Review: Iron Man 3

If you’ve seen Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, you’ll know that director Shane Black took some of the sensibilities from that film and put them in Iron Man 3. And that’s a good thing. You get tons of comedy along with really great dramatic moments, and some dark themes, and even some dark comedy. If you haven’t seen Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, you need to go watch it now. It too stars Robert Downey Jr. Also watch Iron Man 3 because, well, it’s a great film.

Okay, I’ll start off by saying that Iron Man 3 isn’t technically what most people (i.e. critics) would say is a good film. It’s a good superhero film, sure, but its plot is messy. There’s a lot of spectacle, and some details get lost in the mix. If you think about it too hard you’ll have a lot of “How did that happen?” and “Why did they just gloss over that?” ect, ect. But in the end that isn’t what really matters. What matters are the characters.

People love Marvel films because of their familiarity with the characters. If you don’t know who Iron Man is, well, I don’t know what you’ve been doing in the past few years but it certainly hasn’t been paying attention. The Marvel franchise is good about building characters that are more than just their superhero identities, and incorporating that into the films. Iron Man 3 is an exceptional example of this. The film is about Tony Stark’s journey to come to terms with who he is, and whether who he is is good enough without being Iron Man. After all, for the past three films featuring Stark, he’s gotten more and more intertwined with his identity as Iron Man.

Considering that the main focus of the film is Tony Stark’s character development, I’d say that Iron Man 3 did a fantastic job. We even get tons of action and comedy to add to our enjoyment, but it isn’t pointless. The film starts out with Stark building more and more Iron Man suits, as well as coming up with technology to be able to call the suits to him with just a few gestures through sciency things (don’t ask me the name) implanted in his skin. He can’t be without the suit. And he can’t sleep. And he has panic attacks about the time when he almost died in space during the Avengers.

This is interesting, this concept of having panic attacks. Superheroes don’t usually show that kind of weakness. Yet here we have Tony Stark having panic attacks in restaurants because he broke a crayon, or outside because someone mentioned New York. We see his nightmares. We see how his obsession with protection nearly harms Pepper. And for a superhero film that’s pretty deep. It isn’t new for Marvel, but it’s good to see them continuing down this route. Many films don’t acknowledge the pasts of superheroes and how it might affect them (except the newer Batman films, which are great) but here we see that Tony Stark was definitely affected, and both from the writing and Robert Downey Jr’s acting it comes across as realistic.

Tony’s journey throughout the movie is to move past this idea that he needs the suit to protect him and the ones he cares about, and to come to terms with what happened in New York. His challenge comes in the form of the Mandarin, a terrorist who causes chaos from behind a camera, going so far as to threaten the President. And as far as terrorists go, he’s pretty successful. But Tony has to stop him.

The Mandarin doesn’t make it easy. He destroys Tony’s house. Tony gets stranded in a small town with a damaged suit, which is his worst nightmare. The only person who can help him fix it? A little boy named Harley whose father has left the family and who also likes fixing things. He and Tony bond, sort of, through fixing the suit, dealing with the bad guys, and pulling no punches. Tony doesn’t shy away from Harley’s troubled family, and Harley doesn’t shy away from Tony’s issues with New York. In fact, Harley reminds Tony that he’s awesome without the suit because he’s the one who built it-he’s a mechanic, and that’s where his main talent lies. He fixes things.

So Tony gets to fix this situation. He fixes the suit. He goes to Miami to rescue some people with Rhodey (Don Cheadle.) He ends up infiltrating the mansion where the Mandarin is supposedly hiding. And this scene is awesome because, for the first time in forever, we get to see a real answer to the question posed by Steve Rogers in the Avengers-what is Tony Stark without the suit? The answer is that he’s a badass who can invent weapons out of household objects and infiltrate a mansion like a boss. He’s really competent, and that’s all on his own. He uses a combination of his genius and his fighting ability to succeed in getting into a mansion. And I love that there was a scene like that in the film, because sometimes we forget about Tony being awesome aside from being Iron Man. And he really shines here with his ingenuity and kick-assness.

But he’s not the only one. Pepper also gets to shine in this film. Pepper, played by Gwyneth Paltrow, has always been a character I liked for her strength. We need more female characters like her. And I like that her strength lies not in shooting guns (although that’s cool, too) but in the fact that she’s patient, that she can deal with Stark, that she doesn’t run from danger but she also doesn’t take crap from anybody. She stands up to others, and to Stark. She deals with the other antagonist of the film, Killian (Guy Pierce) quite nicely. She supports Stark but she also lets him know when he’s gone too far and needs help, and when he’s putting her in danger. And, well, Stark tries to save her, but she ends up saving him. Needless to say, there’s some awesome amounts of Pepper in this film.

And then there’s JARVIS. The AI system hasn’t really been too prominent in previous films, but here he (?) gets a lot of interaction with Stark. He also has more of a personality built on wit. He matches Stark, and is involved enough with the action that, for the first time, you get to feel like he’s actually a character and get a glimpse at how Stark must feel-like JARVIS is a sassy but very helpful friend that one would be sad to lose. Stark has an interesting relationship with his machines, like a father with his sons but also like a friend, and Iron Man 3 luckily expands a bit more on this.

The bottom line: you should see Iron Man 3. There’s great character development, and realistic portrayals of being human. You also get drama and comedy and lots of action. You’ll notice I didn’t talk much about the Mandarin or Killian. That’s because I want you to see for yourself, not because I just had a major oversight about the other two main characters in the film. And besides, I have to leave a little bit of mystery, otherwise why see the film? Besides for the awesome dialogue, comedy, dramatic tension, and killer development, and the action sequence with tons of Iron Man suits and explosions. You see where I’m going with this? See it.

But really, it’s good. This film lets us know that Tony Stark is a man, and human, but still awesome, and we need that reminder. Like Stark, the audience tends to become a bit too wrapped up in the Iron Man persona, and this really helps show that while Iron Man is Tony Stark, Iron Man is not all Tony Stark is.

Now That I’m Home

After a fourteen hour car ride through several states and even more traffic jams, I’ve had a lot of time to think about what I’m going to miss about UNC, my home for the past three years. Literally, I haven’t been home more than a handful of times since I’ve gone to school, and now I’m home for an indeterminate amount of time until I can find something like a job, or an internship, or a calling. Anyway, my list of things I’ll miss about college has grown a lot. After all, small-town Chapel Hill is even larger than my small-town in New York. And yeah, we have New York City, but we don’t have Cookout and that’s a shame. So, the list:

1. The People. I’ve met a lot of awesome people at Chapel Hill. My roommate freshman year became my roommate (and apartment mate) for my full time there, and she’s awesome. And there are other awesome friends I’ve met who are extremely smart and good people and share my love of things British (and some things not.) I could talk to anyone about anything-film, television, Tom Hiddleston, cats. Even the people at work were friendly. Speaking of which…

2. My jobs. I had two, one at Carolina Performing Arts as an Assistant House Manager (there are lots of good stories here) and one as an Office Assistant for UNC’s Housing. Both jobs had the main requirement of me being super friendly. The CPA job also had me buying a lot of swanky clothing, and I got to work a show where President Obama and Jimmy Fallon were the performers. Not a lot of college students get to do that. (And look up Carolina Performing Arts-they put on some awesome shows.) Plus, both of my jobs had awesome co-workers that I got along with. They made working pleasant, which is saying a lot. After all, it’s work.

3. The food. Okay, I live an hour from NYC, but even NYC hasn’t got the southern food that I’ve come to crave. Cookout is a prime example-a drive-thru place found only in North Carolina that serves milkshakes worth dying for and really good fast food (burgers, fries, hush puppies, ect) for pretty cheap. If you’re in North Carolina, you need to go. Also, Mellow Mushroom is some of the best pizza I’ve ever had, and I don’t have any Mellow Mushrooms up here. There were also various Chapel Hill staples-Sugarland for amazing cupcakes, desserts, and gelato; Krispy Kreme because some Evil Person took all of ours away up north; a bunch of burger joints; Time Out, which has excellent chicken and biscuits; and the Waffle Shoppe, which is pretty self-explanatory and also awesome. They have an M&M waffle. I bet you’re jealous now. So am I. There’s also some food trucks including a dumpling truck, a baguette truck, and a crepe truck. I console myself by reminding myself that there’s THE Wafels & Dinges truck in NYC. But still.

4. The cheapness of everything. Food costs less. Gas costs less. A ticket to the movies costs less, and I went to see a lot of movies. Now here I’ll have to pay several dollars more. This is actually a tragedy. I love films. I’ll also miss the Varsity Theatre, which would show newer films a few months after release for, like, $3, as well as classics. And our student union showed newer films for free. Leaving was bad news for my film enjoyment.

5. The proximity of everything. At most the state fair (and Raleigh) was half an hour away. We had two Targets (and an awesome mall) within 15 minutes, several specialty supermarkets, an uber-hipster town with all your hipster needs just down the road (Carrboro), and connections to That School Down the Road just in case you got tired of everything being so bright and friendly at UNC. If you couldn’t walk, you could take a bus, and if you had a car you wouldn’t have to go far to find anything. Where I live at home, everything is far away. Okay, we have a movie theater fifteen minutes away, and a tiny mall, but everything else is at least half an hour. Chilis is the hangout of choice for young people because we don’t have much else to choose from. Things close early. You have to drive everywhere. There are no sidewalks and barely any public transport. I feel trapped.

6. Access to EVERYTHING. Yeah, we had three main libraries. Printing was part of tuition. We got access to all the academic online sites, to lots of films and television shows, and other media. We got access to cameras and tripods and editing software of all kinds that anyone would die for. And there were tons of computers for our use in the libraries just in case your laptop broke (mine deleted its hard drive four times.) And now the printer at my house doesn’t work. So much for that. We do have faster internet, though. That’s a plus.

7. The amount of people my age. Yeah, it’s college. There were lots of people my age with similar interests. The potential for making friends was endless. In my home town there are friends, but not much chance for meeting new people. The people I don’t know are made up of a) people I never want to see again, b) older people/parents, c) middle schoolers/high schoolers and just no, or d) people my age who…okay just people my age. A lot of the people my age in my town and surrounding areas are just not my kind of people. People in NC were friendlier. Nerdier. Had more of a moral center, maybe even. Maybe not. But we all had more in common. It seems like My People either congregated in NC or in cities. I’m not sure how to interpret that.

8. Things to do. I mean, there’s really not a lot here. Chapel Hill was full of places to go, things to try, a campus to explore (and we did explore it quite literally.) We had two cities nearby. Here it’s hard. I’ll try to explore NYC as much as possible. I don’t even have classes to go to. I’ve gone from having a full course load and two jobs to…nothing. I don’t even know how to handle Free Time. What even is that?

9. School Spirit. I don’t know if you know about the Tar Heel spirit but at UNC it’s pretty awesome, and all over the place. Carolina blue everywhere. Dook sucks. I feel like I was born a Tar Heel even if I didn’t know about UNC before senior year of high school, so they’re doing their job right. I don’t know many schools with that kind of sense of community and pride. UNC probably even outshines Harvard in that department. We have a better basketball team so that makes sense.

10. The beauty. Campus is beautiful. Chapel Hill is beautiful. Let me drop some photo knowledge on you (and they’re my photos, so you get to see campus like I see it!):

This is the famous Old Well and it’s pretty awesome.

Campus during Holi Moli. We are awesome enough to do that kinda thing.

Our campus has a lot of flowers so it’s beautiful during the spring. And all other seasons. But especially spring.

We also have a lot of bikers so here’s one. Even the bikers look good.

(Okay I don’t miss the bikers so much they are scary to be around on foot or in a car.)

The point is, I’m going to miss UNC more than I’ve ever missed any place in my life except maybe London (but that’s another story.) UNC was my home for three years, the best three of my life so far. They went too fast, and I haven’t really had time to process that I’m actually gone for good. The graduation gown hasn’t even been hung up yet. I also haven’t unpacked.

I think it’s going to be a long summer of getting used to the idea of never going back.

But this isn’t a sad post! There are better things to come. (Right? Right?????)

 

 

 

The Most College Things

Aside from all the work that goes into being a college student, people who go to college also do something called being a college student. Which is more than work. It’s a lifestyle that goes beyond school. As I leave college, I’m looking back. Here are some of the most collegy things I’ve done, which will hopefully give you an idea of what it means to be a college student if you aren’t one already:

-Attended a rally. In the olden days of my parents people attended rallies for a cause. Like to end war or something. I attended the Colbert/Jon Stewart Rally to Restore Sanity/Rally to Incite Fear (or something like that) on the mall of Washington D.C. It was several hours of standing in the cool autumn weather, watching people climb up on trees and other people dressed up as zombies, all in the name of humor and fun, and it was the best thing. I don’t think it actually accomplished anything, but it was pretty fun anyway.

It was a great rally.

-Sleep in an airport. There’s nothing quite like wanting to save money, and there’s no easier way to save money than to make the airport your hotel. Unfortunately, there’s a reason why people avoid airports as places to sleep, because airports are uncomfortable and cold and inevitably you won’t get any sleep. But in the spirit of adventure it’s probably something you should try at least once. And in the spirit of having not that much money it’s probably something you’ll end up considering multiple times if you’re anything like me.

-Going all out for Halloween. I don’t know about your university, but at mine we have a Halloween tradition. It’s called going on our main street (Franklin) in awesome Halloween costumes and just walking to observe. And it’s fun. People go all out. People are impressive with their creativity. The first year I kind of dropped the ball on a costume due to the aforementioned Stewart/Colbert Rally, which took place over Halloween weekend, but the next two years involved more effort. I went as River Song from Doctor Who, complete with a sonic screwdriver, and this past year I went as Loki from the Avengers. There was no candy, but at least we looked awesome.

-Playing Humans vs Zombies. Sometimes I feel like college students want nothing more than to enjoy the things they did when they were kids, and who can blame us? We’re closer to adulthood than ever, so college is the perfect time to have fun. Humans vs Zombies is basically a week long expression of that desire. And, hey, who doesn’t want to shoot people with nerf guns? It’s rewarding.

-Take the overnight bus to save money. When I studied in England over the summer I wanted to take a trip to Scotland, but I didn’t want to spend a lot of money. In order to spend two days in Edinburgh I took an overnight bus there and back. Sleeping on buses is only marginally better than sleeping in airports. Especially when someone puts their head, uninvited, on your shoulder. And especially when you have to wait for two hours in the middle of the night at a bus stop in the middle of nowhere for a transfer. But so worth it.

-Exploring campus in the dead of night. One of my favorite weekends at UNC involved going into the science buildings at night, using the lecture hall for movies, and telling ghost stories in the graveyard. And climbing trees at night for some reason. It was spring, it was nice, and inside just seemed uninteresting. Also, we ran into the poor graduate students who live in the science buildings 24/7. They seemed to miss when they were us.

-Going on a backpacking trip. This was probably the worst idea anyone has ever had: to go on a backpacking trip near Asheville in the North Carolina mountains…without a map. We stayed one night in the woods after walking for three hours. When we woke up it was raining, which was probably a good thing, because it meant we went to stay in a hotel in Asheville to dry out and have good food instead of puttering around in the woods and freezing to death.

-Fitting twenty people in a dorm room. It wasn’t my dorm room.We were also watching movies on a tiny television. These haven’t been acceptable hang-out conditions since.

-Fitting 8 people in a 4 person hotel room. All in the name of saving money. Some of us got really well acquainted with the floor and a few others of us got acquainted with each other. Also for some reason we brought a gaming system with us.

-Having a trivia night at a bar. Because what college students need is more knowledge outside of class. Really obscure knowledge mixed with alcohol and cheese fries. Trivia’s actually really fun when done at the right bar. Linda’s, I salute you.

-Having an all-nighter for no reason. I never did an all-nighter because I needed that amount of time to work. I’ve never been particularly slow about doing school work, and I actually have pretty good time management skills. But it’s an experience. So I basically sat around with other friends in a study room a few times not really doing anything while they didn’t really do anything while trying to work. I’ve since gotten a better sleeping schedule. And I’m more discerning about which “experiences” are actually necessary.

-Having intellectual discussions at 3am. They’re much more mind-blowing. Everyone talks more. It feels like something life changing. Then you wake up the next morning and wonder why you stayed up so late, but you really don’t regret it.

I’m going to miss college, and the experiences it gave me. But there are probably quite a few things on this list that I’ll never do again.

College Classes 101

In honor of yesterday’s Last Day of Classes (FOREVER) I’ve decided to talk about some of the best and worst classes I’ve taken in college. After all, college is basically just going to class for 3-5 years in the hopes that one will catch your interest enough to become your life career.

The Best

Shakespeare-That’s right, UNC’s English department has a whole class dedicated to Shakespeare’s plays. There may even be more than one (I was tempted to take War In Shakespeare’s Plays but didn’t have time.) What was awesome about this class was that it took place over the summer in London and Oxford (there is a semester version in Chapel Hill but it’s much less interesting), and each play we read was accompanied by an outing to the performance in a London or Stratford-Upon-Avon theatre. As a bonus we got to see War Horse and Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead. In other words, I don’t think other classes top this one.

Every Screenwriter Class Ever-These were the most interesting part of my major, really. Learning how to write films, short and long, is hard work. Plus, we got to learn a lot about how Hollywood works. And we got to see our classmates act.

Playwriting-Same as the above, except I like my play better than my screenplay because it’s funnier. Also I’m really happy my professor didn’t kill me for all of my files labeled “Correct Format” that were actually in the wrong format because play format is weird.

Narrative Production-I took the summer version of this course in which we made four films in five weeks and somehow didn’t go crazy. We were a small group, but in the end we all succeeded and had some pretty good short films to take with us. Plus, our TA was open minded. We got to try a lot as a class.

Women’s Studies-Some people might say that this is a stupid class, and those people are wrong. You can learn a lot about gender and how society views it vs what it really is, along with plenty of gender inequality lessons that make a woman feel sad. But it’s interesting. It’s also called “gender studies” now but it wasn’t when I took it.

Psychology 101-I had the best professor who was enthusiastic about her field, even to a large freshman lecture, and who knew a lot. She also described how nerves work to erections. And she might have traumatized the class by showing us some dark film clips of mental illness taken to the extreme.

That One Drama Class I Took First Semester-it was a first year seminar where we discussed style in relation to drama throughout history. I got to present about what influenced Shakespeare’s characters and write a long essay about various versions of Hamlet. I enjoyed it.

Worst

Intro to Rhetoric-I don’t like rhetoric. I don’t like talking about rhetoric. I don’t like writing about it. It’s still trying to break me now.

Spanish Literature-It wasn’t too bad until we got to poetry, and then we all died. Poetry is hard to analyze in the English language. Put it in a language you’re not fluent in that typically doesn’t teach you the vocabulary of literature analysis when you learn it causes disaster. There was also a video project. Never assign a video project outside of a media production class. We won’t talk about the video project.

Intro to Media Production-I would just like to start by saying that all of the intro courses in the Communications Department are like torture. Also, the TA’s for this course and the professor seemed to think we didn’t have other classes. I did make an anti-hipster film, though.

Math 118-I don’t remember exactly what we were supposed to be learning. I really just don’t like math.

Lifetime Fitness (LFIT)-Everyone has to take these courses, and everyone pretty much agrees that they’re pointless. You learn a bit of 6th grade biology and have to come in for an hour twice a week to exercise. And they hope that the course will make you healthier. We’re college students, so it doesn’t.

So, there’s a lot of variety in college, especially at a liberal arts school. You can take anything, and you’ll probably end up with a lot of classes not in your major. There will be some really, really bad classes. And there will be classes better than anything you could have imagined while in high school.

No matter what you do, avoid the 8am class. Those are the worst.

Playwriting: A Journal

Yes, not journey. For my playwriting class we’ve been asked to keep a journal about our writing experiences, which included a few writing exercises (the 500 word sentence being a memorable one) and probably should have included something introspective about getting ideas and the writing process. But there wasn’t. Mostly because, being honest, my process was a bunch of chance things that went like this:

-Draft three ideas, use one that might possibly work.

-A week later try to write a first scene for the idea, realize that it’ll never be a full play, come up with a completely different idea with a difficult-to-swallow premise that the professor has a hard time getting, and decide to write that one.

-Write act one. Play unintentionally becomes a comedy.

-Also there are sex scenes.

-I realize that I don’t know what stage directions are. Or formatting. I try to figure that out. My documents labeled “Correct Format” are not.

-Meet with professor, who tells me that I’m writing a play. That sounds encouraging. At least I’m not writing a novel or math equation or something.

-Write act two. Am not sure how to end play. Play becomes much darker in the second half.

-Quite a few times I question if I know what I’m doing.

-Agonize over casting classmates for readings as certain characters.

-Finish play.

-Have hundredth-thoughts. Re-write play.

-Panic.

-Finally get the play into a somewhat correct format while rewriting the play.

-Ask myself why I decided to torture myself with writing a full-length play. And then I die. Because it’s DONE.

Keep in mind, most of the time I didn’t know what I was doing. And there was a minimal outline. And by “outline” I mean that there was a sort of idea of what the play was about, four characters with names, and a kind-of-sort-of-theme that probably changed halfway through.

Writing a play is hard. Writing a long anything is hard. I’ve written screenplays that were hard, too, but somehow the play was a little bit easier, perhaps because scenes were longer, there was more dialogue, and plays don’t have the same sort of requirements as Hollywood scripts do. Sure, I’m more familiar with film scripts rather than play scripts, and I was out of my depth, but I think I’m more satisfied with the play I’m still in the process of writing than anything else I’ve done.

People actually like it, for one thing.

It was introspective. Characters have bits of my life in them, but so does everything else I write, at least a little. I had to ask questions about situations in my own life, how I would react to things, and how I saw the world, and then put it in a fictional piece of work. And I had to name the characters while doing that. Naming is so hard.

Titling is even worse. Some people have that gift, but I do not. My works are perpetually “Untitled” until the last moment.

And it’s hard and sometimes a bit painful but it’s also enjoyable and rather funny. Trust me, there’s nothing like having a classmate read a character you wrote using a sex-voice and getting really into it. There’s nothing like hearing other people attempt to act out what you wrote, and hoping that it’s somehow comprehensible to them. There’s something awesome about knowing something works when you hear it, and something a bit awful about hearing something cringe-worthy that you wrote.

I’ve enjoyed writing  a play. I might even try my hand at another one. This isn’t my playwriting journal, but this is pretty much as close as I’ll ever get to having one.

Metaphors

I’m taking this class called rhetoric. It’s about as tedious as it sounds, but unfortunately this class is the one thing standing between me and graduation. (Literally: I have to get a decent grade and this is the only class where the TA’s are very, very hard graders.) So I kind of have to stick it out, and usually my professor’s lectures are in the realm of stuff I already knew (like logos, pathos, and ethos), stuff I am learning too much about and will never use again (MLA citation to an extreme), and very specific theories and works by very specific philosophers (that I don’t know and have a hard time learning.) But today was the first day my professor said something interesting. 

We were talking about language. Language has a certain importance to communications majors that is glossed over if you’re in the Media Production program, like I am. There’s a lot about language to consider when talking about rhetoric, which deals with how people persuade other people about stuff (it’s really more than that, but this is a nutshell discussion here).

Today, in particular, we were looking at how language is a symbol: the word “clock” doesn’t inherently mean a clock, but we all just agreed that those letters and that sound would indicate a thing that tells us the time. And somewhere along the way people also agreed that a “watch” and a “clock” are different things, even though they share a function. (And a watch is technically a clock, but that’s over thinking a bit.) 

Anyway, we were talking about how metaphors are used in language, and how to find metaphors in language, in particular in speeches. There are no shortage of speeches that use metaphors, and I use them every once in awhile myself while writing. I’m more familiar with it in fiction but I can recognize it in a speech. But then my professor said this thing that I had never thought of before, that turned metaphors on their head a little in an Inception-moment of mind-blowing awesome:

ALL language is metaphor. 

Which is a HUGE deal if you like language and find it fascinating. But my professor sort of brushed it aside for more important class items. But I was stuck on it. I do love linguistics, even if I don’t study it as my major (I don’t love it that much.) I love looking at the structure of language and how it works, how our society became prescriptive towards language (think grammar), and how what really matters to linguists is whether you can be understood or not. If you can be understood, then why? What’s the difference between languages? Do certain languages shape thought, or does thought shape language? What does a language say about a culture? What are the rules of each language? 

Fascinating stuff. But I’d never heard language referred to as metaphors, even when I took a linguistics class. Which is strange, because I’d heard language referred to as symbols, but not as a whole. More like, “these words mean this thing even though they LITERALLY don’t mean this thing.” End of story. 

But what is a metaphor? My rhetoric class has a paragraph about it. Metaphors are basically when you associate one thing with something else to relate them, even (probably especially) if they aren’t related. So if I say “he was blown away by that film” he wasn’t really, because that would be weird. But we understand that “blown away” means “impressed, amazed, awed” and we sort of leave it at that. Very few people would take that literally. 

Language, similarly, is assigning letters and sounds to objects or ideas to create meaning. We know that when someone says “cat” they’re referring to the little furry things that meow. But the word cat isn’t inherently that. If we all agreed that cat meant water bottle, then people would change their association. We actually see these changes in language a lot. Gay used to mean happy, but it now means homosexual due to a change in culture. Meanings change all the time, and new words crop up, and cultures take them on and add them to their language. 

And all these words are not inherently the things they describe, but we all understand each other perfectly well unless we don’t speak that language or are unfamiliar with certain words and turns of phrase. Kind of like a metaphor. A very extended metaphor. 

It’s amazing how adaptable and changeable language is based on who’s speaking it. There are so many ways to use words, and if they are metaphors, then we don’t even realize what we’re doing. But it’s still an interesting way of looking at language. Find the best way to make someone understand you, pick which words work and which don’t.

If you find this interesting, you should read the following NY Times article “Does Your Language Shape How You Think?” here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/29/magazine/29language-t.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

Don’t Kill the Messenger

My university, UNC Chapel Hill, has been in the middle of a huge rape case. You can read the latest article here: http://www.dailytarheel.com/article/2013/03/landen-gambills-ex-unc-forced-me-out

The school paper, the Daily Tar Heel, has done an admirable job trying to cover a difficult topic, yet find themselves the subject of criticism from students who want the paper to take a side. Thus far, the Daily Tar Heel has neither supported the assumption that Landen Gambill is right in her accusations of rape, nor have they condemned her ex boyfriend, the accused. The paper has simply reported what each side has to say, and there are still many unknowns to the case. The only thing we do know is that the university messed up how they dealt with the accuser and the accused, as shown by both sides of the story. 

Students’ complaints about the coverage of the rape case come from a valid case: rape culture is alive and prevalent not only at UNC but everywhere. We still live in a culture where the victims of rape can be doubted, treated with disrespect, and blamed for what happened to them when they shouldn’t be, rather than putting the responsibility on the rapist. As a result, this Gambill case becomes a sensitive subject amidst a time when UNC has been accused of dealing poorly with rape cases. Other rape victims have come out and spoken against the university, and rightly so. 

What makes the Gambill case different is that rather than being a part of the university rape culture as a whole, the case has become particular to itself. Gambill has been using her experience as a way to speak out against rape culture, but the difference between her and the others that spoke out is that her ex-boyfriend, the man accused of rape, is also speaking out. He filed an Honor Court violation against her for creating an intimidating environment for him. And then the confusion started. 

The Daily Tar Heel can’t take sides because we don’t know what happened. Ideally, one would take the side of the victim, but with each article published there are new details that make things less black-and-white. Gambill states that she hasn’t done anything to create an intimidating environment, that she simply wants to help better how the university deals with rape. Gambill’s ex boyfriend says that he didn’t rape her and was surprised when the accusation came four months after they broke up. Both had to be treated for psychological conditions related to the case, and in both cases psychological conditions were used against them. Gambill’s ex boyfriend was found not guilty of rape, but guilty of verbal assault, but all this by a student-run organization. The police were never involved, and given the four month delay in reporting, there was probably not much they could do. 

The Daily Tar Heel has simply been reporting what everyone has said, taking a neutral stance, which is the way journalism works these days for all stories (I have some issues with that, but in this case it’s the right way to proceed.) There are many unknowns, and no matter what the results of the case are, there is nothing good that can come of it. There are three possibilities: that Gambill wasn’t raped, which would set back the activism based on her case; that Gambill was raped, which means that the university put her through that much trouble for no good reason; or that Gambill and her ex boyfriend are somehow both right or wrong, which means that people need to be better educated on what rape is, and what the consequences of raping someone and/or accusing someone of rape entail, and that our university is not at all equipped to deal with rape cases as is. 

None of these outcomes is the fault of the journalists who report it, nor have they assumed that any of these outcomes are true. They report what they know, and leave inferences to those who read the articles. They look for balance, which is hard. Either way, journalism is all about finding the truth, and to do so they must look at both sides of the story, which is why we get not only Gambill’s side but also that of her ex-boyfriend. No one wants Gambill to have been victim blamed, and even less people want her to have wrongly accused someone. But anyone reporting on the story can’t make assumptions when the university itself isn’t sure what happened. The only people who know are Gambill and her ex-boyfriend, and they both have different stories about what happened. And you can’t blame the journalists for that. 

Either way, the stories published are important in that they can start a conversation about rape. Through this case, students can be made aware that rape does happen, can criticize their university for how they deal with rape cases, can educate people on what rape is, and can discuss how future cases should be dealt with in a way that causes the least harm to the victim. There are always possibilities that no one wants to talk about but they should be considered as well. A discussion has many sides, and life is rarely clear. That is why papers like the Daily Tar Heel exist, to report what they know and incite discussion. 

Don’t blame the journalists. They can only report what they know, and nothing else, and what they do report helps bring issues to light and bring about discussion. But discussion can’t be had if we’re blaming them for reporting both sides of a story.