TN2 March 19/20

2019/20 ISSUE FOUR MARCH/ APRIL TN2MAGAZINE.IE

ART TELEVISION SEX FILM LITERATURE FOOD THEATRE FASHION GAMES MUSIC

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EDITOR Sam Hayes

editor@tn2magazine.ie

DEPUTY EDITORS Caroline O’Connor Amyrose Forder deputy@tn2magazine.ie ART | art@tn2magazine.ie Libby Phillips FASHION | fashion@tn2magazine.ie Bukola Veronica Bolarinwa, Gelsey Beavers-Damron FILM | film@tn2magazine.ie Connor Howlett, Graham Kelly FOOD & DRINK | food@tn2magazine.ie Ursula Dale, Sam Hayes GAMES & TECH | games@tn2magazine.ie Sean Clerkin LITERATURE | literature@tn2magazine.ie Shane Murphy MUSIC | editor@tn2magazine.ie Naoise Osborne, Sophia McDonald SEX & SEXUALITY | sex@tn2magazine.ie Chloe Mant TELEVISION | television@tn2magazine.ie Ciara Murphy, Gillian Doyle THEATRE | theatre@tn2magazine.ie Larissa Brigatti ILLUSTRATIONS | illustrations@tn2magazine.ie Ren O’Hare PHOTOGRAPHER | photo@tn2magazine.ie Cait Murphy COPYEDITING | copy@tn2magazine.ie Amyrose Forder, Sam Hayes, Caroline O’Connor SOCIAL MEDIA | promotions@tn2magazine.ie Ursula Dale BUSINESS MANAGER | business@tn2magazine.ie Ann Scanlon

Editorial

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Female Representations in Irish Art Institutions

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Art at Home : New grange

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The 70’s Are Back - and We Ain’t Complaining

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Cut From a Different Cloth

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Elitism and Complacency

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Berlinale in Review

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A Student Guide to Film Festivals

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That’s The Tee

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Stay Grounded

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Action as Character

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Simple Joys of Slice of Life Games

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Dreams Spotlight

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This Year, Read Shakespeare

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Four Contemporary Classics to Outlast Our Lifetime

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Give Them What They Want

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An Interview with EDEN

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The Real Horror of Stephen King’s IT

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The Portrayal of Female Friednships on TV

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The Disguised Archetype

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What It’s Like to Meet Your Boyfriend on Tinder

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The Exploitation of Power Dynamics

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LAYOUT BY: Ursula Dale, Sam Hayes, Caroline O’Connor and Libby Phillips COVER ART BY: Sam Hayes TN2 is funded partly by Trinity Publications, and claims no special rights or privileges. All serious complaints may be directed towards chair@trinitypublications.ie or Chair, Trinity Publications, House 6, Trinity College, Dublin 2. Appeals may be directed to the Press Council of Ireland.

Get involved with Trinity Publications through social media, or secretary@trinitypublications.ie.

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EST. 1998

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Letter from the editor EDITOR Sam Hayes

editor@tn2magazine.ie

Well another year has come to an end and though I write to you uncerimoniously amidst a pandemic, I hope this issue brings you some joy. I hope all are safe and sound. With this being my last address as Editor in Chief I would like to thank all of our readers for their compliments, all of our writers for producing fun and thought provoking content, and most of all to our sta who have made it all happen. This year we have strived to inform and entertain, something I could not have done with out a group of pasionate individuals. This has been one of the most enjoyable creative endevours I have undertaken and I hope they feel the same.

Sincerely,

Sam :)

www.tn2magazine.ie 5

FEMALE REPRESENTATION IN IRISH ART INSTITUTIONS WORDS BY Libby Phillips

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Guerrilla Girls, Let’s Toast Irish Art, Lads (Pssst: Not So Fast, Lasses), 2010 Purchase, with funds from the Print Committee © Guerrilla Girls

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‘The Finkbeiner Test’, developed by journalists Christie Aschwanden and Ann Finkbeiner, is a seven-part checklist used to avoid superfluous gender discussion in academic articles. In reflecting upon using the test in her writing, Finkbeiner noted: “The fact that she’s the first woman to do that [win a particular award] says a lot more about the prize-giving committee than it does about her.” This quote came to mind immediately when I came across a piece from the Whitney Museum of American Art archive online, Let’s Toast Irish Art, Lads (Pssst: Not So Fast, Lasses) from the Guerrilla Girls Portfolio. The piece, a print done in 2010, pointed out how male-dominated the Irish art scene was at the time.

The Guerrilla Girls, an anonymous, anarchist, feminist art collective founded in 1985, is still active today. Their mission is to call attention to gender imbalances in all spheres of society through performance and visual media campaigns. In their piece on Irish institutions, they cover museums, galleries, art schools and awards.

A decade ago, each of these were male dominated. For example, the collection of the National Gallery of Ireland (NGI) was 95% men and the solo exhibitions in the Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA) were made up of 86% men in 2009. I reached out to some of these places to inquire as to whether female representation has increased in the last ten years, either by conscious efforts or unconsciously, and to find out if there were any intentions to provide recognition for women in Irish art.

NGI stated it recognizes the gender imbalance in their collection and “is committed to addressing this imbalance.” This effort has led to the acquisition of 47 works by women since 2017, with an additional 79 by men for a total of 126 new works. Some of these women include Dorothy Cross, Mary Swanzy and Amelia Stein. NGI noted the following exhibitions either focused on a female artist or “had a large female representation”: • • • • • •

Margaret Clarke: An Independent Spirit (13 May – 20 August 2017) Käthe Kollwitz: Life, Death and War (6 September - 10 December 2017) In[Visible]: Irish Women Artists from the Archives (19 July 2018 – 2 March 2019) Markievicz: Portraits & Propaganda (27 October 2018 - 2 March 2019) Making their Mark: Irish Painter-Etchers & the Etching Revival (2 March - 30 June 2019) Shaping Ireland: Landscapes in Irish Art (20 April - 7 July 2019)

The gallery has obviously made steps to represent women more prominently in their collection. Their upcoming exhibition, Drawn from Nature: Irish Botanical Art, in which female artists created 64% of the works, opened on 7 March.

Lynn Stringer, Meadowsweet, 2018 Watercolour Private Collection. © Lynn Stringer

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IMMA has made a more conscious effort to rectify the lack of women in their space. Last year, their solo exhibitions featured Mary Swanzy, Helen Cammock, Doris Salcedo, Janet Mularney, and Kim Gorden. Their upcoming solo exhibitions in 2020 include five female and two male artists. Moreover, IMMA is creating a discussion around art, gender, and diversity: they hosted feminist writer Sara Ahmed for a lecture “on the role queer methodologies play in disrupting the normative use of our public institutions.”

The museum using their resources to confront gender while simultaneously facilitating exhibitions for women is both an immense growth from their state in 2009 and a model which other institutions should bear in mind.

The Guerrilla Girls piece implicated the Hugh Lane Gallery in the underrepresentation of women, as well. At the time the work was created, their collection was 90% men.

Representatives of the museum at this time were eager to assist with this article, but unfortunately no gendered record of acquisitions exists. However, in regards to the gender ratio, they “assume it hasn’t changed much.” This does align with a statement by the NGI, which asserted that gender discrepancies exist in “all historic collections.” There are in this statement a number of questions, few of which I am able to answer today. Is this imbalance a consequence of there simply being fewer historic female artists? Was their work lost to time or destroyed because it was not valued? Did women make art in nontraditional spaces, thus causing it to be disregarded? These are all questions of history and of how historic narratives are presented through visual mediums such as art.

Modern galleries and museums would do well to consider the implications of their collections in what they say about the capabilities of women past and present.

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Jane Stark Heliamphora heterodoxa, sun pitcher, 2015 Watercolour Private Collection. © Jane Stark

Women have always made art worthy of acclaim. When the Guerrilla Girls drew attention to the problem with gender disparity in Irish Art institutions, they called upon those spaces to fix things. In some cases, that can mean honoring women posthumously. Valuing contemporary artists, though, is of vital importance: the best way to change the status of female artists is to allow their careers to flourish in the present.

You can support female artists at NGI by attending the Drawn from Nature: Irish Botanical Art from 7 March to 21 June 2020. Also this year, IMMA will present solo exhibitions from Paula Rego, Chantal Joffe, Bharti Kher, Eva Rothschild and Anjalika Sagar, one of the Otolith Group. This does not include the female artists in their upcoming group exhibitions, Desire and Ghosts from the Recent Past. The museum will also be predominantly showing women through their IMMA Archive: 1990s exhibition.

Art At Home: Newgrange WORDS BY Chloe Mant Newgrange is a prehistoric passage tomb located in Meath. If you’re Irish you’ll probably recognise it from two different places— the influx of media that it attracts during the Winter Solstice and the leaving cert art curriculum.

When I was younger, Newgrange was a lot less professional than it is now. There wasn’t a visitor centre and it was far less maintained. However, with a bit of investment and interest in protecting the cultural heritage sites, it is now being given the treatment it deserves.

Newgrange was built roughly around 3200BC. It predates both the Egyptian pyramids and Stonehenge and is believed to have some religious significance to the pagan people that constructed it. It consists of a circular mound with a cross shaped passage on the inside. The standing stones which encircle it are believed to have been added at a later date than the initial time of building.

Around Newgrange there are also ‘kerbstones’— large slabs of stone. Many of these feature some of Ireland’s most important parts of Neolithic art.

Kerbstone 1 This is one that will definitely be remembered by those who studied leaving certificate art.

Kerbstone one, or the entrance stone as it is more commonly known, features motifs of triple spirals, spirals and lozenges. While these designs appear simplistic, they are impressive for the tools of the time.

Kerbstone 52 This kerbstone is located at the back of the mound and is one of the more heavily decorated stones at Newgrange. There is a natural groove in the slab and the artist has designed the stone with lozenges and spirals on the left side and oblong shapes with incisions on the right.

Obviously, Newgrange’s most notable function is its roof box that allows in light that illuminates the passage on the Winter Solstice. The much anticipated event is difficult to get tickets for and I’ve never attended, but it is supposed to be spectacular (weather-dependent, of course).

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The 1970s are back - and we ain’t complaining The 1970s is back in fashion again.

If there’s one thing we could take from Doja Cat’s ‘Say So’ music video, it would be that 70s fashion is back. Personally, I’m a huge fan of 70s fashion. The 70s was a decade full of discos, revolutions and designers today are embracing the return of the 70s. We can thank the 70s for creating trends like velvet, corduroy, midi skirts, the wrap dress and more. When we go to the high street and see all the styles that are currently trending, we can’t deny the 70s influence. So, if you would like to take some inspiration from the 70s and add it to your wardrobe, these are some styles that you can incorporate to your outfits to rock those 70s vibes.

Tonal Dressing They had tonal looks back in the 70s and this is a trend we still love today. In the 70s, wearing the same colour top, bottom and jacket was a look of sophistication and it is a look we still care for today. Tonal dressing is all about wearing different shades and hues of the same colour; the key to making it work is to layer all your items in a way that looks chic and edgy.

The Satin Slip Dress In the 70s, the definition of glamour, sophistication and elegance was a satin slip dress and today, we are emulating that style and incorporating it into our wardrobes. A satin slip dress with a pair of trainers layered over a t-shirt makes a casual day look, while a satin slip dress with a pair of heels and a thick waist belt can easily make you the belle of the ball.

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Denim Dresses Everyone back in the 70s had some sort of denim dress in their wardrobes and if you walk into any store today, you’ll probably see racks on racks of denim dresses and tbh, we aren’t complaining. From ripped denim dresses to midi denim dresses, there’s a denim dress out there for you. This is a 70s trend that you can easily incorporate into your wardrobe today!

Platform Shoes Platform shoes were an iconic look for the 70s that you didn’t just find in the discos. Today, we have platform sneakers, platform boots, platform wedges and even platform sandals that all draw inspiration from 1970s fashion.

Bell Bottoms and bell sleeves I’m pretty sure that any shop you walk into, will bombard you with bell bottoms and bell sleeves. This trend doesn’t need any introduction and, with regards to the rise of bell bottom jeans in particular, I don’t think this trend is going anywhere anytime soon.

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There’s a reason why the 1970s is considered one of the most fashionable decades. During the 1970s, fashion got bolder and more colourful. Fashion became more about the individual and according to a Vogue article from the early 70s, “There are no rules to the fashion game now” The 1970s also saw the rise of supermodels like Iman, Janice Dickinson and Beverly Johnson - even Cher had her moment in the 70s. So today, when you think of velvet, flares, over-the-knee boots and even midi skirts, you have the 70s to thank. The 1970s was also another historical fashion decade because it was during this decade where mass-production and trend-driven fashion and style became more available. The 70s also saw an increase in the feminst movement and a drive towards equality. ‘I am woman, hear me roar’ became a slogan for the 70s after the release of Helen Reddy’s Grammy Award winning song ‘I Am Woman’. So, as women started feeling freer in 70s, this freedom was not only reflected in their daily life but in their fashion choices also. Skirts got shorter, heels got higher and boots got taller. Even men weren’t shy about wearing platform heels.

The 1970s was a decade of change, acceptance and rebellion and the fact that we see trends from this decade back again today is something that we really aren’t mad about.

There are so many ways you can incorporate the 70s into your wardrobe. From the trends listed above to other trends not mentioned like overalls, peasant dresses, over the knee boots and socks, patchwork and tie front tops, there’s a variety of trends to choose from and a style that would suit every fashion-forward individual out there.

WORDS BY Bukola Veronica Bolarinwa

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Cut from a Different Cloth: Exploring the Rise and Importance of Non-Western Fashion I have a confession: I love fashion-based reality TV. Since I was young, I have watched every episode of Project Runway religiously. Something about the design process and the way different designers find wildly different inspiration within the same challenge is intoxicating to watch. It makes you feel as if you are in the workroom with them, trying to create a red carpet ball gown in an hour. However, most of these shows have a tendency to focus mainly on American designers, with maybe the rare UK designer thrown in to spice things up. However, when I learned that Netflix’s new take on the classic format Next In Fashion purposely chose to curate a cast from all over the world, how could I say no? The designers came from all over, which gave the show a more international feel and allowed for different fashion perspectives to be shown. While the show still has some of its first season kinks to work out and, in my opinion, I don’t think Tan France and Alexa Chung are the most qualified to judge a design competition of this nature, the show was, overall, an enjoyable experience. However, the most striking part of the show for me came from the designer team of Angel Chen and Minju Kim. These two designers from South Korea and China, respectively, were easily the fan favorites of this season. With their lovely spirit, innovative designs, and refusal to be anything other than 100% themselves, and, without spoiling too much, they do quite well for themselves within the show.

For me, what struck these two designers as so fascinating is how different their designs were when compared to designers from the United States or Europe.

From the fabric choices, colour, and silhouettes, their designs seemed to push against the preexisting “rules” of garment creation that many western designers use, but it worked. Something that did strike me as odd throughout the show is how the judges had to actively work to dismantle their bias for more traditional western design technique when judging these two designers in particular. Much of their critique from the show was centered on how structurally different their designs were. Alexa Chung, in particular, kept urging them to create something with more “sex appeal.” Interestingly enough, particularly in a lingerie themed challenge, it became clear that these two had a different interpretation of sexy and flattering that didn’t fit into the pre-existing western ideals. While these two did go very far in the competition, their criticism does raise questions on how we as society have created rules for fashion and how these rules tend to have a traditionally western standard in mind.

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When dissecting how we judge fashion, it is important to look at those who are deemed the pinnacles of basic fashion design. With icons like Coco Chanel, Marc Jacobs, Giorgio Armani and Christian Dior, fashion has built itself on the foundation these and many other designers have created. However, as any perusal on a list of most influential designers can tell, these people tend to come from the same areas: namely France, the United States, Italy, and the United Kingdom. While these people are all very talented and deserve their praise, it seems problematic that most of popular fashion is based on the work of predominantly white, western fashion designers. This pigeonholing of “high fashion” has - intentionally or unintentionally - left out the voices of designers and creators who don’t fit within the criteria of western audiences. From having the standard of women’s wear being fit to an “hourglass figure,” which is a traditionally western idea, to deciding rules for occasion wear and what to wear when, these ideas of have seemed to arbitrarily created to line up with western ideas of beauty.

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In recent years, with the rise of social media and the globalisation of media markets, fashion has seen a renaissance of designers wanting to break the mold of fashion. K-Pop Korean fashion has seen a viral popularity amongst western audiences. While BTS and Blackpink may be the way these trends have been spread, their growth has more to do with the market and choices that Korean fashion offers in contrast to others. Where most Western designers focus on trends and styles that aim for maturity and sex appeal, a lot of Korean style is based on loose fitting clothing, light materials and colors, and androgynous fitting. Further, Korean menswear is less binary, allowing room for what is traditionally considered feminine as well as allowing for experimentation. Due to this Korean, as well as much of Japanese and Chinese fashion, is allowed to be more fun and exciting, mixing hardware and leather with tulle and pastels, creating a visual feast for the eyes. These designs are something that can only be created from and by a particular culture and it is a shame that these designers don’t get more attention for the work they create.

Unfortunately, spreading fashion innovation from other places is even more diďŹƒcult when there isn’t an easily marketable entry way like K-Pop to help exposure. Specifically, many designers from the continent of Africa are overlooked or ignored due to lack of awareness. Similar to how culture influences many Asian designers, the past acts as a guide for many designers in Africa . South African designer Laduma Ngxokolo creates collections inspired by the Xhosa culture and uses it as a basis for his knitwear and beyond. Many designers take traditional garments, like kaftans and dashikis, and fuse them with more modern elements for a new age of fashion enthusiasm in their area. If the 2019 Academy Awards show us anything with Ruth Carter, an African American costume designer, winning an Oscar for her costume design with Black Panther, is that African fashion is due for a rise and the global appreciation it deserves.

What is so refreshing about these designs is that they are not tied to any preconceived notions of fashion.

While some more traditionalist designers may see these designs as unpolished or unrefined, they are far more than what they appear to be. In many ways, what has halted the growth of many non-western designers is the continued trend of western designers either appropriating and stealing these designs for themselves or the continued dismissal of these works as costumes. Recently the Victoria and Albert Museum highlighted the history of the kimono from Japanese culture, and how it has evolved into a modern garment that is on the rise. However, many western audiences still see such garments as costumes that should be gawked at rather than appreciated. The only way for new designers to adopt a more global is for the fashion market to make active changes in the way they analyse and value clothing. Dierence and diversity are extremely important in this world and the fashion industry has a chance to give the consumers access to new styles and designs that they may not have seen before due to their location. By doing this, it will systematically dismantle the old rules and create a new fashion industry built on a foundation of designers from all over the world, not just in a few select cities. If the popularity of Angel and Minjiu can prove anything, it is that western markets are ready for a change and hopefully these two women and many more can help usher us all into a more equally, diverse and, ultimately, stylish world.

WORDS BY Gelsey Beavers-Damron

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Elitism and Complacency: The Trouble With Hollywood Film Scores WORDS BY James McCleary

“Sound is 50% of the moviegoing experience” George Lucas

There are very few filmmaking components as well-equipped to establish a distinctive voice as the score. Blade Runner (Ridley Scott, 1982) is arguably more recognisable for Vangelis’ game-changing synthetic score than for any narrative elements, Ennio Morricone’s work on The Good, The Bad and The Ugly (Sergio Leone, 1966) established the definitive template for scoring cinematic duel sequences, and John Williams’ Star Wars (George Lucas, 1977) theme is among the most recognisable musical works in history, and yet it feels increasingly like sentiments such as Lucas’ famous line on the importance of sound, cited above, have been quoted so often in film discourse as to be glazed over rather than internalised. The importance of a unique musical presence has gradually become less desired over the years, resulting in another easy shortcut for Hollywood towards designing a truly risk-free production line for their output. In mainstream circles, composers are no longer being chosen for their compatibility with the project, rather because they have a reputation for a specific, tried-and-true style which has proven popular in their past works.

To this end, the producers on the highest levels of mainstream filmmaking have essentially narrowed the field of eligible composers to a small handful. Any upcoming blockbuster which has an epic and emotional scope will more than likely be assigned to Hans Zimmer, while a film marketed with the key buzzword of ‘fun’ will inevitably be offered to Michael Giachinno. On the other hand, any quirky Oscar contender will become putty in the hands of Wes Anderson-emulator Alexandre Desplat, with Thomas Newman picking up the slack by covering the more weighted prestige dramas.

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Consequently, this diverse range of films have all begun to sound virtually identical; I dare anyone to try and distinguish between Hans Zimmer’s work on Widows (Steve McQueen, 2018) and his work on X-Men: Dark Phoenix (Simon Kinberg, 2019). This has had a massive effect on the gradual blending of Hollywood films into one grey mass of copycat content aiming only for inoffensive reactions, an approach that is quickly becoming the standard in a post-Marvel landscape.

There are still a respectable number of unique players in the field of film scoring, however they have largely become dependent on independent projects managed by specific directors to realise their work, which rarely leads to prolific career paths. Daniel Lopatin has produced unsettlingly offbeat scores for both Good Time (Josh and Benny Safdie) and Uncut Gems (Josh and Benny Safdie, 2019), yet those remain his only two film credits to date. Similarly, Michael Abels’ memorable and thematically tuned work on Jordan Peele’s films Get Out (2017) and Us (2019) have garnered no recognition from the industry whatsoever. The opportunities offered to these experimental composers are few and far between, as the market has seemingly turned its head away from new and exciting ideas in favour of swelling violin hero beats, leaving the responsibility of giving these fresher voices the space to execute their rejected visions to lower-end, more outgoing filmmakers who cannot afford them the widespread recognition they deserve.

The Academy Awards have a part to play in this bias against modern film composers, having consistently given the majority of the nominations in the Best Film Score category to old favourites. The 2020 Academy Awards have only cemented this issue, having assigned four of the five spaces to returning composers, including the aforementioned Alexandre Desplat, John Williams and Thomas Newman, alongside Randy Newman, who appears, based on the originality of his score, to have mistaken Marriage Story (Noah Baumbach, 2019) for a particularly morose sequel to Toy Story (John Lasseter, 1995).

The only remotely interesting voice in this category was Hildur Guðnadóttir, who brought considerable depth to the arguably undeserving Joker (Todd Phillips, 2019). Her ultimate victory is a slight glimmer of hope for unconventional film composers, though it should be noted that, in stark contrast to Newman and Desplat, Guðnadóttir has booked no additional projects for the foreseeable future. The greatest achievements in this category may occasionally yield recognition, but they are evidently not enough to change the fact that the deck is stacked high against the more distinctive contenders.

There is no corner of the film industry which could be considered remotely accessible to the majority of the talented artists working today, however I believe that the practice of film scoring should absolutely be the one to pave the way for a more open-minded system to develop in the future. The scoring process is the perfect testing ground for artistic risks in high budget scenarios, precisely because the bankability question is not nearly as much of a threat in this portion of the process. Avengers: Endgame (Joe and Anthony Russo, 2019) did not earn $2.798 billion at the box office because of the high demand for Alan Silvestri’s score, rather due to its focus-tested storylines and spectacular marketing prowess. There is little to lose in lending opportunities to composers like Lopatin and Abels, who appear to have something more provocative to contribute than the recycled industry leaders. If the century-old precedent is anything to go by, the results could change the filmmaking world forever.

Belinale in Review WORDS BY Mia Sherry

With over 21,000 trade guests, 20 participating cinemas and a ‘slimmed down’ programme of only 340 films (note heavy sarcasm), it might surprise most movie-goers that the Berlinale is actually one of the most public-friendly and accessible of the ‘big three’ European Festivals (alongside Cannes and Venice), though it is perhaps the lesser known of the three. This isn’t a surprise, andFILM is not MIA even something the event tries to change; where Cannes and Venice fit their models to a more ‘international’ ( Hollywood-friendly) standard, often premiering at least one or two soon to be heavy-hitters in the Hollywood awards race, Berlin places a strong focus on the political and moral machinations within each film, often foregrounding current affairs and systematic oppression throughout their programmes. This year, the 70th, there was much to be said on poverty; with One of These Days (Bastien Gunther), Time To Hunt (Yoon Sung-Hyun) and Kids Run (Barbara Ott) all particularly foregrounding the issue and its cyclical nature.

This year was perhaps one of the most exciting Berlinale years to date; with brand-new leadership coming in the form of Carlo Chatrien and Mariette Rissenbeek, after a 19-year tenure by Dieter Kosslick. The changes they brought were not exactly dramatic, but the international jury they selected speaks for itself; with representatives from America, France, Italy and, notably Palestine.The Berlinale gives other festivals a run for their money when it comes to gender diversity and equality, with 137 of the 340 films directed by women (in comparison to Cannes’ thirteen and Venice’s shocking two).

With all that in mind, you may be wondering: but I’m not a film student, nor a filmmaker! How can I attend such a paragon of intellectual revelry? Am I cursed to be cast upon the rack of the uncultured forever more? Fear not, dear reader!

Having attended two years in a row, in truth, I could discern no real difference in my experience with student accreditation than when I went as a member of the public-- bar the money I saved on tickets. Allow me to explain:

Accreditation? Who’s She?

Accreditation is a fancy word for a “pass” to the inner-workings of the festival. Consider it a more pretentious, less expensive version of Disneyland’s ‘fast-track’ system. There are over eight ‘types’ of accreditation; press, market, professional, talent etc. Yours truly was on the student accreditation (unfortunately only open for registered film students), and paid eighty euro (gwap) for a fancy tote bag and a piece of plastic with my name and picture on it (it was a nice picture though). I kid – though it’s a hefty sum for a lowly Student of the Arts like me, it ensures a ‘free’ pass into any film. So really, once you see at least eight films – which given the jam-packed programme is more than easy – you’re getting your money’s worth.

Hoi polloi, barbaroi

So, you want to go to the Berlin Film Festival, but you can’t get accredited. Without the tote bag or the fancy lanyard, is there even any point? But of course there is! I cannot stress how much this year opened my eyes to the minute (if, non-existent) difference between student accreditation and going as a regular pleb. If anything, going publicly is easier. With accreditation, the money that you’ve spent on actually getting it means that, unless you’re absolutely terrible at managing your funds, you’re locked in to getting your tickets in person at the accredited ticket booth, which means 5 am starts (and with most evening films ending at least at midnight, this is no easy feat) to stand in a queue for three hours, and feeling the life drain out of you as each day trudges on.

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Without accreditation, you have the choice to buy online at 10 am (oh glorious sleep), though they have a nasty habit of selling out quickly, but it’s not entirely impossible if you use your T-Ball Ticket-Buying skills for good, or you can buy in person.

If you do buy in-person on the day, you’ll often get them discounted for only €6 when you flash that magic student card. While I did get to see a lot of films (I racked up about twenty), most of them were merely because I had accreditation and wanted to get my money’s worth. Trust me, I saw some (hilariously) bad apples, and if I had been clearer in what I wanted, I could have cut down those films in half and still seen what I wanted.

That’s not to say that accreditation isn’t worth it; if you want to network, or are seriously considering a career in film journalism, there’s no better way to get your foot in the door and get a firm grasp of what it entails and if, like me, you want to milk a festival for all its worth, then there’s no greater joy going up to the counter and getting seven tickets knowing it’s on the Berlinale’s dime. But if you just want to enjoy the feeling of a festival, if you want to experience films from around the world that may never be shown again, and if you want the unique and tangible feeling of being surrounded by people as passionate about cinema as you are, then don’t let going without accreditation stop you. Berlin, in many ways, is like Transition Year in Irish Secondary FILM MIA Schools: it gives back to you what you invest in it. Be it money (in my case) or sheer passion, if you go with the right attitude, you’ll have a phenomenal time regardless of how you get into the screenings.

Go forth, film lovers, and enjoy.

What to look out for from Berlinale 2020 Mogul Mowgli (Bassim Tariq) Winner of the Critic’s Prize, co-written by Tariq and Riz Ahmed, Mogul Mowgli is a refreshing drama charting Zed (Ahmed)’s identity crisis played out on a molecular level. A rapper, Zed returns home for the first time in years before his first big break, where Tariq deftly and beautifully translates the complexity of heritage and chronic illness into a cinematic language. Navigating the gift and curse of representation, Mogul Mowgli is not one to be missed and is sure to set Ahmed on the path to true indie-darling.

Shirley (Josephine Decker) An evocative and eery look at gothic-horror writer Shirley Jackson (Elisabeth Moss) as she makes her first foray into novel-writing. Starring Michael Stulhberg as her husband in what is a fantastic turn against the kind and loving father he played in Call Me By Your Name (Luca Guadagnino, 2017), the two slowly make life both a living hell and complex paradise for a young married couple (Logan Lerman and Odessa Young). What unfurls is a dark, moody and sensuous, with the strongest ensemble performance showcased at the festival.

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What to look out for from Berlinale 2020 Saudi Runaway (Susanne Regina Meures, Muna) A national geographic documentary co-directed by Susanne Regina Meures and Muna, it is one of the most emotionally intense and cinematically raw documentaries to emerge in years. Filmed entirely through her smartphone, Muna is a young woman trapped by her father, her arranged marriage and the extreme laws Saudi Arabia places on women. On the eve of her honeymoon, she decides to escape. The documentary charts both her preparation, her pitfalls, and above all, her entrapment in a profoundly vicious legal and social system weighted against women at every turn.

Haunting and moving, it is a powerhouse of storytelling and documentary filmmaking.

Dispatches from Elsewhere Jason Segel premiered two episodes of his new anthology show Dispatches From Elsewhere, also starring Sally Fields, Andre Benjamin and Richard E. Grant. Think Black Mirror meets Welcome to the Nightvale meets The Good Place. Full of whimsy, charm and humour, it’s cut through with moments of thought-provoking philosophies and beautiful affirmations of life and loneliness. It breaks conventions of classical television set-ups while also utilising some of the best cliches to their fullest extent. It will have its television premiere on March 1, and is most definitely the next thing you’ll want to binge watch.

Surge (Aneil Karia) It’s hard not to watch Surge and think of the Safdie Brothers, but Karia, coupled with the power of Ben Whishaw in the leading role, takes the conventions of the cityscape thriller to newer, more introspective heights. Joseph (Whishaw) is a lonely airport security guard in central London, who is at first painted like a modern day Arthur Fleck. However, as he catapults himself into a life of crime for forty eight hours, Whishaw gives one of the most stunning portrayals of a man slowly coming to life. If you want something that both plays with and works against the ‘clown prince of crime’ conventions, Surge does all that and more, and will still leave you out of breath.

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Student Guide to Film Festivals As Mia has already discussed, Berlin is an excellent festival to attend as a student, providing the opportunity to see many exciting films that you would not get the chance to see otherwise, and all in unique venues around the German capital city. Berlinale isn’t the only festival accessible to students, however, so here are some of the best FILM CONNOO European film festivals that offer passes or discounts for students.

Venice (September 2-12, 2020) Venice is a festival that offers the chance to get up close to the red carpet, attend big world premieres, relax on one of Lido’s beaches, sip €1 espressos and Aperol Spritzes between films, and see a wide range of both Hollywood and international-language cinema. Venice is my favourite film festival that I’ve attended so far (Brad and Timothée may have something to do with that), and it’s a perfect excuse to skip freshers’ flu with some last minute sunshine. With a €70 Early Bird fee for ‘University Students Accreditation’, you are given the same access to films and locations as the film students and industry. And, unlike Berlinale, you don’t have to queue at 5am, just before each film. Food and drink tend to be a little cheaper than Dublin, but public transport, accommodation and flights can begin to add up.

BFI London Film Festival (October 7-18, 2020) The London Film Festival is one of the smaller festivals to visit, but one of the most affordable. Students of any kind, merely stating an ‘interest’ in film or the industry are eligible to apply for ‘Future Film’ accreditation, which cost £40 in 2019. London tends to collate several of the films on the festival circuit, so I was able to catch up with the films I had missed at Venice here, such as Marriage Story (Noah Baumbach, 2019) and The Painted Bird (Václav Marhoul, 2019), as well as some hits from Toronto, like Jojo Rabbit (Taika Waititi, 2019) and Knives Out (Rian Johnson, 2019). Accommodation is so plentiful in London that, unlike Venice, you have options to choose from, and food is cheaper than in Dublin. You queue for each screening with people in the industry, so be sure to give your friend a phone call in the line and mention that great screenplay you’ve been working on….

Dublin International Film Festival (February/early March 2021) Dublin is another great, small festival that showcases many unique and international voices in cinema.

Unfortunately, Dublin hasn’t offered much financial incentive for students this year or in the past, with the student price for an accreditation-style ‘Season Ticket’ valued at €225. They are, however, improving, with a student discounted ticket available for every event, unlike previous years which only discounted a select few screenings. This year is also the first that they have run the ‘First Frame’ event, which invited film students from around the country and showcased several student short films on the largest screen at The Lighthouse in Smithfield, including one short from Trinity film students. It is clear that student engagement does matter to the festival, and this is still one of the cheaper options as there is no need to pay extra for accommodation or flights.

Cannes (May, 2021) ‘Film buffs’ aged 18-28 are eligible to apply for a pass to the first and last weekend of the Cannes Film Festival and it’s free.

Gratuit. The catch? You have to write a one-page cover letter to explain your love of film and why you would be a good candidate for the pass. The pass gives you access to all the competition films (imagine getting to see Parasite (Bong Joon Ho, 2019) in May last year and rubbing that in your friends’ faces) as well as the industry hangouts, where, again, you can make that phone call about your screenwriting magnum opus. That leaves the flights, accommodation and food to cover, but, apparently, you get free coffee in the industry areas with a pass. Just don’t spill it on your tux.

WORDS BY Connor Howlett .

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That’s the Tee: Your Dublin Guide to a Night WITHOUT ALCOHOL WORDS BY Ursula Dale

Best Student Mocktails: For some of the best student mocktails in Dublin, there’s a surprising amount of availability in places you probably already know.

The Porterhouse on Nassau Street (and the busier sister branch in Templebar, which I’ve never personally been able to find a seat in) offers delicious and surprisingly high quality mocktails for only €4.70. This is my personal favourite spot for a fancy, non-alcoholic beverage - I’d recommend the ‘Turkish Delight’, which blends rose lemonade, a dash of cranberry juice, rose syrup, a lime wheel and fresh strawberries, all over crushed ice.

Next up is Captain America’s, a well-travelled student hotspot. They offer frozen cocktails, pitchers and an array of other alcoholic treats to accompany dinner (or to be enjoyed alone), but also provide a very affordable collection of mocktails which cap - no pun intended - at €3.85 each. If you’re stopping here for a while, both the ‘Woo Woo’ and ‘Little Engineer’ are also available in pitchers for just €12.50.

Bow Lane is at the high-end of the student list, offering non-alcoholic cocktails for €6. Certainly the pricier option, it’s better suited to those enjoying a meal out or a cocktail night with friends - the relative luxuriousness of the drinks and venue means anyone can be included in cocktail festivities. Most appetising to me is the ‘Tropical Smash’, which combines passionfruit, ruby grapefruit, orange, lime, apple and lemonade.

IRELAND’S ONLY NO-ALCOHOL BAR: If you don’t mind splashing the cash for a quieter and slightly more opulent experience, the place for you is The Virgin Mary. Lauded upon opening for introducing Ireland’s first non-alcoholic bar, it offers a range of sophisticated drinks for any teetotaler, or anyone fancying a day off from the lash. Extending beyond the purview of faux cocktails, it offers an expansive range of non-alcoholic drinks. Its website explains the source of selection and that all the available “beers, wines and cocktails are 0.5% ABV (the same as a ripe banana) or below.” For fancy mocktails look no further than their blend of self-titled “interesting ingredients”, such as the ‘Caleno Spritz’ for €8.50, which mixes Caleno (a tropical, distilled no-alcohol spirit), Chamomile, Mandarin, Cardamom, Sparkling Wine and “bright fruity bubbles”.

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This is probably not the ideal locale for regular student bevving, its prices for mocktails starting at around €8 and beers ranging from €4.50 upwards. An interesting alternative to prosecco is also available - though perhaps not of interest to the average student - in the form of ‘Copenhagen Sparkling Tea’, which is fine if you’re happy forking out €35 for a bottle. Despite the price, the complete dedication to a venue not centred on alcoholic socialisation provides a much more normalised milieu for teetotalers of all ages. For any with more unconventional tastes, treats such as non-alcoholic absinthe are also on the menu.

NON-BAR LOCALES: For any teatotalers who aren’t looking for faux beverages, there are several cute spots for late night tea and coffee.

In the same vein, there’s Accents Cafe. Nestled in at the end of Stephen Street Lower, Accents is one of my favourite places to hike to for hot chocolate, which is served as hot milk with a box of chocolate drops for stirring in (to your taste). It’s open every night of the week (except Sunday, when it closes at 10pm) until 11pm, providing a cosy venue for late night coffee and chats, no alcohol required.

Also on offer is “fine tea and coffee” venue Clement and Pekoe, which sits at 50 South William Street.

Offering very tasty tea, coffee and pastries until late, this spot is perfect for coffee till 7pm on weekdays, 6.30pm on Saturdays and 6pm on Sundays.

Honourable Mention: Another sweet spot for drinks with non-abstaining friends is Coppinger Row. The bar offers three flavours of homemade lemonade to be enjoyed - elderflower, mint and raspberry.

OUTSIDE THE CITY: Finally, Nick’s Coffee and Copán, situated in the cosy boroughs of Ranelagh and Rathmines respectively.

Nick’s Coffee Company, at 22 Ranelagh, is open till 8pm every night of the week, except Sunday when it doesn’t shut for another hour! As an added bonus, the prices are student friendly.

Copán in Rathmines offers €5 mocktails and in line with its celebrity-motif menu has humourously coined a ‘Safe Sex on the Beach’. Any low-cost, low ABV drink which promotes good sexual health is a win in my eyes!

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Stay Grounded A Blind Coffee Tasting Blunder During the production of TN2 issue 4 I sat down with two friends to take a scientifically flawed test. The two tasters were Ursula Dale and Liana Parachaki. Ursula admitted to not being a coffee connoisseur by any means, meanwhile Liana is a self proclaimed coffee addict who I have been known to criticise for her explorations with instant coffee… a claim I would come to regret.

What we were interested in testing not only which coffee place was the best, but if our intuitions about coffee held while we didn’t know what we were drinking. For this blind testing we selected eight popular shops from around Trinity:

WORDS BY Sam Hayes • • • • • • • •

Starbucks Costa Coffee Angel Offbeat Café Napoli Dublin Barista School The Arts Block Lavazza Machine Tesco Gold Instant Coffee (because we had it lying around in the office)

We used Americanos to put all of the coffees on an even playing field, and with rogues gallery assembled, we began tasting:

Costa (Founded 1971): Starbucks (Founded 1971): Coming in at three euro, Starbucks was the second most expensive of the coffees and is from the most successful chain of the bunch. Operating in 78 countries as of 2019, with 31,256 locations, 67 of which are in the Republic of Ireland. The corporation grossed 24.71 Billion in terms of revenue in 2018, so is its popularity justified, or is it just marketing?

In short Starbucks did not play well with the tasters with both participants describing the coffee as burnt and watery.

Ursula: 5 Liana: 4

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Starting out in London Costa another global chain operating as a subsidiary of the Coca-Cola Corporation. With 3882 locations across 32 countries it would be an understatement to call the company successful, a fact that Liana would describe as well earned declaring it her favourite of the coffees.

In the test upon tasting it Liana exclaimed “That’s Costa!”. Both participants described it as the hottest, though it is important to remember that the Coffees were bought sequentially so while this affected the ratings it may not be true if you are picking up your daily dose of caffeine.

Ursula: 5 Liana: 8

Offbeat (Founded 2016):

Coffee Angel (Founded 2004):

Offbeat is a doughnut shop, and also the cheapest of our options and offers a student discount of 10%.

The value is also improved by the fact that not only is there a discount, but if you bring a keep cup you can get a free glazed doughnut for your trouble. The chain even sells its own beans so you know that someone likes the coffee. Its nearest locations to campus are on Westland Row and Westmorland Street.

Offbeat performed solidly with our tasters. Neither had much to comment, but both remarked that it was generally pleasant and mild.

Coffee Angel was the most expensive coming in at 3.10.

Founder Karl Purdy describes his first day working at coffee angel thusly, “On St. Patrick’s Day, 2004 I stood alone on Howth’s East Pier and served Coffeeangel’s first coffee. I served 150 cups that day and was elated. Today that number stands at well over a million cups served and continues to climb”. So, as you can see the brand styles itself as a homegrown success, and successful it has been, with its Nassau Street location becoming a frequent haunt of many of the denizens of Trinity’s Arts Block.

Coffee Angel fared poorly, with our tasters describing it as watery.

Ursula: 6 Liana: 6

Café Napoli (Founded 2001): Café Napoli is an Italian restaurant that I had been to once for dinner, but paid little heed since first year until a lecturer of mine mentioned the quality of the coffee. Intrigued, I ventured to try their americano and it has since become my favourite place to grab a coffee. The aroma alone is beautiful and a touch bitter.

This bitterness hurt it in the taste test. The tasters commented positively on the smell, but they didn’t like the bitterness.

Ursula: 6 Liana: 6

Arts Block Lavazza Machine: 1 euro coffee sounds too good to be true, but given this coffee is smaller than the others, can it contend?

Both tasters said that it wasn’t that strong and didn’t taste watery giving it solid ratings across the board.

Ursula: 7 Liana: 7

Ursula: 3 Liana: 5

Dublin Barista School (Founded 2011): Dublin Barista School runs accredited barista courses. For 499 euro you can get a barista qualification by learning things such as farm to cup theory and milk chemistry… if that’s what you’re into.

They also sell an Americano for 2.50 (with student discount) which is on the cheaper end of our scale.

The Americano we received did not go down well with the tasters. The coffee was described as strong and earthy, but also weird and watery.

Ursula: 4 Liana: 5

Tesco Gold: We had to, it was just there, for free! 200gs of this muck can be yours for only 2.49 Our Tasters described it as having a sour aftertaste.

Ursula: 5 Liana: 4

Feeling rather vindicated by these results I was interested in trying my own hand at the experiment, and this was where the problems began. For starters, after the instant tasting I had begun throwing leftovers in the instant batch, which I had completely forgotten. To add insult to injury I started to panic about looking stupid in front of my friend that I had beraated for drinking instant. So afraid that my pretentious ego would be shattered, I berated all of the coffees, aside from one. I’ll let my evaluations speak for themself, but all I can say is don’t be pretentious, it will only make you look like an idiot when you fall flat on your face. Stay grounded friends.

Starbucks 5 Costa 6 Coffee Angel 4 Offbeat 4 Napoli (this one hurts) 4 Dbs 3 Lavazza 5 Instant 7

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Action As Character How video Games Create a Compelling Fiction WORDS BY Emily Walsh The interactive and frequently player-driven nature of video games allows for unique and interesting approaches to character building in narrative terms.

Characterization is at the center of most modern storytelling, and is the engine that drives the majority of modern media. While historically, the focus of storytelling has more often been the plot, or whatever moral the story is trying to convey; there are many modern genres – such as sitcoms or slice-of-life anime – which focus almost exclusively on the characters. In these genres the characters are the hook which keeps the audience engaged and the plots are usually just excuses to see how the characters react to unusual situations. As character is such a central part of modern media, the unique ways in which video games can express character is a worthwhile topic of conversation.

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Equipment

Sometimes a character’s initial equipment will reflect their background, like a poor farmer starting with a pitchfork rather than a real weapon, or a married character will have a wedding ring in their inventory like the protagonist in Fallout 4. This can flesh out minor characters and add more depth to major characters without simply having them state facts about themselves through dialogue. This more subtle storytelling can help flesh out a game world without resorting to clunky exposition.

Skills

In addition, sometimes the game mechanics themselves can be used to express changes the characters undergo over the course of the story; how they grow and change. Alongside standard level-up or advancement mechanics, sometimes a character having a moment of personal growth or revelation can be expressed through gameplay by a new skill or ability. Sometimes an injury or illness is expressed mechanically, allowing the player to experience the pain and frustration of the player character. For example, in Red Dead Redemption 2 the main character encounters physical health issues throughout the story, reducing their HP and causing them to cough.

Speech

Finally, the interactive nature of videogames means that there is also room for the player to define the character, in addition to the author. This is most often seen in the form of dialogue options, by which the player can define aspects of the protagonist. These can be decisions the character makes, but sometimes dialogue options are used to define the characters backstory or simply their reactions to events. These sorts of varying dialogue options can be used to allow the player to aect non-player characters as well. This is most commonly done using some sort of approval mechanic, where making decisions that the supporting cast approves or disapproves of, changing how much they like and trust the player character. Some franchises, like the Dragon Age series, even allow the player to change the opinions and outlook of some supporting characters through dialogue by encouraging them to see the world in a dierent light.

While video games have some unique challenges in creating fleshed-out, believable characters; there are also some unique advantages. The blank-slate protagonist can be an implausibly passive piece of cardboard that the more interesting characters talk at, or a genuinely engaging character in their own right, acting as a window through which the player views the game world. The large quantity of information about each character that most games give to the player can be totally divorced from the narrative, or it can reinforce and foreshadow important character beats. Like most aspects of writing, what determines whether the medium of video games enhances or hampers its characters depends on the skill and craft of the creators.

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Simple Joys of Slice of Life Games

WORDS BY Niamh Muldowny

With the release of a new Animal Crossing game just around the corner, I’ve been preoccupied with slice of life games. Instead of action and adventure, slice of life games aim to capture the mundanity of everyday life. It could be that of a new farmer starting out for the first time in the countryside, a student heading off to college, or a new villager in a town inhabited by animal people. Although these are mundane actions and objectives, slice of life games bring joy and importance to them. So let’s explore some of the more popular and interesting games in this genre.

Harvest Moon is most likely the game that we have to thank for this genre.

The first installment was released in 1996 for the SNES and has been a staple of the category since then, but whether playing on the SNES or 3DS, Harvest Moon games have followed the same formula. The player arrives into a town or island and comes into possession of a farm, and from here the game cycles through the days and seasons of a year in which they plant different crops and farm animals, along with building relationships with the surrounding townspeople. In Harvest Moon nature is magical and the farmer is often bringing balance back to the surrounding area by their work. Rune Factory, a fantasy spin off series of Harvest Moon, leans into the fantastical elements of the series. Here the player can be a farmer, an adventurer protecting the town from monsters, or a combination of both.

In recent years there’s been strong yearning to return to the simpler early days of Harvest Moon. This yearning culminated in the spiritual successor Stardew Valley, developed nearly single handedly by Eric Barone who goes by ConcernedApe online. First released in 2016 on PC, this game has been ported to Mac, Linux, Xbox One, PS4, Playstation Vita, Switch and mobile. The game has been periodically updated over the last four years, adding more relationship options, a multiplayer mode, and many more quality of life improvements. But at its core it is a simple - yet refined - farming, exploration and relationship sim, calling back to the 16-bit games of the past. Each day passes in about 12 actual minutes, the rushing to complete tasks before the end of the day creates a wonderfully morish gameplay loop.

Let’s leave the farm now and explore a more life sim type of game. Animal Crossing with its five mainline games and three spin-off games has been around for nearly 19 years.

In these games, the player arrives as the new inhabitant of a small town and can spend their real time days doing whatever their heart desires. This can be fishing, catching insects, talking with your animal neighbours, decorating your home, or saving money to pay off the mortgage on your home to Tom Nook. Over the years Animal Crossing has introduced new aspects to its games, such as city living, mayoral responsibilities, and most recently an island getaway, but at its heart it is the charm of the simple routines you’ll make that will bring you back again and again to this game.

At its heart, however, the gameplay has stayed the same.

Lastly, perhaps not a very well-known game, but one I spent many hours of my childhood on is Enchanted Folk and the School of Wizardry. This DS game was part of a bigger series but was the only entry to be released outside of Japan. This game lets you create a young wizard beginning their year at magic school and let you attend classes, make friends with your fellow students and solve magical mysteries.

While it was a blatant copy of the Animal Crossing formula, the element of magic and the weekly challenges delighted me as a child. Looking back on it now, its graphics have aged dreadfully and the movement is floaty and unresponsive, but it captured my heart and my mind in living out this Hogwarts-esque fantasy.

However, this game did succeed in capturing the mundane in the magical and the 28 magical in the mundane, which is for me the joy of the slice of life game - not the big magical moments, but the simple delights found in the routine of everyday life.

Way back in 2013, at the PS4 reveal event in New York City, the software that would eventually become Dreams was unveiled for the first time. Developed

by Media Molecule, the studio behind Little Big Planet and Tearaway, it was unclear to the public what Dreams was meant to be. The studio touted it as an accessible games development platform, an animation suite and digital art gallery all rolled into one, running on PS4. In 2019, the developers ran a Beta program, and the game picked up a small but dedicated community of creators. Now the game is finally out, so we’re taking a look at it, in order to answer the question; what is Dreams, and should you buy it?

In a nutshell, Dreams is an accessible creative platform. But of course, there’s more to it than that. It follows the Little Big Planet motto of “Play, Create, Share”, except Dreams applies it to more than just user-created game levels. Dreams can be used to create entire games, 3D art, music, animations and more. Anything made in the game is uploaded to the ‘Dreamiverse’ for players around the world to use or modify in their own creations. You’ll spend most of your time either playing or creating. I had a go at both to get my bearings in the vast world of Dreams.

Playing

Dreams foregoes the succinct “story mode” and “create mode“ found in Little Big Planet, instead encouraging you to try a showcase game made by Media Molecule entirely within the creation toolkit. This game is a two-ish hour long story called Art’s Dream. It explores the struggles of a jazz musician named Art, as he tackles his crippling self-doubt, wrestles with his past and attempts to make amends with his estranged bandmates. The story plays out in the backdrop of a dream in Art’s head. In typical Media Molecule fashion, this leads to some incredibly creative scenes and mechanics. The campaign showcases how Dreams can be used to create an impactful narrative, a rhythm game, a twin stick shooter, a shoot-em-up, a racer and a platformer, all under the same banner. Undoubtedly, ‘Art’s Dream’ is the most ‘wow factor’ that Dreams has to offer.

After completing ‘Art’s Dream’, you’re encouraged to go “Dream Surfing”. This involves browsing the latest creations from the community, whether they’re games, animations or anything else. Some of these are absolutely jaw dropping. The stunning work done by the community would encourage anyone to try their hand at creating something for themselves.

Creating

I don’t mean to brag, but my Little Big Planet levels were modestly popular some twelve years ago. The simplicity of the creation tools in Little Big Planet and its sequels led me to think that the toolkit of Dreams would be equally accessible. I was unfortunately wrong. Creating anything in Dreams is relatively complicated. Thankfully, there are optional tutorials for each part of the creation toolkit, though these can still be overwhelming as there are literally dozens of hours of interactive videos to explore. You can also search the “Dreamiverse” for user-generated assets, which can mitigate some of the more complicated work. In order to create anything, you’ll need to get to grips with the motion-controls. The creation toolkit relies entirely on the motion sensor of the Dualshock 4 controller in order to move objects around in 3D space.

Alternatively, you can use a pair of PlayStation Move controllers, although both control schemes have a similarly steep learning curve. Armed with the tutorials and a litany of online forum posts, I had a crack at recreating a level I had made in Little Big Planet all those years ago. Once I had my vision in mind, it was easy to solve the problems I encountered and to create at the very least, a proof of concept.

Dream or Nightmare?

Dreams’ complicated creation mode shows that simplicity can come at the cost of versatility. However, the difficult learning curve is not steep enough to discourage a determined and creatively inclined user. Dreams has plenty to offer for lovers of art, animation, or indie games, as well as just about anyone with a creative itch. I would highly recommend it, especially for its asking price of €39.99.

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This Year, Read Shakespeare WORDS BY Shane Murphy The name and work of William Shakespeare needs no introduction, but acknowledging his status is fun, like explaining the overwhelming idea of God, almost too big to comprehend.

Being the most prolific writer of the Elizabethan Age and the single best-known playwright of the English language, it is possible that his literary corpus has done something more than just embed itself into Western culture, it has inscribed itself into the bedrock of our understanding of government and interpersonal relationships. Shakespeare is revered not just from a conscious love of his work but more deeply than that, a collective and certain awareness that he is the greatest creator of English literature the world has ever seen. And thanks to the works of translators, he can be read everywhere.

The accuracy with which Shakespeare represents human feeling and complexity of emotions is one of the most convincing explanations of his longevity. From jealousy in Othello, to lust in Twelfth Night, Shakespeare seems on one hand to document with encyclopedic thoroughness, the humane highs and lows of living, and on the other, accomplishes it with such marvelous empathy that it appears he has created them himself. He is the mechanic of human emotion, the inventor. In Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare created love in a cauldron, drawing two young souls to dramatise his idea of love perfectly; capturing the drama, pain and annihilating power of love. In the West, it almost seems there’s no understanding of love that exists without these two young protagonists. For most people they are seen to be the most authoritative and definitive representation of love. The two, Shakespeare and love, are almost as inextricably linked as Romeo and Juliette: standing alone, they seem less complete.

Shakespeare didn’t hide from the brutal ugliness or messiness of life and pain. There is no hesitancy to be seen, no filling language. Many of Shakespeare’s characters may twist and evade the truth, but the playwright himself never does. In actuality, he dives into his themes and characters completely and with total confidence. Shakespeare explores settings and dynamics deliberately, delivering characters like Hamlet and Ophelia so messy and confused that it plays as madness, as scrappy and indecipherable as life itself. With all of the skill and flawless execution of plotlines, a reader is struck by the interiority of the characters who dwell on life, who are obsessed with it. They all express a functional psychology, one that is unique and totally plausible. Yet at the same time, Hamlet, and his protagonist peers, Macbeth, King Lear and Othello are not inspiring heroes, they murder people and at times lack remorse for doing so. They cannot express sympathy in their stories but surprisingly, the audience cannot but express sympathy when reading them or watching them on stage. No characters, from the raging Tamora to slimy Shylock, play a one-tone, in a Shakespeare play, all the roles are prizes. The rare accolade of Shakespeare’s work is that it is never judgemental or virtuous, there is no singularity of thought, in any moral or religious sense. In that respect, Shakespeare as a writer is cruelty-free.

If nothing else, the stories themselves are also just fun to read.

Quick insults and lewd comments litter the pages of dialogue. In the stiff confines of ‘English literature’, where Shakespeare is institutionally protected, it is easy to forget that his plays were produced to be commercial. Shakespeare’s production company, The Lord Chamberlain’s Men, was a for-profit business, having its main venue in the relative red-light district of London in the late 16th Century - far from the glamourous setting Shakespeare is reverently performed nowadays. It was to be enjoyed by people of all interests and tastes.

Not all of Shakespeare’s plays are serious and heavy; A Midsummer Night’s Dream is about a group of teenagers in ancient Greece who ingest psychedelic drugs from fairies and get lost in the woods. As for the 16th century English used in the plays, that can easily be adjusted to. Once you lock into the metre ofthe speech and sync up to the sense of humour then understanding the play becomes something incredibly rewarding and fertile. To feel connected to a piece of art at all is a blessing, it is nonexhaustive in its ability to comfort and to teach.

Shakespeare’s plays have so much breadth and organic complexities to them, like a plant that rises from the ground with thousands of internal pathways and interactions to be understood. Hearing from many who love the works of Shakespeare, they agree that the inexplicable beauty of his work preserves it so well, and to take the final words of the Tempest, to not see this would “project fails which was to please.” This is Shakespeare and this is why he should continue to be read.

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Four Contemporary Classics to Outlast our Lifetime Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin Giovanni’s Room is the oldest novel on this list, but it feels just as modern as its peers. It is one of Baldwin’s greatest novels, though mostly overshadowed by his other more famous works If Beale Street Could Talk and his Collected Essays, which include ‘The Fire Next Time’ and ‘Stranger in the Village’. Giovanni’s Room is a small book; it follows the story of a man vacationing in Paris, away from his normal life and wife in America. Totalling 159 pages, this book is slim like a dagger. Giovanni’s Room is a story less about queer love than it is about queer fear, how sufficating and hurtful it can be, this book holds it all. Baldwin’s prose is so searing that it burns away any hesitancy to approach delicate topics of intimacy and pain. It figuratively and literally strips its characters to bare flesh, exposing their vulnerability and studying it under the light. For LGBTQ+ literature, this is a totemic text and is one to be brought forward in queer studies and the queer experience.

Outline by Rachel Cusk Cusk’s 2014 novel, the first in her trilogy, fractionally changed the contemporary conception of fiction. Outline falls into the genre of autofiction, a form characterised by the slight fictionalisation of the author’s life, moulding it into a narrative with a message and optional changes of names and places. The supposed goal of the form was for the writer to distance themselves from their past life, like a Greek catharsis.

In 2014, the term ‘autofiction’ began to resurface in mainstream literary discourse, having last majorly surged in the mid-late 90s, New York. The difference now is that Cusk’s novel prescribes to the autofiction standards, replaying a titled version of her life on paper, but without the goal of soothing emotions towards life hitherto. Outline is a look back at the past, not focused on the person you were but on the places you were and what relations and systems filled that place. Cusk perfectly cuts together social realism with personal viewpoints, like Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar merged with George Eliot’s Middlemarch. In the novel Cusk’s avatar is used to craft an excellent social realism, told with clear, clean sentences.

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A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing by Eimear McBride For a novel published in 2013, McBride’s debut is a strange creature. Its form is typically modernist, told in stream of consciousness, but the subject matter is timeless, or at least, undesignated to a time. It resists strict definition, and convenient summation. It is about a girl, what she is given and what she wants for herself, and the mutual exclusivity of those things. It is a book saturated with contradictions, at times it reads as difficult as Samuel Beckett. One could say that it is a book about sex and family, but one could also argue it is not about that at all. Does the protagonist’s psychology orbit around pain, or is it dogged by pain? These are the questions. McBride sews in all of the trademarks expected in an Irish story: Catholic tyranny, sexual difficulty and enshrined shame. But its allegiance to nationalism is questionable. It is a great book, one of the greatest Irish books of the last decade, but there is nothing nice about it.

All The Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy The language of McCarthy’s seventh novel is twisting and expansive. It's a sensual experience to read All the Pretty Horses.

The writer’s focus is on everything and everyone, the candle on the windowsill and the heartbeat of the horse, but that's not the most compelling reason to read it. The speed and sincerity of the writing is touching, like an outpour of desperate expression. His novel reads a lot like the works of Salinger and Scott Fitzgerald. It is a Great American novel dealing with Great American themes. A man’s bond to the land and his bond with himself. The American need for something new and the American need for something to own.

WORDS BY Shane Murphy

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Give Them What They Want: posthumous releases and the case of Brian Wilson Boys,

Soon after Smiley Smile (1967) was released, the principal songwriter of the Beach Brian Wilson, was admitted into psychiatric care.

With his talent for original composition, Wilson held almost sole responsibility for the band's success. Ever since Wilson's resignation from live performances in 1964, however, his musical direction changed. In contrast to songs like ‘Surfin' USA’, the new songs were personal, melancholic and surreal. It just didn't seem commercially viable. This caused friction during recording sessions. The label took a different tack towards the public, presenting the band's new direction as a sign of a masterpiece that would challenge the claim of the Beatles as the kings of pop. "Brian Wilson is a genius!", a 1966 advertising tagline proclaimed. Internally, however, they were keeping a worried eye on him.

By the late 60s, Wilson's artistic vision had become utterly disconnected from the rest of contemporary pop music. Pet Sounds had been strange, but the music of Smiley Smile was out of this world. The entire project has become the stuff of legends. For the recording of the song ‘Fire’, Wilson lit a fire in the studio. On ‘Vega-tables’, it was rumoured he had Paul McCartney munch on a carrot, and have that serve as percussion. For other tracks, he insisted that the Beach Boys sing while floating in his swimming pool. The recording process was as surreal as the music it produced.

Yet despite the beautiful insanity of Smiley Smile, this wasn't the album Wilson had been aiming for. That album was to have been called ‘Smile’, and should have been the Beach Boys' magnum opus. It never came to be. Due to the divisions within the band, Wilson's deteriorating mental health and the sheer ambition of the project, it collapsed under its own weight. Losing patience with the expensive, meandering songwriting process, Capitol Records demanded that the Beach Boys fulfill their contract by providing an album, be it good or bad. Wilson was persuaded to shelve his ambitions and simply have the estranged members come back in and record what he had so far. The result was Smiley Smile: the biggest commercial failure at that point in their career.

Why was Smiley Smile such a failure? The main issue was Capitol marketing avant-garde music as if it were pop. ‘Smile’ was intended to be a concept album about childhood, with humour interspersed throughout. There were comic sketches, including one where Brian Wilson falls into a piano, getting stuck between the C and the C-sharp, until his bandmates manage to play him out. These were cut. The songs were made short to encourage radio play. These decisions lead to the album sounding rushed and shallow.

As the years passed, a cult of interest in the ‘Smile’ project became noticeable. In 2011, Capitol responded to this demand by issuing The Smile Sessions, a box set comprising five discs. Instead of presenting radio friendly compressions of what the Beach Boys had recorded, the whole sprawling project was laid out in its incomplete form. The release was a commercial and critical success, despite being composed of outtakes and unfinished material.

Together, these releases illustrate two distinct approaches to unfinished material. With the Smiley Smile approach, you try to cover up the unfinished nature of the work, and present it as if it were a completed work. Your aim is radio play and wide commercial success. Ideally, it should fit comfortably with the artist’s previous releases without arousing suspicion from uninformed fans.

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You can see this very same approach in the posthumous albums of American rapper XXXTentacion. Since his death in June 2018, two albums have been released. On both, a small amount of material is stretched out with guest features from a slew of artists including Kanye West and Lil Wayne. The list of producers is even more copious.

There is no indication on the front of these albums that there is anything unusual about them. This is intentional.

Ideally, an uninformed listener would keep buying whatever material was released under XXXTentacion’s name.

The problem with releases like these is that, as a listener, you're left in the dark about how much input the deceased artist even had in these tracks. Your sense of their personal touch is obscured under a thick layer of polish.

This approach appears to me the height of cynicism. It handles the deceased artist as if they were merely a cog in a machine to be replaced when they stop working. For artists like Michael Jackson, it’s truly amazing how many posthumous work is released under their name. They appear more productive in the grave than they were in life.

The alternative approach is exemplified by The Smile Sessions. Here, you emphasise the unfinished nature or the album. You can present different versions of a song, contrasting early takes with later ones; things you wouldn't dream of putting on a release you hoped would be a chart-topper.

The benefits of this are evident on recent Beatles releases, such as the 2018 remaster of the White Album or the 2019 remaster of Abbey Road . On the second halves of these albums are session recordings where you hear the band joking around, and experimenting with different approaches to their songs.

Over the last century, audiences have become increasingly demanding. We feel a sense of entitlement towards the media we consume. Even when a project collapses, we stand patiently by the wreckage, waiting for any remnants to be presented to us. We're insatiably predatory.

Record labels respond to public demand. The only problem is that the public doesn't know what it wants. In fact, nobody does. Public taste can change in an instant. Still, the executives at Capitol, the publicists, the other members of the Beach Boys, and Wilson himself all had their own expectations about what would be a hit. Of course, a hit song is a notoriously difficult thing to achieve. Some bands only ever have one, and then waste the rest of their career trying to emulate that success. Others, like the Beatles, Phil Spector, and the early Beach Boys seemed to have had it down to an art. The fatal flaw of the Beach Boys was that they got too concerned about what the public wanted. They were so anxious about whether their new music would alienate their listeners that they ended up boring them instead.

Like all companies, record labels are amoral. They are guided by money alone. As long as we keep accepting d ubiously moral posthumous releases, they'll keep robbing graves to provide them. We live at a time when companies can be held morally accountable for their actions. Through social media, we can damage them where it hurts. These companies are only trying to give us what we want. It's about time we have a hard look at what that is.

WORDS BY Ben Pantrey

In Conversation With:

EDEN

Our music editor, Naoise Osborne, got the chance to chat to EDEN. The Dublin-born 24-year-old has just released his second full length album, no future. In the lead up to a run of shows at Dublin’s The Olympia, we chatted touring, Dublin’s music scene and song-writing.

You’ve had a whirlwind few years, travelling and touring a lot, doing a world tour and several tours of the US. What has that been like for you? Are the shows getting bigger each time, more of a production or an event?

Yeah, it’s been a pretty wild ride. The first time I played in London was a free concert for 200 people. The second time was to, maybe, 400 or 500, and the third time was to 2400. And then, the kind of show we have been able to put on has also gotten to an amazing level. I can’t wait to play this new show we’re working on for the first time.

What has been your favourite place to play so far?

There was something really special about my first show in Dublin at The Academy Green Room. There was also a show I played in Brussels years ago at a Botanical Gardens that was pretty amazing.

Is there anywhere that’s on your bucket list to play? Anywhere you’ve dreamed of playing?

I’d really like to get to South America and Asia. I’ve done festivals in Japan and Korea, but I'd really like to do my own shows out there. Honestly, the biggest dream was to do the 3Arena and Brixton Academy; I’ve done Brixton and I don’t think I’ll ever get to the 3Arena because of the direction I’ve gone in, so I’m pretty content to be honest. I’m at a pretty great level.

What are your thoughts on the Dublin music scene? A lot of artists feel the need to go to London or the states to get their big break. But a lot of your work has been done or based here; is there something about Dublin that is conducive to or contrary to the creative process, in your experience?

When I started making music there really wasn’t much of a scene - at least that I was aware of. Fast forward to now and it’s really buzzing. I think Dublin has always been a hotbed for artists and musicians, but for this new generation of artists it’s just taken a while to establish communities and a sense of shared culture. For me back in 2014-2016 I was either looking in the wrong places or it just wasn’t really there.

Following on from the above, do you have any advice for artists in Dublin, or anywhere, trying to break into the music scene?

Keep pushing. No one can find your work if it’s not in the world, and once you start that don’t stop. Avoid the hesitancy to hoard things ‘til the ‘time is right’ or ‘til you have the right backing/support etc. If you believe in it just go, the world will follow.

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I wanted to talk to you obviously about no future and the process around that. What was the writing process like for you? You’ve been writing, mixing and releasing tracks for quite some time now, has your writing process or your approach to writing changed over time?

Yes definitely. I think once I moved from my parents house in Dublin a few years ago I really stopped being able to write songs on a piano or guitar because I have been moving so much. That’s something I really want to get back to. Aside from that I’ve really transferred a lot of the in-the-box things I was doing (synthesis etc) to hardware synths. I don’t have a massive collection or anything but I find it’s so much nicer to work with physical things and the ones I do have sound gorgeous. Kind of a similar reason to wanting to get back to playing piano and guitar more.

I kind of wanted to chat to you too about the production side of it, mixing and mastering, and your decision to keep everything in-house I suppose - a lot of artist as things get bigger, as the fan bases and the streams grow, the other sides of it get bigger too and grow but can kind of potentially lose a sense of intimacy in doing so. You don’t let any outsiders into that process - why is that?

I’ve been thinking about this a lot. I think collaboration is amazing and leads you to great places, but I always end up starting so much by myself that I don’t want to let people in. I like having control and ownership of it. But I’m really considering striking up a partnership with someone since I’m moving so much to help keep moving on the creation process. Someone I can send things to to mix etc while I’m on the road and can’t really do that side of things. But I’ve also just bought studio speakers to bring on the road so well see if that really pans out.

Were there any particular inspirations that you drew on when writing and creating this album? Experiences, or other artists you drew on?

I was listening to a lot of Negro Swan by Blood Orange and a tonne of Yung Lean and Ben Howard. The album actually ended up being quite retrospective in terms of experiences.

You’ve also had a really like, interactive relationship with fans - I remember after I think you think too much of me, scrolling through comments and people were theorising about what the 9 words were and where they appeared, then there’s the 360degree music video for ‘drugs’, the coordinates treasure hunt thing for ‘Gold’...where did this kind of interaction stem from?

I honestly just liked the intrigue that the puzzles created in the beginning, and the fans just really got on board with it all.

They go through the source code of all of our websites etc etc. It can be quite intense but it’s a blessing to have people who are that dedicated. People are still asking about those 9 words 4 years later.

Can we expect more of this with no future?

I think the no future campaign felt right being a little more straightforward. There were things like the mcmxcv.eu site that we used to tease out information etc, but no big scavenger hunt or anything. Might make a return to that going forward though.

What are you most looking forward to in 2020, and what do you want people’s main take-away to be from no future?

I am looking forward to continuing to create things. From the live show (that has really become a massive art project) to more music I’m really excited about how everything is feeling. In terms of the album, I want people to feel like things keep going, even when it feels like the end. That was something I definitely wanted to achieve musically. There’s an ‘it goes on’-ness to everything in my mind. This is all just a platform for the next thing.

You can find EDEN’s latest album on all streaming platforms.

WORDS BY Naoise Osborne 37

The Real Horror of

Stephen King’s IT is a difficult beast to adapt.

The final showdown is meant to be understood as being somewhat metaphorical, which works in the thousand-page epic that King created, but watching Bill actually bite the tongue of an eldritch alien has unsurprisingly - not made it to either the television or film adaptations of the novel. We couldn’t make it work in the 90s, and we couldn’t make it work now. This Christmas after reading the book, I watched the 1990 miniseries and both the 2017 and 2019 films, because waiting on results is more stressful than watching seven kids deal with their trauma four times over.

Seeing the story of the ‘Losers’ Club’ play out differently each time got me thinking about how it should be adapted. As much as I loved the 2017 film, it really works much better as a TV show. The difficulty of what you want to keep and what you have to change means that you really need to have the whole story planned out. This was clearly not done for the films, where the scriptwriter has Mike deface a Native American artefact, the only alternative worse than just filming the tongue scene. It is also 6 6haphazardly ‘revealed’ that when Bev looked into the ‘Deadlights’ she actually saw each of her friends and herself die as adults, crucial information she decided to keep from her friends, and also from the audience. IT simply works best on the small screen.

The first advantage that tv has over film when adapting IT is that with tv you can use the book’s format. The story of the ‘Losers’ Club’ is told in a non-linear fashion, cutting between the tweens and the adults. The 2019 film showed the problem with splitting up the adults and the kids into separate stories – the kids are the best part of it. However, you can’t tell the story in one film, so splitting the kids and the adults up makes sense. When it comes down to it, there’s not really enough in the adult’s story to put in a film. There’s the interludes where Mike gives the reader information about Derry’s backstories and how IT has corrupted the town over centuries, but that pauses the story and doesn’t really give the audience any essential information. You can include Maturin, the great turtle that created the universe and advises the Losers how to defeat IT, but even in the book finding out that the universe was created by an animal burping hurts the tension a little; it’s not worth the cost to include it. That’s why the film seems so sparse, it calls itself a meal when really it’s leftovers.

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In the first episode of the miniseries we see the kids’ whole story play out, interspersed with introductions to them as adults. This is unfortunately done terribly - we see all six phonecalls that Mike makes to the other Losers calling them home to Derry, and they all follow the same script. Worst of all, they don’t even meet in this part, which means that in the first half we know none of the kids will die because we see them as adults, diminishing the tension, and in the second half we hardly see the kids at all because their story is done. It’s truly the worst of both worlds. This is compounded by the decision to have Stanley commit suicide at the very end of part one rather than at the beginning. If the first thing we see is a man inviting his childhood friend back to town, and that man immediately kills himself, that establishes a different kind of tension. Instead of focusing on how the kids all make it out, we know that whatever they’re about to go through is literally worse than death. It also makes all of the scenes with young Stan bittersweet - even if he’s happy now, we know what happens to him later. Having this knowledge in the book provides a very different experience than that of the film or the TV show, and I’d really love to see it make it to the screen someday.

Another advantage that the TV format has over film is the length of time you can spend with the characters. There’s seven kids and six adults, and we need time to get to know each of them properly. One of the best moments in the miniseries is a scene early on in part two where, after Mike has shown Bill around town, the two pass the time before everyone meets up by messing around with Bill’s childhood bike. The scene is intercut with footage of them as children doing the same thing, and it reminds us how their happy childhood memories of this time are tinged with the threat of IT, while simultaneously investing us in the Losers as adults. Showing these interactions between a limited number of the group gives them room to breathe and establish their characters without vying for your attention among six others. While watching the film, Mike’s limited screen-time really stood out to me in contrast to the rich scenes given to us by the miniseries. The TV show then follows with a scene where the remaining adult Losers meet up to reminisce over old times before they must confront what they are really there for. In the film such tender moments are breezed past, as most of the Losers reconnecting is seen in montage form because of how much must be covered later.

I don’t want to exaggerate the quality of the existing IT mini-series. Leaving aside the out-of-date special effects and sloppy final form of IT, the dialogue leaves much to be desired. The decision to have Eddie announce to the group that he’s still a virgin when they are down in the sewers searching for IT borders on the absurd. However, these aren’t problems with the format, but rather problems with decisions made behind the scenes. The same can’t be said for the films. What deserves is a five part mini-series that focuses on the kids, only sparingly cutting back to the adults. If based on the five-part structure of the novel, there is time to do IT right. Overall, when it comes to IT, TV is King.

WORDS BY Gillian Doyle



the portrayal of female friendships on TV Growing up, I had a plethora of TV shows about female friendships at my disposal, from The Sleepover Club to H20: Just Add Water. However, most of these shows were sugary, idolized versions of how young girls interact with each other. Given that these were programmes written for children, this depiction seemed acceptable for the target audience.

As I’ve grown older, it’s been harder to find such shows aimed at women, rather than little girls, that put female friendships front and centre in all their realistic glory.

In a world still dominated by the male point of view, many ‘female-centric’ shows fall into lazy, baseless stereotypes.

This is commonly seen in reality TV, where women are consistently portrayed as back-stabbing and catty to one another. These toxic traits seem to often be tolerated, and such groups of ‘friends’ are deemed normal, despite the individuals not appearing to even like each other most of the time. This is the central problem with Lena Dunham’s controversial Girls, which despite what its title suggests, only seems to focus on the negatives that can come from such friendships.

In contrast, many male characters, who of course have their fair share of similarly dysfunctional and toxic friendships, also exhibit tight, loyal bonds with their respective ‘bros’ or ‘buds’. This perpetuates the misogynistic concept of ‘frenemies’- a word entirely reserved to describe groups of two or more women who may appear friendly, yet have an underlying and fundamental rivalry. All too often in the media, it is as if women are not capable of forming actual platonic relationships with each other. This can in part be blamed on aspects of reality bleeding into fiction. For example, as it is often harder for women to rise through the ranks career-wise, in TV shows, two-dimensional women competing for such positions cannot seem to afford social niceties. However, these narrow-minded depictions are far from the truth; despite our anatomical differences, women and men are both capable of creating fulfilling, loyal friendships.

Thankfully, in this new age of television, there are more female showrunners in the industry pushing female narratives into the mainstream media. I’m now able to see my own experiences and those of my friends represented more consistently on screen, free from failing the Bechdel test. Broad City’s Ilana and Abbi are two 20-somethings struggling through life in New York City, while navigating the natural ups and downs in their friendship; they fight, they make up, as all women do. They are refreshingly hedonistic, with sugar-coated ideals of girl talk and shopping trips swapped for the nights of debauchery and absurdity more regularly experienced by modern women, yet usually reserved for their male counterparts on screen.

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Female friendship is not just restricted to carefully chosen gal pals either. Netflix’s GLOW revolves around a group of women trying to become amateur wrestlers in the 80’s, and is a treasure trove of diverse representation. They each share a common goal, but instead of keeping each other down, they lift each other up (sometimes quite literally), acknowledging that they are not in competition with each other, but rather with the society that discriminates against them. The show’s diversity echoes reality, as women from all walks of life are brought together by work, forming complex relationships of varying intensity.

In a similar way, Parks and Recreation also highlights the way that opposites can attract when it comes to female friendships, like in the case of over-enthusiastic public servant Leslie Knope and laid-back nurse Ann Perkins. Despite not having much in common on the surface, they support each other endlessly and bring out the best in each other, just as their male equivalents have done in umpteen other shows.

These positive portrayals are the antithesis of the picture-perfect aspirational female friendships frequently seen on social media, where groups of powerful, polished women march together preaching #feminism and #squadgoals. These relationships might have real aspects to them, but at the same time can feel manufactured. This idea of glamourised female friendship is usually presented by celebrities and influencers, probably in pushback to the aforementioned ‘frenemy’ stereotype, but is nonetheless just as harmful. Women can sometimes be cruel to their friends just in the same way as men can; over-correcting the situation by pretending we are perfect companions to one another only serves to limit our freedom, not expand it. This is why, in the era of online airbrushing, media outlets including TV shows that explore the complex nuances of female friendships are vital now more than ever.

Despite what my favourite childhood programmes would suggest, female friendships are not all pillow fights and giggling over boys. Yes, these superficial things can be part of our bonds as women, but, just like men, we also have the ability to form lifelong supportive relationships with one another that don’t end in a hair-pulling catfight. Seeing this reality depicted on television allows us to celebrate the good, the bad and the mundane of what it means to be lady friends in the 21st century.

WORDS BY Ciara Connolly

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The Disguised Archetype Androgyny And Otherness In Dionysus WORDS BY Giorgiomaria Cornelio

One of many names behind which Dionysus conceals his total visibility is Lysios, ‘The One Who Unties’. This seal, this trace of wax, marks nothing but a seismic vow and a promise of otherness. Thus, another epigraph of this text could have been the alchemic motto: “Solve et Coagula” (Separate and Join Together), since the inclination of Lysios lies precisely in this imperative of dissolution. In fact, the very lineage of Dionysus is formulated under the umbra of a perpetual camouflage which reveals that every genealogy is the erratic result “of a multiplicity of flows, of forking paths, of different sedimentations.” (Georges Didi-Huberman). The stalking archetype that, more than the others, is tied to the figure of Dionysus is the androgyne, the fluid creature that bears on its body the impression of an utter alterity that always defers itself, unfolding new spiral movements and rejecting the clinical bisection of the body. In the androgyne, what Mario Mieli calls the “innate transsexuality” of the human being is manifested beyond the necrotic domain of the Norma and declares its presence either as a sulphurous vocation or as a bleeding wound. In his treatise called The Androgyne: Reconciliation Of Male And Female, Female Elemire Zolla provides an account of the subincision ceremonies of Australian aborigines, during which a cut is opened into the lower part of the penis, baring the urethra. Later in time, this wound is periodically made to bleed as a “proof of the adept’s link with the source of life and with the central archetype of the androgyne.” This passage says something more than just its anthropological account, unveiling what is buried in the word archetype, i.e. the ἀρχή (arche). Certainly, the arche is the beginning somewhat linked with the “source of life”, but it is also the power of the command, of an utter authority that must be acknowledged, being able to ‘pierce’ the body.

At this point, we can consider two examples or symptoms of this twofold nature that also belongs to the androgyne, i.e. the paradigmatic Dionysius of The Bacchae and Heliogabalus, the Dionysiac crowned

anarchist depicted by Antonin Artaud as a portrait of what is beyond-gender. Heliogabalus is the expression of a struggle, of an always impetuous attempt to make the reality androgynous through a subversion of the stable powers.

When this young emperor dresses in female clothes like a prototypical drag queen, he exhibits what neither the history nor the power can tolerate or limit, i.e. an identity based on a communion of the contraries, on an uncovered otherness: “The entire life of Heliogabalus is anarchy in action, since Elagabalus the unitary god who brings together again man and woman, the hostile poles, the One and the Two, is the end of contradictions, the elimination of war and anarchy”.

From a theatrical point of view, Artaud’s Heliogabalus is the actorial machine par excellence since the emperor constantly fabricates himself anew through a multiplicity of prostheses and through a line of unpredictable shiftings, becoming the definitive suppression of the narrative character. He also embodies (in the most literal way) the abolition of political authority because he accepts and reintroduces in Rome what the king Pentheus vehemently refuses in The Bacchae, i.e. the Dionysiac and solar aspect of life. Heliogabalus comes from a foreign country, that is Roman Syria. In the same way, Dionysius (particularly the Dionysius of The Bacchae) is depicted as a foreigner (Xenos) who brings with himself the fever of the otherness, perturbing the common reality of the land. Hence, he is another expression of the uncanny (unheimlich or l’inquiétante étrangeté), a creature which unties (Lysios) the very knots of the heteronormative geography, being what Jung would have called a synchronic field or perhaps another filiation of the Dogon’s Aduno Tal, i.e the egg of the world described by the anthropologist Marcel Griaulae and used by Deleuze and Guattuari as a depiction of the body without organs. The very tragedy of The Bacchae consists in the missed acknowledgement of the authority of this innate (in-nata or mai nata, manifested but without an origin) alterity.

Nowadays, Dionysus lives a life upturned in a double camouflage, like the Nonexistent Knight which has no-body underneath his armour, being himself the body or the printed character of an illusion. Nevertheless, he is still ubiquitous since his masked presence is necessary to overcome the conflict of the opposites that otherwise would turn the world into a bloodshed. In this modern age, finding the androgynous trace of Dionysus is to witness the sudden appearance of an errant archetype.

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What it’s like to meet your boyfriend on Tinder WORDS BY Charlotte Dunne “Ah, yeah, no, so we met in a club.”

“Was it love at first sight? Did your eyes lock across the room?”

“I mean no, not really, or maybe, I guess…”

“And so, you danced and then found somewhere quiet to chat? Did your two groups of friends get to know each other?”

Little does my granny know it was more love at first swipe than love at first sight. Also, given the deluge of men my lonely drunken self waded through during a couple of nights of Freshers’ Week this year, it was barely even that. I think my family must have some idea that I’m lying to them. Or maybe, they don’t understand how hard it is to meet someone in real life when you’d rather spend your evenings Netflixing in bed with a nice cup of tea than pounding it up in the club (yes - the choice of phrasing here should make it clear that I’m not hip). Arguably, the club is the only place where people under the age of 25 engage in active flirting anymore. I know I certainly wouldn’t feel comfortable wandering up to someone on the street, or across the Arts Block concourse, and only in the pub after I’d had enough drinks to ensure that they wouldn’t understand what I was saying anyway. Plus, after too much drama in my course last year, I decided I really needed to steer clear of anything with anyone who I might have to awkwardly encounter week after week in tutorials. (To the professor who gave us our welcome lecture in first year: you were right, tutorial groups CAN suddenly feel very small when you’ve done something you shouldn’t.)

I decided that the only way I was going to meet someone beyond my circle of friends was through Tinder. I’d been put off the app until a few months ago by the knowledge that, should my family know what I was up to, they’d worry. They live overseas, and perceive Dublin (or of any city which they cannot reach by car or train in two hours) as seamy and potentially harmful to their pride and joy. I infer this from my aforementioned granny giving me an alarm for attacks and made me promise to abstain from all quote unquote ‘casual sex’ whilst abroad.

You now understand why I think they know I’m lying. Clearly, my family has a decent understanding of the attention most young women might be exposed to, and the idea of casual dating. Young women such as myself, are catcalled or eyed up and down every day - an issue facing many of us which I believe deserves more attention, and I think that most of us can remember a time when we’ve been touched up in some way at a club. Anyway, all these experiences, and the encouragement of a friend who’d met her partner on Tinder, made me think that perhaps Tinder wouldn’t be such a bad idea – I mean, how much worse could it really be? My family associates Tinder with a casual hook-up culture. They’re not against technology generally, and my mum has, in her time, used her fair share of online dating sites. Their main concern is my vulnerability. It turns out, their fears were not entirely misguided. Despite producing what I consider a wholesome profile, I awoke the morning after my first swipe session to maybe 20 messages from men looking for sex. Some were easy to spot from a mile off, the undesired: “If you were a bike, I’d ride you,” was a dead giveaway. Others took longer to get to the bottom line; after initially agreeing to meet me for coffee, one man told me that actually, he was only ever free in the evening, but “don’t worry, I’ll buy you wine to make up for it.”

Later that day, I showed my two closest guy friends the whole picture. They seized my phone, sending counter-one-liners to those who had sent creepy stuff to me. I must admit, that by the end of my time on Tinder, I’d got fairly good at the comebacks myself. As they worked their way through my messages, they flagged guys who they thought I should respond to. Here emerged ‘puppy man’, as he shall forever be known to my friends. Amongst the handful of men I messaged seriously on Tinder, ‘puppy man’ emerged as the firm favourite. He wasn’t my usual type (5’11” with brown curly hair and a rugby-player build, if you’re wondering), but he distinguished himself by not being afraid to cut the BS . He opened with an almost off-putting amount of cheese: “You and your pup, name a cuter pair….” but refused to entertain my flattery-baiting “Two puppies?” with anything more than a “Fair enough.” When we eventually moved our chat to Instagram (scandalous, but not half as bad as Snapchat), I was fairly confident that he was mainly interested in dog pictures, rather than anything less PG. I couldn’t have been more correct. In ‘puppy man’ I had essentially found my Tinder equal. He was looking for a real relationship and was willing to put the time in getting to know someone. He was funny, openly lazy and, generally, a breath of fresh air.

After about ten days of chatting non-stop – and I do mean from the time I woke up to the moment I put my phone down for the night – we arranged our first date. From then on, we both referred to the anticipated event as ‘Thursday,’ which I took as a good sign that his expectations were just as high as mine. Eventually, ‘Thursday’ became ‘Sunday’ as I realised that I had double booked him with a friend who I forgot was coming to stay. Again, I was pleased that he accepted that I was being honest with him when I rearranged, and that he was willing to work around my schedule. At this point I trusted him, letting him choose the date activity and keep it a secret from me until the day before.

The day of the date came, and it turned out to be Token, just a short walk from where I live. My housemate prepared to provide my security detail, whilst I freaked out about actually meeting ‘puppy man’ in the flesh. The fact that Token was so close was really helpful; I could wait until ‘puppy man’ was there until I left my house, and, once he was there, there was no going back for me. The date was a roaring success. After three hours of dinner, drinks, and games, we still hadn’t stopped talking. I invited him back to mine ( just for tea and a chat) and five hours later, he had to hurry off to get the last bus home. That’s not to say the date was perfect – it took me a while to wrap my head around the fact that I was greeted by a clean-shaven face – but it was far better than I expected, even after chatting with my ‘puppy man’ for so long.

Almost six months later, ‘puppy man’ and I are going strong. I’m still lying to my family about how we met, but I think the lie is worth it. ‘Puppy man’ met the puppy he fell in love with on my profile, and the dog reciprocated that love. My family really like him, and I think that, for now anyway, I’d rather not spoil that by coming clean . I’m sure the truth will come out eventually, but, at the moment, I’m glad that to keep them in the dark about some of the more predatory messages I was receiving. I think if they knew the truth, they’d imagine the worst before remembering that I’m now in a happy, healthy relationship as a result.

The takeaway: whilst hang-ups about using Tinder as a dating app in the more traditional sense of the word are justified, I would encourage anyone lamenting the contemporary dating scene to give it a try. I’ve met a great guy who I probably never would have come across in real life. I know that I was lucky to meet someone so soon – my boyfriend confessed to me a few dates in that he’d been on Tinder for a year with no success – but, you’ll never know who you’ll find if you don’t try. I feel bad lying to my family, as I know it perpetuates a stigma about Tinder, but my reasons are understandable and that this article brings a few of us a little bit closer to being more open about our love lives and how they are enabled.

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The Exploitation of Power Dynamics in Romantic Relationships Power dynamics in relationships can be difficult to spot. Sometimes when a person enters a relationship, there’s seldom evidence of such a dynamic until something goes wrong. An unhealthy power imbalance can exist for reasons such as age, experience or financial situation and, while power instability in relationships isn’t always unethical or non-consensual, it can leave a person feeling naive, confused and mistrustful. Going out with someone a few years older than you isn’t wrong. Gaps in age, experience or position between consenting adults are fine, but sometimes power dynamics are created and, when exploited, can seriously harm the people involved.

I didn’t realise that I was in a relationship with a power imbalance until I was out of it. The person in question was older than me and had a lot more experience emotionally and sexually. When the relationship began, the imbalance of power, and his authority, was cemented by these things. I don’t believe that he necessarily exploited this for personal gain, but he was definitely aware that it existed and didn’t seem to have a problem with it. That being said, neither did I at the time. Now that I’m a few months out of that situation, I think if I went back with the experience and knowledge that I now have, I wouldn’t have entertained the relationship in the first place. I felt at times that I wanted to impress him and gain his approval simply because he seemed to be on a level above mine. I desperately wanted to be in a place where I felt that he viewed me as an equal, but the imbalance of power meant I never actually was. I don’t think that he created these conditions on purpose, but they were created and did affect me personally. I felt I let myself down by how much I altered my core beliefs for this person. Looking back, I should never have been put in a position where I felt that this was the only way I could be validated by him.

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It’s not uncommon for young people, especially those at the start of a crucial life stage like university, to become vulnerable to exploitation. Completing a degree, moving into a postgraduate position, or even a further career, offers tangible life experience, and those who have undergone such development are cognisant of their own position. If people in this position choose, with an awareness of their own power, to enter into a relationship (casual or otherwise) with any person who is considerably younger than them, without acceptable reflection on their own authority, then they become complicit in this manipulation. Not all relationships between younger men and women and those a few years older are representative of this; I recognise my personal bias, It is important to acknowledge that many people will treat those younger than them, who are likely more emotionally and financially vulnerable, with the respect of equals and peers. My own experience, unfortunately, has been informed by a negative exposure to the dynamic of dating someone older, who also held greater social and sexual experiences. The boundaries of my relationship with someone older were confusing from the beginning. We were initially clear with wanting something casual - I was just out of my first ever relationship. As we continued to date, he established a desire for emotional intimacy and the appropriate rituals which accompany romantic - not casual - attachments. The holding of authority fell insidiously onto his side. Desiring emotional intimacy, but not wanting commitment, the person I was seeing would frequently express how they thought they were hurting me, and expressed an awareness of my wanting a boyfriend. Reflecting back now, I am frustrated with my lack of awareness, and his clear insight into how I felt, and how my naivety could be used to his benefit. Frequently, he would leave after we dated or were intimate, claiming to prefer the company of himself and his own bed. Recounting my experiences undoubtedly make me feel confused and hurt by my own lack of awareness; in equal measure, however, I am angry that someone with a clear recognition of their position continued to use their authority for a personal emotion benefit, and an obvious ego boost, without consideration for destructive emotional impact on the other party. This person was older, had far greater experience than me and consistently spoke of how they’d strung women along in the past or had abruptly ended relationships over text. The consistent misuse of their position, with a visible understanding of my vulnerability, meant the person I was seeing was well experienced and equipped with the tools for visibly predatory behaviour. Women are often blamed for not spotting the warning signs in relationships which go wrong, and held to higher degree of moral accountability than those who take advantage of them. This is representative of a wider culture of applying false blame. This is a culture in which men’s immorality is brushed off as a symptom of lad culture, and where conscious manipulation is blamed on the naivety of young people (especially women) in general, as opposed to the deliberate behaviour of the perpetrator. When operating within a power dynamic your position, your autonomy, is not the same as in a stable and balanced partnership. Men are seldom unaware of the power of their own position, especially when it comes to women.

WORDS BY Alex O’Sullivan and Ursula Dale

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