My Last Article for the Eye! (again, *tear*)

May 8, 2009 at 4:49 am (Clips)

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Created 29 April 09

The quintessential dorm room familiar from TV shows and slacker comedies is strewn with clothes, books, and CDs, but the typical Columbia dorm room is suspiciously CD-free. Though CD sales have been on the decline ever since Napster introduced mass music file-sharing in the ‘90s, the closing of Kim’s, Morningside Heights’ only record store, and a 30-percent price increase on popular songs on iTunes have both furthered students’ motivation to download music illegally. But getting an album for free can mean risking thousands of dollars and trouble from Columbia—is it really worth it?

Columbia, more than other universities, strictly enforces penalties for illegal music downloading. Columbia University Information Technology’s policy says not only that under the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act, Columbia must take action if informed of copyright infringement, but also that the copyright owner may take additional action if necessary.

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My last Spectator Article! *tear*

May 8, 2009 at 4:47 am (Clips)

Adolescence tough for LGBTQ

by Jennifer Mayer

Until 1974, homosexuality was listed as a category in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.

While psychologists have progressed past viewing certain sexual orientations as disordered, students grappling with sexual identity often encounter unique mental health issues.

“For a population between the ages of 14 and 24, the rate of depression and suicidal gestures and completed suicide is higher for people who are struggling with these issues. It’s not a way of pathologizing, it’s a way of saying it’s a very difficult thing to deal with in a culture that’s so heteronormative,” said Mary Forbes Singer, a psychologist at Furman Counseling Center at Barnard who specializes in LGBTQ issues.

Young adulthood is often a time for defining identity, and for the LGBTQ community, it can involve coming out for the first time. Some students find the experience to be less liberating, and more stressful, than they expected.

Peter Gallotta, CC ’09 and former president of the Columbia Queer Alliance, said that coming out to his parents contributed to his experience with depression.

“My parents didn’t kick me out, but they haven’t really demonstrated a certain kind of acceptance and awareness that I would have hoped they would have found in their hearts,” he explained.

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My Latest Article

April 23, 2009 at 4:07 pm (Clips)

Swipe Ethics
how animal rights factor into every meal plan
By Jenn Mayer


John Jay Dining Hall serves over 13,000 meals a week. But how many diners stop to consider the rights of the animals they’re consuming?

On a campus with students known for their political activism and penchant for complaining about everything, digs on the food at John Jay are common. Still, Columbians rarely take a critical look at the cafeteria’s animal rights policies. According to a survey conducted by PETA2 (the student version of PETA), 97 percent of 18- to 22-year-olds believe that animals should not be treated cruelly or made to suffer. So why aren’t more people aware of John Jay’s animal rights track record?

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My Review of “I Love You Man”

March 26, 2009 at 4:52 am (Clips)

iloveyouman

I Love You, Man takes bromance to the next level

by Jenn Mayer

Sick of romantic comedies? Thanks to Paul Rudd and Jason Segel, stars of the film I Love You, Man, the future of movies lies in the bromantic comedy.

I Love You, Man centers on the engaged Peter Klaven (Rudd), who has gone through life without close male friends, and is now driven to remedy the situation when he realizes he has no one to serve as his best man. When his unconvincingly gay brother (Andy Samberg) sets him up on some “man dates,” hilarity ensues. Eventually, Peter meets Sidney Fife (Segel), which sparks the beginning of a passionate and all-consuming bromance. Rudd and Segel sat down for a conference call last month to discuss the absurd hilarity of the new genre of bromantic comedy.

As one might expect, the best scenes in the movie are those between Rudd and Segel, who play off each other’s absurdity and whose fast-paced dialogue should give audience members enough one-liners to last them until the next Judd Apatow film is released. In a conference call interview with Spectator, Segel described the ambiance of filming by explaining his and Rudd’s “first date” scene: “The director told us, ‘Look, the goal is just to look like you guys are slowly starting to like each other—don’t really worry about a script.’ And then they just gave us four hours of fish tacos and beer and we just had to talk and be funny and enjoy each other’s company—it was very, very easy and very, very fun.”

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Latest Article – Obama and Food Policy

February 14, 2009 at 5:44 pm (Clips, Politics)

Pollan Nation?
BY JENNIFER MAYER
PHOTO COURTESY OF LUCID NUTRITION
activist michael pollan spreads sustainability gospel as president obama
grapples with food policy

picture-14

Barack Obama may have raised a hand and
lifted a nation, but is his food policy something
you can believe in? A small but clamorous group
of food activists—led by revolutionary author Michael
Pollan—are calling not just for sustainability,
but for a complete shift in the food paradigm.

Food policy is not a new concept. It first became
a political issue in 1906 after the publication
of Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle”, an exposé on the
corruption of the meat industry. The ramifications
of the book were so powerful that President
Theodore Roosevelt ordered an investigation of
the meat industry that resulted in the establishment
of the Food and Drug Administration. In the
1970s, organic farming began as a small, radical
movement after agricultural experts realized that
chemicals used in the treatment and production of
food products negatively affected both the environment
and people’s health.
Now, once again, food has become a hot issue.
Organic food is the fastest growing sector of the
American food marketplace, with sales growing
17 to 20 percent a year for the past few years. But
even as people are making a conscious effort to
eat in a more sustainable way, the term “organic”
has become so open-ended, according to federal
definition, that the “organic” food sold in supermarkets
is not very different from the corporate
farms the label began as a protest against. Because
of this, many sustainability activists are calling
for President Obama and his administration to
take a tougher stance on changing the way food is
produced in the United States.

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My Review of “United States of Tara”

February 4, 2009 at 5:52 pm (Clips, Narcissism)

Mental Illness Comes to Primetime Comedy

BY JENNIFER MAYER
PUBLISHED FEBRUARY 02, 2009
Searching for a way to laugh at mental illness without becoming a social pariah? Diablo Cody’s new series, United States of Tara (UST), might be your answer.
UST centers on a family dealing with their mother’s multiple personality disorder. Tara, much to her children’s chagrin, morphs into alter egos raging from an out-of-control teenager to a hillbilly to a ’50s housewife.
In many respects, UST resembles Diablo Cody’s other famous creation, Juno. Both plotlines center on women living a life that makes society squeamish. While Juno was criticized for mitigating the seriousness of teen pregnancy with humor, the same could be said of Tara and mental illness.
Tara’s multiple personalities provide the comedic relief of the program, but the series has potential to make a much more meaningful statement about mental illness. In just the first two episodes, we begin to get a glimpse of how Tara’s husband deals with the circumstances as well as the community’s misconceptions about her situation and her sister’s refusal to acknowledge her condition.
Part of Cody’s ability to normalize such taboo subjects stems from her protagonists. Both Ellen Page and Toni Collette are typical ultra-hip girls with a self-deprecating and honest sense of humor, which makes their abnormalities more easily acceptable to viewers. Just as Juno did not fit the typical image one conjures up when hearing the words “pregnant teen,” Tara puts a human face to a largely misunderstood condition. And just as critics praised Page for her performance, it would not be surprising to see Rosemarie DeWitt (who plays Tara’s sister, Aunt Charmaine) as a Golden Globe nominee next year.
While watching UST, though, we must remind ourselves that the ultimate purpose here is entertainment with only secondary statements about society. Cody does, in a sense, mock both pregnancy and mental illness through her comedies. Most sufferers of multiple personality disorder do not behave as Tara does, nor do their alter egos surface in the convenient manner in which Tara’s do.
However her motives play out, Cody has created a captivating premise for a series. The challenge will be whether or not she can adapt her style to fit the television format. While the pilot was endlessly entertaining because of how much it revealed about the main characters, the second episode did little to build on their complexity.
To keep its viewers entertained, UST must dig deep and flesh out all of its characters—and refrain from a singular focus on Tara’s alter egos. For example, Aunt Charmaine is obviously in denial over her sister’s diagnosis, but little has been revealed as to why she finds it so disturbing.
With such acclaimed talent on board (Steven Spielberg is the executive producer), UST has all the makings of an award-winning and highly rated series. Whether it will reach its potential remains to be seen.

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Milk: The Case for Sean Penn

February 2, 2009 at 12:18 am (Clips)

 

If you are a dedicated Spectacle reader, you most likely already know about my quest to view all the Oscar nominated movies before the award’s ceremony. If not, that last sentence pretty much got you up to speed.

In any case, watching The Wrestler earlier this week left me with a better understanding of why someone like Mickey Rourke could win the Golden Globe, and why it was possible for him to take home the big prize, the Oscar, as well. After sitting down to stream Milk¸ my appreciation for Rourke has been upstaged by Sean Penn’s performance as gay activist Harvey Milk, the first openly gay man in office. While I can say that my blood will not boil should Rourke win for best actor, I would understand if Penn pitched a fit in protest.

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The Wrestler: Revisited

January 28, 2009 at 9:04 pm (Clips)

My latest post from the Spectator blog:

Like most of the movie-watching population of America, I often wait until Oscar season to watch many of the nominated movies. Although there’s been a lot of buzz about Mickey Rourke’s performance in The Wrestler, especially after securing the Golden Globe, I just sat down to check out the picture last night. Having now just recovered from the wave of depression caused by the viewing, I do have to commend Rourke for a stellar performance.
Despite living a lifestyle mostly followed by complete tools, Rourke is amazingly easy to empathize with.  Granted, he’s a coke-sniffing, stripper-boning, deadbeat dad who weekends as a professional wrestler in the most amateur sense of the word. But as we follow Rourke, aka Randy “The Ram” Robinson, through his failed career and failed attempts to connect with the women in his life, his human and vulnerable elements escape easily from his rough and tumble exterior. While Darren Aronofsky’s directing style and the simple yet stunning cinematography certainly help his cause, part of Rourke’s ease in embodying the character is the fact that he is the character. That craggy face is not makeup, my friends.
It would be easy to look back on Randy’s failed attempt at a career, family, and relationships as his own fault. However, Rourke manages, in a few gruff words, to paint Randy as a determined and loveable man coming to terms with his own vulnerability.
Adding to his chances for an Oscar (besides his Golden Globe) are his centrality in the film. The few other characters remain underdeveloped and one-dimensional.  Another testament is the lack of background information on Randy. We see him in his washed-up state, without knowledge of how he got there, but can still identify on some level with him. While I have yet to see Milk and can’t compare Rourke’s performance to Sean Penn’s, I can give him kudos for an understated yet powerful performance. Whether it is too understated for the Academy, time will tell.

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I Am Officially A Diversified Blogger

January 12, 2009 at 5:32 pm (Clips)
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So I’ve started blogging for the Columbia Daily Spectator’s Art’s and Entertainment blog, Spectacle. Here’s my first post. You can also check out the blog itself on the links sidebar.

24 : Out With the Old and In With the New, Kind Of

We last saw Jack Bauer in 24:Redemption, a two hour TV event that was presumably an attempt to get viewers to remember that show they used to watch two years ago. Then, viewers were given the impression that the series had changed to focus on a softer, more global agenda.

Jack was saving orphan boys in Africa, a female President was inaugurated, and the Senate subpoenaed Bauer for the shady torturing business that had been the staple of the previous six seasons. Last night, in which the first two hours of the four-hour season finale aired, it seemed as though while some things had changed, the staples that first attracted 24’s fan base were still going strong.

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Old Clip: Stylista Review

November 27, 2008 at 5:34 pm (Clips)
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The CW Has Stylista, But It Lacks Substance

By Jennifer Mayer
PUBLISHED OCTOBER 28, 2008

Stylista, the CW’s newest fashion reality series, had its greatest promise with the inclusion of Arnaldo, a Columbia graduate, in its cast. Unfortunately, Arnaldo’s dreams of stardom were crushed in the very first episode, when he was deemed “not the right fit” because he dressed too much like an investment banker. At Columbia, this certainly would not have been taken as a criticism.

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