working
conditions
that
factory workers in China were
susceptible to. In an interview
with Racked, Aflalo said, “I
also went to China to visit a
factory, and I had this moment
where I realized this is really
a polluted environment … I
started to make the connection:
This is me, I’m making clothes
and I’m a big part of this.” She
soon left Ya Ya and started
Reformation in 2009. In the
beginning,
the
company
practiced
sustainability
by
solely
refurbishing
vintage
dresses
they
purchased.
However, as they expanded,
they
were
able
to
buy
sustainable materials to make
their own original clothing.
Now,
Reformation
prides
itself on making sustainable
clothing
out
of
previously
produced deadstock (clothing
that was never sold or used by
customers), carefully selected
fabric and repurposed vintage.
The company itself is very
transparent about the clothing
they
produce.
Each
piece
online provides information
regarding its carbon and water
footprints so customers truly
get to see the difference they
make in the environment by
purchasing reformation versus
clothing from a standard retail
company. For example, the
RefScale for the Barb Top is
labeled as having 9.0 pounds
in carbon dioxide savings, 1.0
gallons of water savings, and
1.1 pounds of waste savings.
Patagonia
is
another
sustainable clothing company
that
stands
out
in
the
transparency
they
exercise
with
their
customers.
On
their
website,
Patagonia
openly discusses the journey
that their company has taken
regarding their transitioning
to
increasingly
sustainable
materials. In their clothing,
Patagonia solely uses recycled
polyester and 100% organic
cotton
that
they
produce
themselves without pesticides.
Patagonia’s
sustainability
efforts are initiated by their
customers’ existing passion
for nature. This is why they
also actively play a role in
environmental campaigns that
the company itself is passionate
about, such as protesting dams
in the South American region
of Patagonia. Furthermore, the
website provides information
on
grassroots
campaigns
all over the country that
Patagonia
supports,
which
work to alleviate the damage
of climate change.
Beyond
Reformation
and
Patagonia, there are other
companies that are also well-
known
sustainable
options
such as Alternative Apparel,
Amour Vert, DL 1961, Eileen
Fisher,
Everlane,
PrAna,
Threads 4 Thought and Tribe
Alive.
With sustainability comes a
higher price. But, if the amount
of sustainable clothing options
are increased, the demand will
decrease and price will fall.
Therefore, in the meantime,
we must support sustainable
brands and purchase vintage
when looking to save money.
We
are
all
guilty
of
sustainable
ignorance
and
steps must be taken to deter
the irresponsibility revolving
around the fashion industry.
Clothing
companies
should
feel inspired by the widespread
success of Reformation and
Patagonia and look to these
companies
as
an
example
to model themselves after.
Climate change is not waiting
and neither should we.
If Tim Burton and Sam
Raimi had a child, and they
raised that child on nothing
but LSD and Pink Floyd’s Dark
Side of the Moon, that child
could feasibly grow up to direct
“The Nutcracker and the Four
Realms,” a film so wild in its
every creative decision that
it almost succeeds through
sheer ridiculous force alone.
At different moments, it recalls
any number of films, from “The
Chronicles of Narnia” to “The
Wizard of Oz” to “The Santa
Clause 2,” but it more often than
not dances away to another
lunatic sequence before you
can put your finger on what
it’s causing you to remember.
If we were to judge the film on
the number of jaw-dropping
“WTF” moments alone, this
newest
“Nutcracker”
might
earn a pass.
Unfortunately,
we
must
also judge it by the characters
and their uniform flatness,
the underdeveloped story and
performances that are, more
often than not, memorable for
all the wrong reasons. This
doesn’t include star Mackenzie
Foy (“Interstellar”) who leads
the film as Clara, a young girl
who finds herself whisked away
to the magical land of the Four
Realms while trying to unlock
a mysterious box left to her by
her late mother. Where so much
of “The Nutcracker” relies on
strange gimmicks and visual
splendor to keep its audience’s
attention,
there’s
genuine
emotion and charm to Foy’s
performance that keeps her
watchable.
The rest of the cast, however,
is best summed up by Keira
Knightley’s
(“Collateral
Beauty”) turn as the Sugar Plum
Fairy, the leader of the Land of
Amusements. As with the rest
of “Nutcracker,” Knightley’s
performance is so bizarre that
it nearly works — at the least,
you’re kept wondering why she
thought that voice was a good
idea in the first place and why
no one stepped in to tell her she
sounds like Moaning Myrtle
on helium — but as with the
rest of “Nutcracker,” there’s
nothing underneath to keep it
interesting. She’s not funny or
complex, and the dramatic turn
her character winds up taking
is completely unearned.
Similarly
weak
writing
abounds, as even Clara falls
prey to an arc that doesn’t
change her so much as it affirms
what we already knew about
her. She begins “Nutcracker”
as an inventive young woman
confident in her mechanical
skill, and for all the story’s talk
about using what makes her
special, she never wavers in that
confidence. If she is meant to be
recovering from her mother’s
death, the closest thing to an
alternative arc we’re given,
then there’s no focus lent to
that goal. It’s a forced “believe
in yourself” lesson that’s never
convincing for all Foy’s talents
and is communicated in the
same way as “Kung Fu Panda”
virtually verbatim.
The one stalwartly good
aspect is the visuals. While
the effects will likely date
themselves
within
a
few
years, the production design
is breathtaking from top to
bottom and there are a couple
smart visual homages to other
films, including a beautiful
send-up to the “Toccata and
Fugue in D minor” segment
of “Fantasia.” Some of the
costumes are sillier than others
— Richard E. Grant (“Can You
Ever Forgive Me?”) looks like
Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Mr.
Freeze worked him over with
a lead pipe and Eugenio Derbez
(“Geostorm”) looks like a Fox
News anchor’s idea of what will
happen if you smoke pot even
once — but for the vast majority
of
“Nutcracker,”
they’re
ravishing.
The rest of “The Nutcracker
and the Four Realms” must
rely on its oddness to make it
work, and while scenes of Keira
Knightley eating the cotton
candy that grows in place of her
hair are certainly interesting,
they hardly make it watchable.
For that, it must rely on what
actually counts — the story,
the characters, the themes —
yet in all these areas, the film
is
lacking.
Maybe
younger
audiences
will
gravitate
towards the bright colors and
quirky characters, but that
kind of surface-level enjoyment
only lasts until the next movie
that relies on those exact same
things.
“The
Nutcracker
and the Four
Realms”
Ann Arbor 20 +
IMAX, Goodrich
Quality 16
Walt Disney
Studios Motion
Pictures
FILM REVIEW
BTBU: Chiang’s ‘Stories
Of Your Life And Others’
One side effect of coming late
to everything is that I have a lot
of submerged influences; my
past resembles a neglected attic.
I’m always surprised when my
friends can see themselves as
somehow continuous with who
they were at age 14, like they
haven’t experienced the kind of
abrupt, dizzying turnaround I
did when I left adolescence and
stumbled into adulthood. I still
sometimes
remember
vague
hints of my experiences, but my
memories usually feel like they
happened to someone else. My
conception of my past is both
gallingly calcified and shifting,
amorphous, as if hidden behind a
curtain blowing in the wind.
One
thing
I
can
clearly
remember from my childhood
and preteen years is how much
I read. I was not precocious, and
my taste was conventional. I
read the “Eragon” trilogy, every
“Harry Potter” book, “The Lord
of the Rings,” et cetera — the kind
of narrative fiction that the reader
lives in, at once comfortingly
Manichean and vibrant. I think
it was this desire for built worlds
that led me to also spend a
great amount of time immersed
in
popular
science
books,
especially the large, illustrated
coffee-table kind, usually about
space. The workings of faraway
stars felt both fantastical and
fundamental, grounded in some
kind of self-consistent celestial
logic. I didn’t really understand
anything I was reading, I just
wanted somewhere to go.
My mom, a science fiction
author and editor, lent me
her autographed copy of Ted
Chiang’s 2002 anthology “Stories
of Your Life and Others” when I
was somewhere in middle school.
She might have been prompted
by my entirely aesthetic interest
in science and technology, but
I also recall that she mentioned
the book on more than one
occasion as one of her favorites.
The stories were unlike anything
I had ever read before, and I
remember being shocked by their
energetic, yet concise structures.
As I grow into what she calls
“literary fiction,” I find that the
collection is one of the only books
we still have in common. When I
revisited it a few weeks ago, I was
just as surprised by it as when I
had first read it. For a moment,
I seemed to be seeing out of my
younger self’s eyes, experiencing
the stories’ wonder anew.
Chiang’s day job is a software
engineer, which is arguably the
cultural role that the Medieval
monk and later the Renaissance
alchemist occupied previously
— the universal chroniclers,
arbiters
and
discoverers.
Software engineers now create
entire
worlds
from
scratch,
building the Borgesian map over
our shared reality. More than one
story invokes ancient engineers,
alchemists and scholars as stand-
ins for the cultural role of the
creative programmer. One story,
“Seventy-Two Letters,” places
the ancient Jewish myth of the
Golem — an automaton that is
activated by a slip of paper with
a “name” on it — in a rapidly
industrializing
19th-century
context. Chiang’s stories operate
by the logic of the Golem — his
stories read like little literary
automatons, put into play by
their own mechanical logic. He
juxtaposes the tower of Babylon
myth
with
contemporary
cosmological speculation, he uses
a specific linguistics problem to
investigate free will, he brings a
parable about attractiveness and
charisma to jarring conclusions.
In his laser focus on extremely
specific ideas, he doesn’t lose the
capacity to surprise. If anything,
it’s his relentless drive to reach
the logical conclusion of his
assemblages that, more often
than not, makes the stories feel
so strange and surprising.
Rereading
the
anthology
reminded me of my past fixation
with technology and logic as
ends
in
themselves.
Chiang
creates with his stories a feeling
I usually associate with finally
grasping a complicated math
problem — the joy of consistency
(perhaps sharing an affinity with
the German term Funktionslust).
I frequently forget that I came
close to majoring in computer
science — I used to be so much
more attracted to this feeling
of
completeness,
of
making
things work. The more subtle,
incomplete affects I revel in now
came later. Chiang’s stories serve
as sort of a bridge between those
two versions of myself, rendering
my past mental life in terms that
I can understand now.
The
anthology
also
gave
my present self two stories
that reminded me of what I
dislike about this mentality.
“Understand” and “The Evolution
of Human Science” both have
an unfortunate fixation with
superhuman intelligence that
posits a positivist, quantifiable
vision of intelligence, and even
of personality, that I now find
narrow-minded.
“Understand”
follows a brain-damaged patient
treated with a neuroregenerative
drug. When he finds himself
mentally
“enhanced”
beyond
the
capabilities
of
ordinary
humans, he spends the rest of
the story basically marveling
at the “gestalts” he is able to
grasp that “ordinaries” don’t.
It’s frustrating to read lines
like “The quotidian patterns of
society are revealed without my
making an effort,” and it’s a little
embarrassing to think of what
the 16-year-old version of me
would have thought of that line.
It’s hard to deny that even the
better stories exist in the cultural
space also occupied with Neil
DeGrasse Tyson, TED talks and
XKCD. This affinity was invisible
to me on first read but painfully
obvious when I revisited the
collection.
Even so, Chiang manages to
hover over the self-satisfaction
of the other fabulists of STEM,
using speculation like a wedge to
crack reality open in unexpected
ways rather than falling into
received notions of progress
and the universal utility of
science. The true connection
between Chiang’s work and the
contemporary culture of STEM
lies less in tone than content —
Chiang is satisfied with a working
concept rather than a working
plot, and his stories primarily
serve the ideas they grow from
rather than their characters. It’s
this, rather than his ability to
interrogate through fiction, that
I think I have outgrown since the
first time I read it.
I think what I ultimately
learned
initially
from
the
collection
was
that
fiction
was capable of changing the
way I thought about things. In
speaking the language I then
understood and then breaking it
apart, the anthology changed the
way I thought about writing in
general in a way that I wouldn’t
realize until much later. I now
ascribe the ability to create and
destroy worlds to language, and
this belief has its roots in this
unlikely collection of stories.
EMILY YANG
Daily Arts Writer
BOOKS NOTEBOOK
Sustainable
clothing. The
term isn’t
something
you hear too
often and
when you do,
you may feel
ignorant —
has the item
been made
with organic
cotton? Is it
compostable?
WALT DISNEY
‘Nutcracker’ is so bonkers
it almost works (almost)
JEREMIAH VANDERHELM
Daily Arts Writer
It’s time to start caring
about sustainable fashion
Sustainable clothing. The
term
isn’t
something
you
hear too often and when you
do, you may feel ignorant
— has the item been made
with organic cotton? Is it
compostable? Patagonia and
Reformation, two of the most
renowned sustainable clothing
companies, are known most
for their style and high quality.
Considering how important
reversing (or slowing) climate
change is to the preservation
of our way of life and lives,
sustainable
clothing
should
be widespread and become a
household term.
The textile industry is the
second largest polluter in the
world after only oil. Fashion’s
carbon
footprint
includes
the pesticides used in the
production of cotton and other
fabrics, the toxic dyes that
are used and then incorrectly
discarded, as well as the
significant amount of pollution
generated in the processing
and shipping of garments. In
basic terms, the cotton t-shirt
you’re wearing from whatever
unnamed retail store played
a role in melting an ice cap.
It is time that other clothing
companies take note of what
sustainable brands are doing
to help the environment.
Reformation
was
created
by Yael Aflalo, who embarked
on her journey in the fashion
world in 1999 by working at
her first brand, Ya Ya. She
was devoted to this job until
she learned how the industry
was
detrimental
to
the
environment and the horrible
SOPHIA HUGHES
Daily Arts Writer
REFORMATION
STYLE NOTEBOOK
Friday, November 9, 2018 — 6A
Arts
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com