The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Arts
Friday, January 11, 2019 — 5
MUSIC NOTEBOOK
“It’s not worth being a partial person or worth
having an identity that’s incomplete.” — Sam
Melo of Rainbow Kitten Surprise
Google will tell you identity is “the fact
of being who or what a person or thing is.”
Deceptively simple? You bet. Identity is one of
the most complicated concepts we face every
day, especially if we consider ourselves to hold
a hybrid identity, a mix of contradictory and
diverse facets. If you’re looking for the living
embodiment of multi-dimensionality, turn to
Sam Melo, lead singer of the band Rainbow
Kitten Surprise. As a son of missionary parents,
Melo spent seven years of his childhood in the
Dominican Republic before moving back to the
United States, ultimately attending Appalachian
State University in N.C.. He grew up in a family
who not only spread a Christian message in a
foreign country, but preached strong Southern
values. In his song “Hide,” released in Aug.
of 2018, Melo details his emotions behind
discovering that he was gay and subsequently
feeling like he had to hide his sexuality.
“Hide” is a clear nod to the LGBTQ+
community, detailing the freedom that comes
with being unapologetically yourself. But
“Hide” doesn’t stop there — it pushes this
unrestrained existence a step further. The
magic of “Hide” resides in its ability to subvert
how we approach the idea of identity and the
communities that influence our existence.
“Hide” provided affirmation when I needed it
most, drastically altering how I view my own
identity, and it did this for me in a three step
process.
STEP #1: Conflict in Identity
Melo is masterful in his depiction of
contradicting worlds. He makes a clear nod
to the conflict between his sexuality and the
religious community he grew up in with the
lyrics, “The Son of Man held me in his clutches,
the sons of men pulled me to the touch and I
loved it.”
With these lines, Melo launched me into the
intensity of his internal division — when the
divine harshly conflicts with a dimension of
who we inherently are. I could physically feel
the sense of disapproval from the community
he’d been bred in, held in the clutches of religion
while drawn to the “sons of men.”
Although nowhere close to the difficulties
Melo depicts of his sexuality conflicting with
Southern values and religious upbringing, I
instantaneously internalized “Hide,” feeling
solace in its nod to my battle with the creative
versus the practical, the most epic conflict
of the 21st century. Constantly feeling torn
between the pursuit of practicality and the
pursuit of expressiveness. What is considered
“artistically masterful” in one category of my
life can easily be considered “impractical and
uncanny” in another. Melo tugs on my heart in
this way — he screams out about the dichotomy
of identity and the utter helplessness it creates.
STEP #2: Community Influence on Identity
Melo sings over and over, “Hide your love,
don’t let it slip away.”
We’ve all experienced it before — walking
into a room and feeling like you have to hide a
part of yourself, as it doesn’t quite fit in with
the community at hand. In these lines, Melo
speaks to the constant battle between feeling
like you have to hide who you are in certain
communities, yet not wanting this hidden part
of yourself to “slip away.” The communities we
reside in and draw comfort from provide us
with the critical feeling of belongings; however,
what happens when that community leans
towards only one category, only one checkbox?
Melo speaks to wanting the support of the
communities you are in, but not wanting the true
parts of your identity to be stripped away from
you. I began to ponder the trade-offs between
embracing the support a community provides
and conforming to the identity that community
encourages “Hide” comments on feeling like
certain worlds outcast and write-off the way
you exist, but the “feeling of belongingness”
that community provides is enough to make you
stay: “Running from a place where they don’t
make, people like me / I keep my bags packed, I
keep my car running, I don’t wanna leave, just
don’t wanna leave last.”
When you reveal a dimension of yourself
and it doesn’t fit into the “traditional identity”
that community holds, you repress it, for the
support of those people is too valuable to lose.
Melo keeps his bags packed, noting the second
these repressed aspects of himself come to
the surface, he has to be ready to leave. It’s
scary to flee. Once again, in no way close to
the intensity of Sam Melo’s situation, I lost
the feeling of “wantedness” when I deviated
from the mindsets my respective communities
hold. When I conform to the identity my
Business major provides, I feel comfort in those
friendships, and vice versa with my English
major. “Hide” speaks to that — “Hide” speaks
to how my communities influence my existence.
STEP # 3: DO NOT
Box Identity Into One
Category!
Ultimately, “Hide”
brings
me
to
the
realization that our
identities
shouldn’t,
and don’t have to,
fit
into
one
box.
Our
communities
today
need
to
be
increasingly aware of
the realization that
humans
will
never
be one thing. Melo
preaches
against
being limited to one
identity — Melo has
southern pride and
he is also gay. Melo’s
music is influenced
by Schoolboy Q, Kings
of Leon and Frank
Ocean — a diverse set
of
influences
from
contemporary music.
Melo
contradicts
himself,
and
that’s
okay.
I, just like Melo,
will never be one
thing. I will walk
through
the
halls
of Ross all day long
and
preach
about
the latest novel I’m
annotating.
Simply
put, that shouldn’t be
a problem. We are all
multifaceted humans,
and the communities
we reside in must
learn not to back away
or shame someone who deviates from what is
“traditional” in that particular community, but
rather to embrace the fact that our identities
are never meant to be boxed into one category.
I’m not a partial person, and I refuse to have an
identity that is incomplete.
I’m done with consistently hiding facets of
my life, and I’m done fitting into the easier
parts of my identity. I’m done with the pursuit
to “Hide” — and that’s thanks to you, Sam Melo.
SAMANTHA CANTIE
For the Daily
Don’t let it slip away: ‘Hide’ by Rainbow Kitten Surprise
AUDIOTREE
As a son of
missionary
parents, Melo
spent seven
years of his
childhood in
the Dominican
Republic
before moving
back to the
United States,
ultimately
attending
Appalachian
State
FILM PREVIEW
In “Roma,” Alfonso Cuarón
endeavors
to
render
the
intimacy and introspection
of
the
memoir
in
three
dimensions. The results are as
stunning and moving as they
are profoundly sad.
Cuarón selects a thoughtful
angle from which to approach
his personal history, focusing
the camera on Cleo (Yalitza
Aparicio in a breakout debut
performance),
the
fictive
counterpart
of
Lido,
his
family’s
housekeeper
who
played
a
significant
role
in his upbringing in late
20th-century
Mexico
City.
And when I say “focus,” I
mean the unwavering, intense
kind that a person devotes to
someone they love. This love
guides the camerawork in
compounding
sequences
as
Cuarón slowly scans a site, be
it the house Cleo takes care of,
or the city block in which it’s
nestled. The camera may very
well visit other characters
and objects, but once it stops,
we wait with bated breath
for a return. Every time, that
awaited gravitational figure is
Cleo.
In this respect and several
others,
Cuarón’s
visual
memoir doubles as a love letter
to Lido, he even signs it “For
Lido,” in the closing scene.
This love letter hardly ever
errs, crossing the divides of
gender-based, socioeconomic
and
other
privileges
with
grace and respect. Cuarón
navigates
these
tensions
adeptly, juxtaposing scenes
that emphasize Cleo’s beloved
status in the eyes of her
employer’s
children
with
reality-checks
maintaining
the family is not immune to
seeing Cleo as their servant.
In one scene, we are floored
by
breathtaking
love
as
Cleo’s employer Ms. Sofia
(played by Marina de Tavira,
“Efectos Secundarios”) and
her youngest child take turns
holding Cleo as she cries
for fear of an unexpected
pregnancy. In the next scene,
however, when her employer
takes her to the family’s
doctor to test for pregnancy,
we watch Ms. Sofia speak
for and infantilize Cleo — we
sigh, and we ache for Cleo.
In Cuarón’s deep, matchless
regard for his characters lies
the distinct mode of realism
that
permeates
“Roma.”
With a keen eye for both the
staggering
tragedies
that
sideswipe us and the subtle
ironies of life that mock us,
Cuarón does not waste any time
in fruitless pursuit of their
source or rationalization for
their inevitable occurrence.
Instead, he pays homage to the
women expected to suffer all
of these in silence by telling of
Ms. Sofia’s anguish and even
more extensively of Cleo’s.
Each abandoned by the men
who were supposed to love
and support them in large and
small ways, these sufferings
are palpable, at once resonant
and incomprehensible.
And oh yes, “Roma” is sad.
But its sadness is not the
senseless, manipulative kind,
buttressed by the logic that,
on the one hand, you earn
your audience’s sympathies
by eliciting their tears, and,
on the other hand, that you
can
justify
this
approach
to
sadness
by
calling
it
realism.
“Roma”
instead
is distinguished by a fresh
realism, for Cuarón refuses to
narrate tragedy aimlessly or
callously in a way that would
justify drowning a character
just
to
make
a
more
convincing sea. Instead, he
invests foremost and most
deeply in his characters,
romanticizing neither their
suffering nor their triumphs.
The chief return on this
cumbersome but worthwhile
investment
in
a
more
authentic realism is a world
in which extraordinary love
appears just as possible as
extraordinary evil, a world
in which we each have the
choice to act in the name of
either.
That might explain one
of Cuarón’s visual motifs:
airplanes. In the opening
scene, one streaks across
a patch of sky reflected in
Cleo’s soapy water while she
scrubs the family’s driveway;
another airplane completes a
parallel route in the closing
scene, the camera aimed
upwards
this
time,
after
having tracked Cleo laboring
up a flight of stairs. As if to
say, why do you still crane
your neck? Why do you look
to the sky for your heroes?
There’s a hero, a saint, a
miracle, right by your side.
She sings to you softly in the
morning to ensure you get to
school on time. She calls you
by your name. She doesn’t
walk on water, but she would
drown before she’d let you go
under. Whether biological or
surrogate, she’s your mother,
and she loves you.
Could
you
imagine
anything more extraordinary
than that?
JULIANNA MORANNO
Daily Arts Writer
‘Roma’ renders radical
NEW MEDIA
When thinking about video
games
in
2018,
one
thing
probably comes to mind:
“Fortnite.” The addictive game
took over talk shows, Twitter
and teenagers across the globe,
but there was a lot more to this
year in games than just dancing,
armor-clad avatars. Here is
Daily New Media’s picks for the
five best video games of 2018.
1.
“Red
Dead
Redemption 2”
“Red Dead Redemption 2”
has the most detail I’ve ever
seen in a game. Rockstar’s
rendition of the American
Old West is impeccable. Every
action has an accompanying
animation. I’ll be honest and
say I haven’t even completed
the story yet because I get lost
in the realism of the world. The
map is a gradient from modern
industrialized cities on one
side to untamed badlands on
the other, and riding through
it feels like a microcosm
of
America’s
development
into the nation we know
today.
That’s
the
beauty
of “Red Dead Redemption
2”: it gives you senseless
murder
and
destruction,
but it also provides political
commentary on par with the
highest and most pretentious
of the arts because it, too, is a
masterpiece.
2. “Super Smash
Bros. Ultimate”
The best word to describe
“Super Smash Bros. Ultimate”
is
ultimate.
This
iteration
of “Super Smash Bros” has
quickly proved itself to be the
best in the franchise. Not only
does “Smash Ultimate” include
an impressive 76 characters
(with more to come via DLC),
many of the older characters
have been updated with new
moves and abilities. On top
of that, “Smash Ultimate”
just seems beefier: hits pack
more punch, characters are
more
responsive
and
the
music is enticingly epic. It
always makes me want to
play another round. I’ve been
playing “Super Smash Bros”
all my life, and I’ll admit that
I probably haven’t even begun
to master an eighth of all the
characters “Smash Ultimate”
offers. It just might be the
new gold standard for fighting
games.
3.
“Detroit:
Become Human”
“Detroit: Become Human”
is a game everyone should
play. A departure from the
usual shoot ‘em up violence
that
is
ubiquitous
in
the
game industry, “Detroit” is a
narrative-based choice game
in a class of its own. Set in
a futurist version of Detroit
where androids have become
common, the player navigates
the lives of three androids who
find themselves in situations
that
test
their
morality,
blurring the lines between
human and machine. The best
aspect of this game is that each
story can be played differently.
Due
to
multiple
dialogue
and action options for each
decision, the player can inject
as much personality into the
characters as the developers
can. “Detroit: Become Human”
is an emotional rollercoaster
and a model for what the game
industry has the potential to
be in the future.
4.
“Marvel’s
Spider-Man”
Like my newfound taste for
mushrooms, I was surprised at
how much I enjoyed “Spider-
Man.” Swinging between the
beautiful
and
astoundingly
accurate
skyscrapers
of
Manhattan
is
a
euphoric
feeling few games can create.
Despite
a
slight
learning
curve with the movement and
combat, after an hour “Spider-
Man” becomes a game of fluid
finesse. The story is heartfelt,
the villains are a real threat
and
the
characters
are
dynamic. I could play “Spider-
Man” for hours only swinging
around the city — that’s how
fun it is.
5. “Fortnite”
You
can
say
what
you
will
about
“Fortnite,”
but
one thing is true: The game
dominated 2018. “Fortnite”’s
Battle Royale mode united
gamers young and old to
bask in user-friendly, light-
hearted, cartoon murder. In
2018, I personally devoted an
embarrassing number of hours
to the game. However, I also
used “Fortnite” as a way to
connect. As I enter my adult
life, keeping in touch with
old friends and relatives is
difficult. Luckily “Fortnite”
allows me to maintain these
long-distance
relationships
while also letting me blow off
steam after a long day. As an
emerging international esport,
I hope “Fortnite” continues to
grow, and I’m eager to see the
future content Epic Games
releases this year.
ELI LUSTIG
For the Daily
2018’s top video games
“Roma”
The Michigan
Theater
Participant Media,
Esperanto Filmoj
There’s a hero, a
saint, a miracle,
right by your side
There was a lot
more to this year
in games than just
dancing, armor-
clad avatars