Jaden Smith, Louis Vuitton’s New Woman

by Kaitlyn Repman

Jaden Smith and Louis Vuitton have teamed up to fight against gender roles: one photo shoot at a time.

Jaden Smith, Will Smith’s 17-year-old son, has officially become the new face for Louis Vuitton’s womenswear. A photo has already been released of Smith showing off some fashionable women’s clothing, next to three of Louis Vuitton’s female models. There have been men wearing female-inspired men’s clothing, as well as transgender females being models for women’s clothing, but Smith is one of the first to put on all women’s wear and pose for the camera.

He’s taken a brave step in society, trying to teach others that it is okay to dress however one pleases.

On Instagram, Smith wrote: “Thank You So Much @louisvuitton And @nicolasghesquiere For The Opportunity To Impact This World.”

Mr. Ghesquiere, the man who helped Smith get this role, said that this photo shoot “represents a generation that has assimilated the codes of true freedom, one that is free of manifestos and questions about gender.” 

The reaction to this new partnership between Smith and Louis Vuitton hasn’t exactly been positive. But the question at hand is, why do people care? Jaden Smith is seen dressed head-to-toe in women’s clothing, and everyone starts screaming about how this is “weird” and acting as though it’s terrifying to see gender roles being broken. Though Smith is doing something he has wanted to do; and following through with his dreams, people are taking this situation to heart.

But what people are not considering is how this is going to help people across the world to feel brave enough to dress how they wish. Fred McConnell, a writer for The Guardian, stated “[Smith]’s simply laughing in the face of stereotypes, which are actual barriers to acceptance of self and other people in a way that gender is not.”

But these different reactions to the newest edition of the Louis Vuitton modeling family won’t stop Smith from continuing to work for the famous brand. The seventeen-year-old is going to continue to inspire young people to dress how they please, and not let the negative reactions stop him from doing what he is passionate about.

AHS Hotel: A Scary Place To Stay

by Moriah Thoman

The 5th season of American Horror Story checked in on October 7th of this year. This season’s storyline takes place in the Hotel Cortez in Los Angeles, California. The hotel’s many guests provide an intrigue that latches onto the viewers from episode one. The Cortez also sparks the interest of a police detective who sees first hand the historical haunting past of the building. Several different subplots are seen intertwining throughout the progression of the season.

Fans of American Horror Story seem to always be curious as to what the title sequence of each season will be like. This short sequence tends to consistently be elaborately bizarre, down to the creepy nightmares climbing out of the beds. Hotel’s sequence features neon lights flashing the ten commandments, which presents itself in the plot as the series progresses. Along with those eerie images, the sequence also features skeletons and ghostly figures floating down the corridors. Just seeing the beginning sequence alone could potentially cause an appearance of the disturbing figures in anyone’s nightmares.

The cast is not unlike the previous season’s, with reappearances of Evan Peters, Sarah Paulson, Denis O’Hare, Kathy Bates, and Finn Wittrock, just to name a few. However, one of the main characters this season is new to the American Horror Story scene. Lady Gaga made her appearance as the luxurious vampire countess in the series. Her well known name may have brought some suspicions of simply a marketing stunt; however, she stepped up to the challenge and has been playing her role excellently so far. The all glamour lifestyle of the countess shows similarities to Gaga’s lifestyle outside of acting.

The acting, like past seasons, successfully sends shivers down the spines of those watching. This season acting brings about the important aspect of wanting to understand the backstories of the characters. In the case of the Countess, her behavior in the present leads people to wonder what her previous longer than human lifespan was like. The actions of Sally have to coexist with the fact that she was pushed out a window and is now simply trapped in as an eternal guest at the Cortez.

Cinematography can be something that makes or breaks any horror film. But in the case of American Horror Story, they embrace the lighting, angles, and frames as their best features. The key to this series lies in the ability of the camera to be at just the right places at the right times. This is how the the story is told, through ambiguous point of views and sneaky movements. If the cinematography was not executed right, the series would not be as successful as it is today. Everything seen in the frame is meant to only enhance the scene, which is done throughout the Hotel episodes thus far.

The director of this horrifying masterpiece is Ryan Murphy. He knows how to create even the most unsuspecting plot twists. This season, he included more bloody scenes than in the past seasons, even by the standards of a couple of vampires. The gore filled scenes interspersed throughout the episodes enhance the growing unease that the viewers have as their feelings range from strong disgust to horror. These scenes are necessary in the case of the vampires involved in order to make the points of the character’s intentions.

This series has some promising elements for the upcoming episodes. The ability of the director and the actors to work together to draw the viewers in and get attached is one that is not always easy to achieve, especially in the horror genre. Each Wednesday night the tensions and questions continue to build. The eerie subject matter as well as the intricate connecting subplots keep the audience on the edge of their seats in a mixture of curiosity and horror.

No Country For Little Green Men: The Martian Is An Intense Trip To The Red Planet

by Ashlyn Parlin

 

As five astronauts venture into the unknown planet, Mars, a massive storm hits. The astronauts must leave the planet immediately. But as the storm begins to brew, a chunk of metal flies off of the base and strikes fellow astronaut Mark Watney (Matt Damon). The crew searches frantically for Watney in the few short seconds they have before they leave.  Unable to find him, they presume he is dead. Saving themselves, they leave him on the planet as they begin to make the journey back home. Little do they know, Watney is still alive on Mars.

The Martian is a stressful and enjoyable movie. It was a film that had a very serious issue, yet remained light hearted and funny. The viewer grows to love Watneys quirky side. While in the midst of a disaster, he is cracking jokes almost every minute.  

This movie is one of the first that actually makes space travel look realistic. Obviously, man has yet to land on Mars. But if they had, I’m sure this film would be realistic. It also includes many accurate scientific experiments.

Director of the Center for Science and the Imagination at Arizona State University, Ed Finn, said, “What this story does really well is imagine a near-future scenario that doesn’t push too far of where we are today technically.”

Watney, a botanist, realizes he will eventually run out of food. But he is able to grow potatoes on Mars, while making a small environment. He also produces water in a way that NASA will be using for a rover in the near future.

Matt Damon’s performance was phenomenal. Playing a cool, calm and collected Watney, Damon received many positive reviews.  Other notable actors in the film include: Jeff Daniels, Kristen Wiig, and Donald Glover (Childish Gambino). Daniels plays the hardcore director of NASA. As his character has to make the tough decisions, Daniels portrays it very well. Alongside the director is the NASA spokesperson, Wiig. She deals with all of NASA’s publicity, and for this movie, has a lot to clean up. Lastly, Glover plays the NASA aerodynamicist. He hatches a way to get Watney home and safe.

The Martian is a great movie that will have your chest hurting and your face smiling as you leave the theatre.

Coming-of-Age Films Leave Out LGBTQ Youth

by Jakob Kostelec

Growing up is hard. Thank God we have an entire category of films dedicated to the pain, embarrassment, and excitement of adolescence that everyone can enjoy and relate to.

Except we don’t. Who really comes of age in coming-of-age films?

Mainstream teen films are and have been characterized by their incredible amount of heteronormativity, sheer lack of diversity, and a depressing shortage of everyone else who is not able-bodied and does not fit the Eurocentric standards of beauty.

To exist as a young person and watch films where straightness and whiteness are embraced as normal, the standard, and everything else as an “other” is harmful. Growing up is hard, and it’s even harder when you never see any representation of yourself and your experiences and instead are forced to enjoy smug love letters to privileged teens and their “relatable” lives which are – guess what? – not relatable at all.

Too many films are catered towards these straight, white, middle-class teens and their oh-so-eventful lives while we hang around in supporting roles as the comically stereotypical “gay best friend”/”sassy black sidekick”/”weird Asian exchange student”. It’s not exactly breaking news that nonwhite, LGBTQ characters in such films are regarded as jokes or props – our only purpose being things for all the other characters to mock or to use so they gain some sort of sick satisfaction. Which I can tell you, unsurprisingly so, is also paralleled by real life experiences! This is common and it happens to real people daily, 24/7. And just as the characters in these films face no consequences for their actions, neither do the people in real life. Let’s get this out there: microaggressions of homophobia, transphobia/transmisogyny, racism, and sexism are widely accepted and considered normal. And films encourage this.

What also happens with both young people of color and LGBTQ youth is a kind of internalized dislike and hatred. You are young, you are impressionable, and you believe what these films tell you, that nobody wants to see you grow up because you’re already expected to be grown. You are truly and wholeheartedly convinced that you exist outside of normality and that you are somehow a freak, an outsider, or an “other” because you have no idea there are people out there who have the same experiences as you, or that no one around you seems to care that the standards for such normality in mainstream films are outdated and exclusive in every way.

Films are constantly overlapping with life; every film we ever watch influences the way we present ourselves. So now you can imagine what happens when we don’t bother to share and explore the experiences and points-of-view of the underrepresented. We’re simply letting ignorance and lack of understanding continue both in real life and on the big screen in pastel tones starring washed out actors and their washed out children. What is happening is this disease of bland teen cinema causing us to not even see oppressed teens as teens, or even admit to ourselves that this is happening.

I can think of two coming-of-age movies last year that created massive buzz but really were just as stale as their predecessors, only marketed in a way that had us all under the impression that they were somehow better or different. They were not either of those things, and their titles are Boyhood and Palo Alto.

Now I wouldn’t even have a problem with Boyhood if it faded into obscurity which I really feel is what it deserves, but it’s been racking up nominations and wins from every awards show there is. Which is not any surprise at all, I can tell you, as whatever committees that make these decisions are composed almost entirely of old white men whose greatest joy in life is rewarding mediocrity.

It comes down to this: white, straight, privileged people can watch and relate to so many more films than nonwhite people. Even LGBTQ-themed films tend to have an extremely white cast, though the LGBTQ community is much more diverse.

I mean, lack of racial diversity is old news. According to Metafilter.com “Across 100 top-grossing films of 2012, only 10.8% of speaking characters are Black, 4.2% are Hispanic, 5% are Asian, and 3.6% are from other (or mixed race) ethnicities.”

Not a lot has changed in these three years. And just think about how much of these tiny fractions are composed of bad stereotypes and misrepresentation.

Palo Alto was another disappointing addition to last year’s smorgasbord of anticipated films. (an alternate title for Palo Alto could be Whiny Heterosexuals Party and Make Casually Racist Statements While A Really Good Soundtrack is Wasted.) Since there are so few women involved in directing, I wanted to support Gia Coppola when it came out. I really did. Female directors get so little exposure you learn to be thankful for anything at all. But after watching this I learned two things: a) Never trust a Coppola. b) Halfway decent cinematography does not fix everything.

I’m not surprised, as the film was based off James Franco’s book and James Franco doesn’t seem to strike me as the kind of guy who really cares about anyone but himself. So I really don’t know what I expected. I can only hope Gia Coppola abandons this flop concept and can only evolve as a filmmaker and a person because, listen, we really need it.

But it’s amazing how much work people will put into a film and not for a second think about who they’re leaving out and who they’re really making their films for. Did Richard Linklater think for even once in those 12 years about who his real audience was? Does Gia Coppola lay awake at night and wonder what’s missing in Palo Alto? Or who?

However, it’s important not to erase the achievements of filmmakers, especially women, in the independent community who have redefined the coming-of-age genre. Women have been making funny, beautiful, heartbreaking films about other women. Women of color have been telling their stories on-screen. This is enormous to see, because until recent years, we only really ever saw men’s films from men’s perspectives, which meant the concept of being a woman has been distorted beyond recognition by the hypermasculinity that consumes mass media. But now it is being reclaimed, stripped down and portrayed truthfully. That’s something to look forward to.

There’s been progress, and some groundbreaking movies have been made recently, but it’s saddening to see the lack of exposure these films get. We can only hope these films gain larger and larger audiences and receive the attention and cult status they deserve.

Here’s a short list of movies that have recently attempted to broaden the definition of what it means to be leading men and women, and though these films haven’t quite gotten the same treatment as The Breakfast Club, they’re just as important, perhaps even more important, and should be celebrated:

GIRLHOOD

PARIAH

MOSQUITA Y MARI

MISSISSIPPI MASALA

GUN HILL ROAD

TOMBOY

LOVE & BASKETBALL

BOYZ N THE HOOD

SAVING FACE or HU DIE

Fashion Trends Form Social Circles

by Kaitlyn Repman

From Timberlands to Victoria’s Secret PINK, Central Dauphin’s hallways are filled with fashion trends that conform the students into specific groups.

When a student walks into Central Dauphin High School, one of the most noticeable sights is how everyone in a certain group dresses the same. Cliques of girls all wearing the same shoes or brand can be seen walking down the hallway when coming into the school.

“Your fashion choices decide what friend group you fall into,” said Lizzie Adlestein, a student at CD.

Groups mixed with different types of fashion senses are difficult to find at Central Dauphin, with mostly everyone dressing in the same brands and similar styles of clothes. A Central Dauphin Student, Taylor Knupp, noted that “instead of people’s interests deciding what type of friend group they fall into, it is now the clothes they wear.”

Magazines such as Seventeen and Teen Vogue have pages dedicated to back to school style, leading to students conforming and wearing certain clothing brands just to fit in with everyone else at school.

According to psychologist, Allen Kanner, kids learn to dress a certain way to fit in. “By the time children reach their teens, a developmental stage when they’re naturally insecure and searching for a personal identity, they’ve been taught that material possessions are what matter,” Kanner stated.

Many of these fashion trends blossom from how celebrities dress, role models are splashed across the front of magazines in clothes that students at CD start to wear just weeks later.

Central Dauphin student, Rachel Aaron, said “In friend groups, many people shop from the same stores, and even though they have their own separate style they are usually similar and accepted into groups which makes them friends.”

So people may not be dressing identically, but their clothes come from the same brands and they’re similar enough to create segregated groups within the high school.

Some students wonder if this is really a good thing. It helps people find their friends, and allows students to easily join into a group of people. But, this separation of groups is not allowing CD students to befriend others outside of their fashion sense. Someone who dresses in all black with blue hair might have the same interests as someone who wears all American Eagle, but they will never take the chance to be friends because of what they wear.

Carson Sniegocki, a Junior at Central Dauphin, believes that this prevalent situation may be helpful for students. “People judge you based on what you’re wearing. It’s the first thing people see, so you then get accepted into friend groups,” Carson stated, but then added, “but it should not define you as a person.”