriti (uncredited), Ennio De Concini (as Vassilij Petrov), Jack Wallace (American narration only) Cinematography by: Marcello Masciocchi Special effects by: Caesar Peace Music by: Lelio Luttazzi and Carlo Savina (uncredited) Produced by: Samuel Z. Arkoff (executive producer) Hugo Grimaldi (executive producer) Presented by: Fred Gebhardt Production companies: Titanus and Ultra Film (Italian version), American International Pictures (American version) Released by: Titanus (Italy), A Four Crown (US) Original release date: August 1960 (Italy), December 13, 1961(US) YouTube channel: Sci-fi-London

In December 17 of the year 2116, Ray Peterson, reporter of the Interplanetary Chronicle of New York was sent aboard the Spaceship Bravo Zulu 88 to the International Satellite Zulu Extra 34.

His mission is to write a story about the check-up of infra-radiation flux on Galaxy M12.

What should be a routine procedure suddenly changes. Before the spaceship crew were leaving to Base 12 on Mars, they tried to communicate with the Spaceship Alpha 2, but they get no answer.

They assume its pilot is dead.

During the passage to the red planet, they have to attend an emergency with Spaceship Metro Sierra 13.

After landing on the Martian moon, Phobos to rescue the only survivor of the Metro Sierra 13 -- who was dying -- the Commander received an order to move to the Interplanetary Base on planet Venus.

Their mission there was to intercept the Alpha 2. This ship is out of control and has two photonic deflectors activated creating an intense heat shield capable of destroying all life on planet Earth.

It's time to Peterson to prove his worthiness despite the Commander and some others of his fellow crewmates see him as "a leech".

Assignment Outer Space is a 1960 space opera film. An English dubbed release of the original Italian movie, Space-Men. Presented in its original color format.

Fascinating facts:

This is the debut of Antonio Margheriti as a director.

To simulate the effect of weightlessness due to the lack of gravity in space, actors were instructed to move in slow motion. Actor Archie Savage aced this technique because he was also a dancer.

In the US, it was released almost a year after its original Italian release in a double feature with an black-and-white American film presented on this blog on April the first, The Phantom Planet.

#space opera #space western #60s sci fi #italian adventure #italian fantasy #Italian sci-fi #Assignment Outer Space #Antonio Margheriti #Anthony Dawson #Italian space opera #Italian movies #Youtube

[brookstonalmanac]

Holidays 9.4

Holidays

Animals’ Day (Curacao)

Anthracite Coal Miner's Day

Beetle Bailey Day

Bey Day

Bright Idea Day

Clear Day (Scientology)

Glass Day

Google Day

Grand Magal de Touba (Sénégal)

Immigrant's Day (Argentina)

International Hijab Day

International Taekwondo Day

Kodak Day

L.A. Day

Larry Platt Day (Georgia)

Looking For the Boundaries (Cuchumatan Indians, Guatemala Highlands)

National Joan Rivers Day

National Leadership Day

National Only Ever You Day

National Penis Day (New Zealand)

National PKD (Polycystic Kidney Disease) Awareness Day

National When Pigs Fly Day

National Wildlife Day [also 2.22]

Newspaper Carrier Day

Professional Care Workers Day (UK)

Rhishi Panchami (Female Employees Only Festival; Nepal)

Umhlanga (Reed Dance for the Zulu King; Eswatini, f.k.a. Swaziland)

When Pigs Fly Day

World Day of PFAPA Syndrome

World Leukemia Day

World Sexual Health Day

Xena Day  

Food & Drink Celebrations

Currywurst Day (Germany)

Eat An Extra Dessert Day

Finnish Food Day

Häagen-Dazs Day

National Macadamia Nut Day

National Spice Blend Day

National Wine Day (Chile)

1st Monday in September

Burning Man ends (Nevada) [1st Monday]

Great Bathtub Race (Nome, Alaska) [1st Monday]

Labor Day (Bermuda, Canada, Palau, U.S.) [1st Monday]

Luxembourg City Kermesse (Luxembourg) [1st Monday]

Mouthguard Day [1st Monday]

St. Giles Fair begins (Oxford, UK) [1st Monday]

Wakes Monday [Monday after Wakes Sunday]

Yard Art Day [1st Monday]

Independence Days

Flandrensis (Declared; 2008) [unrecognized]

Lostisland (Declared; 2010) [unrecognized]

Paxaris (Declared; 2021) [unrecognized]

Feast Days

Aaron and Moses (Maronite Church)

Alexander Liberman (Artology)

Buckthorn Day (French Republic)

Candida the Elder (Christian; Saint)

Catherine of Racconigi (Christian; Blessed)

Ceremony of Transformation Through Anubis (Ancient Egypt)

Chester Brown Day (Church of the SubGenius; Saint)

Dina Bélanger (Christian; Blessed)

Ed the Happy Clown Day (Church of the SubGenius; Saint)

Guglielmini (Positivist; Saint)

Hermione of Ephesus (Christian; Saint)

Ida of Herzfeld (Christian; Saint)

Irmgardis of Süchteln (Christian; Saint)

Ludi Romani begins (Ancient Rome games; until September 19)

Marcellus and Valerian (Christian; Martyrs)

Media Aestas IV (Pagan)

Moses and Aaron (Lutheran Church and Eastern Orthodox Church)

Oskar Schlemmer (Artology)

Paul Jones (Episcopal Church)

Rock Appreciation Day (Pastafarian)

Rosalia (Christian; Saint)

Rose of Viterbo (Christian; Saint)

Roosevelt Franklin (Muppetism)

Rufinus, Silvanus, and Vitalicus (Christian; Saint)

Thamel and companions (Christian; Saints)

Tirobhab Tithi of Sri Sri Madhabdeva (Assam, India)

Ultan of Ardbraccan (Christian; Saint)

Lucky & Unlucky Days

Fortunate Day (Pagan) [35 of 53]

Tomobiki (友引 Japan) [Good luck all day, except at noon.]

Unlucky Day (Grafton’s Manual of 1565) [41 of 60]

Premieres

All About Steve (Film; 2009)

Black Boy, by Richard Wright (Memoir; 1945)

Bob Roberts (Film; 1992)

Butter (Film; 2011)

The Castafiore Emerald, by Hergé (Graphic Novel; 1962) [Tintin #21]

Chill Out, Scooby-Doo! (WB Animated Film; 2007)

Curious George (Animated TV Series; 2006)

Easy Rider (Film; 1969)

An English Murder, by Cyril Hare (Novel; 1951)

Extract (Film; 2009)

Foiled Again or Don’t Fence Me In (Rocky & Bullwinkle Cartoon, S4, Ep. 158; 1962)

Get Your Ya-Ya’s Out!, by The Rolling Stones (Album; 1970)

Gone Batty (WB MM Cartoon; 1954)

A Handful of Dust, by Evelyn Waugh (Novel; 1934)

How to Play Baseball (Disney Cartoon; 1942)

The Last Battle, by C.S. Lewis (Novel; 1956) [The Chronicles of Narnia #7]

London Calling, by Noel Coward (Play; 1923)

Maigret Rents a Room, by Georges Simenon (Novel; 1951)

The Price is Right (TV Game Show; 1956)

Speaking of the Weather (WB MM Cartoon; 1937)

Swing Time (Film; 1936)

Three Musketeers, Part 1 (Rocky & Bullwinkle Cartoon, S4, Ep. 157; 1962)

Toxicity, by System of a Down (Album; 2001)

Xena: Warrior Princess (TV Series; 1995)

Today’s Name Days

Ida, Iris, Irmgard, Rosalia, Rosalie (Austria)

Dunja, Ida, Marin, Mojsije, Rozalija (Croatia)

Jindřiška (Czech Republic)

Theodosias (Denmark)

Priide, Priidika, Priidla (Estonia)

Ansa (Finland)

Iris, Moïse, Rosalie (France)

Ida, Iris, Irmgard, Rosalie, Sven (Germany)

Ermione, Ermioni (Greece)

Rozália (Hungary)

Rosalia (Italy)

Dzintars, Dzintra (Latvia)

Germantė, Girstautas, Rozalija, Rožė (Lithuania)

Ida, Idar (Norway)

Agatonik, Ida, Lilianna, Rościgniew, Róża, Rozalia (Poland)

Moise, Vavila (Romania)

Rozália (Slovakia)

Moisés, Rosalía (Spain)

Gisela (Sweden)

Becky, Erin, Erina, Ida, Idalia, Moe, Moises, Moses, Moss, Reba, Rebecca, Rebekah (USA)

Today is Also…

Day of Year: Day 247 of 2024; 118 days remaining in the year

ISO: Day 1 of week 36 of 2023

Celtic Tree Calendar: Coll (Hazel) [Day 28 of 28]

Chinese: Month 7 (Geng-Shen), Day 20 (Yi-Chou)

Chinese Year of the: Rabbit 4721 (until February 10, 2024)

Hebrew: 18 Elul 5783

Islamic: 18 Safar 1445

J Cal: 7 Aki; Sevenday [7 of 30]

Julian: 22 August 2023

Moon: 73%: Waning Gibbous

Positivist: 23 Gutenberg (9th Month) [Guglielmini]

Runic Half Month: Rad (Motion) [Day 8 of 15]

Season: Summer (Day 75 of 94)

Zodiac: Virgo (Day 14 of 32)

#calendar #Holidays

[brookston]

Holidays 9.4

Holidays

Animals’ Day (Curacao)

Anthracite Coal Miner's Day

Beetle Bailey Day

Bey Day

Bright Idea Day

Clear Day (Scientology)

Glass Day

Google Day

Grand Magal de Touba (Sénégal)

Immigrant's Day (Argentina)

International Hijab Day

International Taekwondo Day

Kodak Day

L.A. Day

Larry Platt Day (Georgia)

Looking For the Boundaries (Cuchumatan Indians, Guatemala Highlands)

National Joan Rivers Day

National Leadership Day

National Only Ever You Day

National Penis Day (New Zealand)

National PKD (Polycystic Kidney Disease) Awareness Day

National When Pigs Fly Day

National Wildlife Day [also 2.22]

Newspaper Carrier Day

Professional Care Workers Day (UK)

Rhishi Panchami (Female Employees Only Festival; Nepal)

Umhlanga (Reed Dance for the Zulu King; Eswatini, f.k.a. Swaziland)

When Pigs Fly Day

World Day of PFAPA Syndrome

World Leukemia Day

World Sexual Health Day

Xena Day  

Food & Drink Celebrations

Currywurst Day (Germany)

Eat An Extra Dessert Day

Finnish Food Day

Häagen-Dazs Day

National Macadamia Nut Day

National Spice Blend Day

National Wine Day (Chile)

1st Monday in September

Burning Man ends (Nevada) [1st Monday]

Great Bathtub Race (Nome, Alaska) [1st Monday]

Labor Day (Bermuda, Canada, Palau, U.S.) [1st Monday]

Luxembourg City Kermesse (Luxembourg) [1st Monday]

Mouthguard Day [1st Monday]

St. Giles Fair begins (Oxford, UK) [1st Monday]

Wakes Monday [Monday after Wakes Sunday]

Yard Art Day [1st Monday]

Independence Days

Flandrensis (Declared; 2008) [unrecognized]

Lostisland (Declared; 2010) [unrecognized]

Paxaris (Declared; 2021) [unrecognized]

Feast Days

Aaron and Moses (Maronite Church)

Alexander Liberman (Artology)

Buckthorn Day (French Republic)

Candida the Elder (Christian; Saint)

Catherine of Racconigi (Christian; Blessed)

Ceremony of Transformation Through Anubis (Ancient Egypt)

Chester Brown Day (Church of the SubGenius; Saint)

Dina Bélanger (Christian; Blessed)

Ed the Happy Clown Day (Church of the SubGenius; Saint)

Guglielmini (Positivist; Saint)

Hermione of Ephesus (Christian; Saint)

Ida of Herzfeld (Christian; Saint)

Irmgardis of Süchteln (Christian; Saint)

Ludi Romani begins (Ancient Rome games; until September 19)

Marcellus and Valerian (Christian; Martyrs)

Media Aestas IV (Pagan)

Moses and Aaron (Lutheran Church and Eastern Orthodox Church)

Oskar Schlemmer (Artology)

Paul Jones (Episcopal Church)

Rock Appreciation Day (Pastafarian)

Rosalia (Christian; Saint)

Rose of Viterbo (Christian; Saint)

Roosevelt Franklin (Muppetism)

Rufinus, Silvanus, and Vitalicus (Christian; Saint)

Thamel and companions (Christian; Saints)

Tirobhab Tithi of Sri Sri Madhabdeva (Assam, India)

Ultan of Ardbraccan (Christian; Saint)

Lucky & Unlucky Days

Fortunate Day (Pagan) [35 of 53]

Tomobiki (友引 Japan) [Good luck all day, except at noon.]

Unlucky Day (Grafton’s Manual of 1565) [41 of 60]

Premieres

All About Steve (Film; 2009)

Black Boy, by Richard Wright (Memoir; 1945)

Bob Roberts (Film; 1992)

Butter (Film; 2011)

The Castafiore Emerald, by Hergé (Graphic Novel; 1962) [Tintin #21]

Chill Out, Scooby-Doo! (WB Animated Film; 2007)

Curious George (Animated TV Series; 2006)

Easy Rider (Film; 1969)

An English Murder, by Cyril Hare (Novel; 1951)

Extract (Film; 2009)

Foiled Again or Don’t Fence Me In (Rocky & Bullwinkle Cartoon, S4, Ep. 158; 1962)

Get Your Ya-Ya’s Out!, by The Rolling Stones (Album; 1970)

Gone Batty (WB MM Cartoon; 1954)

A Handful of Dust, by Evelyn Waugh (Novel; 1934)

How to Play Baseball (Disney Cartoon; 1942)

The Last Battle, by C.S. Lewis (Novel; 1956) [The Chronicles of Narnia #7]

London Calling, by Noel Coward (Play; 1923)

Maigret Rents a Room, by Georges Simenon (Novel; 1951)

The Price is Right (TV Game Show; 1956)

Speaking of the Weather (WB MM Cartoon; 1937)

Swing Time (Film; 1936)

Three Musketeers, Part 1 (Rocky & Bullwinkle Cartoon, S4, Ep. 157; 1962)

Toxicity, by System of a Down (Album; 2001)

Xena: Warrior Princess (TV Series; 1995)

Today’s Name Days

Ida, Iris, Irmgard, Rosalia, Rosalie (Austria)

Dunja, Ida, Marin, Mojsije, Rozalija (Croatia)

Jindřiška (Czech Republic)

Theodosias (Denmark)

Priide, Priidika, Priidla (Estonia)

Ansa (Finland)

Iris, Moïse, Rosalie (France)

Ida, Iris, Irmgard, Rosalie, Sven (Germany)

Ermione, Ermioni (Greece)

Rozália (Hungary)

Rosalia (Italy)

Dzintars, Dzintra (Latvia)

Germantė, Girstautas, Rozalija, Rožė (Lithuania)

Ida, Idar (Norway)

Agatonik, Ida, Lilianna, Rościgniew, Róża, Rozalia (Poland)

Moise, Vavila (Romania)

Rozália (Slovakia)

Moisés, Rosalía (Spain)

Gisela (Sweden)

Becky, Erin, Erina, Ida, Idalia, Moe, Moises, Moses, Moss, Reba, Rebecca, Rebekah (USA)

Today is Also…

Day of Year: Day 247 of 2024; 118 days remaining in the year

ISO: Day 1 of week 36 of 2023

Celtic Tree Calendar: Coll (Hazel) [Day 28 of 28]

Chinese: Month 7 (Geng-Shen), Day 20 (Yi-Chou)

Chinese Year of the: Rabbit 4721 (until February 10, 2024)

Hebrew: 18 Elul 5783

Islamic: 18 Safar 1445

J Cal: 7 Aki; Sevenday [7 of 30]

Julian: 22 August 2023

Moon: 73%: Waning Gibbous

Positivist: 23 Gutenberg (9th Month) [Guglielmini]

Runic Half Month: Rad (Motion) [Day 8 of 15]

Season: Summer (Day 75 of 94)

Zodiac: Virgo (Day 14 of 32)

#Holidays

[bradrcook]

Books make great gifts! The Remarkable Journey of the First Road Trip Across America historical fiction The History of St. Louis Writers Guild: Celebrating a Century nonfiction Steamtree: The Airdrainium Adventures middle grade steampunk fantasy The Iron Chronicles Iron Horsemen | Iron Zulu | Iron Lotus young adult steampunk fantasy Signed trilogy is on sale on my website! Available in ebook and paperback Order online, from your favorite bookstore, or get signed paperbacks on my website www.bradrcook.com

#books #steampunk #fantasy #nonfiction #historical fiction #readers #reading #holiday sales #ebooks

[green-scrub-chronicles]

Cultural humility-the final chapter

As I take the final bow, fieldwork has been a journey of a thousand steps through a valley of a thousand hills. One may argue that the pressure equates to growth and forces you to gravitate out of your comfort zone. I agree because the young, scared girl in green scrubs that walked the gates of this tour has emerged as a confident and capable being. Growth means not just seeing progress but also considering my shortfalls.

Allow me to take you to our final stop in the OT Chronicles. It is sad, but everything comes to an end. Did I take the learning opportunities placed in front of me to be the therapist I have to be in less than 18 months, but who is counting?

If you ask me what cultural humility is, the sensible definition I will give is to break the words into two: culture is what guides our morals, principles, and basically who we are, and humility is how we present ourselves and treat the people around us. The University of Oregano defines cultural humility as a practice of self-reflection on how one’s background and the background of others impact teaching, learning, research, engagement, choice, and leadership. They further mention the components that embody the concept of culture, such as the analysis of our cultural practices and beliefs and how they impact choice and perception. It consists of having the ability to acknowledge the power imbalances and the willingness to learn to dissemble the stigmatization and stereotypes we carry as individuals.

The blurred lines between cultural humility and cultural competency due to the perceived idea of learning about one’s culture and adapting behaviour and communication style to uphold the cultural principles of another do not necessarily equate to cultural humility because it leads to being general about certain cultural values and overlooking the uniqueness within the individualistic cultural principles. For example, with a client that is a black Zulu man who is a Nazarene, I walked into a treatment session with perceived biases about what I should expect. That diverted from seeing him as an individual, causing a negative impact on his occupational profile when looking at his roles and general behaviour. For instance, I would refrain from doing meal preparation activities because of the cultural setting within a black Zulu household of a man not being in the kitchen. My biases may be proven to align with the client's overall being, as he did not perform house duties that he perceived as feminine, which I perceive as normal. This may contradict my perceptions pertaining to household chores, but exposure, it broadened my viewpoint and gave me a generalized idea of what to expect. This leads to reflecting and understanding that it is a choice of "a person" but not a group, and to being aware of qualities that may overlap among different groups of people but do not bind them into a single cultural belief.

Cultural humility addresses the negative power imbalances in therapist-client interactions. It goes to the initial contact with the client as you build rapport based on how you present yourself and the appropriate use of social skills. We unconsciously do and behave a certain way, shaped by our own cultural principles and ethical behaviour, to portray and uphold ourselves in a professional way. When I interact with people, I exhibit an enthusiastic and friendly manner which some may perceive as appropriate to interact only with peers and seem like a lack of respect for an older. This may be due to their own beliefs and background on how one should behave. For instance, I adapted my presentation skills based on the client’s values in a way where I had to refrain from maintaining eye contact with a client and minimize the vocal flexibility and projections to maintain a controlled dialogue. To me, it was abnormal due to my own experiences and the absolute freedom to express myself while maintaining respect within my home, friends, and community. However, it was a learning opportunity to comprehend further the Shembe religion and core values.

The power we exert as professionals within practice causes an imbalance, subconsciously disagree with clients when they consider traditional medicine due to their knowledge and personal beliefs. When I look back to my interaction with my CVA client, she expressed that her stroke was due to a white bird sent by a witchcraft-practising neighbour. I cracked my head trying to comprehend the intricacies of the cause outside of the constructs of Western medicine. Based on research, I learned more about the cultural beliefs about diseases and their pathology. My perception of witchcraft clouded the possibility of the validity of the reason, but to uphold cultural competency, I adapted and accepted the client’s beliefs, but that caused me to perceive it as a goal rather than acquiring more to reach a mutual place to provide a collaborative approach, as I was unable to cater to the needs of the client due to internalized biases. According to Singh et al. (2022), occupational therapists may identify and rectify power relations over time, improve cross-cultural therapeutic interactions, hold systems responsible in client-centred practice, and eventually eliminate health disparities by improving their practices to encourage cultural humility. Read more below on cultural humility in occupational therapy:

I was stunned dumbfounded for a few seconds, "All I need is prayer, and Christ will hear my cry." Occupational therapy preaches about giving clients hope, but how can I validate her belief that she will be healed by employing prayer? Hope is a notable notion, but the absence of dedication to Christ renders it challenging to provide assurance and empathy for her cries. Given my beliefs in prayer caused by grief and my psychological state, which impacted the encounter with the client, all I could provide was medical knowledge to reassure her. I lacked holistically in contemplating her spiritual expression, although acknowledging and controlling my prejudices, produced a stumbling block in reaching a higher plane in developing a positive rapport. In the session, I learned how religion moulds our behaviour, choices, and lives. The ability to comprehend the role we play as health professionals in the dynamic interaction of religion, the power element, and the influence on clients' care. It goes back to how the client interacts; the level of participation and motivation to engage are guided by culture. Therefore, cultural humility promotes the complexity of our identities and helps us understand the uniqueness of individualism. I agree that it will be an ongoing learning experience due to how diverse our country is, as we are a rainbow nation displaying uniqueness within our commonalities in religion and cultural groups, further broadening the diversity.

Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn. -Benjamin Franklin, It has not been an easy journey, but through supervision, it was a lighthouse in an unsettling stormy sea. What I learned from my supervisor was the importance of consistency and a willingness to learn. To avail yourself and absorb the information to improve critical thinking, employing thinking beyond what is superficial and finding links. To not work in the process of elimination and categorization but be able to observe and use yourself as a tool through the guidance of therapeutic frameworks to adapt and perform sessions with clients. The supervisor included me in my learning experience, which was profound as I could compare and contrast my performance without prompting. At first, I perceived it as a formal setting between teacher and student, but I shifted my view and differentiated the key components, which were support, assurance, collaboration, and a conducive environment to learn.

OT enthusiasts, my take-home message this week is that we are better together because together we can achieve great things. Together, we must be able to acknowledge the sameness in our culture but also understand its individualistic uniqueness. To open ourselves to actively learning about our differences and reflecting on our own prejudices, as our differences should unite us rather than separate us. We have 11 official languages, each of which contains diversity to explore, research to humanize our interactions, and our own stories as tools to assure, heal, and validate.

We have closed the chapter of this story, but the book is not finished yet. This is not a goodbye, but “a see you soon”.

#final #cultural humility #diversity #inclusivity #learning opportunities #ot student #Youtube

[garethwilliamsauthor]

So excited that the second novel in my Richard Davey Chronicles is now available as a paperback as well as an ebook. Set in the aftermath of Waterloo, it explores what happens when Napoleon Bonaparte meets Shaka Zulu. #amazon #amazonbooks #kindle #amazonkindle #thebooktypesetters #theconradpress #sequel #books #napoleonbonaparte #shakazulu #battleofwaterloo #africa #whattoread #needingnapoleon (at Isle of Skye) https://www.instagram.com/p/Cc7fY4jO_Bk/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

#amazon #amazonbooks #kindle #amazonkindle #thebooktypesetters #theconradpress #sequel #books #napoleonbonaparte #shakazulu #battleofwaterloo #africa #whattoread #needingnapoleon

[westrangecountry]

31 Horror Movies of my October 2021 in one paragraph each (Reviews)

Purchase the collage on Etsy.

The Legacy (1978)

Mostly forgettable Gothic that feels like a missed the boat Hammer Horror film. Some dreamy photography and disturbingly mustache-free Sam Eliot make it an OK watch. Rating: C

Toolbox Murders (1978)

Much more craft to this than I expected. The opening 10 minutes or so pass by with scarcely a word uttered beyond a car radio, a surreal mix of nighttime 70s Los Angeles streets mixed with increasingly gruesome, pointless murder as news broadcasters and preachers rave. Excellent atmosphere. Unfortunately, most of the acting, especially the male lead, is “rough” at best…with the exception of genre star Cameron Mitchell as a man who might be the killer, who gets a solid 12 minutes straight to take over a scene and explain his madness almost directly to the audience in a riveting unfolding of a heart. Rating: B-

Tourist Trap (1979)

Puppet Master director’s earlier slasher. Everything from mannequins to psychic powers is here and there is a lot to like, but it never pulled together for me. Still an interesting watch I can recommend. C+

Hausu (1977)

How Japan’s involvement in World War II and the Atomic Bomb goes on to hurt the next generation of their youth, but as a psychedelic, borderline whimsical, series of supernatural murders. Under comedy lies the tragedy. Seemingly every cinematic technique is deployed, sometimes at once, in an audacious display of craft. For fans of Lynch…and Evil Dead. A+

When a Stranger Calls (1979)

Nearly 25 minute, edge of the seat cold open that inspired Scream is the stuff engrossing Hitchcock (or Carpenter) style suspense is made of. By the time the title dropped, I was expecting a masterpiece, then the remaining 65 minutes happened. The film loafs around, chronicling the escaped killer almost strictly to his POV, as he actually tries to not kill, be a normal person, but is forced by pressures around him into murder. That sounds like it would make for a gripping psychological study or satire, but it doesn’t - not here. C-

Final Destination (2000)

Strange preceding the 9/11 decade of horror with a film about a plane crash and terrorism suspicion. Balances the dark humor with actual characterization and musing on grief, making the kids feel pretty real. Even in the first installment there’s an all-timer death as we watch a teacher get set on fire by her computer, blown across a room, hit by exploding glass, have a knife fall into her, a chair fall and hammer the knife in more, and her house explode. Ending still feels like no one knew how to end this thing, but fair enough. Tony Todd the GOAT. A-

Sole Survivor (1984)

Final Destination’s inspiration but played more straight. Instead of accidents, we mostly have specters of the dead haunting the survivor. Eerie, its strength is almost more in its sense of pervading isolation, no matter if its your own house or the middle of a crowded city. Everything is so still, so dead. Only taking it down some for a repetitive feeling middle. B+

Hollywood Strangler Meets the Skid Row Slasher (1979)

With all due respect to Joe Bob Briggs, but the production’s cheapness lends this a surreal off-kilter vibe that gets old fast. No dialogue since it was all lost, so we only have narration by the killer as he stalks very real LA streets. Might be worth sampling the first few scenes to get the general idea of it but even 1 hour 15 minutes seems like twice the length if all you have is scenes of a guy narrating why he hates sluts before cutting someone up. F+

Trilogy of Terror (1975)

Three adaptations of horror author Richard Matheson’s stories with Karen Black as a different role in each, only one of which is really worth anything. “Julie” is Hot For Teacher Gone Wrong and ends where it should only be getting started. “Millicent and Therese” is a see it a mile away twist without a story. “Amelia” is about a possessed Zulu hunter doll trying to murder the titular woman in her apartment and is what makes this anthology still talked about (also the only one actually adapted by Matheson himself - it shows): captures the short story well, works around only having a doll prop with creative camera angles, and is a steady build to all out chaos. Haunting final scene that brings the emotional backbone of the short into focus, too. C+, D-, B+ respectively.

Final Destination 2 (2003)

Hiring a stunt actor turned director and going full black edgy comedy was the right move since you can’t recapture the original. We were all in that place in 2003, anyway. The opening accident has to be seen to be believed, just pure madness. B

Silent Scream (1979)

Once again, Cameron Mitchell strikes. OKish if predictable slasher here with decent enough atmosphere and a sense that the film makers really wanted it to be more. It isn’t, but that’s ok. C+

The Curse of Kazuo Umezu (1990)

Anime anthology adaptation of two stories by Junji Ito’s main inspiration, Kazuo Umezu - AKA the guy responsible for the manga behind the “This is my hole! It was made for me!” meme. The first story, “What Will the Video Camera Reveal?” Is a slow build to a deranged climax and sort of a vampire story. The clear standout of the two. The second is called “The Haunted Mansion” is no slouch, but can’t live up to the first since it has less time to work with. Expect body horror in both. B+

Final Destination 3 (2006)

Was not with this at all for the first half, the mostly CGI based accidents feeling like cheap imitations, but the back half goes strong. As far as death based set piece settings go a town’s July 4th bash is an inspired one. ALSO: suggests 9/11 was another Final Destination type event in Death’s Plan? B-

The Laughing Target (1987)

Who knew the creator of Inuyasha did a straight up horror with some of the same otherworldly love triangle elements earlier in her career? Short anime adaptation full of strikingly beautiful backgrounds, sensuous as it is at times forbidding. Captures the tragedy of love gone wrong well. B+

Vampyr (1932)

Going to admit I could barely pay attention to this one beyond some striking black and white camera work of shadows on walls early on. Sorry Carl Dryer gang. N/A

Mortuary (1983)

Feels a bit like Dead & Buried at first. Strange secrets around a funeral home. Old secrets people kill for. Not remotely as good, but plenty charming. Bill Paxton as a nerdy high schooler who skips to class in sweater vests and tries to pick up dates by bragging about his new Mozart vinyl is worth a watch, especially as he is revealed to be the killer sneaking about in a Phantom of the Opera style get up. C+

Butcher, Baker, Nightmare Maker (1983)

Begins with the implication that a husband and wife are murdered in an auto accident by the wife’s sister so she can raise their toddler and groom him - gets darker from there. Labeled as a slasher, for the first hour this is pretty deathless other than a single murder by the reverse Mrs. Bates psycho aunt, but features a harrowing depiction of railroaded justice as an equally nightmarishly to the aunt police chief does everything in his power to get the wrong man. The man who the aunt murdered was gay and the now teen adopted boy has a gay coach, so in the mind of the chief the aunt is covering for the boy…and not the other way around. I haven’t seen the actor who plays him before, but there’s a normalcy to everything he does that’s terrifying. This all climaxes in a bonkers final act that is absolutely and fully a slasher, with but with a role reversed “final boy”. They go all out: decapitations, people set on fire, a Cape Fear-esque Biblical battle in water. A-

Just Before Dawn (1981)

Slasher set in the woods that starts out pretty well but reveals its killed halfway through as a redneck with big bushy eyebrows and a pot belly. All the great atmosphere of the woods at night vanishes. Some decent kill effects remain. C+

Final Destination 4 (2009)

Without 3D the CGI stands out pretty badly. The stupidest one, but entertaining and I appreciate the meta of one of these ending in a movie theater. C+

Phobia (1980)

John Huston retire bitch only good he didn’t because he bounced back somehow to make The Dead. F+

Nightmares (1980)

You mean the female lead with the traumatic childhood in the mostly male cast is the very obviously telegraphed as female killer? What a mystery! D

Funeral Home (1980)

Homely Southern slasher. Doesn’t get as much out of the funeral home bed and breakfast (!) gimmick as you’d expect but has some charm. C

Final Destination 5 (2011)

Cool twist gimmick (“take a life, save your own life”) is only deployed in the final 30 minutes for a few scenes. Intro accident is once again impressive. Takes a long time to slowly establish the rules despite being the last one of these ever. The big twist at the end got me and it connects most of the series in a way I didn’t expect. C+

The Unseen (1980)

Goes for sadness more than creepiness and works well for it. Like the better monster movies, the real monster is just man putting his own desires ahead of his good. Excellent scene where we get the background on the dad as his actor’s goofy and sweet facade crumbles to reveal a demented, self-interested schemer by having him talk directly to camera. B

Windows (1980)

Godfather cinematographer in one of his few directorial efforts. Talia Shire is a woman violently assaulted by a man, hired by a woman obsessed with her. Much more emotionally focused and careful with handling this sort of storyline for something from 1980 than I would ever expect. Climax isn’t a series of bodies but a whispered conversation on a roof ending in tears. B

Deadly Games AKA Dial Code Santa Claus

Clear inspiration for Home Alone, but this is part horror, part fairy tale, all French. An unknown man who comes to believe he is Santa Claus stalks a rich young boy and his grandpa in their family’s mansion. The boy must fight back using traps, but this isn’t Home Alone, this is very R-rated. At times whimsical, at times tense, this one is taken to another level by massive amounts of effort put into the actual film making of the simple story. i.e., the boy is stuck on the roof and it zooms out until the winter struck building is like something caught in a snow globe. A+

Night of the Demon (1980)

Bigfoot rips a random bypasser's dick off in graphic detail. B-

Without Warning (1980)

For a film about a stereotypical green alien being a slasher and doing Predator in the backwoods of America, this is mostly uneventful. Led by stars Cameron Mitchell, Martin Landau, and Jack Palance we’re mostly treated to POV shots of a shadow in the woods and kills almost all consist of following a sci-fi boomerang as it guts someone. Every time. D+

He Knows You’re Alone (1980)

Tom Hanks is fully formed as a charismatic actor in his first major role as a Slasher Boyfriend who is dating one of the brides stalked by a killer. More effort than expected on the mood of each locale, but mostly boring. C-

Sledgehammer (1983)

First direct to video horror film in existence, made by a porn producer and his crew of regulars over a week. Remember what I said about the cheapness of Hollywood Strangler Meets the Skid Row Slasher giving it an off kilter vibe? It’s that, but it doesn’t get old - ever. Like an alien impression of a film, or a Neil Breen slasher. B+

Society (1989)

Brian Yunza might not quite have his friend Stuart Gordon’s skill, but this is an impressive debut that’s also thoroughly sickening for how much it Just Goes For It. Eat the rich before they eat the poor, literally. A-

Fade to Black (1981)

Highly biographic movie about a Film Twitter guy losing it and going after people in ways that mimic old Hollywood movies. The he deaths are highly entertaining and you do get to see Mickey Rourke play a jock bully type who gets gunned down in an alley by a cowboy, but the build up trying to make the lead film geek sympathetic before he snaps is entirely too long and unearned. C+

Don’t Go in the Woods (1981)

Commits the cardinal sin of Just Before Dawn by fully revealing the slasher as something not quite threatening but does it even quicker and without the skillful atmosphere building of that film. Cheapness of it did make me chuckle. You could see them having something more with it all being about people who go into the woods and lose their humanity, turning into killers, but there’s just no skill. D

As Above, So Below (2014)

The most accurate Tomb Raider movie despite not having much in the way of action. A crew of explorers led by a British woman who wants to prove a crazy claim of her father descends into the catacombs under Paris, entering Hell itself where they must confront their sins to escape. Even has some Tomb Raider puzzle solving. Feels not entirely horror until the end, but a fun adventure type movie on a small budget. B

Saturn 3 (1980)

Nice intro scenes free of dialogue and cool retro sci-fi production design flow into a mostly silly movie about Harvey Keitel trying to seduce a bland Farrah Fawcet away from Kirk Douglas. Keitel is out of his element. Oh, and British novelist Martin Amiss (!) wrote the screenplay somehow. I think it is meant to be a heavily satirical look at the future of man, with Douglas as the aging last remnant of how we used to be (are now) and Keitel as the amoral, cold and calculating man of the future. Of course the killer robot the movie suddenly becomes about eventually wears his head and talks with his voice. C+

Terror Train (1980)

Just an all around fun time with a killer whose gimmick is that he changes costumes with each kill, so he's sort of an Invisible Man at times. Strong cast, unique location for the slasher of a train that I'm surprised doesn't get repeated (if you have even stock footage of an exterior you can reuse one or two set rooms infinitely for cheap), and a tense climax. B+

Sweet Sixteen (1983)

Low budget direct to video slasher that also tries to tackle racism against Native populations. Way ahead of Halloween Kills on being about mob justice and unfocused violence in a slasher, but not so smartly decides to have a character lynched entirely off-screen so we don’t feel the effect. Patrick MacNee does not seem like he should be the father of a small town America girl who has no trace of accent. C

Kwaidan (1965)

A staggering work, a masterpiece, it is all it is said to be. The poetics of its horror cannot be understated. Eyes watch from winter backdrops. One section is entirely narrated in song. Doomed love and doomed honor abounds. A+

Eyes of a Stranger (1981)

Competent slasher about a man who calls a news anchor before every kill. Goes Rear Window later and uses its seaside apartment set well for suspense, but nothing special beyond the stellar takedown of the killer. C+

Invisible Man (2020)

I meant to catch this in theaters before everything that happened in 2020 did, wish I had managed it. The Invisible Man character has always been a man turned into a criminal by lack of eyes on him, the lack of others witnessing him letting his worst impulses go out of control: the update here is that he already is a criminal with a degree of invisibility provided by wealth and status as a tech innovator. Speaking of tech, here the largeness of the frame itself is a threat. Leigh Whannell fills shots with openness, goes out further than usually needed even for simple conversations between two characters: the implication in our minds is clear, the invisible man might be - probably is - somewhere at work in these scenes. Sometimes your suspicions are rewarded, sometimes not. Features a twist that actually makes the rest of the movie make more sense, not less, when it hits. A

Absurd (1981)

Does not live up to its title all the time but good goofy fun. A priest with a gun and a thin backstory about creating a super soldier (?) pursues Florentine Michael Myers, who is a guy with tousled hair and a beard. The most Italian portrayal of an American town celebrating the Super Bowl. The main house is possibly a countryside villa. C+

So what did I get out of 2021's horror crop?:

1. Golden Age Slashers (70s-80s) were of higher quality than expected, even if only a few stood out as gems (Unseen, Terror Train) in their own right, but boy there sure are a lot of them. I set out with a goal of seeing all of them in chronological order and even not needing to check out the franchise ones (Halloween, Friday, etc.) and some other major ones (The Prowler) I never even reached 1984.

2. Final Destination feels like the franchise of the 00s next to Saw. The black comedy and focus on seemingly random, senseless Rube Goldberg deaths fits the nihilism of the world at the time, murder made into clockwork not unlike Jigsaw. As we all know now, there is always another accident around the corner.

3. Bigfoot graphically ripped off that bypasser's dick for no reason!

Happy Halloween...again and again.

The 31 one paragraph reviews will return in 2022.

#toolbox murders #the laughing target #the legacy #vampyr #horror movies #horror films #horror #horror review #movie review #final destination #tourist trap (1979) #hausu #phobia #when a stranger calls #nightmare #funeral home #sole survivor #unseen #Hollywood Strangler Meets the Skid Row Slasher #Windows #trilogy of terror #deadly games #Dial Code Santa Claus #Night of the Demon #Silent Scream #without warning #The Curse of Kazuo Umezu #kazuo umezu #He Knows You're Alone #mortuary

[blackinperiodfilms]

Showtime has ordered a drama series about Zulu king Shaka, with Antoine Fuqua onboard to direct and executive produce.

“Shaka: King of the Zulu Nation” hails from writers and executive producers Olu Odebunmi and Tolu Awosika. Rooted in actual events, the series chronicles Shaka’s unlikely rise to power, uniting multiple tribes across vast stretches of Africa in the early 19th century to transform his power into legend, on par with history’s most seminal figures.

“This project offers a gateway to our past that is so critical to our global history and yet so often marginalized,” said Fuqua. “Through “Shaka: King of the Zulu Nation,” we hope to bring this saga to life, all the tears, sweat and blood, all the joy and sorrow, all the intimacy and intensity and humanity. In short, we’re going to rock the world with this one.”

“Olu and Tolu have written such an exciting and emotional origin story of an African warrior hero,” said Gary Levine, co-president of entertainment for Showtime. “And Antoine’s passion for this project, coupled with his formidable talent, promises an epic series unlike any other on television.”

#Shaka King of the Zulu Nation #Shaka #Antoine Fuqua #Olu Odebunmi #Tolu Awosika