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The Amateur Media Blog

The Deconstructive Brigade Of Star Wars - Comparing The Last Jedi To Its Analogue In Gaming

31/12/2017

by Luv Mehta

So this little indie low-budget movie called Star Wars: The Last Jedi came out, and fan reactions are… split, to say the least. It’s an incredibly risky movie that adds a lot of introspection and deconstruction to the series, calling into question the way the Force, the mythical space-magic that has been a mainstay of the series, has been treated, interpreted and taught across the whole saga.

For better or for worse, this has ended up being exactly the kind of movie that the franchise needed - a risky installment that shakes up the whole series and invites discussion and analysis. There have been quite a lot of debates on the matter, and there are so many great takes that have been spawned that you can spend the whole day getting to know new perspectives on it.

Through this article, I’m trying to do something different. Because all this deconstruction and introspection isn’t new to the Star Wars universe - it’s something gamers have experienced back in late 2004, when Obsidian developed and released Star Wars: Knights Of The Old Republic II: The Sith Lords - a title that split fans to the core, in many of the same ways the current movie fandom has experienced right now. And I feel it might benefit to compare them both, seeing how the decisions they took are simultaneously critical of the central morality play of the series, and why these end up making for a stronger story.

Mild spoilers for The Last Jedi follow, and I’ll do my best to avoid any spoilers for the Knights Of The Old Republic series (referred to as KOTOR afterwards for convenience). Because the analogy can be extended best to a Light Side playthrough of KOTOR II, I’ll primarily deal with the plot on that side.

Loving Relationships Can Be Toxic - A Look At BOJACK HORSEMAN Season Four

16/9/2017

by Luv Mehta

It’s been a week since BoJack Horseman’s fourth season got released on Netflix. I've written about why the show is so amazing before, and and this new season hasn't disappointed, rocketing the show up to the top of my favourites. It’s a fantastic crop of episodes, combining the strong character development of season two with some of the experimental nature of season three, and the plotlines show a strong commitment to the theme of family.

However, as amazing as the main storyline revolving around BoJack is, there are a lot of thoughts in my head regarding a secondary one. Although, to be fair, no storyline can really be called secondary by now, since the whole cast is an ensemble of deeply interesting characters with interesting lives. And none fascinate me more than the relationship between Diane and Mr Peanutbutter.

This article will contain spoilers.

ILLNESS AND DEATH IN MUSIC: AGENCY IN 'THE BLACK PARADE'

6/9/2017

by Shataparni Bhattacharya

Punk rock is the voice of the disillusionment era. It was created by a generation of youths who primarily considered themselves to not be artists, but working-class individuals, who faced a set of social and economic problems, including but not limited to mental illnesses. Though largely neglected within discourses of illnesses, the punk rock genre has been a champion for the cause of drawing attention and awareness to various illnesses, usually psychiatric.

(Extremely) Flawed Gems - NAYAK (2001)

16/7/2017

by Luv Mehta

So there was this BuzzFeed article I saw recently, another one of those quizzes designed to bait you in by making you say, "Wow, I remember that!" And while it does always work on me, this case included, I was pretty miffed with the title - How Many Of These Ironically Fuckall Movies Have You Seen? Because I have seen quite a lot of the movies listed in this article (fifty, to be exact) and I do genuinely love a lot of them.

Sure, they may not be paragons of quality - hell, a lot of them have genuine problems that can't be ignored. But, in my own humble opinion, it is possible to enjoy and appreciate flawed movies, even while acknowledging their faults.

All this is basically my excuse to start talking about all those weird and amazing movies I hold close to my heart. And I can’t possibly think of a better example than Nayak.

ANOMALISA - The Unbearable Existence Of Being

11/6/2017

by Luv Mehta

I have to start this article by talking about Charlie Kaufman.

Ever since he broke into the industry, Kaufman has always poked and prodded at the very structure of scripts, cutting and rearranging the metaphorical fabric they're woven out of. His first big hit was Being John Malkovich, the story of people vicariously living their fantasies through a Hollywood star (played by himself - Kaufman scripts always tend to attract genius casting). His second script, Adaptation, was something every film student kicked themselves for not thinking of, an exercise in metatextual narrative made long before being meta was memetic. Then came Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind, which played a romance story in reverse to justify why relationships can be worth facing their own eventual breakdown.

Eventually, he went into film direction with Synecdoche, New York. Kaufman had always been interested in the inner workings of the human mind, but it was here that he showcased his obsession with mental disorders for the first time. Using a model recreation of a New York district in the same district itself (a synecdoche in Schenectady), he framed the story about a man named Cotard, suffering from Cotard's delusion - perpetually obsessed with the idea that he was close to death.

And this background becomes relevant in the context of our subject of discussion, and what might be his simplest, yet his richest script yet - Anomalisa.

The Silent Son - A Moment of Confusion In BOSE: THE FORGOTTEN HERO

5/6/2017

by Sucheto Nath

When I saw it, my first reaction was to remember an emojipasta, probably found exclusively in a Facebook group about Love Live!, which begins thus:

Bose: The Forgotten Hero, a three-and-a-half-hour film, follows Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose from his separation from the Indian National Congress to the moment his plane leaves Saigon in 1945 - the very plane which reportedly crashed, killing the leader of the Azad Hind Fauj. The film is quite surprising, I might add; the plot is quite engaging and evenly poised, and even the special effects are nothing to snort at.

However, there is the slight problem that the hero joined forces with this man here:

Is Beowulf American Literature?

27/5/2017

by Sucheto Nath

I had a funny idea before bed one night in late May, so I posted the following status on Facebook.

I was only half-joking, actually, because a connection had occurred to me; but what surprised me is how seriously people reacted. A friend who studies English said she’d slap me; a meme-maker said Beowulf was an anime; everyone else unironically mansplained the poem’s origin, or posted a picture of an otter saying ‘No’. Personally, I should be flattered, because I’ve been thinking that perhaps everything I say is misconstrued as a joke; it’s nice to be taken seriously by so many people for a change. Not only did they not realise that the emoji was there for irony, but, in all modesty, it is slightly disconcerting that about ten people who know me would think an almost-graduate of English wouldn’t know when Beowulf was written.

My last line brings us to my first line of argument. For virtually all works of literature that are studied in schools and undergraduate programs, we have a fixed, or at least approximate, date of composition. This is more important than is immediately obvious. Not only does knowing the date of publication or writing enable to us to understand the text better, we can actually pin down the work to a certain author. By declaring that one text is written by one author, within a certain time, and under certain conditions of life, we are able to say, and often do, that the meaning of the text (outer, inner, or whatever) must be understood by studying that author’s life and the time in which the book was written. When we can’t pin down a book to a certain time, things get complicated - or to put it in another way, a complicated matter becomes obvious.

Beowulf is one of these poems. All that is more or less certain is that it came long after the Germanic people described by Tacitus. It describes the coming of Scyld, which seems to be more legend than fact. It mentions Hengest and the Battle of Finnsburh, which happened around 450 CE. The extant text is in West Saxon, so the poem as it now exists was probably not written in the early years of Anglo-Saxon life in England. There are strong aspects of oral poetry and epic heroism, but also passages that were written by a Christian. Again, the depiction of Danes suggests that Beowulf may have been written after the establishment of the Danelaw. Even assuming that we can separate a core text from later interpellations by Christian scribes, when can we say it was written - or, as we must say, composed? In fact, can Beowulf be pinned down to a written text, or do we have to treat the poem as an amorphous object?

Now that’s enough of serious talk. Let’s see why Beowulf is clearly an American poem.

Rebirth: Drawing From The Past

12/5/2017

by Tarique Ejaz

"Sometimes some things can't be saved. You need to know what is worth saving and what is not."