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Book Review: So Good They Can’t Ignore You by Cal Newport

February 2, 2019

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When I was taking a course in web development, one of my projects was to re-create a poster known as The Holstee Manifesto, a series of short affirmations that stand out with big, small and medium-sized fonts. These affirmations often say things like “if you don’t like your job, quit” or “live your dream and share your passion.”

In Cal Newport ‘s 2012 book So Good They Can’t Ignore You: Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for Work You Love, he argues that this idea that one should pursue only what they love, aka the passion hypothesis, is not only total B.S. but also harmful to people’s self-esteem and ideas of genuine happiness. Instead we need a much more realistic discussion of what the words success, happiness and passion actually mean. Before I read the book, I poo-pooed Newport’s idea and became sick and tired of hearing that my dreams of moving to New York City for my music career were unrealistic and I was just setting myself up to struggle miserably. After reading this book, I can’t even fathom why I would become so overly optimistic about such an ideal without considering how to put bread on the table, pay my rent or heck, even learn how to survive at all.

Newport opens his book with a true story of a young man named Thomas who travels the world after college in search of a career he enjoys. He finds his true calling at a Zen monastery in the Catskills Mountains of New York. He practices meditation and studies day and night to pass his koans, or word puzzles in the Zen tradition. However, this did not bring him true happiness and he found himself yet again asking, “What should I do with my life?” Newport uses this example at the beginning in order to support his argument that just because we think we have landed out dream job or found our passion does not mean this guarantees absolute happiness. In fact, he explains that people who find their true lifelong calling at a young age are rare and most people who are successful use a craftsman (or craftsperson, to include women and non-binary people) approach to their career instead of just simply starting off “doing what they love.”

Having a craftperson mindset, unlike a passion mindset, means focusing on the value you can bring to your job (i.e. what you can offer an individual or company) rather than focusing on what the job can bring to you. Newport interviews a professional guitar player named Jordan and although he, Newport, started guitar at the same age as Jordan, took lessons and performed a lot of repertoire in various shows, he explains that he did not reach the level of proficiency that Jordan did. It wasn’t so much the number of hours they practiced their instruments, but what they did during those hours of practice. As a musician myself, I know how tempting it can be to just run a piece straight through during practice sessions and then move on to the next one because it seems fun to do so. However, I finally had to come to the conclusion that playing a piece straight through just isn’t efficient practice, and when you get on stage in front of an audience, you end up messing up worse than you did in the practice room, and soon later, burning out.

Jordan, however, practices in order to get better. According to Newport, when Jordan plays a wrong note or out of tune, he goes back and fixes it. Simple as that. He also seeks new opportunities to experiment with his technique, such as playing by ear. I myself have found it helpful to practice music by ear because it not only helps expand my repertoire (give me some P!nk songs any day of the week to hash out classical-style), but also gives me a chance to step out of my comfort zone. Even just by experimenting with how accurate the pitch I am playing is is an exercise in and of itself. I remember getting extremely burned out during my first professional orchestra audition because I just played all these difficult pieces at the last minute, straight through, no taking breaks for myself, and I burned out before my audition. However, two years later, I have been working diligently with my mentor on practicing with the specific intention to get better rather than just perform.

In my lesson one day, my teacher talked about the advice that famous comedian and actor Steve Martin gives to people who ask how they can be successful in their careers. Martin’s advice is always “Be so good they can’t ignore you” (hence the book’s title), and it’s the kind of advice most people don’t want to hear. Martin says that most people want advice on how to get an agent and write a script, but it really just came down to persistence and thinking outside the box that helped launch Martin’s career. His new act took ten years to actually achieve success, which goes to show that there really is no shortcut to fame.

Another key thing people need to have in order to find a job they actually can succeed in and love is career capital, aka the rare and valuable skills you can bring to the table. Alex Berger, a successful television writer, took on multiple projects that forced him to get out of his comfort zone and use feedback from his peers as an opportunity to improve upon his work and build his portfolio. According to Newport, how you leverage your skills depends on what kind of market in which you acquire career capital. A winner-takes-all market only has one type of career capital that people want and people compete to perfect this one career capital so they can get all the opportunities, the call-backs and so forth. Alex was writing for a winner-takes-all market, and the only thing that matters to employers in this industry is the quality of your scripts. An auction market, however, lets you acquire various types of career capital so that each person can generate their own original portfolio of varied skills that people in their field could be looking for.

Newport further argues that one also has to have a clear mission when they pursue a career. Pardis, a 35 year old biology professor at Harvard, enjoys her hobbies of playing guitar and volleyball, and that in part because her work has a clear purpose and provides her the energy to keep pursuing these hobbies. She does her work not just so she can get grant money or recognition but because she wants specifically to use technology to fight some of the oldest diseases, such as malaria and the bubonic plague. However, Pardis began by building career capital, aka the rare computer algorithm she created to find disease-resistant genes, and using the knowledge she acquired over time to develop her research. In short, she focused on one small niche and then gradually expanded her work to fit a broader mission.

Newport tells an earlier story about a young woman named Jane, who dropped out of college to pursue ambitious goals such as surviving the wilderness and learning how to breathe fire. She launched various businesses, freelance and blog posts to fund her own journey, but unfortunately lost motivation because she didn’t have anyone who was willing to financially support her ambitions. What makes Pardis’s story different from that of Jane is that Pardis was patient with herself and developed her passion as she went along in her research so that she could build quality material to show people. She started small so that she could later enjoy succeeding big rather than just merely “dreaming” big. Jane, however, tried to dream big from the beginning and soon came up small. I found myself relating to Jane because I started off after college with this unrealistic idea that I was going to become a professional soloist and travel the world and play for various orchestras just to become rich and successful. But two years down the road I have done more research on the field and sought guidance from professional musicians, and have concluded that it is unrealistic (and downright horrible for your mental health) to magically expect your dreams will come true by quitting your day job and striking it out on your own with your instrument and knapsack.

I have come to embrace Pardis’s story because she acquired a specific skill set and developed her findings over time while still pursuing what she loved on the side. Even as a musician, I have found using this blog to be helpful in developing my voice in writing and cultivating the art of patience. I know this blog will not be perfect overnight and it takes time to build a good blog, but as someone who tends to be a perfectionist I honestly have to remind myself of this every day. As a philosophy major I was constantly writing, editing my papers and learning how to craft a well-founded argument, sometimes until two in the morning. As a musician I have learned to take criticism, practice more efficiently, and perform under pressure. Working in customer service has enabled me to communicate on a human-to-human level and work well under pressure. Right after college, I assumed things would magically fall into place with my degree and a single orchestra audition and I got cynical and depressed when they didn’t. However, even my small accomplishments along the way have been immensely formative in helping craft a larger picture of what I want my life’s purpose to be. I believe that finding creative and valuable ways to use my skills in order to create career capital will help me confront my perfectionist tendencies, stay curious and open to feedback and ideas, and help me develop a clearer mission for my career.

Finally, Cal Newport talks about how developing a clear mission requires using small and achievable projects (little bets) to explore an idea of interest that could be of interest to the public. He discusses how the actor Chris Rock, for example, prepared a successful comedy set for one of his HBO specials. Rock made several surprise visits to a comedy club in the New Jersey area and took notes on a legal pad while onstage so he could figure out what material the audience was willing to see. Even though the audience didn’t really like most of his jokes during these visits, he actually admitted to them onstage that the jokes need improvement, and even the act of admitting it was all awkward for him made the audience laugh. Over time, Rock’s series of mini-flops and mini-successes went into developing an original set that people actually enjoyed. Had he had the perfect set from Day 1, Rock wouldn’t have learned how to appeal to his audience, and moreover how to create capital for his career.

One thing I liked about this book is the absence of a clear cut plan for how to achieve success. While it was nice reading Richard Bollas’s What Color Is Your Parachute? at first, I stopped doing the exercises and reading the book altogether. Even after taking all the self-assessments in the book, I still didn’t feel like I had a clear idea of what my ideal job would look like, and this depressed me even further. So Good They Can’t Ignore You cuts straight through the sugary fluff of “follow your passion” and gives concrete examples of people who have succeeded by starting off with realistic goals and following through with them, and also gives examples of those who didn’t do this and ended up struggling.

There is this awesome video by Chelsea Fagan and Lauren Ver Hage of the popular personal finance site The Financial Diet in which the two elaborate on the flawed passion hypothesis by giving specific tips how you can realistically achieve your goals, even if that means going against what some “inspirational” manifesto poster tells you to do.

Agree or disagree with the passion hypothesis? Comment below!

So Good They Can’t Ignore You: Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for Work You Love by Cal Newport. Grand Central Publishing, 2012. 304 pp.

Sorrys- A poem

January 31, 2019

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Sorrys are useless in the hands of cowards

Sorrys are useless when you have said them over and over again

Thank yous do not cover up the hurt you have caused.

Sorrys are like sugar on a festering open wound

Sorrys are like giving roses and buttercream cake to cure a black and blue bruise

Sorrys do more harm than good in the end if delivered carelessly

Sorrys are empty when you have hurt the people who love you

Thank yous are a mindless void when delivered half eaten

Loving yourself is important

So you don’t keep making excuses for opening up fresh wounds to hurt people

When you hurt yourself, hurt others, you open up fresh wounds

You heal those wounds by reflecting on and loving you, not running away from life or hurting yourself even more.

By communicating openly.

Not hiding your hurt where people cannot find it.

By being honest with yourself.

By not getting wrapped up in your own pain.

You are beautiful. You are loved. Just as you are.

Don’t ever forget it.

ASMR Videos- My Thoughts

January 31, 2019

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Ever since I was young I can remember feeling a warm tingling sensation every time I heard someone whispering or eating food. During summer school, I was in the classroom reading during my lunch break and there was a girl behind me eating potato chips. I felt my whole body tingling from head to toe, and felt like falling into a deep sleep. I never get tingly when I am hearing myself eat, but I get that warm and fuzzy feeling whenever I hear other people eating. In the library or college, I again got those tingles when I heard a student whispering the words they were studying for a foreign language exam. It put me at ease and made my morning feel that much better.

Before I heard of ASMR (an acronym for autonomous sensory meridian response) I thought I was the only one who felt calm whenever people ate food or talked in soft and soothing voices. But on YouTube there’s a whole community of ASMR folks and so I feel less alone because I know I’m not the only one experiencing it.

These videos on YouTube feature people eating, whispering or making other noises that elicit tingles in the viewer. While researchers are still trying to figure out what exactly in our brains triggers this kind of reaction, they have found that these videos particularly help people who have panic attacks, depression and insomnia. I know that these videos so far have been helpful in calming me down. Experiencing ASMR is very much like having a mental illness or synesthesia; it’s subjective and can’t exactly be measured quantitatively because it’s based on how we experience and see the world in our own individual way.

I think it’s also a gratifying experience for the person doing ASMR video because they get to savor their food while looking into the camera and feel these tingly sensations themselves when they press into slime or a pillow. There’s something so aesthetically pleasing and, well, sensual about ASMR videos that it’s hard to explain other than the warm and fuzzy feeling.

It would be nice if I could do an ASMR video such as reading children’s books. Here’s a great Guardian article I read that tells more about ASMR.

4 Books That Hit Me So Hard (That I Won’t Be Able to Stomach Their Movie Adaptations)

January 30, 2019

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I probably mentioned in an earlier post that I usually watch film adaptations after reading the books they are based off of. However, there are some books that were so graphic and intense that I’m too faint-hearted to watch them on screen. Maybe someday I will watch these films but as of now, these four books were sufficient enough to stay forever lodged in my memory.

  1. The Last King of Scotland by Giles Foden. This novel is narrated from the perspective of a Scottish doctor who is employed by Idi Amin, who in real life was the president of Uganda in the 1970s. I read this book in high school in world geography class because I wanted to learn more about Uganda’s history during our unit on Africa. We had a list of movies we needed to see as part of our grade for the class, and I overheard a classmate ask my teacher if he could see The Last King of Scotland for his film grade (it wasn’t on the list because it was school district policy that the teacher couldn’t recommend any R-rated features). She approved but warned him to be prepared because “Idi Amin was a really nasty dictator.” Reading how the doctor, Nicholas, has to witness individuals endure incredibly brutal torture under Amin’s regime, and after seeing Forest Whitaker play Amin so accurately in this trailer, I decided that the book was enough to sit through. I love both Forest Whitaker and James McAvoy’s acting (Whitaker took home the Best Actor Award at the Oscars in 2007 for his depiction of Amin in the film), but this is a movie I’ll have to sit out until I can officially muster the guts to stomach it.
  2. Schindler’s List (the Australian version is called Schindler’s Ark) by Thomas Keneally. A poignant novel based on the true account of Oskar Schindler, a German industrialist and member of the Nazis who saved 1,200 Jews from concentration camps during the Holocaust. Like all works about the senseless killing of millions of human beings, expect graphic scenes of torture, murder and abuse. The book was enough to keep me up at night and honestly I wish I had finished it in the daytime because it was enough to bring me to tears. After reading it, I was too emotionally exhausted to think about seeing the film.
  3. Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh. A black comedy that doesn’t adhere to the traditional linear narrative format, Welsh’s various characters share how they are either directly or indirectly influenced by heroin abuse and other forms of addiction. I know that black comedy is technically supposed to be funny, but weirdly enough I couldn’t remember laughing at any point during this book (except for the scene where one of the female characters, Kelly, gets back at a bunch of slimy dudes who harass her during her waitressing shift by putting gross stuff in their food). One scene that will never leave my memory is when Mark Renton, one of the main characters, goes to see a drug dealer who explains how he lost his leg from abusing heroin. I was already having a hard time dealing with the male characters’ poor treatment of women and their abuse of heroin, but this particular scene had me breaking down in tears so badly I didn’t think I would ever get to finish the book. Reading this one scene was worse than any anti-drug PSA I ever saw, and believe me, I’ve seen some pretty intense ones. Sounds melodramatic, I know but the novel had an impact on me and I can’t ever forget it, so I don’t think I will be able to handle the movie that well. I am now in my long hiatus from Irvine Welsh novels, but I want to read more of them because he’s a really good writer. Next time I read one of his works I will read it during the daytime when I can better process it.
  4. Requiem for a Dream by Hubert Selby, Jr. I know trailers don’t always say a lot about a film, but the trailer for the movie adaptation of this novel was haunting. Even the poster gave me chills, with that big blue eye staring out at you like those of Dr. T.J. Eckleburg in The Great Gatsby. But that’s the point. Like Trainspotting, this novel scared me out of my wits because of how its characters’ lives spiral out of control when they abuse heroin. It’s supposed to scare readers and raise awareness of how abusing these drugs can make people feel a false sense of security with themselves, when in reality they miss out on life because they are dealing with the severe psychological, physical and emotional effects of heroin (and the effects of withdrawal). I read a synopsis of the film adaptation because I knew I’d be too chicken to actually sit down and watch it, although it would have probably scared everyone if they had shown it as part of our health class’s unit on drugs and alcohol. Like a lot of kids, I grew up with D.A.R.E. programs, drug-free pledges and D.A.R.E. bracelets in school, but Hubert Selby’s work is essentially the whole D.A.R.E. program in just 200-300 pages. Phenomenal book; however, until I can manage to get my stomach muscles in order, I remain too shooketh to see Darren Aronofsky’s film.

Got any more film adaptations to add to the list? Let me know in the comments.

Review: Bad Moms

January 29, 2019

First off, this film was HILARIOUS! 🙂 The gorgeous Mila Kunis plays Amy, a stressed out mom living in an affluent suburb who tries to please everyone. She works for a start-up coffee company where she is the oldest hard-working employee and her younger coworkers are just goofing off. She runs to PTA meetings. She also does her kids’ homework, makes their lunches, drops them off at school and makes dinner. She is juggling so many things but never has time to herself. Even when her husband doesn’t value her or his kids, she takes his crap because she feels that’s what her duty is: to be the perfect mom.

She also has to deal with a clique of snooty PTA moms (played by Christina Applegate, Jada Pinkett Smith and Annie Mumolo) who runs the meetings. When I first saw Annie Mumolo in this film, I thought, Wait, where do I know this lady from? And then I remembered she played an uptight mom in The Boss. 🙂

The movie has a lot of great social commentary about society’s expectations for mothers and generally how people perceive women to be the multitaskers and the ones to do everything. In my senior year of high school, I saw a documentary called Race to Nowhere, which talks about how kids today are more stressed more than ever because of standardized tests and expectations for them to beef up their college resumes and essays with extracurriculars and other things. But Bad Moms shows how this school-related stress can have a toll on parents just as much as it does on their kids.

There’s also a great book called How To Get Sh*t Done by Erin Falconer that would be a great tie-in to this film. In the book Erin talks about her own experiences with trying to please her partner, parents, friends and coworkers by taking on extracurriculars, lots of projects, and tasks at home. She says that women are not making enough time for themselves because society tells them they should be caretakers and that if you make any time for yourself, you’re not doing your job. She gives really good tips for time management and explains that the art of saying “no” is hard but important in helping women prioritizing their time. In Bad Moms, Amy and the other moms feel like “bad moms” because they don’t always please their kids and partners. However, Amy eventually wakes up and realizes that unless she takes charge of her own time and learn to say “no” to being over-committed, other people will keep demanding her time and she will keep going through the vicious cycle of guilt, shame, resentment and passive-aggressiveness that comes with saying “yes” to everything.

She also comes to understand that she pampered her kids by doing everything for them and they grew up with a lack of appreciation for everything she did. One of the film’s best scenes is when she tells her son to start doing his homework by himself. When he gets upset with her and tells her he is a “slow learner” she tells him straight-up that he is not a slow learner. Instead, she tells him, he grew up with a sense of entitlement and that if he keeps expecting her to do everything for him, he will carry that entitlement mentality with him as an adult and it won’t be good. There are a lot of kids whose parents can’t always be there for them. There’s a lot of kids whose parents die or divorce when they are young, so these kids have to learn how to take care of themselves. In a lot of families, kids have to hold down a job or two in high school so they can support their parents, and at the end of the day they still have school work to do, so they don’t have time to complain like Amy’s son did. This film in retrospect really taught me how to appreciate my parents more because they worked so hard to get me through school and encouraged me to study hard. I never had to hold a job in high school but if I have kids, I want to encourage them after seeing this movie to make their own bed, laundry and meals, get a part-time job and yes, do their own homework. Whether or not they carry those habits with them to college is not for me to decide, but at least they will have learned independence early on.

In a way, the film raises an implied discussion on class and classism without explicitly talking about it. Gwendolyn, who chairs the PTA board, forbids the moms from making any treat with sugar or other refined ingredients. Amy goes out and buys donut holes for the bake sale anyway. However, it should be noted that her main reason for baking treats was mainly because she didn’t want to. Food insecurity is still a reality in many places in this country, and moms living on low incomes can’t always afford to buy expensive ingredients and make treats for their kids’ bake sale. Amy also chooses to not go to her firm’s meeting because she is done with the people who work there. Many moms work jobs where they can’t afford to take off whenever they feel like it. While I understand it’s supposed to be a funny film, it also raised some interesting questions about the correlation between class, privilege and self-care. Not all moms can afford to eat out, go to spas, or go drinking with friends.

Overall, the film was lots of fun, rich with thoughtful themes, and very touching too. Shout out to all the moms out there; thank you for being you! 🙂

Bad Moms. 1 hr 41 m. Rated R for sexual material, full-frontal nudity, language throughout, and drug and alcohol content.

Review: Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse

January 28, 2019

Like many theaters, before I entered the theater there was a sign warning about the strobe lights in the film, and I’m glad that warning was there. (I can’t remember there being one for any other action movie I saw, not even The Incredibles 2 and that had a lot of flashing images in it) It was actually the first film I saw where the theater had a warning about strobe lights (to understand the significance of strobe lights in the film, The Mighty has a piece about it here).

The film definitely does have a lot of strobe lights from the very beginning. Even as someone who does not have chronic illness or autism, I had to close my eyes at some points due to the flashing lights. The illustration of the characters, as well as that of the Spider-verse, however, was incredible and the characters really came to life on the screen. I also loved the soundtrack of the film (I found myself bobbing my head while “Hypnotize” by The Notorious B.I.G. played in one of the scenes). And similar to many action movies, the film’s beautiful score truly conveyed the intensity of the scenes.

The cast was also excellent. One of the villains, Doctor Octopus, is a female in this version of Spider-Man (in Spider-Man 2, Doc Ock is male), which is pretty epic in my opinion considering many villains tend to be men. For some reason Doc Ock looks like a combo of Professor Trelawney in Harry Potter and Shego in Kim Possible. At the end credits, there were several actors I didn’t even know were voicing the characters, Hailee Steinfeld, Mahershala Ali, and Nicholas Cage to name a few. The late Stan Lee also makes a cameo in the film (not telling when he appears if you haven’t seen it yet) and receives a touching tribute in the credits.

The film has a very encouraging message, too. The main character, Miles, is so inspired by Spider-Man, but he gets discouraged when he realizes how hard being a superhero actually is. However, like other Marvel and DC films, he learns that in order to truly defeat evil, he must conquer his self-doubt and confront the villains head-on in order to save his friends, family and society.

And also, let’s just say how thrilled I was to have a person of color playing Spider-Man! 🙂 Miles is half African-American and half-Puerto Rican. The last film I saw by DC or Marvel that has a Black superhero was Black Panther.

Overall, I highly recommend this film. It deserves to win for Best Animated Picture at the Oscars.

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. 1 hr 56 min. PG for frenetic sequences of animated action violence, thematic elements and mild language.

10 Movies With LGBTQ+ Protagonists

I kept a lot of my old blog posts and was wondering what to do with them, so I decided to publish them now. I originally wrote this post back in January 26, 2019:

Although there are hundreds of well-known movies featuring characters identifying as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer +, these characters don’t often play major roles. Here are some major films I have seen that have LGBTQ+ people as the main characters. Have a box of Kleenexes handy next to that bowl of popcorn.

  1. A Fantastic Woman (2017): A beautiful drama set in Chile about a trans woman named Marina who navigates the death of her partner, gender discrimination at the hands of his family, and her dream of becoming a famous singer. In real life, the actress who plays Marina, Daniela Vega, changed Oscars history by becoming the first transgender person to present at the awards ceremony. In Spanish with English subtitles.
  2. Moonlight (2016): I don’t have many movies in my Amazon collection, but this movie is one of the few that made it in there. Truly compelling narrative about a young Black man growing up in Miami and coming to terms with his sexuality. It tackles subjects such as abuse, race, poverty, and masculinity in nuanced ways that we don’t always see in mainstream movies with Black male protagonists. There isn’t a lot of dialogue or flashy camera-work, and that is what makes the film so beautiful. I have seen it twice and still cry every time I see it. It deserved its Oscar (and also won for the Best Kiss Scene at the MTV Movie Awards) 🙂
  3. Milk (2008): Riveting biopic about the first openly gay person elected to public office in California, this takes place during the beginnings of Harvey Milk’s campaign and progresses until his assassination in 1978. Now, of course, since it’s a biopic and not a documentary, there’s probably at least one historian who would say there were facts about Milk’s life that the film could have done a better job of portraying. However, if you have never studied or heard of Harvey Milk, watching this film will at least give you a brief glimpse of his political campaign and his life. The movie has had an especially big impact on LGBTQ+ activists because it came out the same year as Proposition 8, an anti-gay amendment that would have outlawed same-sex marriage. If you Google “Milk movie and prop 8,” you’ll find countless articles about the topic.
  4. Rent (2005): I watched this movie for the first time during a Gay-Straight Alliance meeting in high school and still to this day remember most, if not all, of the musical’s numbers by heart. Jonathan Larsen, who directed the original Broadway, died at a young age shortly after its production, but he goes down in history as a playwright who addressed real-life issues, such as poverty, sexuality, and AIDS, in his productions. While I am sad I will never get to see the actual show (it’s no longer on Broadway), I always know I can watch the movie on a rainy day.
  5. Call Me By Your Name (2017): Directed by Luca Guadagnino, this adaptation of the novel by Andre Aciman (I haven’t yet read it but want to) tells the story of a teenager named Elio who meets a 20-something graduate student who living with his parents in ’80s Italy. At first their personalities clash; Elio is an introvert, and Oliver, a graduate student, is more outgoing. However, the two soon fall in love with one another, and both men find themselves conflicted about their relationship. I have heard many criticisms of the film, mainly about the ethics of Elio and Oliver’s age-gap relationship. (Slate has a great piece about it here) However, while watching the film, I found their relationship to be more complex than just an older man dating a younger man. Overall, the film was beautiful and made me fall in love with Timothee Chalamet.
  6. The Misadventures of Cameron Post (2018): Excellently directed film about a lesbian teen (played by Chloe Grace Moretz) whose aunt forces her to attend a gay conversion therapy program in an attempt to force her to become straight. During her time at the program, she meets a host of characters who, like her, are just trying to make it through the program and its haunting leader, played by Jennifer Ehle. I haven’t read the book yet, but I now really want to after seeing the film. It’s also the first LGBTQ+ film I have seen that features a queer-identifying Native American character. It’s a really good movie, and I can’t wait to read the book it’s based on.
  7. Pariah (2011): A young Black lesbian named Alike alternates between her social life, where she is free to be her cool queer self with her close friends, and her everyday life at home and at school, where she is forced to conform to everyone’s ideas about how she should dress and behave. When she meets the daughter of her mom’s friend, everything changes and Alike begins to come into her identity as a young queer Black woman.
  8. The Kids Are All Right (2010): A moving comedy-drama about a lesbian couple, played by Annette Bening and Julianne Moore, who meet the father of their teenage children. It was my second LGBTQ+ film after Rent and I absolutely wouldn’t mind seeing it again.
  9. Love, Simon (2018): A sweet coming-of-age film about a teen named Simon who has a great life and great parents but is secretly in love with another boy at school. One of his classmates, Martin, threatens to publicly announce that Simon is gay if he doesn’t get his friend, Abbie, to go out with Martin. It is overall a beautiful film and the novel by Becky Albertalli was also beautifully written.
  10. Carol (2015): A 1950s love story about a married older woman, played by Cate Blanchett, who falls in love with a younger woman who works as a sales clerk, played by Rooney Mara. Their relationship is a secret, but the two find themselves conflicted as they try to make time to see each other without letting their male partners know. Powerful complex film, especially if you love historical movies.

I am obviously leaving out a lot of films with LGBTQ+ protagonists, so this list is not at all comprehensive. But these ten recommendations are a good start to watching more LGBTQ+ themed cinema.

Got any rainbow-friendly movies to recommend? Let me know!

Black History Month playlist entry 6

“Hang Up Your Hang Ups” (1975): Herbie Hancock

One of my favorite songs by Janet Jackson is “All Nite.” It is funky and fun to dance to. And then while listening to a lot of Herbie Hancock’s music I came across this song from his 1975 album Man-Child, “Hang Up Your Hang Ups” and I heard the same funk melody I heard in “All Nite.” What I didn’t realize is that “All Nite” samples that melody from “Hang Up Your Hang Ups,” so I listened to the song to gain more context. I couldn’t stop grooving. The way Herbie has brought so much creativity to the jazz funk fusion genre had me jamming and made me appreciate even more how awesome he is and how awesome his music is. I also really love that it’s in the key of E minor because that’s one of my favorite keys.

Herbie wrote this excellent memoir called Possibilities. It talks about how he went from being solely about keeping jazz a pure genre into becoming a musician who could still love playing jazz but mix it in with other genres of music such as funk. He talks about how his Buddhist practice of chanting Nam-myoho-renge-kyo played a huge role in inspiring this creativity. “Hang Up Your Hang Ups” is a wonderful example of how Herbie has fused these two amazing genres to form something so innovative and groovy.

Movie Review: Malcolm and Marie

So last week I was debating which movie I should watch. I was going to watch Marriage Story because I saw it got a really high rating on Rotten Tomatoes, but then I remember I had seen the trailer for the recent film Malcolm & Marie, starring John David Washington and Zendaya, and I really liked the trailer and thought, “I really want to see this movie.” But then I saw Rotten Tomatoes gave it a 59 percent, so I thought, “Ohhh, maybe I shouldn’t see this movie.” But then I saw that 85 percent of Google users liked the movie, so then I thought, “Wait, am I not going to watch this movie just because it didn’t get a high rating from the critics?” I have learned in the past while watching films and writing about them on this blog that while it’s great to watch the films that earn Oscars and Golden Globes and get 90 percent ratings on Rotten Tomatoes. But sometimes there’s movies that critics rate 23 percent or some not very high percent, and yet moviegoers end up giving the film five stars. Also, it’s Black History Month, so I’m not going to turn down a movie that’s got two Black leading stars in it, shot in the style of Frances Ha (one of my favorite films), who also produced it. This is not the time to turn down peak Black excellence, my friends.

To be honest, I haven’t seen Zendaya’s work before, I only heard about the films and TV shows she starred in like The Greatest Showman and Euphoria. And I haven’t seen many of John David Washington’s films or shows either, only BlacKkKlansman. But the two of them…their acting…was just absolutely incredible. And I’m not just saying that. It actually held me in so much that I had to stop jotting down notes about the film and just watch the dialogue between Malcolm and Marie.

Interestingly enough, I just found out from the Wikipedia page on John David Washington’s bio that they filmed Malcolm and Marie in secret during the COVID-19 pandemic. Anthony D’Alessandro, writing for a piece on the film’s production in Deadline on July 8, 2020, had all the details: On March 16 Sam Levinson, creator of Euphoria, got a call that production for the show would be shut down due to the pandemic. Zendaya called Levinson and asked if he could write and direct a film during quarantine and within six days Levinson came up with Malcolm & Marie. Sam and his wife Ashley (who produced Bombshell, one of my favorite films, and co executive produced Queen and Slim, another of my favorite films), producer Kevin Turen, John and Zendaya funded the film during pre-production and production. It’s also pretty cool because I noticed in the end credits it said that a portion of the sales of the movie were donated to Feeding America, and it was one of the few times I saw this in movie credits, so I wondered “Ooh, how did that happen?” It turns out that film producers Yariv Milchan and Michael Schafer told Levinson they wanted to finance the film and donate the proceeds to charity. I just thought that was so cool, especially at a time when food insecurity has been at an all time high during the pandemic. Also, not only was it boss that Zendaya and John David Washington were producers of the film but Scott Mescudi (aka Kid Cudi, the very talented and incredible rapper) was an executive producer for the film. When his name flashed on the credits, I nearly squealed with joy! 🙂

Also, the film was shot in accord with very strict COVID-19 safety protocols so that the cast and crew could remain safe. It’s also super dope that the filming location was at this super eco-friendly building (according to D’Alessandro, it’s called The Caterpillar House, and it is an LEED home whose glass doors provided fresh air so that the producers wouldn’t have to use so much A/C or heat while shooting the film. I just looked up what LEED means and it means Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, a program certifying green buildings) and was on land where the company could shoot the film without running into any legal trouble. Co-executive producer Katia Washington headed all of the safety protocols during production, such as the cast and crew wearing masks at all times, eating in designated areas (the chef also had to quarantine with the group) and not allowing anyone to leave the property. If you read the full piece (which I definitely recommend you do because it’s fascinating how they managed to put this movie together in secret when the pandemic was getting really bad and film and TV production was shutting down almost everywhere) the protocols they followed were very well thought out. I definitely appreciate these protocols more after working at an office where strict COVID-19 protocols have been enforced in order to keep everyone safe. I also appreciate these protocols that Katia and the team headed because I think about how Tom Cruise had to yell at the team members who didn’t follow social distancing guidelines on set because Mission Impossible had already had to shut down production earlier during the pandemic and Cruise was just so fed up with having his job and other people’s jobs put at risk due to people not taking the transmission of coronavirus seriously enough (although some say he was right to yell like that to his team-I guess you could call it in Buddhist terms “courageous compassion”- others like Katie Hurley say that his rant just brought more stress upon the team in a public health crisis that is already stressful for everyone and their loved ones). Although I don’t know whether or not Katia or the team in charge of the protocols had to yell at certain times if people accidentally broke one of the protocols or not, but it seemed that they managed to keep their heads above water with getting these regulations together in such a short production time.

Alright, so now that I’m done gushing about that, let me gush about the film itself for a while.

So the biggest thing about this film that has me gushing over it is the dialogue. There is just so much raw power in the way that Malcolm and Marie talk with one another. Each of the characters takes turns giving these powerful monologues. Malcolm will talk on and on while Marie will look at him, and then Marie will talk to Malcolm and he will listen to her. The insults they throw at each other though were really deep. Malcolm thinks that Marie wouldn’t know what it’s like to be a filmmaker because she quit acting after a while. Marie, however, reminds Malcolm that he based his film’s character Imani on her life, so if she had acted in the film herself rather than having some girl named Taylor play that role, she would have felt better and could process her past struggles with addiction and self-harm in a healthier way. Malcolm argues that it wouldn’t have been as interesting had Marie acted in the film as Imani because everyone talks about how they want authenticity in film, but it’s a word that doesn’t have meaning anymore because no one knows what truly goes into making a film. He also digs at Marie when she breaks down and asks him why she didn’t get the role of Imani, and tells her that it didn’t matter how much talent she had. Even though she was a talented person, he argues that she didn’t truly want the role and was reluctant to take it even though he had given her the opportunity to do so. I think what really got me about the film, too, was the power of nonverbal communication. Sometimes you don’t even have to talk to convey what you’re feeling; the eyes, the lips, the facial expressions sometimes can convey more than any words can. When Malcolm talks about how unfair the movie reviewer’s critique of his film was, you just see a small smile crack across Marie’s face as she patiently listens to him, showing how, even with all their imperfections as a couple, she still loves him. When Marie tells him how egotistical he is, he just listens to her talk and you can see how wounded he feels. This deep chemistry between the two characters is shown both in their powerful honest dialogues with each other and also in their facial expressions. This is what kept me captivated watching the film.

Another thing I loved was that the movie is shot in black and white. According to Zendaya, they shot the film in black and white not just to pay tribute to the timeless Hollywood classic black and white films, and not just for the pure sake of aesthetics, but because too just having these two Black people be at the center of this classic black and white film is a way of reclaiming the narrative of Black Hollywood. Even though Zendaya acknowledges that many Black filmmakers have shot their films in black and white, there weren’t too many black and white films where Black people got to tell their own stories. And she’s right. Even though I myself am not well-versed in black and white cinema, I can count maybe a few movies where black people were allowed to speak into the camera, to tell their own narratives instead of letting the white protagonist tell it for them. I can only think of one movie and that is Stormy Weather (1943) with Bill Robinson and Lena Horne. The film was significant because at the time there weren’t many films where Black actors and singers rarely appeared in lead roles in mainstream Hollywood productions, and Stormy Weather was one of the few films to have an all Black cast. I acknowledge that there are elements of minstrelsy and racial stereotypes in Stormy Weather. But when Zendaya mentioned the historical lack of Black representation in mainstream leading roles, Stormy Weather was one of the few classic films I could think of where Black people played leading roles. And I think that’s why I loved Malcolm and Marie, because the two leading Black characters got to have a deep discussion that wasn’t being interrupted by anyone else. Malcolm and Marie is one of the few, perhaps the first black and white film I’ve seen featuring two Black lead characters who get to tell their narrative onscreen. It’s like by being the only two characters in the movie, they get to reclaim this private space for dialogue and intimacy.

The way the film was shot in black and white film made me think a little bit about Frances Ha, a film directed by Noam Baumbach. When I watched the film it gave the movie this sophisticated sort of feel, like instead of being set in the 21st century I was watching a film set in the 1960s in New York City. It was actually kind of calming watching the film in black and white even though of course Frances’ struggles to find herself and pay her rent are not fun. But with Malcolm and Marie, there was just something so refreshing about seeing Black people inhabit that intimate space that Frances enjoyed in telling her life story, and being able to tell their stories from their own unique perspectives as Black people. I don’t even think it’s fair for me to compare Frances Ha to Malcolm and Marie because Frances Ha was about a young white 20 something trying to figure out her life, and while in some sense it sends a universal message of don’t give up on your dreams, it was just nice seeing Malcolm and Marie because they got to have these tough conversations with each other about race and being a Black filmmaker in Hollywood. As someone interested in filmmaking, I gained a lot of insight from Malcolm and Marie’s conversations about what it’s like being in the film industry as a Black person, and I really loved their whole conversation about authenticity and what makes a movie authentic. I love technicolor movies of course, but when I saw Malcolm and Marie it somehow gave the film a more introverted feel. I guess because I wasn’t so focused on the color schemes of the room and surroundings I could just focus on the dialogue between the two characters. I don’t know how to explain it really, it just gave the film a more intimate feeling.

I think the music also gives the movie its intimacy and its significance as a film with two leading Black characters in it. The film opens when Malcolm plays “Down and Out in New York City” by James Brown, and he is talking about how good his film is, and Marie is just listening to him. Then when they fight she plays “Get Rid of Him” by Dionne Warwick as a sort of comeback. And the last scene features Malcolm and Marie standing in silence together, and is followed by “Liberation” by Outkast. The last song is a mixture of jazz and R and B, which is so fitting for the last scene of the film because after all of the deep dialogues and raw emotions that Malcolm and Marie expressed towards one another, this song serves as a sort of release in tension. “Liberation” is one of my favorite songs, and I think it fit really well with this final scene because after all the intensity of the film I was able to finally take a breath and go “Wow, that was a really good movie.” It’s one of those films I wouldn’t mind watching again for the sake of just hearing the dialogue because there was so much I could analyze and look into.

Malcolm and Marie (2021). Directed by Sam Levinson. Rated R for pervasive language and sexual content.

TV episode review: Mixedish, season 2, episode 3

After the show Black-ish comes on ABC, there is a show called Mixed-ish that comes on. Black-ish shows Rainbow, also known as Bow, Johnson when she is grown up and living with her husband Dre, her kids and her mother and father in law. Mixedish goes back to Rainbow’s childhood in the 1980s when she, her parents Alicia and Paul and her siblings navigate life as a mixed race family in the suburbs. In this episode, Paul, Rainbow’s dad, brings Jay, one of his students, home so he can stay with Paul’s family. Rainbow immediately falls in love with Jay and starts imagining them together as a couple, but she keeps her love for him a secret. Meanwhile, Paul and Alicia compete with each other to see who can best mentor Jay. Paul works as a teacher at a school with mostly Black students and wants to help Jay succeed (context: Jay is Black), but Alicia, a lawyer, wants Jay to get into the law field, so she takes him to work with her so he can develop an interest in law. Paul and Alicia argue about who can best help Jay succeed, and while Paul argues that Jay would be more interested in being mentored by a teacher, Alicia argues that she can relate more to Jay because they’re both Black and grew up poor, while Paul can’t relate to him because he is a White guy who grew up in a wealthy family (Santamonica and Johan both point out to her though that her father-in-law, who is White, did help Alicia get a job, so in that sense, she can’t fully relate to Jay, who didn’t ). Paul tells his friends one day about Jay staying with him, and one of his friends, who is Black, asks him what his intention is in trying to help Jay. Paul wonders why his Black friend is asking him why he cares about mentoring Jay so much, so he talks to Alicia and she gives him more context. He tells her he really wants to help his students succeed and he is stuck because he isn’t sure if what he is doing to help Jay is enough. Alicia breaks down the White savior complex for him, explaining that White people have historically helped Black people not out of an intrinsic desire to see them succeed or help them, but as a way of making themselves feel better about the good deed they did, like “Look at me I helped this Black kid out so I’m a good White person.” Paul listens and then they both conclude that both of them are good mentors to Jay just as they are, without butting heads about who is more suited to mentor him.

But as it turns out, neither Alicia nor Paul win the prize for Best Mentor for Jay, because Jay admits to Alicia that he’s not really interested in becoming a lawyer. Jay just appreciates that he got to stay with them. Jay’s departure from the family hits Rainbow hard though, and she continues to have a crush on him long after he has left the family.

One thing I really like about Paul’s character in the show is his allyship when it comes to talking about matters related to race and Blackness. Even as a member of a marginalized community, I can always learn to be a better ally to other marginalized communities, so in part seeing how Paul approached conversations about race showed me how I can be more supportive to my friends in marginalized communities. Even though Paul gets defensive at first when Alicia told him he wouldn’t be as good a mentor as she was, and even when his Black friend made him question what his true intentions were for helping out Jay, he ended up being open to listening to what his wife and his friend were telling him, instead of continuing to get defensive. Paul genuinely cares about Black people, but is stuck about how he can mentor his Black students as a White person who hasn’t gone through the same difficulties they have. When Alicia explains to him the White savior complex, he doesn’t get it at first but is willing to listen to Alicia tell him about it. He doesn’t assume he knows everything about race just because he has three Black kids with his wife. As someone who is trying to be a better ally myself, admitting I don’t know everything but am willing to learn and educate myself more has been a key step in practicing genuine empathy and becoming a more supportive ally to my friends. He admits that he may have approached mentorship in a way that perpetuated a savior complex, and is willing to do better. He accepts her criticism gracefully, and tries to do better, and even when he slips up and Alicia corrects him, he immediately becomes aware of what he is saying and corrects himself. I am trying to be a better ally myself so I went to this website called The Guide to Allyship: The Guide to Allyship

Here is a clip from the episode: