Please read my friends substack article about her mental health🥰
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A Lukewarm Defense of rupi kaur
For what it’s worth, I understand and agree with most of the criticisms against her. Now the question arises: why do I claim to defend her? I am not excited about it any more than her critics are excited about bashing her to the ground (if anything, they seem more enthusiastic about that than I have been about reading anything from kaur in a while). I also think she has done a bad job of developing as an artist. But my hands were forced by a specific type of critics.
My latest Substack essay titled “A Lukewarm Defense of rupi kaur” is published now. Please click on the link to read.
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I Don’t Want to be the Low Maintenance Friend Anymore
This happens all the time; things fester in the chest and one day it stops resembling anything human. It doesn’t make for gratifyingly vulnerable musings, or a prophetic calling to make others feel seen. There is no room to hammer it into something poetic. It comes in a strange metaphor to me: you want your vulnerability to show on you like an adorable puppy so that warm-hearted people stop to give you some food or take you home. But you are in the streets for too long and before you know it, you are panting around with a maggot-infested wound. People cover their noses and run away and you can’t chase them with that broken leg of yours.
My latest Substack essay titled “I Don’t Want to be the Low-maintenance Friend Anymore” is published now. Click on the link to read.
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Everything not saved will be lost
Something a little bit different from my previous essays - here I list 10 things I found worth sharing this week!
Sneak peek of my art included near the end!
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Postcards by Hasif
We all come with something. Baggage, wounds, half-healed chapters. Versions of ourselves that we’re still learning to forgive. There are days when we are loud in our fears, days when we’re quieter than usual for no clear reason, days when we need space but don’t know how to ask for it kindly, and days when we say we’re okay just to avoid explaining the complicated spiral inside our head. There are moments when we love with all we have, and others when we recoil, terrified of how much we’ve allowed someone in. We’re made of contradictions. That’s the most human thing about us.
None of us are easy to be with
💜💜
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It’s the new year, so in my latest substack newsletter, I’m taking a look back on why I create art, and why I keep choosing to do this.
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Frankenstein and the Manosphere
Known as the first true science fiction novel, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein never left its throne of cultural relevance. But recently, even more people fell in love with the story as the celebrated auteur, Guillermo del Toro, released his adaptation of the novel. The contextualization in this piece is important because del Toro’s movie frees the audience from the novel’s moral exercises, and the roles represented by the characters need to be assigned correctly if we are to live with the film’s romanticism.
My latest Substack essay titled “Frankenstein and the Manosphere” is published now. Please click on the link to read.
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A little late, but here’s my latest Substack newsletter! Just a few observations on how the social media landscape is changing - particularly Instagram, and how Gen Zer’s are responding to it.
I for one am tentatively enjoying this slow (pun intended) shift to slow media… but will it last? Who knows? It’s still interesting from both a user and observer perspective tbh
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Peacemaker (2022) and the Internet Manosphere - Review
What makes Peacemaker so fun to watch is that it doesn’t simply poke fun at superhero logic; it provides characterization that takes aim at the contradictions of white masculinity recurring in the genre. Christopher Smith, which I believe to be a deliberately generic white male name, takes on the alias of Peacemaker and spends the first season torn between two desires: desperately wanting to be respected as a hero by the public, and craving approval from a father who measures masculinity by the ability to impose violence.
Peacemaker’s inner conflict mirrors how many white men today feel trapped between societal pressures. Caught between a) having their masculinity called into question by society for being “soft” (language which in itself has its own phallic implications.) Or, b) make the mistake of trying too hard. Performing masculinity too severely, and being met with condemnation of your toxic masculinity by the same society who originally influenced the performance. Being labeled a bigot. The brilliance of Peacemaker’s writing comes from its ability to explore the perspective of a white man in privilege through its use of satire, metacinema, and sharp character work.
Dialogue, (a screenwriter’s most direct tool of communication with the audience,) makes clear that Chris’ logic is meant to serve both as a joke showcasing his lack of intellect, but ultimately a larger critique of the superhero justice we see on screen. In our opening seconds we are greeted with Peacemaker’s catchphrase, “I cherish peace with all my heart,” which is immediately undercut when he adds, “I don’t care how many men, women or children I have to kill to get it.” A montage of his kills grows bloodier with each cut. This choice of visual in editing underscores the irony in how superheroes’ claims of superior morality are quite literally undercut by the violence of their methods. Furthermore, the show’s auditory repetition of Rick Flag Jr. ’s dying words, “Peacemaker, what a joke,” makes it clear that even within his own universe, the philosophy imbued onto Chris by his dad is absurd. These choices signal to the audience, even if subliminally, we aren’t being asked to celebrate Chris’s heroism we’re being prompted to critique his logic.
Even the musical elements of Peacemaker offer subtle critique of genre. Take for example its theme song. The ‘80s rock ballad, stiff choreography, and visible winch cables hoisting cast members into the air to pull them off screen. How every character, rival, stranger, alien moves simultaneously. Like action figures flipping through stop motion. Being controlled by an unseen hand we can’t see but nonetheless are intensely aware of. Immediately these directorial choices separate the show from genre cliches and establish a uniquely self-aware tone. As our unlikely dancers stare into the camera, both the production studio and the audience are able to share a wink.
ALTCharacterization through exposition further builds on the metacinema and satire of genre which the opening credits establish. In one early scene a janitor compares Peacemaker’s fame unfavorably to Aquaman’s, a way of showing that Chris is a Z-list hero in his own world. Another gag comes when the janitor only remembers Chris as, “that racist superhero who only kills minorities,” to which Chris defensively insists he’s killed “a fair number of white people too.” The exchange not only delivers exposition, but it satirizes how people deflect against accusations of racism in real life. Chris’s weak defense shows that, like many white men, he is offended by the charge but not self-aware enough to understand why it sticks.
Subtler details, like a Twitter handle “@PepetheFrog89,” serve to signal Chris’s cultural environment. Both Pepe the Frog and the number 88 are common self identifiers of white supremacists online, thus linking Chris and his father to the darker corners of conservative Twitter.
Perhaps the sharpest critique of superhero media comes through Chris’s relationship with his father, Auggie Smith. Their what should be loving dynamic is drenched in toxicity and open racism. Auggie greets his son with contempt, mocks him for being hospitalized with “You let someone shoot you?” and derides him as a “nancy boy.” He laughs at stories of torture and suggests his son should focus on killing “commies, Blacks, papists or kikes.” In visual language the upside-down American flag flying outside Auggie’s house represents his warped sense of patriotism. In these moments at his father’s house, we see the standards Chris is failing to meet. To his father, Chris will always be too soft, too weak and too unwilling to be openly racist.
This double bind defines Chris’s character from boy to man. His father tells him he isn’t hateful or macho enough. The public mocks him as too racist. His own team ridicules his costume and use of violence. No matter where he turns, Chris is told he’s failing. And this emotion is exactly what makes his character not only compelling but relatable to a young social media bound audience. Smith echoes the disillusionment felt by many young men today. Entire industries including pickup artists, steroid-pumping influencers and “manosphere” podcasters profit by barking conflicting orders about how to be a “real man.” Somehow, Peacemaker condenses all that noise and contradiction into one musclebound man, and his pet eagle.
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My Roaring 20s- Lamenting On The Love Lost, & The Love Yet To Be Found.
extremely vulnerable & personal post (ew) but i’m really proud of it tbh <3
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“I fear that anything I will say has already been said; and that any idea I ever have will already have been thought; and that there is nothing left for me to invent.”
I downloaded substack and I’m writing an article on it. I’m just starting out but I thought it could be fun :) this is a tiny spoiler