Second Thoughts. Issue no.1

SECOND THOUGHTS

ISSUE NO. 1 MAY 2020

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Chief Editor: Katarzyna Szyszka Content Editor: Jan Ziętara Editing: Dominika Front Weronika Peek Urszula Świątek Jan Ziętara Proofreading: Dominika Królak Katarzyna Szyszka Design: Karol Mularczyk Illustrations: Zofia Klamka Karol Mularczyk Cover: Zofia Klamka Social Media Management: Dominika Front Publisher: Institute of English Studies Hoża 69 00-681 Warsaw

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Welcome to Second Thoughts!

This project is a work of students alone and we are proud to present to you the fruit of our labour and efforts - the first issue of this new e-magazine. We would like to wholeheartedly thank everybody who contributed to this publication and invite our readers to join us in creating a source of knowledge and information about the cultural-political reality around us. If you want to publish your own thoughts in the upcoming issues or support us in editorial matters, don't hesitate to contact us.

The present issue gathers texts about creating art, managing people, manipulating the consumers, shaping the reality, and conducting discourses. It shows how the world and culture we live in are formed by different individuals, groups, ideas, and tendencies. Therefore, the theme of this issue is “Director” – a person who pulls the strings to forge a picture according to their vision. You will find here texts connected with the cinema, theatre, war discourse, fast fashion and yes, even the weather. Tidbits with facts about directing and cultural events recommendations await you along the way.

So make yourselves comfortable, enjoy your reading, and don't forget to give each text your own second thoughts.

Yours truly, The Editorial Board

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In un-accordance with fast fashion – Helena Żegnałek

“The play has to do with language and only language” – Natalia Valadzko

Directorial Tidbits – Jakub Kądzielski

‘I drink your milkshake!’ – Jan Lubaczewski

Directorial Tidbits – Jakub Kądzielski

Is war gendered? – Anna Wardecka

Wokeness just for show – Marta Stankiewicz

Directorial Tidbits – Jakub Kądzielski

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Understanding the Nazis – Weronika Peek

Directorial Tidbits – Jakub Kądzielski

A Clockwork orange is unlikable – and that is why you should watch it - Helena Żegnałek

A small vernal talk – Vee Em

Directorial Tidbits – Jakub Kądzielski

Stay Cultured at Home

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social • 7 Helena Żegnałek

In un-accordance with fast fashion

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verybody knows what fast food is. We talk about the negative effects it has on society. Yet, people still look puzzled when told about fast fashion, even though the concept is surprisingly similar.

Going to the mall to buy a new pair of socks in H&M seems like the least problematic way to spend a few spare minutes after work. You may even find the perfect dress for the upcoming party, and decide that, after all, you don’t have to eat this month. You don’t wonder where all of the clothing lying on the shelves came from. Why would you?

Nobody thinks about that.

Shopping has become a big part of today’s Western culture. Clothing is easily accessible. Owning a wardrobe full of shirts, jeans, and ugly Christmas sweaters seems to be a standard for many. As a result, 80 billion items of clothing are consumed every year. The speed at which clothing articles disappear propels the companies to look for ways to accelerate production while maintaining the lowest costs possible. It turns out that using cheap materials may be one of the easiest solutions.

How often do you buy a t-shirt just to find out a month later that it’s already ripped? And how often, instead of having it mended, you just go to buy a new one?

For big retailers, it’s a win-win situation. They don’t spend money on good-quality textiles, they sell at least twice as much since people are going to come back to buy again. As a result, the quality of the fast fashion products is questionable.

To lower the costs even more, the supplies of major western retailers like Zara or H&M come from factories in low-income countries, where working conditions and safety of the employees are very often overlooked. In 2013, the Rana Plaza factory in Bangladesh collapsed killing over 1,100 people working there. It took two more years for the Bangladeshi police to charge the owner of the factory with murder.

We live fast. We want to move fast from one place to another. We need to have projects done ASAP, and don’t want to spend too much time on things not connected with our life goals. We wanted to spend less time eating, so we came up with fast food. We didn’t want to waste time sewing, so we came up with fast fashion. The quality and morality of both may be questionable, but who has time to think about it?

8 • cultural: theatre

Natalia Valadzko

A theatre more interested in words than action

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s it possible to write a play only about language? The space of interpretation, between the stage and the audience, makes theatre a fascinating medium for experimentation. On stage, w ords make it possible to accomplish the most using fewer means.

Colourful descriptions can paint objects, decorations, and characters on stage.

Reviewing the renowned Irish plays of the 20th century it’s easy to notice that many of them employ poetic and authentic language, and incorporate it into the content of the play. Some theatregoers may protest the lack of action on the Irish stage, so apparent (or rather absent) in the works of, say, the Nobel prize winner, Samuel Beckett. But the mere opposition of action and language may as well hamper a unique opportunity for new emotional experiences and reflection.

Narratives are so pervasive that life is commonly constructed as a story, drawing in audiences with everyday expressions like “writing a new chapter”, or “the protagonist of your own life”. Plots or, broadly speaking, histories, have been seen as stories with a beginning, middle, and end – all of which are linked by a cause-and-effect relation. The art of storytelling brings us back to the oral culture of the past, to Greek myths, Celtic legends and folktales, to a group narrative consumption, and not a solitary one.

The role of Celtic mythology and folklore cannot be overestimated in the development of the Irish Literary Revival.

Cultural nationalism has been promoted through the use and re-interpretation of the authentic Celtic legends. They were not considered in any way inferior to the classic Greek ones - on the contrary, it was an attempt to de-Anglicize Ireland, retell and reinvent the national identity. Yeats and Lady Gregory wanted to show that “Ireland was not the home of buffoonery and of easy sentiment […] but the home of an ancient idealism”.

cultural: theatre • 9

While Yeats was insisting on the sovereignty of language on stage and the plays that meant to bring “intellectual excitement”, J.M. Synge believed that since he could not write in Irish, he should write as an Irish in English, with the Gaelic rhythm and structures seeping through. This was his answer to the burning question of which language to use on the stage of the National Theatre.

Synge managed to go beyond “a crude stage Irishman” and refine the speech with idioms and Irish cadences to create an authentic experience of the “entire reality of life” that combined realism and beauty. He insisted that the use of dialects was crucial to convey the sense of locality – to put the written work in a particular place and time. He was especially inclined to do so in order to capture the regional differences.

Giving voice to characters might be the most basic mode of representation – and yet, the words “from a subject” instead of “about an object” are vital for the theatre as the nation’s mirror.

The twentieth-century Irish drama was intent on giving agency to the Irish people to renegotiate and rearticulate their identities, their place, and the place of their nation in the larger scheme of things. It was essential to introduce characters who were native and spoke for themselves.

The phenomenon of the stage Irishman might have been most prominent between 1827-1890. However, the residue of the portrayal of the Irish as drunk, childish buffoons has lingered and can be found even in contemporary plays. Interestingly, the trope of the stage Irishman is not confined to the English audience, but it is embraced by opposing political and religious factions. For instance, Northern Protestants paint the stage Irishman as brutish superstitious buffoons – Irish Catholics, on the other hand, have often used this concept for channeling the inferiority complex and its coping mechanisms: by humorizing famine, emigration, language, and religion.

It was all about controlling the narrative. The tool for being heard and seen can be easily found in Brian Friel’s The Freedom of the City. Reanimating bodies is an incredible theatrical technique that plays with time and space, turning dead bodies into subjects capable of telling their own stories.

It turned out to be quite a diverse representation of the society at the time of the play – a myriad of voices, which included a judge, soldiers, a priest, an RTÉ commentator, a sociologist, a pathologist, and a forensic expert.

Irish drama has often employed words on stage for their power of transformative storytelling and providing agency and representation. The problems of “now” have been addressed using the source materials containing the old knowledge, and aspirations for the future were materialized due to the disruptive force of imagination.

10 • DIRECTORIAL TIDBITS

How much is average?

Determining the average income for a director is difficult. If you’re looking for big Hollywood stars, you would have to cough up between $7 million and $10 million for names like Paul Greengrass and Ridley Scott, more if the film is considered a “tentpole”. Christopher Nolan is rumored to have got around $20 million Interstellar. If we look at emerging directors, they can expect from $250,000 to $500,000 for their first big studio feature.

cultural: cinema • 11 Jan Lubaczewski

“I drink your milkshake!”

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merican cinema is often described as the American Dream personified. And, when talking about films made in the United States, there is a tendency to think about a certain type of Hollywood productions. We like to imagine the most popular film industry on the planet as a big, scary-looking and incredibly potent monster whose only concern is to make money, and preferably a lot of it. All of this is of course to some extent true. Yet what is often omitted, ignored or simply not acknowledged enough is the great diversity of American cinema: the diversity of genre, of style, but also of ideas. There is an incredibly fascinating and ample industry of independent American cinema with its great masters such as David Lynch, Jim Jarmusch or Noah Baumbach. All these directors make their films with a very small budget, not because they want it so (although in case of early Jarmusch’s films it could have been the case), but because big Hollywood executives try to, almost literally, take their movie away from them. The independent filmmakers’ cinema often revolves around the subjects of independence, freedom, and dominance. It is also concerned with American society as perceived by them and by the rest of the world, including postmodern artists and writers. Yet, aside from being an independent filmmaker, there is another way of commenting on the situation of the United States and on its citizens’ values, that is, making films in Hollywood, but still remaining an artist and having the final word on the set. This path was chosen by many great American directors such as Martin Scorsese, the Coen brothers, or the protagonist of this article – Paul Thomas Anderson.

To describe Anderson’s films simply as being “American” would be an understatement. The attempt to grasp what’s really “American” about the

United States and the Americans stands at the core of Anderson’s attitude towards film. Almost all of Paul Thomas Anderson’s films are concerned with the illusion of the American Dream, but the ones that stress the idea the most are Boogie Nights (1997) and There Will Be Blood (2007). And so, whether it's the story of becoming a porn star or a 19thcentury gold prospector, PTA always puts forward the question of how it is all connected with the USA nowadays. A firm belief in the American Dream proves to be an answer: the idea that your life belongs to you and that with sheer grit you can easily become a millionaire, and that you were born to do great things.

The second film in PTA’s career is one of the greatest examples in the American cinema of the need for coming-of-age stories that enable the audience to understand themselves better. Boogie Nights was released in 1997 and it provoked a great scandal in the US film business. It is a film about the porn industry, which is not only provocative and explicit but also gives a strange kind of satisfaction. Here is a film in which the pornographic industry is portrayed ambiguously. On the one hand, the critique is there, on the other, it doesn’t seem to be strong enough. To answer the question of how it is all connected to the American Dream, we need to step back a bit and look at the US porn industry of the late 1990s. We also need to note that Boogie Nights puts stress on the financial side of the enterprise.

And on that note, this is how David Foster Wallace, an American postmodern writer, describes the importance of porn within the US entertainment industry: “It is universally acknowledged that the US adult-film industry (…) is an even larger and more efficient moneymaking machine than legitimate mainstream American (…). The US adult industry

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is centered in LA’s San Fernando Valley, just over the mountains from Hollywood. Some insiders like to refer to the adult industry as Hollywood’s Evil Twin”.

Whatever can be said about the porn industry from a moral point of view, you have to admit that its commercial success may be seen as the realization of the American Dream. The porn business is starting to be more and more inclusive as it is being acknowledged as another form of entertainment. What concerns PTA most in Boogie Nights are the moments of living the Dream, and those moments when the Dream is challenged in one way or the other. The whole film, among other things, is about the illusion of Hollywood-like fame and glory. The film questions, but at the same time acknowledges the Dream; there is no judgment – just pure observation. And that’s what makes Boogie Nights so special. We realize that we long for stories about the American Dream and that we wish to take part in these stories. At the same time there emerges the incredibly difficult realization – what price do I have to pay for the Dream to come true? Just how does it change the way I am?

Moving on to another of PTA’s works, recognized as his greatest film and one of the most important movies of the 21st century, There Will Be Blood is a story of a middle-aged man, Daniel Plainview, who one day finds oil deposits while looking for gold and decides to become an oil-rich potentate. The story is set in early twentieth-century California and the atmosphere pervading the movie is one of constant anxiety and fear. The cinematographic and directorial actions taken by PTA constantly mount up more and more tension, which weighs down upon the audience. We experience fear, greed, satisfaction, and a sense of superiority because this is how Daniel Plainview feels on the screen. We quickly realize that Planview’s motivation is really very simple – he wants, he NEEDS to be great.

Some thought should be devoted to the definition of the American Dream. The most accurate and relevant definition is the one established by an American historian H.W. Brands: “The old American Dream (…) was the dream of the Puritans, of Benjamin Franklin’s Poor Richard (…), of men and women content to accumulate their modest fortunes a little at a time, year by year by year. The new dream was the dream of instant wealth, won

in a twinkling by audacity and good luck.”

Brands grasps the essence of PTA’s view on the matter. He pinpoints the way in which the Dream is inscribed into the American psyche. But even more importantly, Brands stresses how it should and must be realized instantly. The aspect of time is crucial when discussing the American Dream phenomenon in PTA’s films. Daniel Plainview’s need to achieve his goals is rooted deep in his consciousness. He is chosen to do great things, he is going to achieve all this by himself, and he is going to do it fast.

The setting of the film is also of great significance. California in the early 20th century was a place of considerable economic growth.

It started during the 19th century, to be more precise in 1848 when the California Gold Rush took place. In 1840 the state was inhabited by 8,000 people. By 1850 the population grew to 120,000.

And of course, most of those newcomers were Gold Rushers, people with a dream. The state to this day is recognized as the place where “dreams come true”, where you can achieve anything you want. And while it is true in almost every state of the US (it is after all the national ethos, the ethos of Founding Fathers), it is especially valid in California, where after the Gold Rush the industrial powers began to expand. Nowadays, a great part of the Californian glamour and fame is Hollywood. There is something ironic in setting a story about success, greed, and fame exactly there.

Boogie Nights and There Will Be Blood are movies that challenge our beliefs. They are also popcultural blends of genres and moods, creating an atmosphere of doubt. The mind of the viewer begins to wander and question the roots of the American Dream. Do I really HAVE TO be successful? How is it going to change me? Do I mind changing, and if so, why? While there are no right answers and there are many new questions, this serves an overarching goal – to make the US doubt in the Dream.

DIRECTORIAL TIDBITS • 13

Never heard of you In 1917 America, when film was becoming the new dominant medium, the status of a director was widely different than nowadays. Directors were treated as craftsmen rather than artists and their names didn’t appear on posters or at the top of the credits. Moreover, they were often “typecasted” – i.e. if a director made proper westerns, he would go on making westerns for the rest of his career. Why fix it if it ain’t broken!

14 • POLITICAL

Anna Wardecka

Is war gendered?

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dward Said, a Palestinian-American literary scholar, based his theory of post-colonialism on the conviction, that the image of the Middle East and Orient delivered by western explorers, writers, and political scientists were in fact bogus. According to Said, these images have been deliberately fabricated to suit a particular discourse – juxtaposing civilized West with the primitive “other”. In his opus magnum, Orientalism, he expresses a belief that such a narrative has been formed in order to justify military campaigns and the atrocities that followed them. This rhetoric seems startlingly similar to gender and racially biased Afghan policy of George W. Bush.

It has been almost 20 years since the Afghan Invasion. The burden of responsibility for the declaration of war on terrorism and terrorists lies in the hands of the 43rd president of the United States. His foreign policy was justified primarily by the defense of human rights and liberal values in the world, which were supposedly threatened by religious and international terrorism. However noble it may have seemed, the United States had once again claimed the right of being the world's bodyguard.

This was the starting point for a discourse in which the United States act not only in their own name but aspire to represent the liberal civilization of the West as a whole.

17th November 2001 witnessed Laura Bush’s radio address to the nation. She was the first presidential spouse to deliver one completely on her own. Needless to say how historic of an event that was. To actively participate in the political discourse meant abandoning the impartial role of the first lady. “The fight against terrorism is also a fight for the rights and dignity of women” – she concluded. Such a sudden interest in the plight of the Afghan women, morally legitimizing the military intervention, may be considered a modern reflection of past imperialist actions. The narrative of “average third-world women oppressed with her own cultural heritage” has been illustrated with numerous examples in the past, such as child marriage and sati (a practice of self-immolation of the widow on her husband's funeral pyre). This time is was symbolized by a veil on the head.

The common perception of the veil as a representation of male

dominance has been frequently challenged. The burqa has been considered a rather modern and liberating notion, allowing women to leave their sacred home sphere while still following the basic principles of Islam. And yet, with the Operation Enduring Freedom, Bush's administration began to set a new frontier of discourse about women and their rights.

At that time, Afghan women were portrayed as silent, passive victims of the Taliban regime, with the mandatory coverage as a signifier of their oppression. Contemporary feminist critics point out that the same rules of gender logic have been applied to American women – they are to play the so-called “damsel-in-distress”. Although pictured as beneficiaries of a liberal political and social system, exercising their right to work and education, they are still to be presented as in need of the protection of American men.

Ironic, isn't it? Given how accustomed we've grown to the situation, it’s just begging to notice how a deliberately constructed discourse can shift our perception for good.

POLITICAL • 15

16 • REVIEW

Matra Stankiewicz

Wokeness just for show

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ative Son, directed by a conceptual artist Rashid Johnson, is a modern revamp of the classic 1940 novel by Richard Wright.

The movie premiered at last year’s Sundance Film Festival. The director made a few adjustments to update the story of Bigger, though the overall theme of racism is the ever-present point at issue in America. Ashton Sanders gives a compelling performance as Bigger Thomas in his next lead after the breakthrough role in the Oscar-winning Moonlight.

Margaret Qualley and Nick Robinson as Mary, Bigger’s victim, and Jan, her activist boyfriend are just as persuasive.

Wright’s novel was critically acclaimed but also harshly criticized, especially by James Baldwin.

In his essay Everybody’s Protest Novel, he claimed that Bigger Thomas is a stereotypical black character. The movie tries to address this accusation.

What Bigger says is that he is not interested in playing the stereotypical black role. Referring to stereotypes and playing with them is a way to refute Baldwin’s objections.

Not only do the black and white characters perpetuate stereotypes about each other; it is also black people who perceive themselves through such clichés. Once Bigger starts working for a white, Mr. Dalton, he becomes not-black-enough for his friends.

He wants to live on his own terms. However, after the murder, he realizes his guilt has been hanging over him since the day he was born and that there is no way to escape his fate.

The deliberate pace and moody aesthetics of the movie create a peculiar atmosphere. An intertextual layer appears when the main character reads Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man. He quotes W.E.B. Du Bois on double consciousness – looking at yourself through the eyes of others, or, more precisely, through the eyes of white people. This addition of important African-American texts makes Bigger a more selfaware character.

One of the most telling scenes is the one where Bigger, Mary, and Jan eat together. The scene shows that although Mary and Jan say that they want to be friends with Bigger, they don’t actually treat him like an equal. It’s not at all a pleasure for

Bigger to eat in a bar in his neighborhood with white people treating him not like a full-fledged human being, but some kind of exotic object. Mary and Jan’s “wokeness” is just for show, as they seem to enjoy their white privileges.

A lot of symbols, which could easily be lost while transferring the plot into a different medium, were actually preserved. As in the novel, the movie starts with a catching of a rat: a scene that showcases Bigger’s fate. This scene shows that Bigger’s life was determined to be what it has become because of the oppression inflicted by the white society. Perhaps that’s why, unlike in the book, it is the first part of the movie that is called Fate, and not the last one.

The contrast between being blind to and seeing racial tensions was boldly presented. A new element was added to that pivotal contrast. Namely, in the movie Bigger wears glasses. He says he wears them to see more clearly. However, he takes them off after the murder. Does it mean that he previously had hoped to change his life, but now he knows what his fate is going to be?

The ending of the movie is different from the one in the novel. At the same time, the dramatic value is well-preserved. This change has made the movie even more up-to-date. In the last scene, Bigger tries to hide from the police in an old, dilapidated building. When the police call him up, they think Bigger wants to reach for his gun. One of the police officers shoots him. It reminds many current situations in the US when the police officers shoot African Americans just because they assumed a black man was armed. This change in the ending shows racial tensions in today’s America in an even more powerful way than the original. When the novel was written, the main character had a trial and was rightfully convicted; nowadays black people can’t even have that.

The director did an interesting maneuver: he changed the naming of the parts and ended the movie with the one ambiguously titled “Flight”.

The very last shot shows Bigger looking through a hole in the roof and seeing a blue sky. That brings to mind his dream of being a pilot – to fly and to finally be free.

DIRECTORIAL TIDBITS • 17 17

…two in the bush Surprisingly, there is not a single artist who has won an Oscar in an acting category and another one in the Best Directing category. In fact, in the history of Oscar ceremonies (92 so far), only five people have won an Oscar in an acting category as well as any non-acting category (Barbra Streisand, Michael Douglas, Emma Thompson, George Clooney, and most recently – Brad Pitt).

18 • REVIEW

Weronika Peek

Understanding the Nazis

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oland has been endlessly losing World War II ever since 1945. Year by year, film by film, the event that was once so “ours” becomes so much “theirs”. The cinema describing World War II is pensive, uncompromisingly serious, at times brutal, but most of all – overbearing. Every young Pole needs to know that they come from the lost nation. They are equipped with all the knowledge of Westerplatte, German death camps, the “cursed soldiers”, and many others. They carry on their burden, growing up in a country so acutely stigmatised by war, until one day their memory starts to fade.

They remember, of course, for how could they possibly forget? This is the moment, however, when they realise that the burden on their shoulders is imaginary. These worlds don’t exist. Not anymore.

Not here and not now. No soldier will ever knock on their door, and no Gestapo will pursue them. The images of all the atrocities become blurry, and desensitization follows. So is there any way to make this kind of narratives more engaging and less overwhelming? It seems like we have finally found one.

Enter: Jojo Rabbit.

Though the story arc may sound familiar, one of its elements undoubtedly stands out – and it didn’t take long for the general public to criticise the idea.

The controversial premise of the new Taika Waititi’s film has been known for quite some time. It follows the story of a young German boy, Jojo, who dreams with all his might of becoming a Nazi. Unfortunately, Jojo’s loyalty is put to the test when he meets Elsa. The young Jewish girl hides in his attic, and

REVIEW • 19

the boy’s mum helps her survive the war. But here's the twist – throughout the film Jojo is accompanied by a silly imaginary friend – Adolf Hitler himself.

The ‘Hitler tease’ became even racier when it was announced that Adolf would be played by no one else but Taika Waititi himself. Casting a Maori-Jew as the most anti-Jewish character in a film described as “an anti-hate satire” seemed like an irredeemable pastiche. Nonetheless, once the project came out, it gathered fairly mixed reviews. Overall, Jojo managed to hit the sweet spot between a light-hearted comedy and a war-drama. It pokes fun at Nazi stereotypes, its humour constantly balancing on the verge of parody, though never crossing the line.

Several reviewers pointed out certain problems with the representation of Nazi Germany. As Nick Schager of the Esquire put it: “Despite its nominal message about turning hate into love, Jojo Rabbit is a work that normalizes Nazis, and thus Nazism, and thus intolerance in general, by alternately saying that it either doesn’t exist, or is cute and amusing and powerless (…)”.

This is only partially true. Indeed, the film is led by the lovable German townsfolk characters, who help Jojo on his way, and yes, the same people somehow contribute to the inner workings of the Nazi system. But maybe that is the point. People all over the world go on with their lives, blissfully unaware of the tragedies happening just a block away. How can we judge them? Nazis should be normalised because after all they were normal people.

Consequently, Nazism in Jojo is not shown as a sinister force, magically influencing people. The real, historical Hitler appears briefly, creeping from posters and leaflets. The whole political system is constructed around and run by the ordinary, background characters. It only takes a glance to see that deep down they disagree with how it works.

Nevertheless, they continue to fight and die for their country, even if that goes against their beliefs. The film depicts intolerance in an unconventional way.

It is no longer a tool used to manipulate the masses, but the by-product of going with the flow of current politics. Jojo doesn’t long to be a Nazi because he truly hates Jews. In fact, he doesn’t even know how they look like. What seems so flabbergasting to him are the powerful soldiers, awesome uniforms and tanks. Above all – the display of power.

It is not difficult to translate the reality of Jojo into modern terms. The public discourse becomes polarized, neo-Nazi groups are on the rise. Perhaps what we need in such a moment is exactly this. No more haunting postcards of buried bodies. No more ghastly silhouettes of ancestors we haven’t met. We cannot escape the horrid past. What we can do, though, is stray away from its mistakes.

20 • DIRECTORIAL TIDBITS

Can the real director please stand up?

If you ever happen to act in a theatre or on a movie set, you’ll quickly realize that there’s rarely a single “director” to listen to. Of course, the main voice goes to the artistic director, but there’s often a whole bunch of other executives who add their input to the production: technical director, production manager, assistant director, stunt coordinator, music director, dance coordinator, sound artist, and so on…. Now, who do I talk to about to about getting extra tickets for my mum?

UNPOPULAR OPINION

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Helena Żegnałek

A Clockwork orange is unlikable – and that is why you should watch it

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didn’t like Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange for one simple reason: it made me incredibly uneasy. I watched it in the comfort of my house, covering myself with a blanket, and drinking hot tea, and yet I was deeply disturbed. Nonetheless, I would recommend this movie to anyone who hasn’t seen it.

Based on Anthony Burgess’s novel of the same title, the movie is set in a dystopian reality and showcases a world of violence and injustice. The main character, Alex, is a young leader of a gang that indulges in theft, rape, and so-called “ultra-violence”. What’s so disturbing about this character is how much he enjoys causing pain to others. He doesn’t try to conceal it, you may even notice he takes great pride in it. Even though his character should be completely unappealing, I found myself rooting for Alex. And I didn’t like it.

The movie touches on important topics. It criticizes the inability of the prison system to resocialize convicts and discusses the idea of morality. One of the questions put forward is this: does being fit to live in a society make you a good person, especially if the choice of doing wrong is taken away from you?

The movie also examines the hardships released prisoners experience while getting accustomed to life outside the prison bars. After serving the years away from society, many people don’t know how to return to a normal life. Many have nowhere to go. In the movie, a released convict comes back to the real world and can't find a place he would fit in. His past relationships are long gone, and a chance of creating new ones with his criminal badge is close to zero.

In the beginning, the scenography and visuals in

the movie look ridiculous. Later on, when you got used to them, they really add to the experience.

The clean and futuristic world contrasts strongly with the violence and primal nature of its characters. No ominous sound effects are present during most of the gruesome scenes of sexual abuse or battering, and the emotional judgment is entirely up to a viewer.

A Clockwork Orange is filled with political, moral, and societal critique. It’s hard to find something that this movie doesn’t find fault with (and that’s the only reason I would reprehend it for). The infamous Ludovico Technique presented in the movie is a satire on behaviorism and the assumption that you can be trained to respond to stimuli in a specific way. There’s a parallel to the violence in the police forces. The politicians don’t mind the actual problems of people; their only concern is how to make themselves look good while bringing down the opposition at the same time. It becomes quite confusing at the end – I wasn’t sure which problem is the most important and should be solved first.

Besides shoving all of the world’s problems in your face, the movie does an amazing job of making people think. It creates a world so similar to ours that it’s impossible to stay indifferent to the dangers it presents. It makes you wonder if you are indeed a good person – and maybe, like me, you won’t like it for that reason.

22 • FEUILLETON

Vee Em

A small vernal talk

T

he founding convention of Wiosna (EN. Spring, or Lencten, if you’re that grandiloquent and grandiloquent enough to know the word “grandiloquent”) took place in February 2019 in Warsaw. The weather condition in February 2020 seems to be a bit kooky. One could argue that the very existence of a left-wing party in Poland, let alone giving it such a name, can lead to God’s holy wrath. Given how jocular our Lord can be, the same “one” could go even further, claiming that both Robert Biedroń and his political party have influenced Polish weather and moved it in a direction that neither he nor his political supporters would aim at. Having an early spring in February would be the expression of God’s playful wrath. That “one” would be wrong, you might say. Perhaps you’re right.

But while seeking reasons for our current weather, one can drift towards such insane theories, that it is better to get over with them as soon as possible.

And I haven’t even got to the part of this theory where my slightly drugged brain cells are playing with Biedroń-Biedronka-biedronki word family.

The truth is, there are tons of articles on how screwed we are with the climate right now. But there are not enough reviews written these days. It is impossible to write a climate review. However, the review of the weather – a specific place and particular time – seems to be doable.

Not to spoil too much information regarding the weather – after all, it is not a forecast – February in Warsaw reminds me of the time I was sent to County Wicklow in Ireland to write a piece on Glendalough goosanders (sort of ducky-kindabird, if you’re not “grandiloquent” enough). Other journalists that went with me also weren’t Irish. Yet, all of us faced unimaginable weather, weather to discuss. There is no room for small talk when, suddenly, the wind blows for five seconds and leaves you feeling like you’ve been hit by a bus, the salty breeze makes you want to drink a gallon of wat.

And there is coldness beyond comprehension while the sun is shining so strong, that you have to wear two pairs of Ray-Ban’s. Of course, let’s not forget that in such favourable conditions, you are still trying to spot a Glendalough goosander. But at least for the people who live there, it was natural. We were just not used to it!

Finally having a topic to elaborate on, the small talk became the general talk, the general talk

became the big talk, and soon enough we needed to find other things than weather to discuss with people we didn’t know, in order to remain polite, since casual politeness is the foundation of international journalists’ co-operation. Within a week we ran out of topics to small talk about. We started having these long and meaningful discussions. They led to true friendships between people of the same minds, real connections beyond the understanding of words, passionate romances, no matter the sex or age. None of us finished their pieces on Glendalough goosander. Without the small talk in the workplace, no proper work was done.

As a society with only a 30-year-old history of capitalism, Poles are only now discovering the invention of small talk. But can they already handle not having it? Can they face a line to a coffee machine along distant co-workers with the subject of the weather that has become actually interesting? What are they going to replace the topic of the weather with? Politics? Not small enough. Art? These days you can hardly find a piece of it that has not been moistened with certain political opinions.

But to be honest – so is it with the weather! One can determine the side you’re on simply by your choice of either talking or not talking about how the weather is getting weirder and weirder. Perhaps the coffee might seem like a neutral topic during a coffee break, but to talk about coffee while making coffee seems like the worst dirty talk possible. Or maybe it is just the time to have a proper discussion about the weather, as it ceases to remain dull. Not the hippie-Glendalough-police-raided-orgies kind of discussion but a proper talk about something interesting, perhaps crucial for future generations.

Things tend to rhyme, and in the modern world, things seem to do nothing else but rhyme. We are running out of every possible reference. Still, we cannot see the thick lines between our actions and the consequences they have on the weather, environment, ourselves, and every other thing.

But wait, that was meant to be a review (and it seems more like a piece that someone who got banned from Greta Thunberg’s public speakings for giving absurd political hypotheses and telling weird stories would say, and thus, get immediately banned more). I am running out of my word limit.

The review: yeah, weather, what the f*ck!?

DIRECTORIAL TIDBITS • 23

The art of the cameo Before there was Stan Lee, we had another director who made a habit of appearing in his own movies. Alfred Hitchcock perfected the art of the cameo, making blink-and-you’ll-mis-them appearances in 39 of his own films. He did a pretty good job of hiding his rather large self.

24 • RECOMENDATIONS

Stay cultured at home

Throughout the last weeks, many institutions have been their resources for free for all of us who are staying at home and crave artistic or academic experience. Here are some of our recommendations including the best cultural and educational institutions' offers.

CHEF’S SPECIAL The Social Distancing Festival is an online artist’s community made to celebrate and showcase the work of the many artists around the world who have been affected by the need for social distancing.

AN OPERA A DAY The Metropolitan Opera is streaming a free series of encore Live in HD presentations on its website for the duration of its closure. Starting March 16, a different show from the past 14 years will be streamed nightly at 7:30 p.m. and remain available on its homepage for 23 hours THANK YOU FOR THE MUSIC Berliner Philharmoniker allows you now to log on to the Digital Concert Hall and use it free of charge for 30 days. There are over 600 orchestral concerts from the Berliner Philharmoniker in the Hall from more than ten years.

BroadwayHD is offering a seven-day free trial.

That means you can watch performances from Broadway, the West End, and other elite venues around the world to your heart's content from your living room. Shows on offer include classics like Cats, The King and I and The Sound of Music.

THE SHOW MUST GO ON The Actors Fund, the national human services organization for everyone in performing arts and entertainment, announced that SiriusXM

Broadway host Seth Rudetsky and his husband, producer James Wesley, will produce daily online mini-shows, entitled “Stars In The House”.

New shows will be produced DAILY at the traditional theater times of 2 and 8 pm ET to be watched on YouTube.

Watch Marquee TV free for 30 days and see acclaimed productions from The Royal Opera House, The Bolshoi, Teatro Real, Royal Shakespeare Company, Opera Zurich and more.

BRING THE OUTSIDE INSIDE Google Earth and Google Arts & Culture have made virtual tours of at least 32 national parks.

Nature enthusiasts can bring the outdoors in with these realistic, digital looks at the Grand Canyon, Yosemite, Yellowstone, and other beloved national parks.

TÊTE-À-TÊTE WITH MONA LISA Google’s Arts & Culture has partnered with 1,200 leading museums and archives to show their exhibits online and offer virtual tours. Among the big names included on the platform are New York’s MoMA, the Guggenheim, the Musee D’Orsay in Paris, the Tate Modern, the British Museum in London, and the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. Some museums also have their own virtual tours, including the Louvre in Paris, the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, the Vatican Museum in Rome, and the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in Washington DC. KNOWLEDGE IS POWER Ivy League schools now offer free online courses across multiple online course platforms. So far, they’ve created over 500 courses in (among others) Business, Computer Science, Health and Medicine, Education and Teaching, Personal Development and many more.