'The Girl With the Satanic Rabbit Tattoo': What's the crack about Donnie Darko? SPOILERS

"What's that thing on your arm?" Is actually something I get more often than you may think. I mean, yes, obviously it's a tattoo. My first one of what is now three (sorry Dad). But when I then proceed to say "That's Frank, from Donnie Darko?" I am still met with blank faces. Not just because most people don't even know who or what Donnie Darko and Frank are, but because they don't see it as something aesthetically pleasing.

It's not a secret that Donnie Darko is my favourite thing to exist in the world since the dawn of time. The obsession timeline goes as such: I bought the DVD for £5 in a discount film and music store in 2013 (along with the Matrix trilogy, also for £5. The shop has subsequently closed down after what seemed to be them just giving films away,) watched it with my mum, watched it five more times, got a tattoo of Frank on my arm.
I admit, Frank is not what you would class "a looker". He's not even, on first viewing, that much of a good guy. He runs Gretchen over, he makes Donnie flood the school and set fire to Patrick Swayze's house, and crash the plane Donnie's mother and sister are both flying on into a whirling black hole of destruction, death and mindfuckery.

Everyone hates Frank at first, and I don't blame them. But what you have to know about Donnie Darko, and we'll return back to why this makes Frank awesome in a second, is that the whole film revolves around the fact that there are two universes: the Primary Universe (PU) and Tangent Universe (TU). Now, the amazing thing about this film is that it's open to many different interpretations. However, with Kelly releasing his Director's Cut (available on Netflix) that explains the Philosophy of Time Travel in more depth, the "two universe theory" is the one that most people regard as the only one worth reading if you're struggling to understand the film (if you don't really give a shit about the in depth meaning of it all and felt like your head nearly exploded, just go with the "daylight schizophrenic hallucinations" explanation.)
Now, in the world of Donnie Darko, a TU is created at midnight on October 2nd, and will last for 28 days - as per Frank's message to Donnie. Now, events can unfold within the TU that do not happen in the PU (the universe we currently live in: e.g. the world that is shown in the film up to midnight on October 2nd and after 6:42.12am on Halloween. Most of the action takes place in the TU.) However, even though those events don't occur, they have a link to reality in the PU: e.g. Gretchen looking at Donnie's mother like she knew her, Frank waking up and touching his eye, Patrick Swayze in tears.

Now, where does Frank come into this? . We see Frank emerge from the car after killing Gretchen, and we recognise him as that guy in the cinema - oh yeah! Well, in the cinema he has a big hole in his eye - right? And then at the end of the film, Donnie shoots Frank in his eye - right? Well the cool thing about Frank is that he's "manipulated dead" which is essentially a "reverse ghost" (Gretchen is too). He dies in the TU and travels back in time to October 2nd to help Donnie. What is Donnie's quest? Remember that plane engine that crashed into Donnie's room? That is called an "artifact", and according to Roberta Sparrow an artifact is created when a TU is created (October 2nd) The TU began over Donnie's house, so that is where the engine is dumped - the TU replicates everything in the PU, so there was a spare engine just hanging around. Donnie's quest is to return the artifact by sending it through a portal into the PU. The engine then crashes in the PU, but because Frank didn't get Donnie out of his bed in this universe, Donnie dies.

So, basically, Frank is a good guy! He saves Donnie from dying from the original drop of the engine, by honking his car horn and talking to him direct. His aim is to help Donnie on his quest to restore the unstable TU to the PU by returning the artifact. Frank gets Donnie to flood the school, causing him to meet Gretchen who also acts as a guide for Donnie. He also makes Donnie burn down Patrick Swayze's house, exposing his "kiddie porn dungeon".
Frank is Donnie's spirit guide, and that's what he is to me too. Frank is pretty misunderstood in the film, and as well as just looking awesome (who doesn't love satanic bunny rabbits?) He actually helps Donnie restore the universe to peace, even if it means sacrificing Donnie - completing his Christ-like transition throughout the film.

The Depiction of Gender in "500 Days of Summer" Presentation 05/11/2014

Using two or three examples of your choice, explore ways in which film and/or television have depicted issues related to modern society.

·       Successfully flips the stereotypical film about a heterosexual relationship on its head: it is usually the male character who is distant, afraid of commitment, and wanting to keep things casual rather than adopt the label of a relationship; and it is usually the woman who expects all of these qualities from him. Laura Mulvey “The narrative structure of traditional cinema establishes the male character as active and powerful: he is the agent around whom the dramatic action unfolds and the look gets organized. The female character is passive and powerless: she is the object of desire for the male character(s).”

·       The story is told entirely from the male perspective, about male expectations of females and ultimately the aim is for the male audience to view Summer as a heartless monster.

·       Summer was completely honest with Tom from the start that she didn’t want a relationship – adopting the male role in the partnership – but Tom is still presented as a victim of this strong, independent and heart-breaking woman. Again, flipping the classic rom-com/romantic genre on its head; countless times it is the female characters presented as victims of male ideas about love.

·       Towards the end of the film Summer is shown crying at a marriage scene in the cinema, clearly this is the turning point for her when she realises that the only reason she has enjoyed not being tied down is just because she’s not met the right person. This realisation is something pop culture suggests is engrained in every woman; the desire to get married and settle down and adopt the domestic personality in exchange for your young and unruly one.

·       As the film is from the male perspective (written by men, produced by men, directed by a man) the message the male audience would take from it is that if you are friendly to a woman, or if you give her sex or spend any quality time with her, that she owes you something regardless of whether she specified when you met her that she didn’t want a relationship. Laura Mulvey: “Representation of 'the more perfect, more complete, more powerful ideal ego' of the male hero stands in stark opposition to the distorted image of the passive and powerless female character. Hence the spectator is actively made to identify with the male rather than with the female character in film.”

·       Summer changes her mind about wanting to be tied down when she meets who she thinks is her soul mate, and Tom is hurt that she has found someone else. What she explains is that she “woke up one day and she knew she felt differently” and the male perspective the film is written in portrays this change of mind as something horrific and hurtful. Anneke Smelik: “The woman's 'guilt' will be sealed by either punishment or salvation and the film story is then resolved through the two traditional endings which are made available to women: she must either die (as in e.g. Psycho (1960)) or marry (as in e.g. Marnie (1964)).”

·       The modern and misogynistic ideology of the “friend zone” is effectively represented in the whole plot line. The whole concept of this idea, as explained rather disdainfully by countless feminist writers, is that it is the duty of the woman to return any affection shown by the male otherwise she is at fault. This term used frequently in pop culture is said to have originated from an episode of Friends. Agusta Christensen: “The insidious problem with these 'nice guys' is that they certainly don’t respect these women. Instead, they stew bitterly in a sense of their own entitlement, waiting indignantly for something that was never promised to them."

HELLO AND UPDATES and (more importantly) Rape Culture Watch: Transport for London's Latest Campaign

Before I get into the main topic for this post I'd like to apologise for being away from you all for so long! I moved to Southampton in September and I've been settling in and getting my head stuck into some film and television studies and I'm loving it! I'm going to make a few promises right here because I need to take this blog more seriously!

1. I'm going to continue with my 60 second projects, at least doing some once a week! I found them such good practice and a really good way of warming my brain up for some writing that I want to do!
2. I'm also going to transfer some of my older short pieces of writing over from my Tumblr, mostly these are short free verse poems but I want to make a compilation of them all and have all my writing in one place; I no longer post my writing on Tumblr as it doesn't fit with my blog style!
3. I had so much fun doing my "Art-A-Day" project, but now I'm at university I don't have much time to sit down and do a painting a day and I left most of my materials back at home, so I will post any drawings I do but I won't be continuing with this project!
4. Leading onto today's topic, I'm going to be posting more about current affairs on this blog now that I need the practice for writing, as well as posting more film reviews (I PROMISE I WILL EVENTUALLY) I realise that this blog doesn't really have a set theme to it, it is just me moaning and waffling and sounding awfully profound and pretentious, but I hope you enjoy the vastness of what I like to write about!

So thank you all for reading! If you want to share any of my posts please do, it would really help me out to get more of a following going - and would probably motivate me to be more active!

[Trigger warnings: Rape, rape culture, awful people being awful, will make you question humanity etc etc.]

Rape Culture Watch: Transport for London's Latest Campaign

I came under fire on Facebook for opposing to Transport for London's latest campaign of the #HomeSafeSelfie, but eventually after I explained why it is so awful people saw sense. 

Let me get a few points out of the way early on here:

1. I appreciate TFL's idea here: raising awareness on the constantly pressing issue of illegal cabs.
2. YES precautions are a good thing if you're going on a night out 
3. and YES let people know when you're home if they are worried about you or if they have asked you to

Now let me outline my issues with this campaign, and I'm not the only person to have them.

GENERAL VICTIM BLAMING AWFULNESS

This campaign shows that it is the women's responsibility to get home safe, rather than male responsibility not to attack or rape. The example I used on Facebook is that rather than #HomeSafeSelfies we should do "Didn't rape anyone tonight selfie #winning." It encourages women to celebrate not being raped over social media (Side note: Celebrating not being raped? How do you think this will make actual victims feel? Insensitive.) Not being attacked or sexually assaulted shouldn't be something to be celebrated it should be the norm. 

Leading onto point two...

WE SHOULD FEEL LUCKY?

The general tone behind this campaign is that getting home safe is something that rarely happens which is why it should be publicly celebrated, and we as females should feel lucky every time we accomplish getting home without having been assaulted. It's something you recognise as a day-to-day thing; you don't stumble home drunk at 4am and go "I must thank all the wonderful men in my area for not raping me like everyone tells me they will. Boy, aren't I a lucky lady." It trivialises the issue of rape and makes it seem like women need to feel grateful every time we get home without being raped or attacked because that is obviously something that would happen to us.

And finally...

IS THIS EVEN CLEVER?

(Well obviously not Em otherwise you wouldn't have made a post about it, I know, but...) In a slightly different feel to the previous two problems, it has been commented that this campaign could jeopardise women's safety rather than help. With advances in modern technology and what we know are our limited drunk texting/Tweeting capabilities it is far FAR too easy to click the "send location" button on a tweet - I've done it when I'm sober - and whoosh, your address has been attached with a photo of you drunk and alone in bed. Well that's not clever, is it? Even without sending your location, there will be people who follow you on social media who know where you live, and possible sharing  on social media that you've "got home safe" drunk at 4am would encourage someone to come to your house? 

Generally you can tell I'm not impressed with this campaign, and I know that there are people who disagree with my disagreements. I definitely support the idea of promoting the use of legal cabs considering the issues that arise from illegal ones, and I am in favour obviously of letting your friends and family know where you are and when you are home safely (my mother wouldn't be able to sleep until I got home from a night out if I got a cab home, meaning most of my time at home I was leaving parties at 11pm so my mum could get her 8 hours peacefully.)

Thank you for reading! I hope you have learnt something today.

Remember if you have been affected by issues such as rape that there are organisations that you can talk to:
Samaritans (UK) 08457 90 90 90
Rape Crisis (England and Wales) 0808 802 9999
https://www.imalive.org/ A text-based online crisis network

A Strange Phenomenon

For as long as I can remember, I have experienced this feeling. It feels like a gentle rush of electricity radiating from the very centre of my scalp, down my spine and into my limbs. I can remember it happening at all the schools I've been to when a teacher or a classmate paid special attention to me; when my friends and I were younger and we'd braid and brush each others' hair; and most recently in relationships when fingertips would softly run over my skin. I'd come out in waves of goosebumps all over my body, and these electric tingles almost hypnotically paralysing me.

It wasn't until I was seventeen that I realised that this phenomenon had a name. For months I'd been referring to them as "brain orgasms", because for me that's what they felt like. After a bit of Googling "nice tingly head feeling" etc. I found that other people were calling it roughly the same thing, and it had gained the acronyms AIHO: Attention Induced Head Orgasms and AIE: Attention Induced Euphoria. With more searching I managed to find it's real name of ASMR: Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response, and I found that this tingly feeling I thought no one else experienced had a massive internet cult following.

Through further searching I entered a dark corner of the internet that I'd never come across or heard of before, a place that was originally quite unsettling.

I found a whole world of dreamy, light and gentle women whispering into and caressing a camera; trying their hardest to recreate the natural situations we find ourselves in that create this sensation in our brain. The above video is a Youtube user (or as I now know them to be called - ASMRtists) called Gentlewhispering, who has created magically relaxing videos that induce a hypnotic trance state in me where I can feel nothing else but these waves of impulses. They've helped me through sleepless nights where sleeping pills cannot, and they've helped me overcome anxiety where other remedies cannot. Some of these videos can last over an hour, and for the whole time you are almost transported out of your bedroom and you are no longer the sleep-deprived, depressed or anxious individual you once were.

The state that some of these videos put me into is almost meditative, you can think of nothing but this pleasure overwhelming your body. The only way I can describe it, as I have previously, is like being in a trance. I always struggled to meditate, as one of the unfortunate effects of anxiety means having  brain that will not shut down naturally no matter how hard you try; but with the help of videos like this one below, my brain is made completely blank and calm.

I fully appreciate that not everyone will experience this same feeling as me when you encounter something like this, but these videos are still made for relaxation purposes. Even if you do not enter the state that people like myself do, these videos can still be enjoyed for their calming effects. I also understand that at first they may seem creepy, someone is purposely recreating a situation in which they are in your personal space. At first, it unsettled me quite a lot, and it took me a long while to find people who actually don't unnerve me with their videos. Some users make their videos with underlying sexual tones, which makes me uncomfortable, and this is also why I generally prefer watching a woman to a man.

In essence, if I hadn't discovered this internet following, I seriously doubt I will have passed my exams. I used them every night to fall asleep during exam period, and I used them during my revision breaks just like some friends of mine would use regular meditation. I hope, in a way, this post has been informative and interesting to you - but most of all, I hope that if you also experience these feelings, it has helped to introduce you to a world where you can embrace them from your own home.

"Saliva" in 60 seconds: watery liquid secreted into the mouth by glands, providing lubrication for chewing and swallowing, and aiding digestion.

i've been low, i'd say the lowest i've been was where i was disregarding any sign my body gave me of hunger as a trick by the creature inhabiting my brain so that he could feed it himself instead of me and i'd watch him grow, eventually growing bigger than me; 6ft 8" without his shoes, and swallow me whole as well.

"Summit" in 60 seconds: the highest point of a hill or mountain; a meeting between heads of government.

isn't it strange how this word means those two things? these heads of governments are mountains, tall and powerful beings looking out across their land. the highest point? their own brain, which they value more than everything that surrounds them, and their summit is up in the clouds.

"Spaghetti" in 60 seconds: pasta made in solid strings.

there are starving children in third world countries begging for a grain of rice or a sip of water. something, anything that can calm the rage of hunger swelling inside every one of them. and then there's me, an eighteen year old girl from england, throwing a whole bowl of spaghetti away because i burnt a bit of the cheese.

"Finance" in 60 seconds: the management of large amounts of money, especially by governments or large companies.

do you ever just stop and think that we live on a rock floating through vast nothingness, and this rock is run by small sheets of paper and pieces of metal with important people's faces on them? notes can be burnt and shredded, be reckless with your money.

"Mistake" in 60 seconds: an act or judgement that is misguided or wrong.

i make more mistakes by 3pm than most people make in a week. errors in judgement, errors in splelling, errors within errors. i need to remember that metal doesn't go in the microwave.

"Rash" in 60 seconds: group of red spots on the skin that is caused by an illness or a reaction to something; acting or done without careful consideration of the possible consequences; impetuous.

constantly pressing, pinching against the walls of my brain; the chambers squirm and tremble. that's what you are, an itch in my very core but no matter how much i scratch you remain. my insides are red raw.

"Charity" in 60 seconds: the voluntary giving of help, typically in the form of money, to those in need.

it’s about giving to those who need, doing things that need to be done for the greater good. donating time or money or blood, sweat and tears. charity can be as simple as smiling at someone in the street, they could need just that. it can be as simple as catching up with an old buddy going through a divorce, or helping someone find their favourite jumper that they lost in the wash.

ART-A-DAY PROJECT: claustrophobia//18.07.2014

have you ever felt like a bear stuck in a cage where those meant to be moral creatures, rather than help you escape, prod you with sticks to make you dance?

my mind has been a bit of a mess lately, i can't even describe why or how. 

i feel trapped in my own head, and i know i have decisions to make that i have been putting off for months. i have questions to ask and answers to find.

as it stands i am trapped, and everyone is just stood around my cage eating popcorn while i struggle to break free.

ART-A-DAY PROJECT: not ur bae//17.07.2014

inspired by danielle and her face.

bae is an ugly word but i use it ironically for danielle. 

i feel like the title and the text create a sense of "if i'm drunk i'm not your bae."

you shouldn't be anyone's anything.

i'm not profound. i don't know if i want a relationship or not. i don't know if i want someone to "own me".

(is this now feminist art?"

ART-A-DAY PROJECT: sexy//16.07.2014

i don’t really know how to describe this other than “two people in a bed surrounded by naked men”.
i guess it’s probably something to do with sex.

two people in bed surrounded by naked men. i think my brain is subconsciously thinking about sex. 

it is interesting to note that they are naked men aside the sleeping girl, i could have chosen it to be a piece about infidelity and thinking about sexually adventurous ex-lovers (don’t we all?)

but that is depressing. this piece is one big freudian slip, it includes a note from my mother.

n.b. freudian slips are errors in speech, calling your teacher “mum” or boyfriend “dad” - typically errors conforming to freud’s ideas.

i’m not always thinking about sex - freud would disagree.

ART-A-DAY PROJECT: i want too much//15.07.2014

i’m trying to be profound on this hot tuesday night guys. this is the first time i touched art materials since i finished doing an art A level.
called (rather profoundly) i want too much. 
i’m going to do a piece a day for as long as i can be bothered. 
you are the witnesses to this.


lately i have been feeling very selfish, i have been craving the love and attention of others. i am always keen to display affection but i get depressed when it is not returned. if i am to succeed in life i need to stop seeking approval, attention and affection from others. love is something that is found, not earned. just because i love does not mean they have to reciprocate that.

Shutter Island: how knowing the twist of a film before you watch it never does any good...(SPOILER ALERT)

When it comes to film twists in the past, I've managed to keep myself in the dark quite well. It's impressive that I saw Fight Club and The Sixth Sense both for the first time in 2013 and managed to keep myself from hearing the twists for so long after their original release. Before I sat down to watch both films with my parents (both had seen them before me) I had the same warning of "just so you know, there's a twist at the end" and then urge me to guess (bringing to mind the twist-guessing game in series two of The IT Crowd... like Roy, I feel it ruins the fun of the movie.)

But Shutter Island was completely different. The first thing I heard about this film came from my brother, who claimed it "proved DiCaprio didn't die on Titanic, as he wakes up on a beach." Neither is true, but a cute idea he had almost certainly heard from someone who hadn't seen or heard of the film (N.B it is actually apparently The Beach that "proves" this...Hmm.) Before sitting down to watch it with my family I was aware that the ending was going to be something we wouldn't expect, but after reading the short synopsis I found on IMDB I already knew what it was most likely going to be. This might be because I consider myself a bit of a film buff, but may also be because at the time I saw it I was in the process of writing my own script set in a mental institution; similarly, with a twist ending. Writing a twist into a story is actually a lot easier than you would have thought, so my worry was that Scorsese and I had similar ideas on what constitutes as a good twist in a mental health drama. And so, I felt I had gone into watching a film for the first time having spoiled the ending for myself unknowingly.
(TRYING NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS BY GIVING A KIND OF VAGUE DESCRIPTION)
In Shutter Island, DiCaprio plays U.S Marshall Edward "Teddy" Daniels sent to a psychiatric facility for the criminally insane on said island to investigate an escaped patient, Rachel Solando. After reading the synopsis, that gave away no more information than the above, I immediately knew that the twist in the ending would be that Daniels was a patient on Shutter Island himself, it was inevitable.
Similarly, the twist ending in the script I was in the process of writing was exactly the same. A medicine student shadows an esteemed psychiatrist in an institution, only for it later to be revealed that this is the hallucinations and ideas coming from a brain-damaged girl, in a coma after attempting suicide by hanging and damaging her nervous system.
Credit to Scorsese, he must have had an idea that when it comes to mental health dramas there are only a select few twist endings that are effective. He took one we probably would have suspected first, but developed it, with the use of characters Rachel Solando and Andrew Laeddis and the use of the "law of four" and the question of who is "patient 67"?

What is your most painful memory?

The Honesty Conjecture p.3

This is part three, and hopefully there will be a part four! I am really enjoying hearing people's stories and their opinions on what makes us human.