Commentary and reviews

Her iconic brows and portraits are on items such as shirts, magnets, mugs, and tote bags. Frida Kahlo knocked down all societal norms placed upon females, even today, and will go down as one of the most influential surrealistic artist in history. She inspires the current feminist movements birth and teaches us that “taboo subjects” such as miscarriages, abortions, sexuality and divorces should not be hidden.

Mexican artist Magdalena Carmen Frieda Kahlo y Calderón, known as Frida Kahlo, was born on July 6, 1907 in Coyocán, Mexico City, Mexico. When Kahlo was six years old, she contracted poliomyelitis disease which meant that her body would become very fragile. She even enrolled in premedical studies to understand the human body better.

In 1925, at the age of eighteen, Kahlo was robbed of her health and dream of entering medical school when an electric train crashed into the brightly drawn bus which was suppose to take her home to Coyoacán. The accident killed many people instantly and in her case, an iron rod protruded from one side of her pelvis to the other side.

On her road to recovery, many doctors predicted that she would not make it. As she was confined in bed, she began to paint many self portraits and it was during this long recovery that she improved her art. Since she was always with herself, she delved deeper into her own looks and even hung a mirror overhead in the canopy of her bed.

Also, she had to endure more than 30 surgeries to help regain her movement and spent her life after that in pain. One of her most famous paintings about her struggles is Broken Column (1940) which consist of her bare body with a cut-out where we are able to see her steel corset that helps support her spine. Nails pierce all throughout her body while streams of tears run down her face. These surgeries led to several miscarriages and abortions since her pelvis was unable to carry a child.

Abortion and miscarriages were very taboo subjects at the time but society never stopped Kahlo from painting her pain. She continued to express herself, taboo or not, and engaged in sexual relations with both men and women. She also once dressed in men’s clothing and even cut her hair “like a man” and painted her experience. She loved to drink, smoke and speak countless profanities. Ideas of what a female was suppose to look like did not faze her.

Another reason she is iconic even today is her fight for all past, present and future feminine beauty ideals. In all of her self-portraits, many can recognize her as the women with the unibrow and faint mustache. Her response to others telling her to shave them off would be to darken those hairs to prove them wrong.

Self-Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird (1940) portrays her beauty and pain. As Kahlo stares directly at you in the painting, the artist wears Christ’s unraveled crown of thorns that cuts into the flesh of her neck. This can show her enduring the pain from her failed marriage to Diego Rivera whom she divorced but remarried a year later.

The dead hummingbird is symbolic for falling in love in Mexican folkloric tradition which is a lucky charm, a black cat, symbolic for bad luck, and her spider monkey Fulang Chang gifted from Rivera, symbolic for evil.

Blogger of Solidarity US, Meadows writes, “Her art deals with conception, pregnancy, abortion and gender roles in an unusually frank and open manner, thus making them political statements because women have not generally felt free to address such personal subjects so publicly.” Frida Kahlo went on to become an icon and influence for the feminist movement. Frida Kahlo shows us that taboo subjects from women’s periods to abortion rights should not be embarrassing topics but to be discussed loud and clear today and to be taken on head on. She knew who she was and what she wanted. She was unafraid to embrace herself and everything about the female body.

Elliot doesn’t comply. Mr. Robot (Christian Slater) moves closer, revealing a gun. Elliot (Rami Malek) remains in place, sitting on his bed.

Mr. Robot pulls the gun up to eye level. He points the muzzle between Elliott’s eyes and pulls the trigger. Blood splatters all over the wall. There’s a hole in his head.

Sam Esmail kicks off the second season of Mr. Robot pulling no punches. Esmail immediately submerges his audience into a fairly unfamiliar environment filled with new characters and new occurrences.

While new elements are added to the show, the general ideas remain the same. Esmail’s additions only serve to further our understanding of his major ideas. Those ideas are deeply embedded in the show.

Mr. Robot addresses themes, including isolation, corruption, and control.

“Control is an illusion”, says Mr. Robot.

As in the first season, Esmail capitalizes on his ability to confuse and disturb viewers. He uses dark images and intense confrontations to evoke unsettling emotions.

The whole episode is about control. There is a constant tug of war. Power is not stagnant. It is taken and given.

In the show’s previous season audiences learn to not immediately perceive things as they seem. There were major twists. Each character and each event contained various layers.

Mr. Robot–Elliot’s father and delusion–was revealed to be a conception of Elliot’s imagination by the end of the first season. He comes back relatively strong in this season’s first episode.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen a character interact with someone who isn’t real quite the way Elliot does with Mr. Robot. At multiple points in the episode Elliot and Mr. Robot have intense feuds with each other, which almost always result in a scramble of violent emotion.

As the episode goes on, Elliot’s delusions seem to be more and more real and manipulative of his actions.

The constant delusions serve to suggest the reality of Elliot’s mania. From the first episode, Elliot seems to be far more damaged than he appears in the first season. All of his trauma, both physical and mental, have burrowed deep into his thoughts and rests in his mind.

All of his actions are manipulated by his thoughts. And his thoughts are toxic.

He only has two significant connections to reality that guide his way. Both exist inside his mind granting him no growth and no escape. He lacks control almost entirely–or does he?

There are questions that remain. Some may or may not be answered. Either way, you’ll have to watch this and the coming episodes (which air every Wednesday) to find out.

“A living, breathing, changing creative expression,” is definitely an unorthodox way to describe an album.

But this is how Kanye West described his seventh studio album, The Life of Pablo, which initially released on February 14. I say “initially” because the album has been altered multiple times since its release, with the most recent version coming on April 1. Although most of the changes have been slight, such as audio tweaks to “Waves,” “Feedback,” “FML,” and “Fade,” these changes are noticeable.

The biggest change came in the form of the song “Wolves.” The original version of the song featured vocals from Sia and Vic Mensa, but the album version replaced this with a verse from Frank Ocean. After many fans (including myself) were upset that the original version of the song was changed, Kanye compromised by reverting the track back to its original, and by giving Oceans verse its spot, entitled “Frank’s Track.”

Perhaps the most controversial song on the album, “Famous,” had a line change that may seem insignificant, but helped improve the direction of the song. This verse two line was originally: “She be Puerto Rican Day parade waving,” and was changed to: “She in school to be a real estate agent.” This new lyric went much better with the following line of, “Last month I helped her with the car payment.”

There already have been multiple changes to The Life of Pablo, and Kanye’s record label, Def Jam, stated that Kanye’s album is “an innovative, continuous process. The album will be a living, evolving art project,” showing that there are more updates for The Life of Pablo in the near future.

This brings up an interesting question: should albums be altered? Kanye West is an extremely controversial artist and almost everything he does gets plenty of media attention. Kanye could be starting a trend for albums and artists of the future. Changing a product gets people interested in it again, but that doesn’t necessarily make it ok to go back and edit something. In another 5 to 10 years, will we still see revisions being made to this album?

Kanye has compared his album to a piece of art, and many people believe the title, The Life of Pablo, alludes to famous painter Pablo Picasso. But when artists showcase their art at a gallery, they don’t run around the room with a paintbrush, attempting to make last minute changes to their paintings.

By making these changes, Kanye shows his dedication to his work, and that he wants his work to stand the test of time. I think treating albums like living, breathing, ever-lasting forms of art can greatly improve the music industry. Although it may seem like cheating for an artist to go back and edit the parts that fans didn’t enjoy, that’s why music is so beautiful. It can change, it can grow, and as long as these changes are made for the right reasons, albums should be allowed to be altered.

Struggling with his position, he turned around restlessly in the orange ragged bag. “I can’t hold it anymore…” Kim Joon Ho, a comedian filming 2 Days 1 Night,  muttered to the camera. The cameraman couldn’t hold his laughter.

Joon Ho tried to waddle to the bathroom when a farmer asked for a photo, recognizing that Joon Ho was a famous comedian.  As the farmer took out his phone, the comedian released it. “Ffffrrrrrppp” and the intense miasma of rotten cabbages and sewage water erupted into the atmosphere. The comedian smiled embarrassedly as the other cast members and staffs ran away from the stench. The old farmer clenched his teeth and endured the smell as he posed for the photo.

2 Days 1 Night is a South Korean T.V. show that presents an unscripted and funny impression of comedians. According to soulsbeat.com, a website that reports news about South Korean shows, 2 Days 1 Night is one of South Korea’s most popular reality shows, attracting as many as 15,660,000 national viewers per episode.

Every week, the PD’s or producers of the show plan a location and several missions for the cast members to do on the two days and one night road trip.  The show’s motto is “real wild road variety” where it is all about survival of the fittest, a distinct trait that sets 2 Days 1 Night from other entertainments. The members battle amongst themselves to earn the superior food and lodging by facing various challenges at some of South Korea’s most beautiful locations. Whether it is harvesting in a village in Gimje or climbing up an ice mountain to eat the local specialty, the PD’s never disappoint.

Unlike other reality shows that do not acknowledge the existence of the staffs behind the camera, 2 Days 1 Night boldly displays the interaction between the cast members and the staffs on screen. In the first episode, viewers saw one producer play a prank on the cast members by replacing their coffee with odious fish sauce. The cast members drank it without any suspicion but only to spit it out with disgust.

Viewers are able to trust the show because of the genuine and playful relationship between the members and the staffs.

In the “End of the Year Special” episode, the six cast members voyaged to Jeju, an island in Korea known for its seafood, scenic beauty and warm climate in the winter.  However, an unexpected snowstorm materialized which only made the episode more comedic. Playing with the concept of nature versus mankind, the members wore black scuba diving suits on the beach as they spun fifteen times in the freezing cold and ran to capture the flag for a lavish sushi dinner.

From the rough challenges, to the amusing and almost petty interactions between the crew members, and the sense of brotherhood that defines the show, 2 Days 1 Night is a must watch.