Gothic 2012

The following is a short feature I wrote for JRN 500- Journalism and the Arts

Gothic 2012: Horror makes a comeback as we worry about the world ending

Gothic literature may seem like a long-outdated form of entertaining writing, yet it has actually made a come back lately in relation to 2012 apocalyptic, end-of-the-world fears.

In the past few years, there have been numerous shows and movies with the theme of religious apocalypse and world-ending disasters. Horror has also crept into many popular book-series-turned-film-series, whether that is the vampire-filled Twilight series or dystopian world of the Hunger Games trilogy (which made $214 million in its opening weekend as a film).

Gothic, horror, supernatural fiction, dark fantasy and dystopian literature–whatever the exact name, they all have Gothic horror elements–have always been a way for people to live out their worst fears. “Gothic is one of those genres that crosses boundaries,” says Sarah Henstra, an English professor at Ryerson University who specializes in Gothic literature. Because of this cross-genre aspect, Gothic is almost always popular and is ever-present in pop culture.

“It’s really popular during transitional states in society,” Henstra says. While Gothic is ever-present, it tends to become even more popular at times of social change and collective anxiety about the future, such as at the turn of each century and around the time of huge scientific break-through.

Each wave of Gothic fiction explores and plays-out current social anxieties. Just as The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde explored fears of new pharmaceuticals and Frankenstein played out society’s fear of technology, the most recent Dexter season explores our worries about religious apocalypse and uprising and the film Contagion plays on society’s extreme anxiety surrounding disease and superbugs.

“But it’s not just about 2012. It’s just a worry about new technologies and such. These anxieties are already in society,” Henstra says. Exploring our fears about the future is easy to do through fictional films and books. “It’s safe and at a distance. It’s a vicarious playing-out,” says Henstra. Seeing our fears become real on a screen or reading about the destruction of the world is a way of releasing our tension about it.

Society’s fascination with its own demise does sound a little morbid, but often getting these fears out in the open is the only way to work through them. “Fear can be both repulsive and attractive,” says Gemma Files, Canadian horror author. “Anything which allows you to explore your fears is healthy.”

“Gothic isn’t a genre at all, it’s an emotion,” says Toronto-based author and journalist David Nickle. Fear and anxiety about the future, about the state of the economy and the earth, about political uprising and natural disasters are all valid feelings. Gothic pop culture simply uses these feelings to entertain us, all the while helping us explore and work through complicated and heavy emotions.

In Apocalypse Observed: Religious Movements and Violence in North America, Europe and Japan, John R. Hall questions what is so appealing about gothic horror. “Apocalyptic images bring focus to anxieties and suspicions about a world undergoeing dramatic change,” he writes. “But what is the appeal of their seemingly fantastic, almost legendary stories?”

The answer to this question is simply the fact that fictional stories help society’s real problems. “Take the thing you want least to happen, the worst thing you can imagine, and play it through. If you do, it may possibly make your fears far easier to deal with...but even if it doesn't, there's still something to be said for exploring the whys and wherefores of those fears,” Files says. “Horror and Gothic helps with that, too: You play out that consummation in fiction, so it doesn't overtake you in life.”

Gothic may be a popular movie style and many television show nowadays has some sort of end-of-the-world theme, but the rise horror-fiction mirrors society’s wide range of real political, economic, and environmental fears and anxieties.

“We're blundering through the first twenty years of another thousand, with absolutely no idea where we're all headed,” says Files. “But I'll tell you this much--as of right now, the prospective future looks a lot more like Panem than it does like Star Trek.”

CBC's New Drama, Arctic Air, Takes Flight [Review]

The following is a review I wrote for JRN 500- Journalism and the Arts.

Arctic Air, CBC Television's new series, is only a few episodes into its first season, but this cold-weather Canadian drama is quickly taking off. Based in Yellowknife, the show follows the lives of the workers at a small-time flying companying, both in the air and on the ground.

Bobby Martin (Adam Beach) returns to Yellowknife after years of living in “the south.” Upon his return, he encounters a lot of old friends with mixed feelings about his return. Bobby may be a charmer, with nice smiles and nice words, but when he gets punched in the face during the first five minutes of the show, it becomes apparent that he has some bad history.

Krista Iverson (Pascale Hutton) is an old school-mate of Bobby's, and her father Mel (Kevin McNulty) is actually Bobby's business partner at Arctic Air, simply because Bobby inherited shares. They have a relatively good relationship with Bobby, but that can't be said of Bobby's old love interest Petra Hossa (Lexa Doig) and her father Doc Hossa (Micheal Hogan).


While over-arching plot elements focus on Bobby's past and present personal and family issues, each episode also contains a mid-air flight fright, whether that be a woman in labour, an electrical storm, or a small-scale hijacking. The showy adventures are fun to watch, but the family issues and half-cooked romances seem much more real than those high flying dramatics. It's the day-to-day problems that keep you hooked.

The show also explores bigger social, racial, and political issues. Bobby is a native and a former oil prospector who spent a good chunk of time in the south. More than once, he encounters racial slurs, anger towards the oil industry, and backlash against his supposed northern abandonment.

There are a few cheap thrills and chills, but there are also a few deep-rooted issues and breathtaking scenes of Canada's north. For a born-and-and-bred Torontonian, Arctic Air is as exotic and different in subject matter as it is in northern Canadian scenery. (For the rest of unsheltered Canada, this series is probably just a good bit of entertainment.)

Photo Credit: From CBC Revenue Group, http://www.cbc.ca/revenuegroup/arctic-air.html

RRJ Blog Posts

I'm writing a series of posts with a friend for the Ryerson Review of Journalism's blog called "The Was Then, This is Now." It's a series of posts about the early career days of Canadian journalists.
Check out my first post about John Macfarlane, editor of the Walrus magazine and veteran writer and editor.

Appreciation: Jeanette Winterson

The following is an assignment I wrote for JRN 500: Journalism and the Arts. My instructor seemed to like it, and I enjoyed writing it.

During the fall of 2007, I borrowed “Oranges are Not the Only Fruit” by Jeanette Winterson from a friend who had never read it before. At the time, I had never heard of Winterson, nor had I read any of her other works. The moment I peeled open the pages of “Oranges,” I couldn't put it down. I discovered that each word in Winterson's novel is a delicious, juicy, succulent piece of a larger story.

Up until the age of 17, I thought that poetry and p
rose were completely different forms of writing. One was straightforward and used sensible language to weave a plot. The other was often chaotic, using flowery language to express abstract ideas.
Upon reading Winterson's autobiographically inspired novel, I found that prose and poetry could be one in the same. The phrases Winterson uses are prose in the sense that they build towards a larger plot, while the way she writes, weaves, and creates her story is more poetic than any poetic verses I've ever read.

In “Oranges,” Winterson explores her own upbringing, the realization of her love for literature, and her blossoming sexuality in a household that kept only the bible on its bookshelves. With flowing language she describes stuttering teenage times, and with comedic verses she delves into the sadness and confusion of her youth.
Shortly after reading “Oranges,” I began the lengthy and enjoyable process of devouring every book Winterson has ever written. “The Passion” and “Written on the Body” have climbed to the top of my own recommended reading list.

Each novel Winterson writes is just as poetic as the last. She has a way of using short, sort of surprising phrases next to long, rambling sentences full of commas, parentheses, and dashes. This fashion of forming her sentences is something I have longed- and tried- to replicate, but I will never achieve the poetic level of prose that Winterson has reached.

Furthermore, within all this poetic-like prose, Winterson is never too explicit. Even when writing about sex, death, and blood, she manages to create a soft image, a sideways reference, and a gentle reference with no rough explanations. While much of the poetry and prose created over the centuries has been about love, sex, and death, Winterson is able to describe a huge range of emotions and extremely subtle physical experience with a few well-placed words and simple adjectives.

For months after I read “Oranges,” I urged the friend from whom I borrowed the book to read its intriguing mixture of prose and poetry. I would repeat lines from that novel- and many of Winterson's other stories- to friends and family in order to bate them into reading my favourite novel. I even chose an “Oranges” quote as my high school graduation message: “If you want to keep your own teeth, make your own sandwiches.”
I am still repeating those same lines today.

Bespoke tailoring in Toronto

I wrote this for my fashion journalism class at Ryerson. Couldn't think of anywhere to pitch it, but it will do nicely on here.

Men's suits have never gone out of style. Just like any other form of fashion, they have trickled down, been influenced by world politics and the economy. They have changed shape, length, width, colour, material, and texture.

These changes and fluctuation come and go in waves, often returning to a style that was popular a few decades earlier. Each subsequent age wants to have their own look. “There's always been a shift between generations,” says Mayan Rajendran, a first-year graduate student at The School of Fashion at Ryerson specializing in street fashion. “Silhouettes are constantly shifting. With each category of age there's always a contrast. You always want to be doing what your dad wasn't.”


Bespoke- a style of extremely specific custom tailoring- was the only thing available 100 years ago. A suit included a jacket, vest, and two pairs of pants. A bespoke suit was created for an individual, for one single person and it would never fit another person the way that it is made to fit the original wearer. But mass-produced clothing became popular during the industrial revolution, and bespoke tailoring became much too expensive for most people.

But now, bespoke tailoring is popular among young New York and London businessmen, and it's slowly effecting Toronto's high-end fashion. Today, lot of young professional lawyers, judges, and news anchors in Toronto have been getting their suits custom made. Bespoke, along with a sort of British Dandyism style (skinny suits, coloured socks, and tapered pants) is becoming much more popular among young Torontonian businessmen.


Terry Beauchamp is the current owner of Walter Beauchamp Tailors, the oldest tailoring company in Toronto. The company started out as a tailor for military suits. Now they do formal wear and the occasional RCMP or police uniform. Most customers are financial workers, TV personalities, musicians, and government officials, but practically all of the suits they sell are bespoke.

Terry Beauchamp, who has owned the store since 1985, has noticed younger men coming in. “It's sort of a nostalgia renaissance,” he says. Bespoke tailoring requires many different measurements, not just the inseam, waist size and shoulder size. “They love shopping here. They're not used to getting looked after,” Beauchamp says of younger men. Mostly, men in their 20s and 30s want to get a suit resized or updated, but occasionally a young man will come in to get a brand new bespoke suit.

One of Beauchamp's recent customers Mike Koncan, 24, is a fourth year RTA student at Ryerson. He has been on RUtv as well as well as Rogers TV in Mississauga. Koncan's parents bought him a custom suit at Beauchamp for his birthday. “I love it. It feels like day and night compared to other jackets,” he says. “I would much rather wear the custom suit and jacket than any of my others.”

But Koncan says he doesn't know a whole lot of people his age ho would wear a custom made suit, most likely because they don't require one for their profession or they simply can't afford it.

Though Glenn Vernie does require suits for his job. He is the network administrator for MicroAge, a Toronto technology company. He is 41 (he said he wouldn't call himself young, but compared to a lot of men who wear or wore tailored suits, he is quite young) and started going to Beauchamp Tailoring about three months ago.

“The issue was I couldn't really find anything that fit properly,” Vernie says. He used to shop at stores like Hugo Boss and Harry Rosen. “I was paying $2,500 for a suit and it still wasn't fitting properly. It was frustrating.”

Vernie had a double-breasted suit made for him at Beauchamp. It was custom tailored to fit him exactly. He also brought in a number of suits that didn't fit him and he had Alfonso Prezioso, the head tailor at Beauchamp, re-do them. “He's a magician,” Vernie says of Prezioso. “He basically tore them apart and remade them. I was just going to throw them out.”

Prezioso was trained in Italy and has been with Walter Beauchamp Tailors for over 40 years. Finding a tailor who has skills as good as his is rare in recent years. Today, suits are usually mass-produced and they don't have the same care and proper fittings put into them. Yet, thousands of people still buy mass-produced suits don't actually fit their body type.

Bespoke suits are completely unlike mass-produced cloths. They are measured and tailored numerous times so they fit the wearer exactly. “We don't think the way the modern world does. We make things too good and they last,” says Beauchamp. “But people appreciate that.” Bespoke suits have an “artisanal quality,” Rajendran says. A suit can be extraordinarily comfortable, but only if it is made to fit the wearer perfectly.

The whole effect is like a morale booster. “You feel like you look better, so you just feel better about yourself in general,” Koncan says. “If your first suit is one of those, it's hard harder to go back,” he adds.

“The dilemma is to convince people that we're not just stodgy old farts,” Beauchamp jokes. He knows that people who value quality and art in fashion will always value custom tailoring. “Knowledgeable fashion people always respect the bespoke tailoring.”


Photo Credit: All photos are courtesy of Beauchamp Tailors.

Bjoerling's Larynx: World Famous Opera Houses (Reposted from JRN504 WordPress)

David Leventi currently has a photographic exhibition, titled Bjoerling's Larynx: World Famous Opera Houses, showing at Beau XI gallery. The collection is named after a famous Swedish operatic tenor, Jussi Bjoerling, who has been called the best singer of the century.



The pieces featured are large-scale photographs of famous opera houses from different cities across the globe, taken between 2007 and 2010.

Each photo is taken from the spot at centre stage where a performer would stand, leaving symmetrical spaces on both sides. The photographs are huge, almost mural sized, and they hang on the wall at perfect eye-level. When you stand directly in front of the photo, you feels as if you were surrounded by the building. You are swallowed up by it.

As Leventi writes in his artist statement, the photos “freeze for eternity the instant before a performance takes place.” The photos are meticulous. Yes, they are architectural spaces, but they are also portraits that show the history and wealth of a country.



“I experience an almost religious feeling walking into a grand space such as an opera house,” Leventi writes. And looking at these photos does give me a sense of awe. One of the larger photos, Teatro La Fenice in Venice, makes me feel as if I am standing in the opera house. It is, in a way, intimidating.

The spaces vary in colour, most of them with plush red velvet and elaborate gold woodwork, but a couple are decorated in cool white marble or blue painted walls.

Some famous buildings included in the collections are the Metropolitan Opera House in New York, the Bavarian State Opera in Munich, the Theatre Olimpico in Vicenza, Italy, plus many more elegant opera houses.



The show runs until the end of February at Beau XI gallery, 340 Dundas St. West.

Fashionable Parents (Reposted from WordPress school blog for JRN504)

So, you know who you barely ever see in any streetstyle blog? Stylish older gentlemen. Hip mamas. Fashionista parents. So, that's who I kept a lookout for.

I don't know this man's name. He regularly comes into the coffee shop where I work. I can tell you, though, that he drinks a medium house-blend coffee every morning. I chased him out the door to snap this photo because I've always admired his fur hat. I really enjoy the whiteness of his beard against the rich, navy wool coat and dark, fur hat. Honestly, I just wish my dad wore a fur hat like that. (My dad wears an Indiana-Jones hat…)

Kathryn is a musician and mother. She lives up the street from me and I regularly see her in snazzy boots, sparkly tops, and cozy leggings. I accosted her at home and snapped a couple photos. (Okay, I don't want to get arrested. Accost is the wrong word. I called first, I didn't just barge in.) For a mother of two kids under the age of five, she always wears stuff that is comfy and functioning, yet also fashionable.

Katie is the second coffee-shop customer who I ended up chasing down. She has a young (extremely trendy!) daughter but she, like Catherine, always looks really pulled together. She often wears high-waisted skirts or jackets with cinched belts. What I always really admire about Katie, though, is her never-ending collection of shoes.
I love the over-the-knee winter boots she's wearing here. Black, classic, and about as trendy as you can be in -20C weather.

Go-To Fashion Blogs (Reposted from WordPress school blog for JRN504)

I don't follow many style blogs religiously, if at all. If something interesting pops up on TweetDeck or in my Google Reader I might take a look, but there are really just a few that I go back to. The following are blogs that I enjoy reading, but they're in no particular order.

Toronto Bike Chic focuses on trendy bicyclists in Toronto. The postings involve mostly photos and a bit of description. The photos are nice and crisp, and they're of regular Torontonian bikers who have that little bit of extra style. I enjoy this blog immensely because I'm a cyclist. I bike to school, to work, and around the city on the weekends in the good weather. I feel that my bike is an extension of my attitude, my style, and my personality. In downtown Toronto, a bike is part of the culture. A bike can be a fashion statement, and in Toronto it usually is.

Coffee Cycle Chic is by the same person, but focuses on coffee shops and cycle shops in Toronto. Sadly, neither have been updated in a while. This round-up makes me miss them.

Though, Hipster Musings is updated frequently, and it is one that I check often. A small-town girl, who goes to Waterloo University, writes this one. Her style isn't actually necessarily what I would wear myself, but I the outfits she puts together are cool nonetheless, and that's exactly why I read it. I wouldn't wear it, so I read her blog and sort of live vicariously through her. Also, I find that her posts are kind of a blast from the past. The music and movies she writes about, as well as her sense of fashion, are very 90s. Not to mention the writer looks like Winona Ryder so I constantly think back to Girl Interrupted (1999) and all the dark, 90s fashion in it.

Lastly, Cheap and Chic is a blog that similar to a million other blogs, but I read it anyway. Nothing about it is spectacular, but I do read this so I thought I should include it. Even the name makes it hard to distinguish. It has pretty photos, some DIY ideas, and some nice fashions. Though I can't really tell what the cheap part is. Of course, the DIY stuff is cheap, but I the clothes are all a bit pricier than I would personally buy.

Here are the rest of the online fashion and design media that I read (again in no particular order): LENS, The Sartorialist, Worn Fashion Journal, Textstyles, College Fashion, and Eye Weekly Style

I love the library

Whether it's the Toronto Public Library or the Ryerson library, I just absolutely adore the library. They're a great idea in general, a way for people to share and learn using books they might not have necessarily had access to otherwise.

Toronto's public library system is one of the best systems in the world. There are many branches, a huge amount of material, and even some really great building and system updates lately. Library staff (not just the librarians) are usually quite knowledgeable and helpful. Not only that, but the Toronto public library system also offer programs for kids and adults alike, all of which are free.

The Ryerson library is also really great. Librarians at Ryerson really know their stuff, and they know how to help a university student, what kind of texts we're looking for and stuff like that. As a former prof of mine (Prof. Copeland) once said, "For some reason, the librarians really like helping you kids."

Ry library also has computers, ipads, laptops and lots of other equipment that can be taken out of reserve for a few hours at a time. But the best part of the reserve material at Ryerson is that there are text books for each class available to take out. You can sign them out for two hours at a time.

So, this semester I didn't even bother buying my French textbook for $120. Instead, before class, I take it out of reserve. Even if it's a little bit late getting back to them, they only charge a dollar fine per hour that it's late. So, if this semester is thirteen weeks long, and I take the textbook back late after each class, it still only costs me $13.

Wow.
And that is why I love the library.

*Photo Credit: Anais Kelsey-Verdecchia. Figure in photo is my sister.

A Moment on Earth

This semester I took ENG 921: Narrative in a Digital Age.
Never have the readings for an English course been so cool! All the "readings" have been digital media, digi art and digital archives of one form or another.

This week we had to look at, among other things, a digital text called "A Moment on Earth." It's the website for two movies that were made a few years ago.

-- 60 filmmakers around the world shot their film at the exact same moment in time around the world, and then did it again 12 hours later
-- On August 5, 2004, at 12 p.m. GMT and again at 12 a.m. GMT, simultaneous moments were caught all around the globe.

It's the perfect demonstration of global synchronicity, and it beautifully shows how we're all connected. Global village and all that jazz.

(Click the cool link-y picture below to check it out.)

We also had to be writing a blog for this course about the readings and our reactions etc. I may post bits and pieces of it here if I have the time.