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Arts
Friday, November 20, 2015 — 5

TV NOTEBOOK
‘Faking It’: the rule-
breaker we all need

MTV show goes 

beyond stereotypes 

in its characters

By BEN ROSENSTOCK

Daily Arts Writer

“Faking It” has never gar-

nered the ratings that MTV’s 
other realistic teen comedy 
series “Awkward” gained over 
the course of its first two sea-
sons. There could be many rea-
sons for that. To begin, it has 
an objectively silly premise: 
two best friends pretend to be 
lesbians to get popular at their 
liberal Austin high school. In 
the act of “faking it,” Amy (Rita 
Volk, “The Hungover Games”) 
realizes that she actually has 
feelings for Karma (Katie Ste-
vens, “American Idol”), her best 
friend.

The first season began by 

exploring this pretend relation-
ship, and it was entertaining 
fluff. There are some good jokes 
as Hester High School satirically 
reverses the stereotypical high 
school food chain in the same 
way that “21 Jump Street” made 
the nerds popular and the ath-
letes the underdogs. However, 
there were no real stabs at social 
commentary in the first season.

The second season, which 

ended on Nov. 2, took “Faking 
It” in a whole new direction. 
The original premise, while 
occasionally being referenced 
for laughs, is mostly thrown 
out in favor of exploring these 
characters’ inner struggles in 
real and honest ways. While 
most shows would immediately 
classify Amy as a closeted les-
bian, “Faking It” illustrates that 
sexuality lies on a spectrum. In 
the second half of the second 
season, Amy finds herself sur-
prised to have feelings for new 
kid Felix (Parker Mack, “For 
the Booth”). When questioned 
about 
being 
bisexual, 
Amy 

can only muster up an unsure 
“maybe.” Amy’s unwillingness 
to box herself into a neat cat-

egory defines the main arc of 
the series, and it’s a surprisingly 
complex topic to tackle.

Even more radical than Amy’s 

characterization is that of Lau-
ren (Bailey De Young, “Bun-
heads”), Amy’s stepsister. The 
season two premiere features 
the revelation that Lauren is 
intersex, an identity hardly ever 
explored on TV, much less by one 
of the main characters in a main-
stream teen comedy. One of the 
most touching moments of the 
season two finale features Lau-
ren openly declaring her sexual 
identity to the school board. She 
says that before she’d come to 
Hester, she’d never been able to 
say that out loud.

Encouraging 
people 
to 

embrace their weirdness isn’t 
unique to “Faking It.” “Be 
yourself” is probably the big-
gest inspirational cliché in teen 
drama. In Hester High School, 
however, “Faking It” has found 
a setting specifically dedicated 
to it. This is a school where the 
Queen Bee is intersex and the 
big man on campus is gay, where 
people actually fake being differ-
ent to attain popularity.

Even setting aside the pro-

gressiveness of its message, the 
narrative of “Faking It” is very 
well-written. So much teen 
drama on TV is based around 
keeping secrets and lying, but 
no secret stays hidden for long 
on this show. One standout 
episode in particular, “Boiling 

Point,” traps all the main char-
acters in one room for deten-
tion in an overt homage to “The 
Breakfast Club.” In this episode, 
all the conflicts that have been 
building throughout the season 
come to a head. Karma admits 
that her ex-boyfriend Liam’s 
(Gregg Sulkin, “Pretty Little 
Liars”) father wants to pay her 
to stay away from him, and her 
precarious financial situation is 
forcing her to consider it. Most 
cathartically, Shane (Michael J. 
Willett, “G.B.F.”), the gay guy 
notorious for outing people, is 
finally called out for his destruc-
tive habit. “You can’t just do the 
wrong thing and pretend it’s for 
the right reason,” Liam points 
out. Most refreshingly, this 
all happens in episode 15 of a 
20-episode season. Many shows 
would wait until the finale to 
disrupt the peace, but “Faking 
It” moves the plot forward con-
siderably each episode.

This is a time when the view-

ership for shows like “Degras-
si” and “Awkward” wanes and 
genre shows like “Teen Wolf” 
hold the most weight among 
teen audiences. “Faking It” 
provides a funny, relatively 
new series that’s defiant in 
its breaking of stereotypes. It 
offers characters of all sexu-
alities, genders and sexes, yet 
refuses to define them by those 
identifiers. It’s the realistic yet 
over-the-top TV series that 
audiences deserve.

MTV

“There’s something good on MTV?”

MUSIC NOTEBOOK
Young & Sick blends 
electronic and soul

By CATHERINE BAKER

Daily Arts Writer

“Hard to tell where the skies 

end and the water begins / All cov-
ered in sunlight and it’s not even 
spring.”

The opening lyrics of Young & 

Sick’s self-titled debut album set 
the tone for the rest of the work, 
focusing on subjective yet univer-
sal experiences of all young adults. 
Released in April 2014, Young & 
Sick combines soul, electronic and 
R&B music to share thoughts on 
love, life and adolescence.

Created by Dutch artist Nick 

Van Hofwegen, Young & Sick is a 
Los Angeles-based music and art 
project. While they started their 
career by covering full albums 
for major acts like Foster the 
People and Maroon 5 and posting 
the songs online, Young & Sick’s 
designs were featured in a fashion 
line by Urban Outfitters in 2012. By 
the winter of 2014, Young & Sick 
played its first live show and was 
announced to play at the Coachella 
Festival. Today, Young & Sick con-
tinues to foster their triple-threat 
status by creating album artwork 
for artists like Mikky Ekko, Robin 
Thicke and Maroon 5.

Despite being categorized as 

soul and R&B music, Young & Sick 
transcends these labels and com-
bines synthetic beats with tradi-
tional instruments to create an 
entirely new genre. The album’s 
opening song, “Mangrove,” is 
soothing and repetitive, using 
simple mediums and upbeat har-
monies to question life. Lyrics like 
“I feel the best I have in my life / 
Something must be very wrong” 
contemplate 
darker 
themes 

through a lighthearted instrumen-
tal.

“Counting 
Raindrops” 
uses 

artificial riffs to emulate rain pat-
ter, using seductive and sultry lyr-
ics such as “Let the rain overflow 
and keep us here / Kiss me like you 
would if this was our last,” while 
still maintaining its electronic 
and R&B roots. By incorporating a 
funky breakdown of electric piano 
and guitar in the middle of the 
song, Young & Sick sets themselves 
apart from other competitors in 
their field.

Conversely, 
“Gloom” 
moves 

away from electronica and heads 
toward jazz, incorporating tra-
ditional soulful instruments like 
trumpets and saxophones into 
a lust filled ballad. With harmo-
nizing falsetto and sultry lyrics, 
“Glass” encompasses a full swing 

band sound with relatively few 
instruments. Transitioning back 
into strong electronic, “Glass” uses 
artificial beats to musically dem-
onstrate the feeling of falling in 
and out of love. The lyrics, “Don’t 
keep me from falling deeper in love 
/ Pour me another lover,” demon-
strate the transient nature of lust 
and love and vocalize a cynical 
view of modern dating culture.

The closing song on Young 

& 
Sick, 
“Twentysomething,” 

describes adolescence by focus-
ing on lyrics rather than instru-
mentals. 
Getting 
into 
the 

mindset of a young adult, Young 
& Sick expresses the sentiments 
of many, singing, “Still not used 
to my skin / Loving the scars 
though / The cuts and bruises.” 
It leaves the listener with the 
feeling of being stuck between 
carefree and trapped, with one 
foot in adulthood and one left in 
childhood.

While Young & Sick’s debut 

album has thrust them onto 
music lover’s radars, their talent 
and ambition makes them an art-
ist to watch. Despite their lack of 
name recognition, Young & Sick 
is forging their own path through 
the industry. Keep your eyes (and 
ears) open.

FILM NOTEBOOK
Why can’t Disney do 
anything original?

By VANESSA WONG

Daily Arts Writer

Between 2009 and 2016, Dis-

ney and Pixar will have released 
seven new animated movies: 
“Up,” “The Princess and the 
Frog,” 
“Frozen,” 
“Tangled,” 

“Brave,” “Inside Out” and the 
upcoming “Moana.” To put it 
in perspective, that’s two presi-
dential terms with only seven 
spunky Disney protagonists to 
counter the political strife brew-
ing in our hearts.

Yet in the past two years alone, 

Disney released four live-action 
remakes of classic stories: “Malef-
icent,” “Into the Woods,” “Cinder-
ella” and “Peter Pan.” Also in the 
works are remakes of “Beauty and 
the Beast,” “The Little Mermaid,” 
“The Jungle Book” and unsolidi-
fied plans to reimagine Dumbo, 
Winnie the Pooh, Tinkerbell and 
the genie from “Aladdin.” It has 
also been capitalizing on sequels, 
with the Pixar branch churning 
out an equal ratio of sequels to 
new films. “Toy Story 3” brought 
the supposedly definitive finale 
of the franchise, only for produc-
ers to turn around and stick in 
a fourth film because it was so 
profitable.

My nostalgic heart argues that 

well-made remakes can — and 
do — generate new artistic con-
tent that simply uses the original 
story as a loose baseline to tease 
out finer details and unique per-
spectives. It’s no wonder that 
powerhouse 
actors, 
directors 

and screenwriters vie for the 
prestigious responsibility of hon-
oring these treasured characters. 
Modern technology allows for 
increasingly sophisticated repro-

ductions of visual worlds. But if 
the original was so timeless, do 
we really need another version?

The box office screams yes. 

The prospect of seeing Lupi-
ta Nyong’o (“Twelve Years a 
Slave”), 
Scarlett 
Johansson 

(“Under the Skin”) and Bill Mur-
ray (“Rock The Kasbah”) sharing 
a screen — and romping through 
the forest from my worn “Jungle 
Book” VHS tape, no less — will 
inevitably draw me to the the-
ater. I probably won’t even watch 
the trailer; my loyalty to the star-
studded cast and a childhood 
favorite is enough.

While directors may, at times, 

be legitimately inspired by clas-
sic stories, it’s clear that the cur-
rent deluge of recycled material 
spawns not from passion alone. 
Disney saw the easy money and 
seized it. But restricting output 
to remakes confines the imagi-
nation to a single world of char-
acters and hampers personal 
creative expression. Meanwhile, 
it blocks fresh content, which 
often 
features 
more 
diverse 

perspectives and launches new 
careers, from getting produced. 
How many potential “Frozens” 
rot on Kickstarter pages because 
Disney would rather play it safe 
and recreate yet anot

More than any other studio 

in the industry, Disney boasts 
the well-padded coffers and 
clout to take bold creative risks. 
Once upon a time, Disney built 
its fortune on virtues of innova-
tion and discovery; now, it grows 
stale, greedy. If the unparalleled 
success of “Frozen” told us any-
thing, it’s that audiences crave 
new fictional worlds to get lost 
in. The droves of recent gradu-
ates flocking to Hollywood with 
original scripts prove that there’s 
no shortage of imagination to 
make that happen.

Is Disney going to take a 

chance on them? Or will they 
regret to inform you that they 
value profit over novelty and 
will randomly select from a list 
of classic Disney movies and 
famous filmmakers to decide 
their next project instead?

COMMUNITY CULTURE NOTEBOOK
On trigger warnings

By SOPHIA KAUFMAN

Daily Arts Writer

Last week, the University’s 

Young Americans for Freedom 
chapter constructed a wall in 
the Diag that protested “Political 
Correctness: The Iron Curtain of 
the University.” It had phrases 
like “offensive,” “social justice,” 
“safe spaces” and “newspeak” 
spray-painted on them.

But the one phrase stood out 

most, in sprawling blue letters 
across the lower center of the 
wall: “Trigger Warning.”

Few other phrases on media 

platforms right now spark the 
same kind of contentious debate 
that “trigger warning” does, and 
there are intellectual leaders 
with impressive credentials on 
both ends of the spectrum. The 
debate over trigger warnings, 
which centers on the use of these 
warnings on college campuses, 
fits into a larger context of reen-
ergized interest in social justice 
and political correctness, but 
it also deserves to be separated 
from that. Unlike the pursuit of 
social justice, trigger warnings 
on syllabi could someday reach 
a consensus in University policy.

Trigger warnings in class-

rooms — preceding lectures, 
readings, films, photographs, dis-
cussions, etc. — are presented as a 
semi-formal “heads-up” that the 
material deals with sensitive sub-
ject matter that could be upset-
ting for some. Trigger warnings 
often precede content about war 
violence or sexual assault/abuse/
trauma, but they can also alert 
the reader to material includ-
ing sexism, racism, homophobia, 
self-destructive behavior or sui-
cide.

Arguments 
against 
trigger 

warnings stem from worries 
about censoring class materi-
als, coddling students, stunting 
intellectual growth and inhibit-
ing the freedoms of others. Many 
University 
professors 
believe 

that students should be exposed 
to difficult material and won’t 
grow intellectually if they don’t; 
they feel threatened that they 
could get in trouble for students 
feeling “unsafe” in their class-
rooms. Many students resent 
the usage of trigger warnings, 
claiming that the overreactions 
or sensitivities of some students 
shouldn’t hinder the intellectual 
pursuits of others.

The negative rhetoric that sur-

rounds trigger warnings over-
whelmingly constructs an image 
of the coddled college student, 
inviting ridicule on every word in 
that phrase. But trigger warnings 
aren’t about coddling students 
or protecting sensitive feelings. 
They aren’t about shielding peo-
ple from difficult material. Trig-

ger warnings themselves don’t 
constitute censorship.

To deny the utility of trigger 

warnings — especially for war 
veterans and survivors of sexual 
assault — is insulting and dismis-
sive of traumatic experiences. 
Claiming that trigger warnings 
perpetuate a culture of victim-
hood is the equivalent of say-
ing “suck it up” or “move on” 
— which isn’t psychologically 
sound advice.

My Resident Adviser put it 

well: “I feel like people are some-
times against trigger warnings 
because they feel like we can’t 
expect to be protected from the 
bad things in life. But the rea-
son trigger warnings exist is that 
some people haven’t been pro-
tected from the dark things in 
life.”

I’m in a Literature of Aboli-

tion class, and we’re studying 
“12 Years a Slave.” This film 
has graphic, violent scenes that 
include physical abuse and rape. 
My professor told all of us before-
hand that we would be watching 
it in class and that if anyone pre-
ferred to watch it by themselves 
at home rather than in a class-
room setting, we were welcome 
to do that.

She didn’t use the phrase “trig-

ger warning,” but she was effectu-
ally giving one. By giving a content 
warning and a choice in how, when 
and where we wanted to view 
this film, she was granting us the 
agency to know how we learn best. 
She wasn’t “coddling” us — she 
was giving us choices that didn’t 
impact the learning opportunities 
of our classmates.

Personally, I took advantage of 

that choice. I watched “12 Years a 
Slave” in a class setting last year, 
surrounded by people I didn’t 
know, and though I wanted to leave 
the room during the sexual assault 
and rape scenes, I was sitting in 
the front of the class — I felt like I 
didn’t want to disrupt everyone by 
getting up. But I felt emotionally 
jerked. I had trouble breathing for 
the rest of the day; I had to skip my 
next class and avoid my friends, so 
I wouldn’t worry them.

I appreciate having the option 

to watch it by myself for this class.

Yes, in the “real world” there 

are going to be times when we will 
witness things that we’d rather not 
— but you’d be hard pressed to find 
a time outside of university classes 
when you’d have to sit through an 
intense portrayal of something 
without having the option to pre-
pare or remove yourself from the 
situation if you needed. You can 
walk out of a movie theater; you 
can put down a book or exit a con-
versation.

The debate over trigger warn-

ings in the context of art in class-
rooms, where it’s being used 

explicitly as an educational tool 
to deepen our comprehensive 
understanding of a topic, is espe-
cially intriguing because artwork 
is often designed to elicit emo-
tional responses — like “12 Years 
a Slave.” But artwork isn’t simply 
an educational tool. There is a dis-
tinction to be made that is lacking 
from debates I see around trigger 
warnings preceding exposure to 
artworks.

Art can be offensive, which 

can make it controversial. But 
there should be a difference in 
how we treat controversial piec-
es of art and pieces of art that 
have the potential to be trigger-
ing though they are often both. 
In classrooms, students should 
be confronted with topics and 
discussions — and yes, artwork — 
that make them challenge them-
selves, their assumptions and 
beliefs. But no one should be con-
fronted with topics, discussions 
or artwork that could potentially 
make them feel unsafe, without 
warning. And despite popular 
opinion, it isn’t impossible to rec-
oncile these ideas.

Another aspect that’s skirted 

around in discussions about 
trigger warnings is the fact that 
intellectual growth is not the 
only kind of personal growth 
that matters in college. Using 
trigger warnings in our class-
rooms doesn’t hinder our intel-
lectual growth; it fosters our 
emotional growth. The recogni-
zance that some have had expe-
riences that others haven’t is a 
lesson in empathy and aware-
ness. By asking for trigger or 
content warnings, students are 
making concerted efforts to rec-
ognize that none of us check our 
experiences at the classroom 
door — we carry them in with us.

Even people who have expe-

rienced trauma have spoken 
against 
trigger 
warnings, 
a 

notable example being Roxane 
Gay. Trigger warnings aren’t 
a one-size-fits-all type of deal, 
and trigger warnings themselves 
don’t mean we will always feel 
safe; we can’t prepare ourselves 
for being triggered suddenly on 
the street with no preparation in 
a “real world” situation. As Gay 
points out in her book “Bad Fem-
inist,” “there is nothing words 
on the screen can do that has not 
already been done.”

I agree with this. Nothing 

preceded by the phrase “trig-
ger warning” is going to be as 
harmful as whatever happened 
that created triggers for a per-
son in the first place.

But that being said — in 

a learning community, why 
not have the option for mak-
ing choices that will make us 
feel safer when we’re trying to 
learn?

WALT DISNEY PICTURES

“What’s Olaf doing with his carrot?”

