Quantcast
Channel: Culture & Arts
Viewing all 18505 articles
Browse latest View live

Adam Driver On Canine Co-Stars, Silent Retreats And Kylo Ren's Convictions

$
0
0

Judging by the breadth of roles he’s taken, Adam Driver’s life gets a little better every year. 2016 alone found him basking in the triumph of “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” and the acclaimed fifth season of “Girls,” hosting “Saturday Night Live,” and playing an NSA operative in “Midnight Special,” a poetic bus driver in “Paterson” and a 17th-century Jesuit monk in “Silence,” which expands to wide release this weekend. 


Yes, that’s right: Adam Driver, an Emmy nominee who went from the Marines to Juilliard, ended his blessed 2016 with a supporting role in a Martin Scorsese drama. For a magazine-cover hunk whose star has steadily risen since “Girls” bowed in 2012, Driver manages to retain an enigmatic lure that evades most movie stars. His serious-actor bona fides are cemented, as evidenced by the numerous critics’ groups that have, for good reason, selected his “Paterson” performance as one of the year’s best. 


When we sat down to discuss “Silence,” a Scorsese passion project in which Driver and Andrew Garfield portray Portuguese priests vilified for not apostatizing while searching for their mentor (Liam Neeson) in Japan, Driver was modest about reflecting on his own upswing. That’ll probably make you love him more. 


“Paterson” was one of my favorite movies last year. Completely independent of my interviewing you, today I stumbled across the news that your doggie co-star died.


Yeah, Nellie. May she rest in peace. It was a female dog playing a man. She died a couple months after. She had cancer. They took her leg off and she didn’t survive. It sucked.


Sorry to open with such a bummer. She was perfect for the movie. Was it easier to to work with an older dog?


I don’t know. I have worked with a younger dog and it was a piece of shit.


Was that when you and Ray had to bring the dog to Staten Island in “Girls”?


Yeah. But “Paterson” was good. Nellie was great. Also because it’s a bulldog, the trainer tried to keep us apart to help the story because we were contentious with each other. But bulldogs have a lot of health and respiratory problems, so I would pick Nellie up and we had to do a scene over and over again where we were walking. Obviously a bond formed.



2016 was a big year for you. Does a behemoth like “Star Wars” now inform how you approach more intimate projects like “Paterson” and “Silence”?


Yeah, yeah, I would say. In a way, the process of working on them is the same in that you try to know as much as you can before, obviously to relieve anxiety. Also I know the pace of a big-budget movie is probably going to be slower than a “Paterson,” where it feels like more of a conversation.


But because J.J. Abrams and Rian Johnson were doing the “Star Wars” movies, it still felt very intimate. “Star Wars” is known vocabulary that we just kind of take for granted. People are going to be wearing helmets, it’s going to be set in space, but because those directors encourage specificity, you have to ask those questions again for yourself: Why is everyone covered up? When everyone uses the Force, why are they reaching out? Why is the lightsaber the way it is? So, in a way, it’s the same questions you’re asking for “Paterson”: Why are his clothes pretty much the exact same thing as his uniform? Why does he go to the same bar every night? Why is his pace this way? Why does he hold himself this way?


In a way, the processes are similar, but on one the catering is better.


Is there a type of filmmaking experience you’re still longing for? It seems like you covered all the bases last year.


Oh no, there are so many other directors that have different ways of working that I haven’t done yet, like Mike Leigh. Mike Leigh is heavy on improv and pre-production rehearsal and crafting the scripts with the actors. I’ve kind of done that in plays a little bit. I’d like to do something with Terry Gilliam. He has a very strong visual sense that’s operating in the background that I’m not aware of.


I think directors, or really good ones, have very strong personalities, and their personalities make their way into their movies. So, because they’re different people, the way they work on them is inherently gonna be different.



Tell me about the weeklong silent Welsh retreat you and Andrew Garfield went on to prepare for “Silence.”


Well, It’s kind of a joke, in one sense, because we were with all these Jesuit priests who were all there, and we’re the two asshole actors — no, I shouldn’t say assholes. It’s these two actors coming in, and it was glaringly obvious who the actors were in that group.


I’ve done a silent retreat before. At the end of Juilliard, they added this part of the program where you go on a weeklong retreat with your class that winds up being a bunch of actors on a retreat in Long Island. It turns into a game of Charades every day.


It was good in that you don’t have a lot of time for quiet in your life. Everything is kind of oversaturated and loud, and to not speak is great. I’m all for it. You can’t help but be self-reflective and have a long, ongoing internal monologue. We also weren’t eating then. We were on the diet to start losing weight, so also at dinnertime we were very short, watching Andrew and myself savor lettuce and things like that. But it was good to watch people, especially to see everyone else who has committed their lives to the church. That kind of faith, to see it practiced, is useful and reassuring.


What are you wearing during this retreat?


Anything you want. You can wear sweatpants. But mostly T-shirts and jeans. There are big grounds that surround the property, so there’s a church that’s 500 meters from the main building. People are walking around in nature. There are paths around where I went for runs around the Welsh countryside.


Did you read?


You read a lot. I think I read A Christmas Carol.


Did you bring that with you?


No, there was a library.


Are there rules?


Yeah, you don’t talk. You have a bed and desk, and that’s pretty much it. You have a communal bathroom that’s down the hall that you share. They tell you when lunch is, they tell you when mass is every night. And that’s kind of it. The schedule is up to you.


So you selected A Christmas Carol?


Yeah, I read that book. I read something else too. And I looked at a lot of picture books. You’re reading the history of Jesuits at that time. The researcher for “Silence” gave us a packet of Jesuit history. We did a lot of reading, a lot of walking around looking at paintings.



That feels like a very Adam Driver thing to do, going on this Method-y silent retreat. Since the moment we learned your name, you were associated with this everyday, real-guy image, as in, “Adam Driver is not a movie star, he’s one of us. He’s a real person.” Is that weird to you?


[Laughs] Is it weird to me that I’m a real person?


And that people write about you that way. It popped up in a lot of profiles I’ve read about you.


Yeah, I don’t know that I have a thought about that. I guess I don’t overthink it. I just don’t know how to be anybody other than who I am, I guess. No, I haven’t really put much thought into it. That’s a nice thing ― it’s good to be real or to be a person. That’s always good.


It’s hard to synthesize what I mean, but I think you’re an example of our changing value system when it comes to movie stars. To a degree, we’ve moved away from Old Hollywood glamour and opted for relatability. It seems like the roles you’ve chosen show you care about that too.


I do. I mean, for me, maybe it’s not as tactical as that. To me, they’re no-brainers. I grew up watching films, and all the people I’ve been lucky enough to work with, I’ve been largely inspired by them, from Spielberg and the Coen brothers and Scorsese and Jim Jarmusch. It makes sense to me.


I have no ambition to follow some formula in Hollywood where you do a small movie and then suddenly you have to do a lot of Hollywood movies. I think suddenly I’m aware of the value of making a movie and how special and rare and lucky it is. I don’t take it for granted.


There are parallels between Kylo Ren and your “Silence” character. They both flirt with the antithesis of their convictions. Kylo Ren is tempted away from the Dark Side, so much so that popular fan theories think he’s actually a good guy. And in “Silence,” Father Garrpe risks dying if he doesn’t renounce his faith. There are interesting good-versus-evil battles in both. 


I didn’t think of it as good and evil, necessarily, but more the anguish of faith. Since you’re making that comparison, they both have strong doubt, and strong doubt goes hand-in-hand with faith. On the outside is actually probably a healthier way to live than just complete devotion to whatever it is.


They’re also two movies where a kind of superpower is persecuting against a smaller organization or belief system. They both feel morally justified to behave however they need to to accomplish that, regardless of whether it means persecuting other people that they just don’t understand. So in that way, yeah, they both have anguish of faith. It’s yet to be determined for Kylo Ren, but I guess it’s more determined in “Silence” whether the character rises to the occasion or not.


We tend to love villains in cinema, and there’s a villainous aspect to the inquisitors in “Silence,” even if it takes a different form than it does in “Star Wars.” Do you feel that people would want these two guys to save themselves or hang on to those convictions?


I think maybe “Silence” asks more questions than it really tries to create a master thesis about it all. I think, as a human, it’s because we live in a world that’s saturated with everything, where the value of things are less. This is very much at a time when actions meant something and your words meant something, probably more than they do now. To watch people with strong conviction is always very moving.


Before we wrap up, did you ever imagine “Girls” would lead to Adam and Jessa getting together?


I didn’t. No, not at all.


What was your first thought?


I was excited. I like working with Jemima.


This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity and length. 




-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.


'Fantastic Four' Co-Stars Jamie Bell And Kate Mara Are Engaged

$
0
0

At least one good thing came out of the disastrous 2015 reboot of “Fantastic Four.”


Cast members Jamie Bell and Kata Mara met while on the film and are now engaged, a rep for the actress confirmed to E! on Friday. 


Bell, 30, and Mara, 33, have been a thing since the fall of 2015, according to People.


And although Bell told E! last March that they were not planning a trip down the aisle, things must have changed because Mara posted a photo on Twitter last week where she was sporting a superhero-sized ring.




No wedding date has been announced.


This will be the first marriage for Ms. Mara and the second for Bell, who separated from his first wife, Evan Rachel Wood, in May 2014. Bell has a son from that marriage.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

These Honest 'Parenting Support' Cards Say What Parents Really Need To Hear

$
0
0

There are greeting cards that congratulate new parents and parents-to-be on their growing families. So it makes sense that there should also be cards that acknowledge breast pumping, sleep deprivation and the other trials of raising children.


This week, greeting card designer Emily McDowell launched a new line of “Parenting Support” cards. The line features cards with messages like “You’re not a monster. Parenting is really hard” and “Hang in there, you’re doing great.”



”Parenting is really hard, and yet it’s frowned upon to publicly admit anything about it that could be perceived as negative, because of the fear that we’ll be judged as not loving our children enough, or pegged as a ‘bad mom,’” McDowell told The Huffington Post


“There’s a well-worn set of cultural expectations about how parents are supposed to feel about the experience of parenting, and women in particular get hammered with it, both from other people and within ourselves,” she added. “When reality doesn’t live up to those expectations, we end up with tremendous guilt and shame, and secretly concluding that ‘there must be something wrong with me’ ― which of course isn’t true.”



McDowell is a stepparent to an 11-year-old boy and also has two very young godsons. She told HuffPost her godsons’ mother has been her best friend for 25 years and served as “unofficial consultant” for her “Parenting Support” cards. 


The designer said she wants her cards to have an impact on people in the throes of parenting.  


“I hope parents who receive these cards (or even see them!) can feel a sense of relief and reassurance that they’re not failing, they’re not alone, and it’s totally normal and OK to both love your kid and have complicated feelings about being a mom or dad,” McDowell explained.



”Someone commented on my Instagram last week that she’d bought herself a whole set of our Empathy Cards (for serious illness and loss), not to send out, but to keep and look at when she wanted to feel understood,” she added. “I hope these can serve a similar purpose for parents.”


McDowell has three “Parenting Support” cards available on her website and is currently in the process of creating more. The next batch will focus on the way your relationship with your partner changes after having kids, issues of identity struggles and finding humor in parenting situations, from caring for infants to raising teenagers.


Said McDowell, “This is a hugely broad topic, and I’m really looking forward to finding different ways to look at it.”

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

How To Survive In A Conspiracy Theorist's World

$
0
0


When the TBS show “Search Party,” a dark detective sitcom starring Alia Shawkat, dropped in November, I wasn’t paying much attention ― this, despite the fact that I’d been intrigued for months by the unsettling trailers. In the pre- and post-election madness, I’d become a cable news junkie and, alternately, switched off the TV entirely and retreated with stacks of books. 


Turns out, this was a mistake. During a month when I was trying to figure out what had happened to my country, how it had become so obsessed with imagined pedophile rings run out of D.C.-area pizza parlors and millions of undocumented immigrants voting in California (didn’t happen), “Search Party” would have been the perfect fictional chaser to all those hours with The Washington Post and New York Times. It’s a show for an age of conspiracy theorists and amateur gumshoes, a jagged-edged sitcom that tries to unravel the psychological roots and painful consequences of our yearning for morbid puzzles.


Of course, politics never overtly enters the picture. “Search Party” takes, as its subject, another zeitgeisty genre: amateur detection. Self-effacing Dory (Shawkat), who channels a hipster ‘50s vibe with her subdued curly bob and boxy blouses, lives with her uptight boyfriend, Drew (John Reynolds), in New York. They’re a few years out of college, but Dory is adrift, working as a personal assistant to a wealthy, dysfunctional housewife while occasionally making noises about pursuing a job mentoring underprivileged girls. One day, she spots a missing poster with a familiar face: Chantal Witherbottom, a girl she recognizes from her college dorm, has vanished.


When Dory brings up Chantal’s disappearance at brunch with Drew and friends, they’re dismissive. Chantal, they recall, kind of sucked. Anyway, they doubt she’s really in danger. Dory’s besties Elliott (John Early) and Portia (Meredith Hagner) barely notice her new preoccupation with Chantal’s case as they toggle through social media feeds, where they’re absorbed in the maintenance of their own manicured self-images ― the former, as a gay cancer survivor who’s launching a charity water bottle startup; the latter, as an adorable blond actress starring as a Latina detective on a new procedural. 


But Dory can’t let it go. As she pursues apparent leads, shows up uninvited at the Witherbottom family’s vigil for Chantal, gets caught up in a Brooklyn boutique-based cult, and partners up with a dissolutely handsome private detective, Keith (Ron Livingston), her relationships suffer. In her quest to save Chantal ― an unlikely outcome at best ― Dory inflicts irreparable damage on everyone around her, and even on herself.


In the horrifying finale (SPOILER!), she and her now-estranged boyfriend accidentally bludgeon to death Keith, with whom she had an affair but had come to believe was her stalker. Immediately thereafter, Portia arrives on the scene with the missing woman herself, who confesses glibly that she had simply run away and dropped contact with her loved ones after a bad breakup. The show ends there, with Dory in the bloody wreckage of her own botched self-investigation of a non-crime with a non-victim at its center. The only damage that has been caused, in the end, was caused by her own paranoia and recklessness.


This narrative undoubtedly skewers the recklessness of the amateur detective trend, both in fiction and in reality (think Redditors regrettably and incorrectly fingering Sunil Tripathi, a missing student, as a suspect in the Boston bombings), but it’s also an indictment of a paranoid, hair-triggered approach to the world that’s hardly restricted to crime-solving forums.


When a presidential candidate promises to jail his opponent on unspecified charges during a debate, or when a man with a gun shows up at a pizza parlor to “self-investigate” rumors of a candidate’s child sex ring, or even when the media is rocked by thinly sourced assertions that the president-elect might have had sex workers in Russia perform a golden shower for him, it seems our political arena has become little more than another theater for conspiracy theorizing and distracting dramatics.


How different, really, is the allure of true crime mystery from that of a conspiracy theory? It’s been argued that the crime genre’s allure lies, in part, in its ability to grant a comforting order to the universe ― the hero vs. the villain, the mystery followed by the answer. In a rather crotchety 1944 essay, critic Edmund Wilson suggested that the popularity of the detective story at the time was due to ...



“an all-pervasive feeling of guilt and by a fear of impending disaster which it seemed hopeless to try to avert because it never seemed conclusively possible to pin down the responsibility. Who had committed the original crime and who was going to commit the next one? [...] Nobody seems guiltless, nobody seems safe; and then, suddenly, the murderer is spotted, and — relief! — he is not, after all, a person like you or me. He is a villain [...] and he has been caught by an infallible Power, the supercilious and omniscient detective, who knows exactly how to fix the guilt.”



Though today’s crime dramas are more often souped up with an amateur element, allowing the reader to put him- or herself in the infallible shoes of the somehow omniscient detective, the psychology still rings true.


Dory herself manifests both the guilt and the fear; she’s terrified that she’s just like Chantal, a pending victim who will be instantly forgotten, and she feels driven to place herself on the side of justice, instead, by becoming the lost girl’s savior. Her search party, her ex-boyfriend Julian (Brandon Micheal Hall) points out early on, is not really about Chantal ― it’s about Dory’s own lack of control over her life and her thirst for attention. “I think you’ve decided this matters to you because you have nothing else,” he tells her bluntly.


Conspiracy theories play into this same psychological need for control over an unpredictable and frightening cosmos. Many recent conspiracy theories are political; as the country becomes more partisan, the opponents to the party in power tend to respond with conspiracy theories that restore sense to the world as they know it. Donald Trump rose to political popularity through championing the birther conspiracy theory, which held that President Obama could be unseated from office because he was not born in America ― a relatively quick-seeming fix to the Obama presidency, for his most rabid opponents. Trump ultimately, and reluctantly, disavowed birtherism, but he became the conspiracy theory president. During his campaign, he retweeted racially charged fake crime statistics. At rallies, he repeatedly proclaimed, “I alone can fix it.” It’s the sort of self-aggrandizing appropriation of the hero role that makes amateur sleuthing and running for president alike so ego-boosting and comforting: You’re taking control, making sure you’re on the side of good rather than the villain or the victim.


This desperate need to feel worthy and necessary might initially seem understandable, and even innocuous ― in certain settings. Dory’s meddling on “Search Party” appears fairly well-intentioned and mild, at least at first. Of course, inserting herself into a stranger’s life, with little understanding of the situation and the effect she might have, is hardly a harmless hobby. The final result of her quest strikingly resembles a scene that actually took place shortly after “Search Party” premiered: the above-mentioned Pizzagate believer’s ill-fated attempt to search the basement of Comet Ping Pong for a pedophile ring run by Hillary Clinton’s associates.


That horrifying event, also motivated by a misplaced sense of heroism and resulting in (near) tragedy, shared another notable characteristic with Dory’s quest ― it couldn’t have happened without a staggering surplus of confirmation bias, which, in brief, is the tendency to seek out, notice and interpret information in a way that reinforces one’s existing hypotheses. Pizzagate, like many other debunked yet persistent conspiracies, rests on slender coincidences, oddities and manufactured or distorted evidence that proponents focus on to the exclusion of clear and convincing proof to the contrary. Usually, this is because they already believe involved parties ― in this case, Hillary Clinton and her associates, one of whom owns the pizza parlor in question ― are corrupt and evil. Likewise, many on the left have been troublingly frenzied for details about Trump’s alleged golden shower party, recently reported upon by several outlets, the actual evidence for which looks mighty shaky. 


Caught up in her own neuroses and fears, Dory, too, latches on to the smallest scraps of evidence that she’s working on the side of good, easily ignoring or discarding any evidence to the contrary. If given two possible paths, she’ll always pursue the line of inquiry that confirms her original, outlandish theory ― even if, at each turn, her suspicions lead her absurdly awry. She’s still convinced, somehow, that she’s right, that she’s the hero, and that she will be vindicated.


Doggedly pursuing an imagined problem might seem to be merely wasted effort, but it can turn into something sinister. When fighting a great evil, extreme measures might appear justified; if that evil is fabricated, distorted or imagined, then the collateral damage from the extreme measures taken to destroy it remains real. Thankfully, the appearance of a gunman at Comet Ping Pong didn’t result in any casualties, but lives were put at risk by a debunked conspiracy theory. Parents of Sandy Hook victims have been put through unspeakable emotional suffering due to harassment by “truthers” who believe the mass shooting was a false flag operation by the government and that the grieving family members are actors. By the time Dory’s investigation has completed, the body count of her quest exceeds that of the original crime she set out to rectify. In seeking to make herself a superhero, she’s made herself a monster.


“Search Party” couldn’t be more timely and razor-sharp, capturing, in its noir spoof of a crime drama, a sharp satire of our true crime obsessions, conspiracy theory addictions and weakness for political sideshows, as well. 


Throughout the arc of the season, the seductive tropes of the mystery and true crime genres are exploded and revealed for the farce they are, mere pleasing visions that allow each of us to imagine ourselves the heroic protagonist rather than someone who would fuck it all up if we stepped in. Conspiracy theories and crime shows let us imagine that we are capable, not culpable. As the show slowly reveals, humans can wreak untold damage when our self-perceived goodness and guiltlessness, rather than the actual effects of our actions, consume us.


You can be highbrow. You can be lowbrow. But can you ever just be brow? Welcome to Middlebrow, a weekly examination of pop culture. Sign up to receive it in your inbox weekly.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

We've Identified The 7 Horcruxes Needed To Vanquish Donald Trump

$
0
0

It’s nearly Inauguration Day, and then Donald Trump’s reign of darkness will officially begin. But there is hope. Over the course of his life, the president-elect has carefully hidden pieces of his spiritual being within artifacts that have held special meaning to the dark lord.


Now for the good news. After aggressive research by our spirit dimension reporters, we believe we’ve identified these seven artifacts.


If these horcruxes are destroyed, he will no longer have an anchor to this world, and he will vanish into the ether. And then we can all unfollow his Twitter account.


-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

Trump Protesters In New York Want To 'Help Ivanka Move'

$
0
0

Ivanka Trump, future First Daughter, is leaving her birthplace of Manhattan for the swamplands of Washington, D.C. ― the city her father, President-elect Donald Trump, and her husband, soon-to-be Senior White House Advisor Jared Kushner, will also call home.


To mark the occasion, the artists and activists behind the Dear Ivanka Instagram account are planning a demonstration. On Monday, Jan. 16., the Halt Action Group will host a “Help Ivanka Move” protest, hauling boxes to the NYC residence of Ivanka and Jared in an effort to send a not-so-subtle message to the members of the Trump administration.


“Say goodbye to:” a poster for the planned demonstration reads, subsequently listing things like freedom of speech, affordable healthcare, LGBT rights, women’s health, climate change and nuclear regulation, and immigrant rights. 


“The boxes represent freedoms that people are fearful of losing,” Halt Action Group wrote in a press release.



The Dear Ivanka Instagram account started sharing portraits of the famous businessmen last year. The images, filled with impossibly chic gowns and picturesque family poses, are affixed with provocative captions like “Dear Ivanka, I’m an American Muslim and I was attacked on the subway,” and “As a good Jewish mother, what will you tell your kids @dear_ivanka when Steve Bannon infects the White House with his anti-Semitic ideologies?”


Halt Action Group hosted their first NYC demonstration on Nov. 28, 2016, reportedly gathering around 500 people in front of the Puck Building, owned by Kushner’s family. Artists like Cecily Brown, Rob Pruitt, and Marilyn Minter were in attendance. (All three and more are expected to be at the Jan. 16 event, too.)


For those members of the public interested in attending the Jan. 16 demonstration, Halt Action Group provides two simple instructions: “Make a box + show up.” 



-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

A Convincing Argument For Why Flirts Are The Best Kind Of People

$
0
0



People who flirt aimlessly tend to get a bad rap. After all, if you have no intention of pursuing someone, what’s the point of pouring on the charm? 


Flirting does serve a purpose, though, says philosopher Alain de Botton, and believe it or not, it’s a noble one. 


“At its best, flirting can be a vital social process that generously lends us reassurance. Flirting freely redistributes confidence and self-esteem,” the author says in a new video from his School of Life series.


“Good flirting,” he explains, “is an attempt driven by kindness and imaginative excitement to inspire another person to believe more firmly in their own likability ― psychological as much as physical.”


De Botton’s take on an “honorable version” of flirting makes sense: Think back to the last time someone shamelessly flirted with you and you flirted right back. Sure, you may roll your eyes at the thought of him or her now (”A phone number would have been nice!”), but for a moment, the light banter you shared made you feel giddy and good about yourself. 


Watch the video above to hear more on why we should all seek to become better flirts.







type=type=RelatedArticlesblockTitle=Related Stories + articlesList=55ad5bbee4b065dfe89f1de0,580533e1e4b0180a36e5b686,57c05944e4b06384eb3f0dd7,57ed78d2e4b024a52d2de351

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

Student Transforms College Rejection Letter Into Viral Work Of Art

$
0
0

This student just transformed a negative into a positive in the most beautiful way.


When Claudia Vulliamy found out that the prestigious Oxford University in England had turned her down for a place on its classics course Wednesday, she was understandably disappointed.


But she didn’t get downhearted. Instead, the 18-year-old student at Camden School for Girls in London hacked up the letter of rejection and worked it into a painting.






Her mom, Louisa Saunders, posted the above photograph of her creation on Twitter, and the image is now going viral.


“When I got home to see the painting, I laughed, because it was funny and also sassy,” Saunders told The Huffington Post on Saturday.


“It was nice, because I could see that she wasn’t feeling too sad about the rejection. I know it breaks some people’s hearts,” she added. “I really admired her spirit, but I wasn’t very surprised because it’s fairly typical of her ― she’s always been creative.”


Saunders’ Twitter feed was soon flooded with positive comments about her daughter’s inspired work of art:


















Vuilliamy, meanwhile, told HuffPost she was “really surprised” that her artwork went viral, but she’s “so glad that it has cheered people up.”


Usually social media can be quite brutal but it made my week,” she added to ITV News. “I just thought it was a bit of a bummer not to get in. I felt like making it into something.”


She now hopes to study at Durham University ― and continues posting new artwork, such as the piece below depicting her mom, to Instagram:



My mum, in acrylic #art

A photo posted by Claudia Vulliamy (@flamboyant_aesthete) on




type=type=RelatedArticlesblockTitle=Related Coverage + articlesList=56f69e1be4b0143a9b485d86,56d57e29e4b0871f60eca190,56ac6e70e4b0010e80ea3fa9

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.


Artist Turns Donald Trump’s Most Controversial Quotes Into Comic Book Covers

$
0
0

An artist is giving President-elect Donald Trump’s most outrageous comments the comic book treatment.


Cartoonist Robert Sikoryak is transforming several of the controversial and offensive statements that Trump made during the presidential election campaign into eye-catching and thought-provoking illustrations.




“The idea occurred to me right before the election,” the New York City-based artist told The Huffington Post on Saturday.  Trump had said so many outrageous things during his campaign that I wanted to catalogue them.”


“It was important to me to only use Trump’s actual quotes, I didn’t want to put any words in his mouth,” he added. “Once Trump became the president-elect, I felt I had to do it.”






Sikoryak’s work has previously appeared on the cover pages of The New Yorker magazine and the Harvard Business Review. He has also transformed Apple’s iTunes terms of service into comic parodies.


For this project, titled “The Unquotable Trump,” he has compiled the images into a mini-comic. He’s also posting them on a dedicated Tumblr page.






“The reaction has been very enthusiastic, much more so than I expected,” Sikoryak told HuffPost. “I needed to get these comics out of my system, so it’s gratifying that other people have been enjoying them.”


Check out more of his Trump-themed comic book covers below and see his other work via his website, Facebook, Tumblr and Twitter accounts.


















type=type=RelatedArticlesblockTitle=Related Coverage + articlesList=56f69e1be4b0143a9b485d86,57443147e4b045cc9a71d728,572c6ac7e4b016f378955696,5784f2c8e4b0e05f05235bb7

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

This Dinner Party Handbook Is The Perfect Way To Learn Queer History

$
0
0



An awesome new project is in the works that will provide fodder for an inclusive conversation about queer history while bringing people together in a dinner party setting.


“Serving Pride: The Queer History Dinner Party Handbook” is currently engaged in a Kickstarter campaign but its creators hope to have the handbook complete by June ― just in time for Pride 2016.



“Coming out is, in some ways, one of the most important political acts we do as queer people,” co-creator Joey Stern told The Huffington Post. “We say to friends and family ‘See me, see me like this.’ Learning about our history, teaching others about our history, thats how we say to each-other ‘See us, see all of us.’ It’s not just learning history, but learning it together that really solidifies that experience. You’re not alone, you’re part of vast and connected community.”


Resources like “Serving Pride” are more important than ever, in an era when its easy to lose sight of our history as LGBTQ people and our collective struggles.


Head here to check out the Kickstarter campaign and keep your eyes peeled for more from “Serving Pride: The Queer History Dinner Party Handbook.”

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

MLK's Daughter On Why Her Father's Legacy Is Important Now More Than Ever

$
0
0

The Rev. Bernice King believes that if her father, the legendary Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., were to reflect on the state of race in America today, he wouldn’t express shock or surprise.


“He would be disappointed that America as a whole did not take heed to some of the things that he encouraged us to do as a nation, which was to wipe out the last vestiges of racism,” King told The Huffington Post in an interview ahead of MLK Day.


Her father’s wish may have been a tall order, but it was one he believed was possible to achieve, in large part, through unconditional acts of love and kindness. As we commemorate MLK Day on Monday and as we enter a political era that has welcomed racism, King says now is a time, more than ever, for all Americans to reflect on and uphold these lessons in achieving equality that her father proudly preached.


“Daddy taught us through his philosophy of nonviolence, which placed love at the centerpiece, that through that love we can turn enemies into friends,” she said. “Through that love, we can create more dignified atmospheres.”



The elder King rose to prominence in the civil rights era of the 1960s, during which he expressed an unwavering faith in achieving equality and fought relentlessly to dismantle injustice. In doing so, he expressed great courage as he spoke about love and unity in the face of racial hate. His preaching was not always well-received and, at a time when black people were frequently subjected to violence from white people on account of race alone, King and other civil rights heroes put their livelihoods in great jeopardy to promote intolerance of such acts of evil.


Ultimately, it was hate that fueled the actions that led to Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination on April 4, 1968 ― but the younger King, who was only 5 years old at the time, says it was her father’s uplifting message around love that allowed his legacy to live on forever.


Bernice King, who is an Atlanta-based minister and King’s youngest daughter, says that while MLK Day is a great time to reflect on her father’s iconic legacy, it should not be the only one. America is being forced to reckon with a breed of racism that has been emboldened by Donald Trump and his presidency, and she encouraged all Americans to always pursue the same dream of equality that her father envisioned and to do what’s necessary to achieve it.


[We must] recognize that we are not seeking to defeat and destroy people but we are really seeking to defeat injustice that’s trying to keep us all separated and realize our commonality,” she said. “That’s what [MLK Day] means to me, that’s what it has always meant to me ― it’s not just a day for me, it’s a lifetime. It’s a lifestyle.”



MLK preached unity and love at a time when hate and division were dominant. He encouraged healing through helping others and wanted to establish a global community where people were understanding of and kind to each other.  


“The greatest thing he taught us outside of the unconditional love and the organizing is that we are part of a global world and that we have to find a way to coexist and live like brothers and sisters. And that takes a lot of humility, it takes a lot of courage, a lot of understanding, and obviously a lot of love and forgiveness,” she said. “These are the things I try to keep close to my heart on a daily basis and because this is the way I was raised. All of us have to be committed to a life beyond our own aspirations.”


These are important lessons to remember, perhaps now more than ever. America is still very heavily divided along racial lines, inequalities exist across almost every facet of life, and it is likely that the incoming commander in chief will make little, if any, substantial improvements in these areas. For many, especially communities of color, it’s easy to feel defeated by the divisive and hateful rhetoric that has consumed our political landscape. But, instead of expressing worry of what lies ahead, King encourages Americans to stay vigilant and to not feel fearful. After all, she reminds us, America has seen much worse.


“It’s hard to for me to be fearful, because of my faith,” she said. “People don’t realize … we have seen worse as humans. You have to realize, when Daddy and them came along they didn’t have the right to vote, when they came along all black people were subject to being lynched. All.”


It’s a sobering reminder of the progress that has been made, but there’s certainly much more work to be done. In acknowledging the positive changes that have occurred, King credits movements like Black Lives Matter for reinvigorating the discussion around racial issues in America and organizing ways to help dismantle them.


“Thank God for the efforts of Black Lives Matter ― we’ve seen an awakening in this era in a way we didn’t see in Daddy’s era in terms of people coming to grips with white privilege,” she said. “[White privilege] has never been uncovered, revealed and discussed by those in the white community in history.”



Be wise in the resistance in the next four years. I’m not saying there shouldn’t be [any], I’m Dr. King’s daughter."
Bernice King


The road to racial equality is one that requires active participation from both white and black Americans, but stubborn attitudes among some white people often makes the journey a difficult one. However, it is irresponsible to leave people in their ignorance and in their hate, King says, which is why she charges white people who have been awakened to the reality of race in America “to take the responsibility now not to just be aware of it yourselves but to begin to create opportunity to awaken your white brothers and sisters.”


In looking ahead, King, a longtime activist herself, also has pointed words of advice for black activists in the fight moving forward.


“Be comprehensive and holistic. Be wise in the resistance in the next four years. I’m not saying there shouldn’t be [any], I’m Dr. King’s daughter,” she said bluntly. “But be comprehensive, be wise and think about the bigger picture … We have to be shrewd in knowing what to resist, how to resist and when to resist.”


“Do we want to be successful or do we just want to make noise just to make it? Or just to put to put something on the record?” she added. “I’ll be honest with you, I’m tired of putting stuff on the record, I’m ready to see some real transformation and change.”


In commemorating her father’s legacy this year, King is helping to host a “Beloved Community Talk” at the King Center in Atlanta that will bring together a diverse group of voices, including Atlanta Mayor Kassim Reed, Ohio Gov. John Kasich, a former Klu Klux Klan member and more to discuss ways of bridging America’s racial divide. It will be live-streamed here at 5 p.m. EST.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

5 Comics That Perfectly Sum Up Life With A Cat

$
0
0

Cats love to lay on our laptopsdrink out of our water cups and sit creepily on the side of the tub while we shower. And while these quirks may sound annoying to some people, cat owners would have life no other way.


Frankie Comics illustrator Rachel Dukes has a whole slate of comics documenting the delightfully strange ways of cats. Here are five experiences you may recognize:


-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

Obama, Possible Aspiring-Novelist-In-Chief, Once Wrote Short Fiction

$
0
0

President Barack Obama’s bookishness is the worst-kept, most endearing non-secret in Washington, D.C. As we, and many other outlets, have previously written, he has long been a voracious reader of everything from contemporary literary fiction to classic writings by American statesmen. His collegiate stabs at poetry were well-circulated during his first presidential run, and his two books of nonfiction have been bestsellers. But fiction?


In a thoughtful new interview with The New York Times’ book critic Michiko Kakutani, Obama discussed the short stories he wrote as a young man, giving rare insight into his artistic side. As a community organizer recently out of college, he told Kakutani, he wanted to hold onto his love for writing and storytelling despite his choice of a policy-driven career path. Like many aspiring writers, he said, “I would come home from work, and I would write in my journal or write a story or two.”


This isn’t a brand-new revelation; rumblings of Obama’s past life as a story writer have surfaced before. In 2012, writer Michael Lewis profiled the president for Vanity Fair and later told CNN that the two discussed Obama’s youthful forays into the world of fiction. “He tried to submit short stories to literary magazines, and they’re very literary short stories,” Lewis said.


In Kakutani’s interview, we get some fascinating details about Obama’s work. Writing short fiction, he told The New York Times, allowed him to sort through the sometimes disparate strands of his identity and arrive at a healthy sense of self:



For me, particularly at that time, writing was the way I sorted through a lot of crosscurrents in my life — race, class, family. And I genuinely believe that it was part of the way in which I was able to integrate all these pieces of myself into something relatively whole.


People now remark on this notion of me being very cool, or composed. And what is true is that I generally have a pretty good sense of place and who I am, and what’s important to me. And I trace a lot of that back to that process of writing.



What kind of fiction would a young Barack Obama write? Apparently exactly the kind you’d expect:



It’s interesting, when I read them, a lot of them had to do with older people.


I think part of the reason was because I was working in communities with people who were significantly older than me. We were going into churches, and probably the average age of these folks was 55, 60. A lot of them had scratched and clawed their way into the middle class, but just barely. They were seeing the communities in which they had invested their hopes and dreams and raised their kids starting to decay — steel mills had closed, and there had been a lot of racial turnover in these communities. And so there was also this sense of loss and disappointment. [...]


So when I think back on what’s interesting to me, there is not a lot of Jack Kerouac, open-road, young kid on the make discovering stuff. It’s more melancholy and reflective.



Melancholy and reflective? Sounds an awful lot like a certain speech he recently addressed to the nation.


He even revealed some tantalizing details about specific stories he wrote, which we’re now dying to read:



One story is about an old black pastor who seems to be about to lose his church, his lease is running out and he’s got this loyal woman deacon who is trying to buck him up. Another is about an elderly couple — a white couple in L.A., — and he’s like in advertising, wrote jingles. And he’s just retired and has gotten cranky. And his wife is trying to convince him that his life is not over.



We may never read these short stories, but let’s remember a few key facts: 


1. Obama has said he plans to write a book after leaving office.


2. Which is happening in a matter of days.


3. After leaving the presidency, George W. Bush graced our eyeballs with the fruits of a foray into painting that pleasantly shocked the nation.


4. Anything is possible.


For more on Pres. Obama’s short fiction and other literary insights, read the full New York Times interview here.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

Women Reclaim The Streets Of Cairo Through Stunning Ballet Photos

$
0
0

In his series “Ballerinas of Cairo,” photographer Mohamed Taher documents Egyptian dancers making the city streets their stage ― pirouetting, leaping and posing their way through their country’s sprawling capital. 


The photos are, at first glance, stunning snapshots of a city’s vibrant culture in motion. But considering the dangers Egyptian women face for roaming these same streets on a daily basis, their impact is far deeper.


“There’s a huge problem for women in [Egypt’s] streets,” Taher recently told Upworthy. “There’s a lot of sexual harassment ... so now this was a layer of the project.”


Sexual harassment continues to present not just a possibility but a terrifying reality in present-day Egypt. A 2013 United Nations report calculated that 99.3 percent of women in the country have experienced sexual harassment on the streets, a problem that’s sparked initiatives giving women a way to fight back. The violence is rooted in an extreme conservative perspective encouraging women to stay in the home.



Taher’s project offers Egyptian dancers the opportunity to reclaim their native streets, performing publicly and inviting the city to take note.


“We got a lot of comments from girls saying they want to do this, and they were very enthused about it,” Taher said. “They want to dance on the street. They want to feel free. They want to have this feeling of being on the streets again, just walking the street.”



They want to dance on the street. They want to feel free.



In early January, the Egyptian Parliament approved tougher penalties for perpetrators of sexual harassment in an attempt to reroute a system that previously blamed and humiliated victims.


Now, the minimum prison sentence for sexual abusers is one year ― double its previous length. The fine for such a crime has been increased, as well, to a minimum of 5,000 and a maximum of 10,000 Egyptian pounds. Yet, as one activist told an Egyptian news source, true change won’t happen until Egyptians change their minds about harassment.


“Egypt does not lack laws, nor does it need harsher punishments,” Hala Mostafa, a founder of the initiative “I Saw Harrassment,” told Al-Monitor. “Egypt lacks political and social will.”


With luck, projects like Taher’s will help remold the minds of Egypt’s public through photographs whose message far exceeds their beauty. 


-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

Library Book Finally Returned 100 Years Later In San Francisco

$
0
0

A book checked out from a San Francisco library 100 years ago was returned last week, outliving the library branch it was checked out from in the first place.


The San Francisco Chronicle reported that Webb Johnson returned a copy of the short story collection Forty Minutes Late that had been checked out by his great-grandmother Phoebe in 1917.






She checked out the book from the library’s Fillmore branch, which has since shut down, and she died one week before it was due. 


The book was returned during the library’s amnesty program, San Francisco’s local ABC news station reported. The program, offered in the beginning of the year, allows library-goers to return overdue books without paying a fine. Little did the library know there was a book on its way back that technically carried a fine of more than $3,500. 


Even so, the library usually caps overdue fees at $5, according to the Chronicle.


This isn’t the first century-old library tome to be returned. Last month, the granddaughter of a man who attended Hereford Cathedral School in Hereford, England, returned a book her grandfather borrowed from the school library sometime between 1886 and 1894.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.


'Hidden Figures' Is The First Movie With Multiple Female Leads To Remain No. 1 Since 2011

$
0
0

Having expanded to theaters nationwide at the start of the month, “Hidden Figures” is the perfect antidote to the doldrums of January moviegoing. It’s breezy but powerful, and its PG rating invites families without spurning adult interest. And now, by our calculations, “Hidden Figures” is the first live-action, non-franchise film starring more than one female lead to hit No. 1 two weekends in a row since “The Help” in 2011. (Curiously enough, both movies star Octavia Spencer. “The Help” found her sharing the screen with Emma Stone, Viola Davis, Jessica Chastain and Bryce Dallas Howard. “Hidden Figures” gives her Taraji P. Henson and Janelle Monáe.) 


This news bodes wonderfully for “Hidden Figures,” a lovely movie owed a heavyweight prize for surpassing box-office forecasts and knocking “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story” from the top spot. But it’s also damning for Hollywood’s oft-cited statistics about the degree to which women are sidelined. 2016’s numbers haven’t yet been crunched, but a San Diego State University study indicated only 22 percent of 2015’s big-screen protagonists were female. 


Of course, none of this is to say we haven’t seen any exemplary female characters in recent films. “Rogue One” and its franchise predecessor, “The Force Awakens,” both put women at the center, a notable moment for a cinematic universe in which ladies are grossly outnumbered. Jennifer Lawrence headlined four “Hunger Games” behemoths, though her core co-stars were male. Various comic-book projects have found women suiting up, but they are always vastly exceeded by macho counterparts. “Gone Girl” gave Rosamund Pike and Ben Affleck equal billing. “Gravity” was essentially a one-woman show starring Sandra Bullock. 2012’s “Think Like a Man” featured Taraji P. Henson, Gabrielle Union and Regina Hall, but it was really a showcase for a bunch of dudes. 2013’s “Oz the Great and Powerful” cast Mila Kunis, Michelle Williams and Rachel Weisz in key roles, but it was mostly a rebooted James Franco vehicle (and a lousy one at that). Others, like “Spy,” “The Other Woman” and “Zero Dark Thirty,” didn’t remain No. 1 beyond their first week in wide release.



So, yes, we have to go all the way back to “The Help” ― the story of Mississippi maids and their racist employers ― to find an original movie in which women earn superior billing and find lasting box-office success. Interest among moviegoers is obviously there. It’s the stories getting the greenlight outside the indie market that are lacking. There’s always a male-driven endeavor on deck.


“The Help” was actually the top moneymaker four weeks in a row, topping out at $170 million in domestic grosses. It went on to earn a Best Picture nomination, something “Hidden Figures” seems poised to secure when the Oscar shortlist is announced Jan. 24. Octavia Spencer scored the Best Supporting Actress trophy for “The Help,” and based on the current Screen Actors Guild and Golden Globe precursors, she could earn another nomination in the same category this year. But we cannot rely on Spencer alone to headline lucrative movies with other women, and we shouldn’t have to wait another several years to repeat this statistic.


It’s also worth noting that Fox hired a white man to make “Hidden Figures.” When I talked to Janelle Monáe last year about her roles in “Figures” and “Moonlight,” she praised director Theodore Melfi, whom she called an “ally.”


“I love [Ted],” Monáe said. “Ted is an Italian, actually, and if you know his story, he grew up poor. He had humble beginnings. The thing that I loved most about working with Ted was that he trusted his actors. He trusted me, Taraji and Octavia as black women to tell our own stories. It wasn’t him coming in every day and saying, ‘Hey, this is what it meant to be a black woman who worked at NASA trying to win the Space Race.’ He always wanted to know what we think, period. ... He used his superpowers, and he stayed in his lane, which was making sure the story came together. I’m so thankful that he started to work on the script and help it come to fruition.”


Fitting as Monáe’s comments may be given how well-told “Hidden Figures” is, it remains true that female directors are also under-represented in Hollywood. A San Diego State study released last week showed that women helmed a mere 7 percent of 2016’s 250 highest-grossing movies, representing a 2-percent dip from 2015.


Like Monáe says in “Hidden Figures,” “Every time we get a chance to get ahead, they move the finish line. Every time.”




-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

'Riverdale' Star Cole Sprouse Wants To His Character To Be Asexual

$
0
0

The CW’s “Riverdale” doesn’t premiere until Jan. 26, but the series, which puts a contemporary spin on the beloved Archie Comics universe, is already receiving ample, pre-release buzz


Still, one of the show’s stars isn’t thrilled about the way his character is making the leap from page to screen. Actor Cole Sprouse, who plays Jughead Jones, told Heroic Hollywood that he’s fought unsuccessfully to portray his character as asexual. 


Jughead, who is Archie’s food-obsessed best friend, officially identified as asexual last year, when writer Chip Zdarsky and artist Erica Henderson were revamping the “Jughead” series. Although Jughead “will have romances with women” on the first season of “Riverdale,” Sprouse vowed to continue “fighting pretty heavily” to make the character’s asexuality a future plot point. 


“Asexuality is not one of those things in my research that is so understood at face value and I think maybe the development of that narrative could also be something very interesting and very unique and still resonate with people, and not step on anyone’s toes,” the 24-year-old star said in a Jan. 15 interview with Heroic Hollywood’s Mae Abdulbaki. 


While Jughead will date women in the first season of “Riverdale,” Sprouse said he isn’t opposed to having his character’s sexuality evolve in future seasons. In fact, he said, it could make the self-discovery even more true to life.


“I think sexuality especially is one of those fluid things where often times we find who we are through certain things that happen in our lives,” he said. “If season one is one of those events or something like that needs to happen in season one for Jughead to eventually realize that kind of narrative, I’d love to play with that, too.”


Given the misconceptions that many people still have about asexuality, it would truly be wonderful to see such mainstream representation materialize if it’s thoughtfully written. Let’s hope this isn’t a lost opportunity just yet.   




-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

Up Your March-On-D.C. Game With These Commanding Works Of Poster Art

$
0
0

Over eight years ago, street artist Shepard Fairey created a graphic portrait of then-presidential-candidate Barack Obama, an image that promptly became ingrained in the minds of most American citizens. The image’s sole written word, “Hope,” embodied the ethos of the time, the overwhelming conviction that our nation’s government could provide for all its citizens, regardless of race, gender or socioeconomic status. 


Now, on the brink of the inauguration of President-elect Donald Trump, we are living in a very different America, one in which many of the tenets on which this nation was founded ― freedom of expression, freedom of religion, equal justice for all ― are seemingly under threat.


To address this surreal moment in American history, Fairey is once again turning to the power of art. Though instead of hope, the artist is advocating for resistance. Fairey is collaborating with muralist Jessica Sabogal and political artist Ernesto Yerena on an activist art project entitled “We the People,” which will flood the public consciousness come inauguration day. The project, commissioned by The Amplifier Foundation, aims to visualize the non-partisan principles that always characterized the true spirit of America ― diversity, democracy and shared humanity.  



Fairey, Yerena, and Sabogal teamed up to create the series of posters, which can be used by protesters marching in Washington on Jan. 21. Citing the possibility of “restrictions on signs and banners” in some parts of the district during inauguration weekend, however, We the People decided to get creative. To sidestep restrictions and ensure that the images could be distributed in such a short amount of time, they turned to an old media staple: newspapers.


The grassroots campaign is currently raising funds on Kickstarter to take out full-page advertisements in the Washington Post on Jan. 20, each featuring a work of protest art that can, conveniently, be ripped out and taken to the streets. With days to go, the campaign has far exceeded the $60,000 goal meant to pay for six ads ― We the People has almost reached $1 million worth of donations.



Come inauguration weekend, the Amplifier Foundation will also circulate some posters at D.C. metro stops, “from the back of moving vans,” and at drop spots that have yet to be announced. As usual, all of Amplifier’s images will be available for free download ahead of time. 


Those interested in supporting the project can still head to Kickstarter to help bring art to the streets of Washington on a day when all of America will be watching. The campaign closes on Wednesday, Jan. 18, at 7:00 p.m. ET. Following the inauguration, We the People intends to send the five images to the new president as postcards, PBS reports.


As we approach the beginning of Trump’s presidency, artists across the country have felt empowered to rise up and resist the normalization of racism, sexism and hate. In the words of Fairey himself: “I think art can help to wake people up because when an image resonates emotionally we want to get to the bottom of it, and art really helps to make people feel things that then they talk about.” 


The Amplifier Foundation also created a call out for poster art from women-identifying and non-binary people across the country, to be used at the Women’s March on Washington. You can download and print five out of the eight selected posters for free on the website. 






-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

Obama Reveals How The Power Of Fiction Was Important To His Presidency

$
0
0

Reading fiction played a valuable role in his presidency, President Barack Obama said, both as a mental exercise and an escape to “someplace else.”


In an interview with The New York Times, published Monday, Obama explained how he sought to balance the kind of fact-based reading he had to do as president.


“[W]orking that very analytical side of the brain all the time sometimes meant you lost track of not just the poetry of fiction, but also the depth of fiction,” Obama said. “Fiction was useful as a reminder of the truths under the surface of what we argue about every day and was a way of seeing and hearing the voices, the multitudes of this country.”


The president, who has listed Lauren Groff’s Fates and Furies and Herman Melville’s Moby Dick among his favorite books, also admitted “there’s been the occasion where I just want to get out of my own head.”


“Sometimes you read fiction just because you want to be someplace else,” he said.


Novels have explicitly helped shape Obama’s thinking at times. In his recent farewell address to America, he quoted Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird.





Obama told the Times that the power of fiction would factor into his future work as well.


“[I]n my post-presidency, in addition to training the next generation of leaders to work on issues like climate change or gun violence or criminal justice reform, my hope is to link them up with their peers who see fiction or nonfiction as an important part of that process,” Obama said.


“When so much of our politics is trying to manage this clash of cultures brought about by globalization and technology and migration, the role of stories to unify — as opposed to divide, to engage rather than to marginalize — is more important than ever,” he added.


Obama will start his post-presidency work in a Washington, D.C., office at the downtown building that houses the World Wildlife Federation. He plans to reside in the city until at least 2019, when his younger daughter, Sasha, graduates from high school.


Read more of The New York Times’ interview with Obama here.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

Eddie Huang Opens Up About Why Asian Male Stereotypes Are So Painful

$
0
0

Celebrity restauranteur Eddie Huang responded to Steve Harvey’s recent distasteful jokes about Asian men with some poignant words.


The Fresh Off The Boat author wrote a raw, revealing op-ed in the New York Times on Saturday addressing Harvey’s daytime show segment in which the host laughed hysterically at the idea of being attracted to Asian men. 


In the powerful piece entitled “Hey, Steve Harvey, Who Says I Might Not Steal Your Girl?” Huang explained that Harvey’s comments are reflective of the commonly held belief “that women don’t want Asian men.” And that stigma has had a profound effect on Huang. 



“No matter how successful I was...there were times I thoroughly believed that no one wanted anything to do with me."



“No matter how successful I was, how much self-improvement was made, or how aware I was that stereotypes are not facts, there were times I thoroughly believed that no one wanted anything to do with me,” Huang wrote. 


The Baohaus owner, who’s Taiwanese-American, said that growing up, he was aware of the various stereotypes attached to Asian-Americans. And while he understood he didn’t fit many of the traits spun out of the “model minority myth” ― like being good with computers or acting subordinate ― the particular conclusion about Asian men’s desirability stung. 


“Attractiveness is a very haphazard dish that can’t be boiled down to height or skin color, but Asian men are told that regardless of what the idyllic mirepoix is or isn’t, we just don’t have the ingredients,” he wrote. 


Huang, along with other friends, have used different tactics to cope and dispel the stereotype, he said. For him, it was comedy. Still, Huang wrote, the media’s harmful propagation of the stereotype has had very real effects.



"The structural emasculation of Asian men in all forms of media became a self-fulfilling prophecy that produced an actual abhorrence to Asian men in the real world.”



“I told myself that it was all a lie, but the structural emasculation of Asian men in all forms of media became a self-fulfilling prophecy that produced an actual abhorrence to Asian men in the real world.”


Indeed, there have been countless jabs taken at Asian men outside of Steve Harvey’s recent one. It’s difficult to forget Sacha Baron Cohen’s off-color comment at last year’s Oscars. The ceremony’s host, Chris Rock, had already made offensive jokes about Asians earlier in the night, and Cohen, who was in-character as “Ali G,” took another step further to joke about “hard-working yellow people with tiny dongs.” 


As Huang mentioned, it seems as though many have bought into this harmful stereotype. Data from dating site OKCupid showed that Asian men actually have a much harder time getting a date, compared to other groups.


But Huang has called on people to stop perpetuating this idea.  


And, as it is 2017, we think it’s about damn time, too. 


Check out Huang’s NYT piece here. 

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

Viewing all 18505 articles
Browse latest View live




Latest Images