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Arts & Entertainment, Private, Theatre

‘Fables’ teaches us about the beauty in life’s relationships

by Samantha Ling on

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One of the most beautiful aspects of life is our ability to form relationships with the people around us. Whether they be platonic, professional, or romantic, these relationships shape who we are and determine who we will become.

Players’ Theatre’s production of Fables explores interpersonal dynamics. Canadian playwright Jackie Torrens depicts the story of a doctor and the relationships that he holds with various individuals in his life. Running from Nov. 15-18 and 22-25, the play follows the life of the doctor, his wife, and two of his patients as they deal with difficult times. The audience peers into the personal lives of these characters—the events that have haunted them, the thoughts they hold towards others, and their aspirations for the future. From overcoming self-hatred to dealing with hypochondria, Fables presents the struggles of each character as it sheds light upon struggles with mental health.

Directed by Filip Rakic, Fables is presented in two acts and uses the stage to portray three distinct settings: A doctor's office, a family home, and a local park. Characters move between these scenes as their relationships with each other face conflicts, grow stronger, and become more complex. We see the connection between the doctor (Thomas Fix) and his wife (Sarah Tiplady) shift as they re-evaluate factors that threaten their marriage via living room dialogue. The doctor’s relationship with his patient, Sid (Alexander Sitaras-Grasic), evolves through fear and ambition for the future. As action plays out in one of the three settings, characters not in the scene can be seen in character in the other two settings participating in day-to-day activities such as writing, drinking, or texting—the audience feels like a part of an ongoing conversation.

From the variety of liquor bottles on the living room table to the classic park bench upon which Lisa (Emily Sheeran) delivers a series of monologues regarding her traumatic past, the production’s set employs detail and adds to the life-like experience that the story tells. Furthermore, all four members of the cast excellently craft its characters by taking on specific mannerisms and maintaining them throughout the show. As Lisa, Sheeran adeptly speaks with uncertainty to display her regret about her past.

Rakic’s decision to largely focus the play on the characters’ monologues allows for the audience to see not only the relationships each character is involved in, but also the inner feelings that these characters hold toward each other and themselves. Fables’ strength is in its intimacy; watching the play is like listening to four new friends who will tell you about their lives, their fears, and their desires.

Rakic, the cast, and the crew have come together to put on a performance that reminds us how the people in our lives accompany us through even the worst of times. Though the play deals with several dark themes, it also uses humour to show the optimistic side of its unhappy characters. Beyond trauma, fear, and regret, Lisa manages to work in hilarious jabs at the doctor’s old age, and Sid constantly mentions his aspirations to make a career out of being a sperm donor. This combination of heavy and light-hearted moments make for a play that provides audience members with a glimpse into their lives and all the ups and downs that are involved.

Science & Technology

Project pollution: McGill professor highlights the risk

by Jade Prévost-Manuel on

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On Oct. 19, the Lancet Commission on Pollution and Health released a report identifying pollution as the cause of nine million deaths across the world in 2015. The report addressed the costs of water, soil, and air pollution to the global economy and public health, stressing pollution as an underreported and terribly severe contributor to the Global Burden of Disease (GBD).

The GBD is an epidemiological study of global health trends since 1990. It aims to understand global health by examining measures like mortality and life expectancy to see how external factors contribute to declines in the overall health of a population.

The staggering figures produced by the GBD’s rigorous research deem pollution a significant health risk. The commission states that 92 per cent of all pollution-related mortality occurs in low-income and middle-income countries—and particularly those experiencing rapid industrialization. Air pollution accounted for 6.5 million deaths in 2015, followed by deaths caused by water pollution, which came in at 1.8 million.

According to the commission, the impacts of pollution on health are unevenly distributed, with pollution disproportionately affecting the marginalized and the vulnerable.

Niladri Basu, an associate professor in the faculty of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences and a Canada Research Chair in Environmental Health Sciences, calls this an unacceptable truth and an issue of human rights.

“We all have a right to a safe workplace,” Basu wrote in an email to The McGill Tribune. “We take this for granted in Canada but millions around the world can not say the same.”

Basu contributed to the Lancet Commission on Pollution and Health’s report, and said that the report will raise awareness about the link between pollution and health. He further commented on how pollution’s severity is underrepresented in the media.

“Many of our donor agencies and foundations are rightfully committed to global health, though few of them have realized the immense burden that pollution plays,” Basu wrote. “Our report shows that pollution causes three times more premature deaths than AIDS, TB, and malaria combined.”

Pollution harms health, but it’s also harmful to economies. Welfare losses due to pollution are estimated to cost more than US $4.6 trillion each year, about 6.2 per cent of global economic output. In middle-income countries that are heavily polluted and rapidly developing, up to seven per cent of annual health spending is allocated to cover the costs of pollution-related disease.

However, it’s not all bad news. The mission of the Lancet Commission is to inform economic and health policy makers worldwide about the burdens of pollution and to suggest affordable control solutions that focus on pollution prevention.

Pollution can be eliminated and the measures taken to do so can be cost-effective. In the past, high-income countries have been largely successful in managing pollution, and in the last 50 years air quality in Canada and the United States has improved immensely. Similar strategies at the level of policy can be applied to countries of all levels of income.

The report outlines six recommendations based on its findings, such as making pollution a high international priority and increasing the funding and technical support of pollution control.

As a professor, Basu is certain that education, empowerment, and the communication of scientific knowledge are long-term solutions to the pollution problem.

“The solution to pollution resides in transdisciplinary sciences,” Basu said.  “We need social scientists to link with natural scientists to link with engineers, public health officials, regulators, and so on. Multi-sectoral and multi-disciplinary partnerships are the only way forward [….] Pollution is preventable, and it can be done in a cost-effective and win-win manner.”

Martlets, Sports

McGill cheerleading goes beyond the sidelines

by April Barrett on

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From teen movies to major league sports, cheerleaders often attract a specific kind of attention, and it isn’t always based on their athleticism. The figure of the cheerleader, in these popular representations, seems to overshadow the actual sport of cheerleading. In reality, McGill cheerleading, a self-funded competitive club, is one of many competitive cheerleading teams where respect for the sport comes above all else.

“Our practices are completely dedicated for us to train for competitions,” three-year McGill cheerleading veteran Gabrielle Cloutier said. “That’s the one thing about cheer; people just see us at football games and they think that’s what cheer is all about, but really it’s way more intense.”

The team practices two to three times per week, with additional practices near competitions, which occur a few times a semester. If you’ve seen McGill cheerleading at basketball or football games, you’ve only seen their warm-up. This semester, the team is training for a competition in Montreal on Nov. 19 and then Power Cheerleading Association Nationals in Brampton, Ontario on Nov. 25.

“[Cheering at a game] reinstates the basics we have,” third-year cheerleader Courtney Macdonald said. “We never do anything super difficult at the games because of the conditions [of the venue].”

Beyond games and practices, being a part of McGill cheerleading also means taking on the responsibility of fundraising for the team. The cheerleaders do everything from weekly samosa sales, to odd jobs, to performance gigs in the St. Patrick’s day parade in order to cover the team’s costs. These costs include renting practice space in a suitable gymnastics gym, coaches’ salaries, and travelling to competitions. The amount of fundraising required can be a lot for those new to the team.

“People don’t realize [the commitment], going into cheerleading […] they think that it’s going to be a side thing,” Cloutier said.

Because of these extra requirements, being a McGill cheerleader demands a high level of mental involvement. Aside from fitness and athleticism, spirit is also an important concept in cheering. The team members apply this idea to the way they approach their dedication to cheer and perseverance through challenges.

“I remember [the old team captain] telling me that there’s nothing that’s as much of a team sport than cheer is,” Cloutier said. “You have to be 100 per cent all of the time, because if you’re not there, someone’s going to get hurt. That’s where spirit comes in. If you’re on the mat and your stunt just fell and you have to keep going to your other stunt, having those voices telling you to keep going is crucial.”

This presence of mind comes in large part from synergy with teammates.

“I never used to be the most spirit-ful person but since being on the team, it’s so easy to be [spirited],” Macdonald said. “When we take the mat we feed off each other’s energy.”

An added difficulty of cheering is managing people’s misconceptions of the sport, and of cheerleaders in general. These notions range from the idea that cheerleaders are catty and shallow, to the idea that cheering is complementary entertainment, rather than a sport in and of itself.

“We’re not the only [cheer] team dealing with that at all,” Cloutier said. “Even if you’re a complete all-star team that doesn’t even cheer at football games, you’re going to have [to face] that perception.”

Cloutier, a former competitive dancer, and Macdonald, a retired national gymnast, both emphasized that, despite common television portrayals, cheer competitions have less rivalry than other sports they’ve been involved in.

“The sport is respected so much that when the other team sees another team doing a stunt that is brand new or really hard to execute you’re going to cheer them on so much,” Cloutier said. “The drama you see in the movies, […] that’s completely absent.”

(Gabriel Helfant / The McGill Tribune)

 

As for the notion that cheering is sideline entertainment, Macdonald explains that anyone who is familiar with competitive cheerleading understands the extreme dedication, physical strength, and risk-taking it requires.

“We do a lot of conditioning, strength training, so that we can be 100 per cent to catch the girls,” Macdonald said.  

Strength is a requirement while executing such physically demanding maneuvers. Everyone on the team understands the potential for injury if someone falters during a stunt.

“We have this rule that if our flyer [the girl thrown in the air] touches the mat, everyone does 50 push ups,” Cloutier added.

This year, try-outs were opened to male cheerleaders for the first time in a decade. Being coed would put the team in a different league, allow for new stunts to be performed, and help manage some of the stigma of being an all-girl cheer team. The team started the year with two males, but after a few weeks, they dropped off due to the high level of involvement.

“I think the fact that we went from being coed to all girl was our biggest challenge this semester,” Macdonald said. “We had to change the routine that our coaches had already started forming, and I think that for some people it was a hit to their morale.”

However, both Macdonald believes that the challenge has ultimately made the team stronger.

“I think we’re happier as all-girl right now,” Macdonald said. “The obstacle of going from coed to all girl has gotten to us where we are today.”

After months of bonding and overcoming obstacles, teammates can now fully rely on one another.

“Right now, we’re at that point in the season where everybody who’s here is here to stay,” Cloutier said.

With so much physical and mental energy put toward making the team possible, both Macdonald and Cloutier wish the McGill community had a greater awareness of McGill Cheer. Not just for their role in cheering on other McGill teams, but for the level of athleticism the team works toward themselves, and the rigorous competitions they participate in.

“We’re fully competing, throwing very dangerous and cool skills,” Macdonald said.

Furthermore, cheerleading goes far beyond entertainment; as McGill cheerleading demonstrates, the team trains and competes as varsity-level athletes.

“We’re here and we’re a competitive sport,” Cloutier concluded.

McGill, News

New Max Bell School of Public Policy created at McGill

by Caitlin Kindig on

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On Nov. 7, at a panel discussion at the Hotel Omni Mont-Royal, McGill announced its plans to launch the Max Bell School of Public Policy after receiving a $10 million donation from the Max Bell Foundation. This school will be housed under the Faculty of Arts and will offer both a one-year graduate program as well as executive programs—graduate-level programs for business executives—led by professors with experience in the field of policy. The school is on track to begin accepting applications in August 2018 for the Fall 2019 semester.

The four pillars of the new school will be Applied Policy Research, Practical Policy Teaching, Effective Public Outreach, and Credible Policy Engagement, all of which the school hopes will cultivate both a theoretical and practical understanding of the policy creation process. The curriculum at the Max Bell School will include topics like open-ended policy solutions, partisan politics, and structures of government.

Economics Associate Professor Christopher Ragan is the inaugural director of the new school, and is currently in the process of finalizing the details for its programming. He is responsible for designing the curriculum, executive programs, case studies of specific governmental policy issues, public engagement programs, and course plans. Ragan is also overseeing space, instructors, and scheduling for the school, which will likely be situated at 680 Sherbrooke street.

Ragan has consulted with research assistants from various universities throughout the world, including at the University of Toronto, Oxford University, and Harvard University, to gather insight and ideas for the School.

“I am simultaneously excited and swamped, but I am delighted to be doing this because McGill is a great place to have such a policy school,” Ragan said. “I have a generous financial gift, a blank piece of paper, and a year to build something wonderful.”

Antonia Maioni, the dean of the Faculty of Arts, is excited for the new project.

“The Faculty of Arts is so very pleased to have the new Max Bell School of Public Policy in the Faculty […] as a new pillar of teaching, research and outreach in public policy that extends to colleagues,” Maioni said. “[The school will encourage] interdisciplinary exchange between faculty and students across the university, as well as practitioners in the public, private and not-for-profit sectors.”

Suzanne Fortier, the Principal and Vice-Chancellor of McGill, also expressed gratitude for the Max Bell Foundation’s donation. She foresees the School of Public Policy furthering McGill’s academic diversity.

“To create the new knowledge needed to solve our most pressing social and environmental problems, and to develop and implement the real-world policies that will effectively harness that knowledge, we need to bring together people from diverse backgrounds, cultures and experiences,” Fortier said. “McGill prides itself on the diverse background of its students and faculty. The Max Bell School of Public Policy will build on this strength by attracting an interdisciplinary, global cohort of scholars and students who will educate, and become, the next generation of policy leaders.”

 

Arts & Entertainment, Theatre

McGill’s first all black play tackles injustice with poetry without mincing words

by Sophie Brzozowski on

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“I was missin’ something,” begins Munyaradzi Guramatunhu’s note, introducing her rendition of the play for colored girls who have considered suicide when the rainbow is enuf in Tuesday Night Cafe Theatre’s (TNC) black and white program. “Something so important, something that ought to exist.”

Though the words were adapted from the play’s final poem, “a laying on of hands,” they rang especially true for the Zimbabwe native and first-time director as she reflected on her time at McGill. Guramatunhu’s show has the distinction of being McGill’s first all-black production, a fact that is more embarrassing than it is shocking.

McGill theatre is notoriously lacking in representation, a glaring weakness that is often defended under the guise of cultural neutrality, or lack of content. With for colored girls, Guramatunhu seeks to correct this inequality.

“A lot of what’s disguised as cultural neutrality is not cultural neutrality at all,” Guramatunhu said. “It’s actually white hegemony in practice.”

The soul-crushing effects of racial homogeneity in the media is one of the many subjects packed into the 90-minute play. Presented by TNC in conjunction with the Black Student’s Network, this adaptation of Ntozake Shange’s 1976 choreopoem explores themes of sex, love, abuse, and culture—demonstrating the ways that these universal subjects function in the worlds of young black women.

Located in the basement of Morrice Hall, just beneath the Islamic studies library, TNC’s theater is small, but the cramped room and shallow stage only serve to make the cast members’ performance even larger and more captivating. The six-person cast radiated energy as they transformed seamlessly from persona to persona, each more heartbreaking and believable than the last. Though Ines Vieux Francoeur is the only McGill-based actress, Guramatunhu promises that there will be many more opportunities for actresses of colour to represent McGill in the future.

The play is performed as a series of poems rather than divided into acts. Some of the stories are told in a linear fashion, while others unfold as a conversation. Several are accompanied by musical numbers, choreographed by Guramatunhu. Each of the poems illustrates a particular vignette or scene from a character’s life, written and performed so viscerally that they seem to have emerged from something more personal than a script. Despite the director’s lack of experience, the show is staged to near perfection—each scene tight and polished.

Although most of the stories revolve around broad themes of systemic injustice, the play narrows the scope of its narrative to focus on the intimate stories of individuals, rather than the politics surrounding the issues. Even the poem entitled “abortion cycle #1,” poignantly delivered by Keren Roberts, refreshingly forgoes the usual discursive tropes. Instead of addressing the issue from a legislative point of view, discussing the female body as though it were the subject of some convoluted bylaw, the play tells a story about what it feels like to get an abortion. The pain, the shame, and the isolation of receiving a medical procedure—too often disguised as a punishment—are all portrayed brilliantly onstage.

The cast refused to censor the ugliness of some of it’s subject matter, often at the expense of the audience’s comfort; performances were often troubling, but always authentic. Likewise, the poem, “latent rapists,” performed with heartbreaking vulnerability by Jamila Joseph, Benita Bailey and Keren Roberts, discusses the humiliation and loneliness felt by survivors, rather than trying to tackle the effects of the epidemic at large. Despite the tragedy and injustice that for colored girls depicts, the play is, above all, a celebration of black women and their strength and resilience.

“This is what it feels like to be at the bottom of the totem pole of so many societies,” Guramatunhi said. “But it’s also an act of therapy.”

Students can forward to more representational content from McGill’s theatre companies in the future.

“This is not a singular event,” Guramatunhi insisted. “This is just the beginning, the next play will be all black students from McGill.”

TNC’s for colored girls will show Wednesday to Saturday Night until November 25th at 7:30 pm in Morrice Hall, 3485 Rue McTavish. Tickets are $6 for students and $10 general admission.

Science & Technology

AstroMcGill talk sheds light on the Big Bang

by Emma Gillies on

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The universe is comprised of billions of galaxies—encompassing all of space, all of time, and all of its contents. It all started with a Big Bang 13.8 billion years ago.

On Nov. 16,  particle physicist and cosmologist Oscar Hernández spoke about the Big Bang at AstroMcGill’s event Where, When & Will It Ever End: a Muggle’s Guide to Our Big Bang, at McGill’s McIntyre Medical Building.

Hernández pointed out a common misconception: The Big Bang was not actually an explosion. It was, in fact, an expansion. According to Hernández, a better name for the theory would be the “Everywhere Stretch Theory.”

Like most discoveries, this one cannot be localized or attributed to one person. In 1842, Christian Doppler proposed the Doppler Effect for light—that the colour of a star’s light changes according to its velocity. Redshift indicates that an object is moving away from the viewer, while blueshift indicates that it is moving closer. Furthermore, in 1912, Vesto Slipher first observed galaxy light and saw that it was redshifted.

Other scientists contributed to the theoretical understanding of expansion. Albert Einstein  published his general relativity field equations in 1915, which he was able to use to derive a history of the universe—despite its inaccuracy.

“Einstein got a solution to his equation but […] he forced that solution to be static,” Hernández said. “Spacetime tells energy and matter how to move, and energy and matter tell spacetime how to curve, and Einstein comes up with his static universe solution that’s not stable.”

Edwin Hubble was given the credit for the discovery of the cosmos. In 1923, Hubble showed that “clouds” that were previously thought to be nebulae were actually other galaxies that were millions of light years away. He then studied the velocities of these galaxies, and in 1929, concluded that they were receding from Earth, and thus that the universe was expanding.

In 1927, Georges Lemaître proposed the Big Bang Theory—which he called the “hypothesis of the primeval atom”—using Einstein’s equations and theories of general relativity. Building upon earlier observations, he said that if the universe was expanding, the galaxies’ light should be redshifted.

Lemaître proposed and Hubble calculated that space was literally expanding and growing between the galaxies. Hernández equated galaxies to raisins in a rising loaf of bread—they’re not moving apart, but rather space is getting bigger.

“The laws of physics are time-symmetric […] so we can run this movie backwards 14 billion years to get this very dense, very hot, very well-ordered, very small cosmic egg of pure energy,” Hernández said.

This relation directly connects the astronomically big to the infinitesimally small. In other words, to study the beginning moments of something as big as the universe, the extremely tiny must also be analyzed.

“[For the first 380,000 years of cosmic time], when the temperature was above 3000 Kelvin, […] light electrons and protons were in a cosmic soup. They were not bound together,” Hernández said.

But as the universe aged and expanded, it cooled. The protons and electrons had less energy to resist one another, thus combining to form hydrogen: The most common element in the universe.

“With fewer free electrons for light to interact with, the universe became transparent,” Hernández said. “When we finally see the light here on Earth, [it] has been stretched so much by the 14 billion-year expansion of space that its frequency and colour have shifted from the original semi-white all the way to cool microwaves.”

This radiation, called the cosmic microwave background, is the heat left over from the Big Bang. Astrophysicists have even been able to map its afterglow.

So, to answer where, when, and will it ever end—the Big Bang occurred everywhere almost 14 billion years ago, and the expansion is not going to end. In fact, scientists have discovered that it is accelerating over time.

There’s still much to learn about the beginning of our universe. By fully understanding its expansion, the mysteries of its origin can be unravelled.

Emerging Trends, Student Life

Making room for meditation: How McGill students find peace

by Mary Keith on

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It’s no secret that attending McGill comes with a slew of academic and social demands. As a result, many students experience anxiety, depression, and other mental health problems during their time here. While there are ways to treat such disorders, including medication and therapy in persistent cases, another method to alleviate their symptoms is meditation. As a practice that has existed for centuries, meditation comes with a range of benefits, including reduced stress, increased productivity, and improved moods overall.

Meditation is the practice of contemplation or focus for a fixed period of time. It typically entails sitting still and often focusing on one thing, whether one’s breath, a mantra, or a guided recording. Many students who meditate opt for a few minutes per day, while others try for 20 minutes in the morning and evening. There is no rigidity to scheduling, because meditation is what one makes of it. Taking the opportunity to meditate, even if it’s just for five minutes, is beneficial nonetheless.

Netanel Schondorf, U2 Arts, sets aside time everyday to just sit and breathe. He has been meditating for three years, and uses the practice as way to alleviate his anxiety.

“If you are an anxious person and tend to get lost in cyclical thought patterns, one thing that meditation will do is remove you from the situation and let you be a passive observer to your thoughts, and not necessarily pursue them and not get stuck in them,” Schondorf said.  

Aside from experiencing the desired long-term benefits for his mental health, Schondorf found that meditation helped him look inward and harness a sense of self-awareness. Over time, meditating aided in regulating his sleep schedule and altered his relationship to stress.

“[Meditation] will make the stress you feel healthier,” Schondorf said. “Stress is just going to happen, and trying to fight stress doesn’t work very well, but coming to terms with it tends to work a lot better.”

In addition to managing stress and anxiety, Schondorf developed productive working habits as a result of his meditation. When presented with the choice of watching Netflix or studying, he has fostered a sense of self-discipline to choose to hit the books. With all of its undeniable benefits and overall positivity, Schondorf recommends pursuing meditation with patience to all.

“Don’t go into it with any expectations,” Schondorf said. “It’s a pretty long-term thing, and the changes are subtle over time. What I will say is that even if you don’t see immediate results, of all the activities I do that have made my life better, this one has the lowest investment with the highest payoff.”

Niketan Valapakam, U3 Management, has been meditating for four months. He began after experiencing sadness and anger following a job rejection.

“When I realized my state of happiness is dependent on such small things around me, I can’t really go far in life,” Valapakam said. “I decided to get more introspective about how I feel about things.”  

Valapakam took lessons through the program Inner Engineering, which includes lessons online, in books, and at retreats. He started seeing small changes in his mindset in the first three to four days, and continues to notice improvements in his mood and outlook.

“I am using this tool to further enhance the things that I don’t know and as I keep using this tool, things are getting more clear,” Valapakam said. “I just have general introspective clarity about things, starting with myself as a person [….] When starting meditation, be skeptical, not cynical, in order to allow something to work, and if it does work, then you are the living experience of the truth that is happening.”

Meditation has stood the test of time and has benefited many at McGill. If students are interested in giving meditation a try, there are plenty of how-to-websites, with free guided meditation and breathing exercises of all sorts of lengths that can fit into any schedule or location: Headspace or Calm are just two of the many free meditation apps available. Furthermore, the McGill Office of Spiritual and Religious Life offers free campus meditation services. With a jump-start on meditation, perhaps the benefits will kick-in just in time for finals–so keep calm, and meditate on.

Meditation is not meant to be a cure-all for depression and anxiety, and should one experience persistent symptoms of these disorders, seeking help through medicine and therapy is the recommended route. McGill offers both psychiatric and counselling services, both of which students can and are encouraged to use. If you find yourself in a crisis, you can call the McGill Nightline at 514-398-6246 or the Quebec National Crisis Line at 1-866-277-3553.

Arts & Entertainment, Film and TV

Lady Bird forgoes condescending tropes for character empowerment

by Brandon Kaufman on

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Lady Bird is Greta Gerwig’s solo debut as writer and director, but the film is crafted so adeptly you’d think it was helmed by a filmmaker in her prime. Saoirse Ronan stars as Christine (Lady Bird) McPherson, a quirky senior at a Sacramento Catholic school in 2003 who identifies as living on the “wrong side of tracks.” She dreams of leaving her city, going to college in New York “where culture is,” or New Hampshire “where writers live in the woods.”

Lady Bird’s family’s financial difficulties make her hesitant to apply to an East Coast liberal arts college, and this economic stress permeates virtually all aspects of her life. Lady Bird’s enrolment at her private school rests on an academic scholarship; her family’s groceries are bought discounted from the store her brother works at; her wardrobe is comprised entirely of hand-me-downs and thrifted clothes. This pervasive sense of financial dread is captured excellently by Laurie Metcalf, who portrays Lady Bird’s mother Marion. Playing a nurse who works double shifts after her husband (the similarly outstanding Tracy Letts) is laid off and becomes oddly unmotivated, Metcalf is an early frontrunner for Best Supporting Actress. She appears to Lady Bird as uptight and hawkish, and she is. But Lady Bird seems unable to connect this to her stressful 12-hour work days and equally stressful weekends dealing with a volatile teen daughter.

 

Lady Bird’s romantic life is explored with nuance and sympathy. She dates Danny (Lucas Hedges), the star of the school play. The relationship ends quickly and on a particularly poor note, devastating her. She sobs to Dave Matthews Band’s “Crash Into Me” with her best friend Julie (Beanie Feldstein), but in a couple of scenes is back to her typical, single self

Gerwig does not let Lady Bird’s relationships define her, though she is honest in depicting teenagers as earnestly thinking a two-week fling is the one. Later, Lady Bird begins dating Kyle (Timothée Chalamet), a guitar-playing anarchist who reads Howard Zinn and lives in a house four times the size of Lady Bird’s. She begins hanging out with his friends, whom a less astute filmmaker would depict as bullies. Gerwig’s screenplay avoids this cliché—they seem to be kind people, inclined to socialize among themselves but genuinely happy to engage with outsiders. The increasing amount of time Lady Bird spends with this group comes at the expense of her time with Julie, and a temporary falling-out ensues. No coming-of-age movie, it seems, can avoid the fallacy of limited time—where a character must choose between two easily reconcilable interests. The subordination of practicality to drama is necessary in storytelling, but can be frustrating. Still, this choice serves as a lesson for Lady Bird and is but one step in her film-wide development.

By the movie’s end, Lady Bird realizes her ego has been obscuring her vision of those around her—recognizing that her father is afflicted with depression, that Danny suffers from his own problems, that her mother doesn’t hate her, but is naturally overwhelmed with having to keep her family afloat. This initial self-centredness isn’t a character flaw but a stage all high schoolers have to get over.

 

Album Reviews, Arts & Entertainment, Music

Album Review: Sleigh Bells – “Kid Kruschev”

by Josh Marchesini on

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Since their 2010 debut, Sleigh Bells have been dubbed the poster child for “noise-pop”—defined as a combination of angelic pop vocals, distortion, and white noise–conveying an overbearing presence that cannot be ignored. Four albums later, vocalist Alexis Krauss and producer/songwriter Derek E. Miller embark on a thematic departure, Kid Kruschev, reflecting their artistic development over the years with new personal and political undertones. Upon the first listen, Sleigh Bells’ new album deviates from the singular explosive, in-your-face temperament, opting for the inclusion of synths and acoustic guitars. However, a closer look at the 7-track EP proves that Sleigh Bells evolve their sound, not only with these new vibrant tones but also with Krauss’ vocals governing the album’s sonic nature.

On their debut, Treats, Sleigh Bells established a genre-bending sound that would carry over the next two albums. However, the synth-pop Jessica Rabbit was a precursor to this new album, harnessing the noisy guitars with the domineering vocal presence of Krauss. Notably, “Blue Trash Mattress Fire,” the opening track, exhibits this position with Krauss belting over the droning guitar riffs throughout. As well, in “Rainmaker,” her voice dictates the booming synths as she croons over a failed relationship.

Like other American artists, Sleigh Bells allude to the current socio-political climate. During the instrumental crescendo in “Show Me the Door,” Krauss duets with a robotic voice, repeating the phrase “Check it out/ Check it out/ The faith’s going away.” This absence of faith, reinforces the darker subject matter present in the album. As well, in “Blue Trash Mattress Fire,” Krauss alludes to political instability: “Evidence of moral detours/ In the downtown holy wars/ Hysterical depths of casual hatred/ Taking place in everyday places.” On a personal level, “Florida Thunderstorm” substitutes the rough guitar riffs for acoustic guitars, layered with Krauss’ low pitch vocals singing over the loss of a loved one. While this deviates from their conventional sound, this experimentation still compliments Miller’s strategy of incorporating unorthodox sounds, such as chirping birds and pronounced reverbs, to disrupt the listener’s experience.

Kid Kruschev can be viewed as Sleigh Bells looking back at their artistic evolution, holding onto their noise-pop roots with powerful vocals. Sleigh Bells find themselves trying to balance a signature sound, while evolving sonically with electronic textures adopted by many in the last decade. Nonetheless, Sleigh Bells deserve attention, looking at their artistic oeuvre to suggest what may well be, the future of pop music.

Sleigh Bells will be performing in Montreal on Jan. 27, 2018 at L’Astral.

 

Science & Technology, Student Research

McGill alumni poised to blow out speaker industry

by Karl Neumann on

More in Science & Technology:

Audio loudspeakers, unlike many other technologies, have seen relatively little advancement since their creation in the late 1800s. That was until ORA Graphene Audio Inc., founded by brothers and McGill PhD graduates Robert-Eric Gaskell and Peter Gaskell, integrated a new material into their speaker design—taking the audio world by storm with their groundbreaking graphene-based headphone technology.

The sibling entrepreneurs both received their doctorates from McGill: Robert-Eric specialized in sound recording while Peter studied electrical engineering. The brothers founded ORA, now valued in the millions, in 2014 while they were still pursuing their doctorates. At the time, Peter was trying to use graphene in batteries while Robert-Eric Gaskell was working on microphone technology. What began as off-the-clock experiments, mixing Robert-Eric’s microphones with Peter’s material-of-interest graphene, eventually transformed into a success story.

 

Graphene, the key to ORA’s innovation, was first extracted with regular Scotch-tape in 2004. The professors responsible for the discovery, Andre K. Geim and Konstantin S. Novoselov at the University of Manchester, subsequently won the 2010 Nobel Prize in Physics for their work. The material is comprised of a single layer of carbon atoms arranged into a hexagonal or ‘honeycomb’ lattice and has a variety of remarkable properties. The substance is the strongest ever discovered, over 150 times stronger than steel and 40 times tougher than diamond. Furthermore, it’s one of the world’s lightest materials, extremely rigid, and excellent at damping vibrations.

Despite this assortment of useful characteristics, graphene has resisted commercialization since its debut over a decade ago. That remained the case until the Gaskell brothers created a composite material in 2013 which they dubbed GrapheneQ. Thomas Szkopek, associate professor in the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering, urged the siblings to patent their invention in 2014. GrapheneQ is made up of thousands of layers of graphene which comprise 95 per cent of the material, while the remainder contains binding components that enable its usability beyond that of pure graphene.

What sets ORA’s headphones apart from others on the market is the vibrating cone within each speaker, made of GrapheneQ. This cone converts electrical signals into mechanical waves that are then interpreted as sound. Other speakers on the market use materials such as aluminum or composite paper for this component, but have to make cost-benefit decisions in order to maximize the three central qualities of a speaker cone: Minimal weight, maximal strength, and great damping ability.

The quality of these headphones will be benefitted by their cone material because graphene excels in regards to all three of the properties. The difficulty comes in molding and manufacturing the notoriously complex material. The layered GrapheneQ must be shaped while maintaining these desired properties. The result is crisp, loud, and energy-efficient acoustics that could potentially set a new standard for headphone design.

Even though the brothers are currently pursuing the headphone market, the company has larger plans for the future. Robert-Eric envisions potential for their technology beyond headwear.

“We can make loudspeakers much smaller but with the same output [as other products], which is attractive to smartphone producers in particular, in order to make thinner or louder devices,” Robert-Eric said.

This potential next step could bring GrapheneQ into millions of pockets worldwide.

A product that began with two brothers working off-hours in a McGill lab has amplified to the point that even Silicon Valley is yearning to integrate their new technology. No matter ORA’s next move, the burgeoning company is at the precipice of changing an industry and is turning up the volume in an otherwise unchanging market.

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